Listen Softly

Water is life force, humans depend on it for our daily living and survival. As the climate crisis deepens respect for and appreciation of water is paramount.

Listen softly invites us to experience water immersively, being with, existing alongside, listening, feeling with water. Joanna Macy talks about the 3 movements and how in our origins as humans we did not separate ourselves from nature.

“In the first movement, our infancy as a species, we felt no separation from the natural world around us. Trees, rocks, and plants surrounded us with a living presence as intimate and pulsing as our own bodies. In that primal intimacy, which anthropologists call “participation mystique,” we were as one with our world as a child in the mother’s womb.” - Joanna Macy, World as Lover, World as Self

The work is presented in a multifaceted experience. Two videos project on opposing surfaces, one looking inward to the water the other outward under and in the water. A vinyl sound track plays on a record player inviting a beginning, middle and end to experiencing the work. The poem “Listen Softly” is conjured from found text, a Brahms introduction, paintings and ponderings alter this vintage book. Elements thread through the soundtrack eery and deep recordings of water and sound.

If we can grow our appreciation and wonder at the more-than-human world might we respect and share love with it. Water will define our human struggles to survive heat domes, floods, fires and daily living. How can we care for our planet more lovingly, taking only what we need, preserving and leaving a future with hope for our future generations.

Alison invites those experiencing Listen Softly to sit, stand, lay with the water, lean into feeling alongside, and take away with them reverence, respect, renewed love for the environment we are part of, not separate from there is hope.

Listen Softly is on show at Island Mountain Arts, Wells, BC in July/August 2023 as part of a joint exhibition with Stephanie Denz , click below to see more.

Listen Softly, Look Between Exhibition