The Music of the Spores
Here in BC, fall usually means rain…in abundance. For some folks, this is the onset of their experience of SAD or seasonal affective disorder. Until you are brought into the mycelial web of the fungi, the darker months can bring low moods for somis. For others, this rainy season heralds the exciting possibility of finding forest treasures that often times appear to us as alien beings, hardly recognizable to this world and its citizenry. It’s said that children can name up to 150 corporate logos by the age of 5 but would be hard pressed to recognize and name 1 or 2 mushrooms from the forest floor. With mushrooms very much on the mind of the public these days, hopefully the winds of change are upon us (wind, the great medium for spore dispersal).
Tiny droplets of glistening dew hung in the air that morning as Robert Rogers and I entered into the mossy, old growth forest. The conditions were right and I had a feeling we were about to get lucky with our foraging adventure. We would be searching specifically for a conk mushroom to communicate with. Communicate you say? YES! Aside from ingesting psilocybin mushrooms, how could this be possible? The tech Robert had brought along with us consisted of electrodes and some type of modular synthesizer. When we happened upon a suitable red belted polypore, Robert got to work hooking up the electrodes to the shelf-like conk. Then, we waited…and waited…and waited.
After some time, a faint sound could be heard warbling through the ambience of the forest. I minute sound that seemed to modulate only slightly as it peeped out a whimper of a tone. “I’m not sure what is going on with this machine? Normally, it’s substantially louder and more diverse!” After 30 minutes of experimenting, an epiphany was arrived at. “Ah ha!” Proclaimed Robert. “I forgot to charge the batteries!” Robert’s machine was also a bit dated by this point. Many companies have stepped up and introduced much less cumbersome, interactive musical tech that gives mushrooms and plants a voice.
“One of the most joyous parts of working with the Music of the Plants is the moment when a person realizes that the plant world is not just alive, it is aware. This changes everything.” – Tigrilla Gardenia, Plant Researcher, Damanhur
The setup is something like this. All things vibrate. Plants and mushrooms are no exception. What most people don’t know is that this is an ever-changing affair and not static. When we hook plants/fungi up to these modular synths, the machines read the changing vibrations and apply sounds to them. Not unlike how a polygraph works. The real magic happens is when the mushroom begins to really sing. Robert exclaims excitedly, “You can hum along with them and they will begin to harmonize with you!”. This is a very exciting revelation! Many people are completely unaware of just how aware nature actually is (see Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird’s book ‘The Secret Life of Plants’ written in 1973,).
Humans often default to an idea of a somewhat static or ‘dead’ world of objects, claiming sentient superiority over all that we survey but when time is taken to slow down and tune into the rhythms of nature, we discover that all existence is pulsing with life…even the lowly rock has such a long imperceptible life cycle from mountain to sand grain, we fail to see it as any kind of life at all. But when we take the stance that all is imbued with this ‘life essence’ then things start to get a lot more interesting. For instance, it has been shown that hearing the forest in the above-mentioned ways actually induces an increase in ocytocin…that chemical that binds us to our mothers and loved ones (even our dogs experience this during times of affection).
This act of providing a voice to the forest dwellers brings us face to face with a new understanding of our environment. That sensuous thing that, prior to our modern culture, people had a more tactile experience of. This animated living landscape is what first dictated our language to us, and from there we took our experience of the world and created abstractions, setting forth an ever-widening divide between ourselves and our surroundings. This would eventually block us from feeling anything at all, resulting in the idea that nature was something to visit but quickly leave to return to our created world. For more on this, I highly recommend, “The Spell of the Sensuous” by David Abram.
*Breaking news Now scientists are claiming they have detected a form of language being used by the mushrooms!
https://futurism.com/the-byte/scientist-mushroom-language