00:02:47.542 --> 00:02:50.959
So I was definitely hearing some
off in that direction.

00:02:56.292 --> 00:02:58.999
How about your ears?
Which direction?

00:02:59.334 --> 00:03:00.667
Over there.

00:03:07.792 --> 00:03:10.959
You can feel your ears to be listening
in their highest register.

00:03:27.167 --> 00:03:35.083
Listen for the sound of antlers clacking,
as the male bulls face off.

00:03:41.334 --> 00:03:46.334
That particular bull elk has a voice
so rich in overtoned it's amazing.

00:04:10.667 --> 00:04:12.375
- Did you hear those Peter?
- Yeah.

00:04:12.959 --> 00:04:14.000
- Beautiful eh?
- Yeah.

00:04:14.834 --> 00:04:16.334
It's a very high register.

00:04:17.751 --> 00:04:18.959
Sounds like whales.

00:05:11.999 --> 00:05:20.042
Somewhere we're listening to one of the
most evocative, plaintive sounds...

00:05:20.959 --> 00:05:25.250
...in all of this more than human world...

00:05:26.834 --> 00:05:33.083
...which is the sound of male elk bugling.

00:05:37.542 --> 00:05:39.334
It's a sound that...

00:05:41.292 --> 00:05:50.542
...arpeggios up and up into these high
overtones and then above....

00:05:57.000 --> 00:06:07.792
...and as you just heard it drops down
into the most full throated grunting.

00:06:08.459 --> 00:06:12.918
And so it seems to really...

00:06:14.626 --> 00:06:20.459
...set the context for all of our human
music making....

00:06:21.709 --> 00:06:24.417
...cause it reaches the height of
an ecstasy...

00:06:26.083 --> 00:06:33.584
...and drops into the depths of visceral
anguish and yearning.

00:06:40.584 --> 00:06:43.667
It's so good to be here,
it's so good to be out.

00:06:45.999 --> 00:06:48.542
So many things come awake at night...

00:06:49.876 --> 00:06:52.167
...when us two-legged usually
go to sleep.

00:07:37.834 --> 00:07:40.334
We have to keep our eyes peeled
like bananas.

00:07:42.584 --> 00:07:45.751
Is this animal territory where
we've been?

00:07:47.626 --> 00:07:50.667
We're coming into it, it's more
than where we've been.

00:07:52.500 --> 00:07:53.500
It's midnight.

00:07:54.709 --> 00:07:57.959
I'm in the Gran Teton Park with
fellow filmmaker Peter Mettler...

00:07:59.292 --> 00:08:02.125
...and David Abram, who's a
philosopher and writer.

00:08:11.375 --> 00:08:13.626
We move so fast
it's hard to see the land.

00:08:15.709 --> 00:08:21.083
In the dark I think I see aspen,
Douglas fir, Spruce.

00:08:23.167 --> 00:08:25.375
I name things to try
to connect with them.

00:08:52.125 --> 00:08:55.000
I can't seem to get into my telephone.

00:09:38.417 --> 00:09:42.459
I had this idea that we could somehow
engage with nature more fully...

00:09:42.834 --> 00:09:44.999
...through coming here
and making a film.

00:09:51.542 --> 00:09:53.292
Nature is a tricky word...

00:09:56.167 --> 00:09:59.000
...one that seems to separate us from it.

00:10:39.292 --> 00:10:41.292
How can I see this mountain
more clearly?

00:10:48.500 --> 00:10:51.918
Somehow by bringing David's words
and Peter's vision together....

00:10:53.959 --> 00:10:55.292
...I thought we could find a clue.

00:11:04.500 --> 00:11:07.250
Right now, I'm just thinking
about bears....

00:11:13.042 --> 00:11:14.584
...and eyes other than our own.

00:11:22.000 --> 00:11:27.834
- Peter, will we start from here?
- Probably, let me check it.

00:11:42.542 --> 00:11:43.834
Did you hear that growl?

00:11:45.000 --> 00:11:46.542
- Did you hear that Peter?
- No.

00:11:46.999 --> 00:11:51.334
I'm not joking it was a growl,
you heard it Jordon?

00:11:52.626 --> 00:11:55.500
- Okay we're ready to go.
- It was a very clear growl.

00:11:58.959 --> 00:12:01.167
David, did you make a growling sound?

00:12:10.626 --> 00:12:11.667
Okay David.

00:12:32.375 --> 00:12:36.584
If I notice a raven soaring overhead...

00:12:41.375 --> 00:12:43.834
...I allow my gaze...

00:12:45.667 --> 00:12:49.500
...to be fixed on that feathered body
for more than a few moments.

00:12:51.417 --> 00:12:57.459
Following it with my focus as the bird
swoops and dives...

00:12:58.918 --> 00:13:04.167
...then sometimes I will feel in my
muscles something of that glide.

00:13:09.000 --> 00:13:14.000
I mean, if I were just a little mind
housed inside my head...

00:13:14.834 --> 00:13:21.792
...it would be impossible to know about
the experience of another animal.

00:13:24.125 --> 00:13:30.334
But what if this awareness I call me is
distributed through my entire organism?

00:13:33.876 --> 00:13:41.834
And isn't this even more true for
animals who are more active that us?

00:13:42.834 --> 00:13:47.584
Aren't they thinking with the whole
of their bodies?

00:14:40.542 --> 00:14:43.792
When I gaze at another creature,
watching as it moves...

00:14:44.500 --> 00:14:49.209
...my nervous system is snapsed through
my senses to its nervous system.

00:14:57.834 --> 00:15:01.626
And so my awareness is in direct
contact with its awareness.

00:15:20.584 --> 00:15:26.792
Perception is an on going improvisation
between myself an other beings.

00:16:37.292 --> 00:16:40.584
This hand is a thoroughly
tangible entity.

00:16:41.792 --> 00:16:45.000
It has it's own smooth
and textured surface...

00:16:46.000 --> 00:16:50.125
...and so it's entirely a part of the
tacticle field that it explores.

00:16:51.584 --> 00:16:54.334
When I reach to touch this tree...

00:16:55.792 --> 00:17:01.959
...I can feel it's smooth surface under
my fingertimes and it's coolness.

00:17:02.918 --> 00:17:08.250
But there's also this other sensation,
I can feel the tree touching me.

00:17:09.375 --> 00:17:11.584
Sampling the chemsitry of my skin.

00:17:39.083 --> 00:17:42.751
These eyes which explore the visible
world...

00:17:43.542 --> 00:17:46.999
...have their own colours,
their own shiny surface.

00:17:48.542 --> 00:17:52.042
They are entirely a part of the visibile
field.

00:17:55.834 --> 00:18:01.834
When I gaze out at these trees, I'm not
just seeing their trunks and branches...

00:18:02.500 --> 00:18:07.000
...I'm also feeling myself seen from
their perspective.

00:18:12.209 --> 00:18:17.500
Trees after all are responding to light
and shadow all of the time...

00:18:17.709 --> 00:18:20.042
...they are highly photoreceptive beings.

00:18:37.751 --> 00:18:43.667
We might just as well say that the land
is perceiving itself through us.

00:19:11.083 --> 00:19:15.751
When I listen or see what's around,
with animals eyes or ears...

00:19:17.125 --> 00:19:18.417
...nothing is passive.

00:19:22.834 --> 00:19:26.751
I feel my senses are part of a huge
network of communication.

00:19:27.542 --> 00:19:29.209
Like tree roots reaching out.

00:19:37.042 --> 00:19:39.375
How can our filmmaking be part of this?

00:19:52.626 --> 00:19:54.459
There are big clouds coming.

00:19:55.584 --> 00:19:57.375
Okay I'm going to grab this shot then,

00:19:58.792 --> 00:20:01.584
- Which way?
- From here, I won't move the tripod.

00:20:04.626 --> 00:20:07.042
- Do you want us to move the stuff?
- Yeah.

00:20:16.542 --> 00:20:19.709
- Is my microphone in the picture?
- Yes.

00:20:20.042 --> 00:20:21.042
The stand?

00:20:23.999 --> 00:20:25.250
For the last few years...

00:20:25.834 --> 00:20:29.334
...I've been so happy just pointing
my cameras at the natural world.

00:20:36.918 --> 00:20:39.375
Strangely, it is an affirmation of the
moment...

00:20:41.334 --> 00:20:42.667
...of being in the present.

00:20:51.125 --> 00:20:53.042
But the animal in me is mistrustful.

00:20:55.834 --> 00:20:58.959
How can technology possibly help us
connect...

00:20:59.751 --> 00:21:01.876
...with this vibrant life that surrounds us?

00:22:41.542 --> 00:22:44.999
My different senses continually
diverge from my body...

00:22:45.751 --> 00:22:50.334
...and yet they continually converge and
flow together in the things I percieve.

00:22:56.083 --> 00:23:01.584
Which enables me to experience each
other being as a conjuction of forces.

00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:17.542
My body's an open circuit that completes
itself on other beings I focus on...

00:23:18.834 --> 00:23:24.375
...and so I exprience my own coherance
only by entering into relation with others.

00:23:30.500 --> 00:23:34.250
In touching things, I feel touched
by those things...

00:23:34.542 --> 00:23:38.792
...in gazing out at the world,
I feel seen by that world.

00:23:46.292 --> 00:23:49.334
Isn't this what anthropologists call
anamism?

00:23:53.500 --> 00:23:57.667
It seems to me that sensory perception
is inherently animistic.

00:24:02.083 --> 00:24:05.459
It's not just this sense that everything
is alive...

00:24:06.250 --> 00:24:09.417
...but also that everything is expressive.

00:28:05.876 --> 00:28:09.417
We can think of language as a
representation of the world...

00:28:10.542 --> 00:28:13.500
...but language is also a bodily thing.

00:28:14.542 --> 00:28:17.709
It's a sensuous activity, speaking.

00:28:18.417 --> 00:28:22.042
An exchange between our body
and the other bodies around us.

00:28:25.209 --> 00:28:29.959
Gush. Wash. Splash. Rush.

00:28:31.375 --> 00:28:37.167
The sound that unites those words is
the sound that water itself speaks.

00:28:39.542 --> 00:28:41.375
"Shhhhhh"

00:28:50.209 --> 00:28:56.292
So, doesn't our langauge belong to the
animate landscape as much as to us?

00:31:27.083 --> 00:31:30.542
Writing arises from out interaction with
the ainimate earth.

00:31:32.000 --> 00:31:37.542
The terrain around us is shot through
with suggestive crawls and traces.

00:31:40.334 --> 00:31:42.375
From the calligraphy of rivers...

00:31:43.083 --> 00:31:46.918
...to the black slash burned by lightning
into the trunk of an old tree.

00:32:06.167 --> 00:32:07.792
Our impulse to read...

00:32:08.667 --> 00:32:15.709
...dervies from our hunting ancestors
who read the tracks of other animals.

00:32:16.667 --> 00:32:22.500
Soon we learned to make our own
tracks on cave walls and rock faces.

00:32:28.334 --> 00:32:34.792
These petroglyphs were themselves
traces of elk, rain clouds, bison.

00:32:46.918 --> 00:32:50.209
With the emergence of formal
writing systems...

00:32:50.876 --> 00:32:56.000
...among the written characters of
hieroglyphic or idiographic scripts...

00:32:59.999 --> 00:33:03.792
...were stylised images of sunrise,
of mountain.

00:33:07.667 --> 00:33:13.999
Such glyphs functioned as windows
opening onto a land that speaks.

00:33:21.042 --> 00:33:25.459
Human language began to abstract
itself from the land.

00:33:31.709 --> 00:33:34.709
A powerful new magic
began to emerge...

00:33:36.584 --> 00:33:37.584
...the alphabet.

00:33:42.584 --> 00:33:44.751
With the advent of the phonetic
alphabet...

00:33:45.042 --> 00:33:50.042
...the characters no longer imaged
anything in the sensuous surroundings.

00:33:54.626 --> 00:33:59.542
Each letter now referred us only to a
gesture made by the human mouth.

00:34:04.417 --> 00:34:09.417
We see a G and we go "guh",
we see an M and we go "mmm".

00:34:12.000 --> 00:34:17.125
Letters no longer fuction as windows
onto a more than human landscape...

00:34:17.667 --> 00:34:22.250
...but solely as mirrors reflecting the
human face back onto itself.

00:34:42.209 --> 00:34:44.459
As people learn their ABCs...

00:34:44.876 --> 00:34:49.000
...their sensorium is gradually closed
within a hall of mirrors.

00:34:50.959 --> 00:34:56.667
Counsciousness or awareness now
seems the property of humans alone.

00:35:20.667 --> 00:35:24.292
It's said that other animals are not really
conscious.

00:35:26.667 --> 00:35:29.042
Plants are certainly not awake
and aware...

00:35:31.584 --> 00:35:35.375
...much less the river, or the wind,
or the thunderclouds.

00:36:05.459 --> 00:36:10.876
Alphabetic literacy is a new and very
concentrated form of anamism.

00:36:13.876 --> 00:36:18.876
The supposedly inert or inanimate
letters now speak to us, vividly.

00:36:19.167 --> 00:36:22.459
Much as rocks and spiders
once spoke to us.

00:38:22.709 --> 00:38:25.459
Once we begin writing down...

00:38:28.876 --> 00:38:32.500
...for the first time in human experience
there's this...

00:38:33.542 --> 00:38:38.751
...dawning sense of time as a linear
progression of events...

00:38:40.999 --> 00:38:45.834
...that is something distinct from space.

00:38:48.500 --> 00:38:55.334
Space is the world of nature, the plants,
the happenings of other animals.

00:38:57.500 --> 00:39:02.584
It doesn't exist as a sense of time that
comes from a distant past...

00:39:02.709 --> 00:39:08.209
...going towards a distant future, that's
a notion for us two-leggeds.

00:39:24.792 --> 00:39:32.375
With the peoples of the book comes this
very new sense of human history...

00:39:33.667 --> 00:39:40.125
...that began somewhere, but is going
somewhere else.

00:40:08.500 --> 00:40:16.292
Nature, the other animals, the plants,
begin to fall away from our awareness.

00:40:19.459 --> 00:40:26.584
The real stuff of import is human.

00:42:38.250 --> 00:42:46.876
Everybody is caught up in this
fascination with recording things.

00:42:48.125 --> 00:42:51.999
There's even a sense that...

00:42:53.834 --> 00:42:59.626
...an event, an encounter is not really
real unless it's recorded.

00:43:04.834 --> 00:43:14.459
I sometimes wonder if we humans, like
other animals of this world are sliding...

00:43:15.999 --> 00:43:21.584
...rapidly into a time of such difficulty.

00:43:23.459 --> 00:43:30.209
Are we recording so much because of
some instictive urge to make a record...

00:43:31.500 --> 00:43:38.834
...of how we are living in this era of
profligate spending...

00:43:40.709 --> 00:43:49.876
...because those in the future will want
to know what happened to those people?

00:43:51.334 --> 00:43:52.584
Who were they?

00:45:14.500 --> 00:45:16.417
I should get that before it disappears.

00:49:35.125 --> 00:49:38.375
- Do you remember where to go?
- Yeah, you just stay on this road.

00:49:39.459 --> 00:49:45.292
- What about our nice coffee place?
- I think after.

00:50:01.542 --> 00:50:02.751
It's quite nerve-wracking.

00:50:20.709 --> 00:50:25.083
It's kind of great, not being here
in the middle of summer...

00:50:26.500 --> 00:50:29.999
...when there are so many cars
on these roads.

00:50:40.000 --> 00:50:45.918
Some people say they notice how
people come to look like their pets.

00:50:46.083 --> 00:50:48.792
I find people come to look like their cars.

00:50:50.083 --> 00:50:53.167
Their faces look like the grill on them.

00:50:58.125 --> 00:50:59.834
My car's name is moonshine...

00:51:01.500 --> 00:51:05.918
...because it's kind of silver, and it just
seemed a great name for it.

00:51:08.209 --> 00:51:12.876
It's always felt to me like once one can
find the right...

00:51:14.417 --> 00:51:16.834
...name for ones vehicle...

00:51:21.042 --> 00:51:26.167
...suddenly you begin taking better care,
of the car...

00:51:27.959 --> 00:51:32.209
...and noticing just what good care
it takes of you.

00:51:34.417 --> 00:51:36.167
Is there a river down there you can see?

00:51:38.000 --> 00:51:39.334
I'm just going to take a quick peek.

00:52:08.125 --> 00:52:15.667
It's kind of wild, witnessing this
outrageous proliferation of technology.

00:52:16.709 --> 00:52:21.751
Right at the same moment that there's
such a fraying and fragmentation...

00:52:22.209 --> 00:52:26.626
...within the earth's various ecosystems.

00:52:36.584 --> 00:52:43.792
It's weird to listen to so many of the
inventors in Silicon Valley.

00:52:45.334 --> 00:52:53.209
Their, image of this future, where
human consciousness is finally able to...

00:52:53.626 --> 00:52:59.042
...download itself from this problematic
body into better hardware...

00:53:00.250 --> 00:53:05.459
...that will enable an immortality to the
human species.

00:53:20.999 --> 00:53:27.042
As we are spending more and more
time entranced by our artefacts...

00:53:29.542 --> 00:53:36.209
...it enables us not to notice what's
going on in the bodies' world...

00:53:43.334 --> 00:53:44.751
...which is really the earth.

00:55:01.250 --> 00:55:11.125
In engaging with our technologies,
we are reflected back to ourselves.

00:55:11.667 --> 00:55:16.918
That is, the technologies intervene
between our...

00:55:18.375 --> 00:55:23.209
...sensing bodies and the
sensuous earth...

00:55:25.417 --> 00:55:31.459
...in such a way, that we begin
interacting with the technology...

00:55:32.083 --> 00:55:37.459
...and forgetting that there is a wider,
more than human world.

00:55:42.959 --> 00:55:50.250
And yet the technologies originate
as tools...

00:55:50.876 --> 00:55:56.751
...helping us to make contact with or
engage that wider than human world.

00:56:05.000 --> 00:56:12.334
We are yearning to feel what it's like to
live in a world filled with intelligence.

00:56:16.999 --> 00:56:22.751
And so our way of trying to get there,
to recreate that experience...

00:56:23.459 --> 00:56:31.250
...involves outfitting digital interfaces
into every built item of our world.

00:56:36.667 --> 00:56:39.125
Ubiquitous, computing.

00:56:39.999 --> 00:56:43.959
Imagine you have zero cookies and you
split them evenly among zero friends.

00:56:45.000 --> 00:56:49.417
Natural language user interfaces
programmed to talk back to us.

00:57:08.459 --> 00:57:17.417
Sometimes it does seem as though, our
technologies are just trying to mimic...

00:57:18.876 --> 00:57:24.792
...that ancient, oral, animistic cosmos
we once inhabited.

01:02:23.375 --> 01:02:27.709
We are flying, and I've almost forgotten
to notice.

01:02:34.250 --> 01:02:39.834
As I sense the plane around me,
has my body grown wings?

01:02:55.375 --> 01:02:59.042
We are carried carefully,
miraculously through space...

01:03:01.999 --> 01:03:06.250
...by the very technology which risks
eclipsing us from it's source...

01:03:08.250 --> 01:03:10.584
...relegating us to a
purely human world.

01:03:26.584 --> 01:03:30.375
And I remember that in the skeleton
of this plane...

01:03:31.334 --> 01:03:33.250
...is the bird that taught us to fly.

01:07:41.709 --> 01:07:47.542
The origins of many of our common
words seem to suggest...

01:07:48.500 --> 01:07:54.042
...an ancient affinity between the mind
and the atmosphere.

01:07:59.709 --> 01:08:06.292
Like our word 'spirit', which shares the
same origin as the word 'respiration'.

01:08:08.042 --> 01:08:10.292
They are both from the Latin word,
'Spiritus'...

01:08:10.542 --> 01:08:13.250
...which means 'a breath'
or a 'gust of wind'.

01:08:16.626 --> 01:08:21.125
Or the word 'Psyche', from which we get
'psychology' or 'psychiatry'.

01:08:22.042 --> 01:08:25.542
It comes from this ancient
Greek term, 'Psykhe'...

01:08:25.999 --> 01:08:29.417
...which originally mean 'a breath' or
'a gust of wind'.

01:08:33.292 --> 01:08:40.167
It would seem that this affinity between
mind and wind...

01:08:40.417 --> 01:08:43.667
...is one of the oldest and most
common intuitions.

01:08:45.459 --> 01:08:47.459
As though the air itself was aware.

01:09:12.792 --> 01:09:14.876
Because we are bodily immersed...

01:09:16.584 --> 01:09:22.083
...along with all the other animals and
the plants, inside a mind that isn't ours...

01:09:23.292 --> 01:09:24.959
...but is rather the earths.

01:09:55.334 --> 01:10:03.167
Among the Inuit, the name is 'Sila',
wind mind of the world...

01:10:03.876 --> 01:10:06.083
...which gives all beings breath
and awareness.

01:10:07.083 --> 01:10:13.375
In Hebrew, the word is 'Ruach',
sometimes transladed as 'rushing spirit'.

01:10:14.959 --> 01:10:16.792
It's the wind which is the spirit.

01:10:23.709 --> 01:10:27.500
Modern civilisation has long taken
the air for granted.

01:10:28.584 --> 01:10:32.083
We don't speak of the air beween
oneself and a nearby tree...

01:10:32.209 --> 01:10:34.709
...we just speak of the empty space
between us.

01:10:36.292 --> 01:10:38.999
It's empty, a void.

01:10:40.375 --> 01:10:44.542
And hence a perfect place to dump
bi-products of our industries.

01:10:59.167 --> 01:11:06.292
For our oral ancestors, that which
dissipates and dissolves into the air...

01:11:07.584 --> 01:11:11.209
...is by that very movent entering
into the mind.

01:11:14.918 --> 01:11:17.459
For mind is not a human property.

01:11:19.792 --> 01:11:22.292
It's a property of the biosphere itself.