Skin to Skin: the Art of Listening through the Soles

Skin to Skin: the Art of Listening through the Soles

As we move irrevocably through the charnel ground of the world we once knew and relied upon, I walk.  Short walks, long walks, walking as creative practice.  Movement that is innate, ancient, and much forgotten.  As I walk, sometimes shod, sometimes skin to skin with the earth, through mud, leaf litter, the entangled web of tree roots and networks that weave their way beneath the surface, the illusion of self, shaken loose by rhythmic archaic patterns of movement, undergoes a dissolution.  New iterations of seeing and listening emerge;  the sensing of complex layers of psychic topography, inner and outer. Beauty and pain, light and dark, repulsion and rapture, all intertwined.  It is an acute way of listening to place, of receiving information about the complex patterning of the visible and invisible, the tangible and intangible.  

I am a lifelong student of place, and of the agency of the more-than-human; an apprentice to the teaching capacity of kin who call us into action or relationship in sometimes surprising ways.  I have been called back into regular walking practice by a small and unassuming but ubiquitous plant which I began a relationship with a decade ago whilst living in Aotearoa New Zealand where walking barefoot was a foundational part of my life for around eighteen years.  This plant ally, whose name comes from the latin planta, meaning sole of the foot, has many names and several forms.  Variously known as plantain, Plantago major, Plantago lanceolata, waybread, white man's footprint, I have come to know these allies not just for their abundance of gifts;  soother of inflamed gut, instant pain reliever for bites, cuts, stings and blisters, anti-inflammatory, styptic, anti-bacterial; but as companion and teacher of the path, since they grow prolifically along tracks and pathways, the seeds carried and released by the feet, footwear and clothing of those who walk.  Recently a bout of gut inflammation brought me back into relationship with this wondrous ally, and the message has been unequivocally clear: to return to the path of walking practice - walking The Plantain Way as my beloved has playfully called it.  This is not a waymarked route that can be found on a map.  It is an unfolding route consisting, to begin with, of daily short and long walks, the conscious imbibing of plantain tea, and the munching, when invited, of leaves.  I have no idea of the length of this route, its breadth, or purpose, only that I must heed the call and set out.

The practice of deep listening to plant allies has been part of my life for two decades, informed by studies in Western herbal medicine and the generous sharing of taonga (treasures of knowledge and wisdom)  by Māori practitioners of Rongoā - their traditional and holistic systems of healing.  Informed also by the Western tradition of simples  -  working with one plant at a time -  I have followed the treasure of knowledge shared with me during a stay in the bush in the southern Kaimai ranges on the North Island of New Zealand, and learnt to listen deeply and get to know one plant at a time through sitting quietly, ingesting it, making tea with it, following its teachings and instruction as they are slowly revealed over time.  So now plantain calls me to a point of convergence and action - to combine the practice of walking with the teachings of this broad spectrum healing plant.  I am compelled to listen. 

I am indebted in my understanding of walking as creative practice to the expansive work of  Ernesto Pujol, who says that historically artists communicate and the public listens, but what if the artist was a public servant and public listener?  What if the artwork was a vessel for listening to society, rather than to speak to society?  And what if walking as creative practice was a vessel for listening to the earth and to all kin, for creating space to listen to the layers of the invisible and intangible as well as the visible? 

The nature of place, as I viscerally learnt during an unforgettable field trip to the Peak District at the age of seventeen, does not make itself known to us only through maps, diagrams, topography, recorded history and archaeology, but also through the permeable animal body of our skin and energetic sensing as we move in repetitive steps in a receptive state, walking off our separation to become that porous and integrated subtle receiver of information and experience - falling into an archaic and regenerative reciprocity.  We become receivers of residues, interpreters of subtlety, listeners to voices which exist outside the illusion of linear time and the confines of consensus reality.

It may, for some, be hard to swallow the idea of walking as an artistic practice.  Ernesto Pujol, in his book Walking Art Practice: Reflections on Socially Engaged Paths, describes walking as dwelling outside the notion of artistic talent and crafty skill.  Walking is not about the modernist myth of originality.  Walking eliminates the myth of achieving something original in the arts because (almost) everyone walks.  Perhaps turning the tables on art in this way could be seen as a generative act and a movement towards counter-colonial ways of being.  Certainly the call of plantain - a common and largely uncelebrated ally, would seem to suggest that this path is not about the cult of the artist, but about something far less elitist.  Walking is a deeply democratic activity.

Walking, in the West, unless for the focused purpose of exercise or recreation, has increasingly come to be looked down upon as largely the domain of those who do not have the dubious privilege or status of owning a vehicle.  Our society’s rights of passage have come to revolve around the car;  the driving test now representing the threshold of adulthood for many teenagers, and the purchase of one’s first car being widely considered as some kind of indicator of success and autonomy in the adult world.  We have largely forgotten the value of walking.  We have forgotten that we have a long and deep history of walking that connects us with our ancestry and which reaches back into the mists of time and forward into the future. 

So with all that in mind, there are a few questions that I will be living and practising over the next few dark wintering months:  

What would it be like to put down the tools of discovery and originality, to forget the pioneering and relentless search for newness in the art world and in personal creative practice, and to rest in a rhythmic, reciprocal, archaic relationship with place; to uncover old ways of seeing and listening that rest the eyes from tired screens and the seclusion of private studio spaces?

 What would it be like to walk out into the world to perceive and receive all kin through the porous animal body, the soles of the feet, and with the inner eyes and ears of the heart?  

What artworks, or vessels for listening would emerge from that kind of engagement?