Featured work in Maryliz Smith’s innovative Conversari Series
Song of the Earth
Featuring prose by evolutionary cosmologist Brian Swimme and environmental activist and author Joanna Macy, Song of the Earth is a 30-minute audio experience that combines music, sound, and diverse voices on the story of our planet. The interweaving soundscape engages us in the birth and beauty of Earth, while deepening our empathy for its devastation through climate change. Divided into three sections, each part takes listeners through hope and anguish, dissonance and resolution, while guiding them to tune into their inner voice on the issue and gradually draw it to the surface.
Event licences are available for both Conversari formats—the guided-reflection format and the music-only format.
“Song of the Earth captures the essence of the new cosmology in a way that is both magnificent and unique.”
Brian Swimme, Director of the Center for the Story of the Universe
Interview with Maryliz Smith
What drew you to the work of Brian Swimme and Joanna Macy?
MS:
When I met Brian Swimme I felt a natural affinity with him. As an evolutionary cosmologist, he takes the long view. He founded the Center for the Story of the Universe where award-winning videos reside to “expand our collective consciousness and redirect the current self-destructive trajectory of society towards a vibrant community that transcends individual, human and geo-political boundaries.”
About the same time I met Brian, I connected with Joanna Macy. I had read her book Coming Back to Life, a guidebook mapping ways to participate in the “healing of our world.” One of the exercises she describes in her book is The Bestiary, a process that “elicits and provides a structure for despair work about what we are doing to our brother-sister species. As a ritual, it also serves to honor, and hold in memory the unique and irreplaceable forms that are passing from us.”
In retrospect, I realize now that the relationships with Brian and Joanna initiated an eight year exploration of how to bring Song of the Earth to the public.
What is the intention behind this work as part of the Conversari Series?
MS:
This is all about using art to break through our defenses around challenging topics. One of the functions of the strategic mind is as a protector of one’s emotions. These mental strategies can be very important when a person is struggling to accept something that seems overwhelming or stressful.
However, when these mental strategies are overprotective, the access to the emotional intelligence of a person can be limited, at best, or bypassed altogether. This is where music, and the arts, in general, can play a role, inviting the emotional range of intelligence to come to the foreground in conversation, where the mind “has no defense” (David Whyte) and when it is safe to do so, especially with intense, challenging subjects.
Once the people involved become acquainted with and understand how to work with strong emotions in company with one another, a powerful marriage between the heart and mind occurs. This dance of mind and heart becomes a strong instrument in service of some of these highly-charged subjects, including climate change, death, or mass migrations of displaced people.
The goal of Song of the Earth and the entire Conversari Series is to orient and prepare individuals to engage in forums, from intimate conversations with friends and family to large conferences with colleagues and leaders, where participants can share their experiences and ideas with the intention to cultivate a sense of community for the purpose of action.
Tell us about the inner artistry of this work.
MS:
There are so many details that come together in this kind of work. Some seem like secret, since I know many audiences will not know what they are hearing, but they will feel it, and that is the art.
First there is a lot of sound magic: The wind-like drone sounds throughout the three sections come from NASA’s satellite recordings in space. The listener also hears a cantatore who combines speaking and singing in an ancient vocal style called recitative, and a host of natural sounds conveying the evolution of earth itself.
Then at an even subtler level in the music itself: The melodic and harmonic structures correspond to Rudolf Steiner’s system of notes correlating with the astrological signs of the planets. The first two sections, “Birth of the Universe” and “The Sacrifice”, are rhythmically based on the Fibonacci series.
Also there is the use of voice: The excerpts of the speeches from the three youth towards the end of the third section, “Stars and Galaxies”, were extracted from the Climate Action Summit, 2019 with permission granted by the U.N. The cello and high voice that appear in all three sections symbolize the strength of relationship and the potential for change because of their unrelenting trust for one another and for the future. The voices of the young and older adults come from friends and colleagues who volunteered their time for this project. I’m so grateful for everyone who offered something of themselves to make this work possible.
Learn More about the Conversari Series
The shared format of each audio experience, diverse applications, toolkit and more.
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