Playing for the forest

Hi there, Since 2020 I’ve been playing my musical instruments to the trees, birds, squirrels and other creatures in my local forest to honour the place that brings me so much inspiration, joy and guidance and also to help me to get my arms around so much uncertainty. It’s amazing how playing quietly gradually fills silence with reciprocal birdsong or a visit from a fox giving me a soulful look. Here is one of my ‘forest’ improvisations.

Gemma, how lovely! Your guitar music with the punctuation on birdsong was so sweet. I understand your thoughts about playing for nature. I live in a wooded/meadow area and often play the piano with my window open. I have often wondered how the flora and fauna perceive my notes. My indoor plants must be ok with it…they are thriving! Play on!

Angela Wilcox wrote:Gemma, how lovely! Your guitar music with the punctuation on birdsong was so sweet. I understand your thoughts about playing for nature. I live in a wooded/meadow area and often play the piano with my window open. I have often wondered how the flora and fauna perceive my notes. My indoor plants must be ok with it…they are thriving! Play on!

Ah, thank you, Angela for your kind words. How lovely to play your piano in hearing shot of the woody meadow. I think nature loves being played to. During the pandemic I couldn’t perform live to people and playing into a camera isn’t the same, so the creatures / trees of the forest became my audience. Some humans appreciated it too!

Neat!  Here we have Shama thrush birds that migrate to the city in the winter months.  They have singing whistles that I notice can change over time.  I often mimic it when I hear it roosting in my trees outside.  It will mimic my mimicking for a bit, then insert a verrrry complicated version that makes me crack up.

Kind of like saying, "yeah, but you can't copy this...!"   haha

I've also tried to whistle Beethoven's Fifth (Ba na na NAAAA), hoping one day to hear a variation being whistled, but so far, no such luck.

Of course, it doesn't help that I'm not a great whistler...

...Connecting with Nature, connecting with Nature...

I perform outdoors as a majority of my performing, whether in the park for tips (busking) or when I'm performing at faires, with the trees as a cathedral of shadow and light.  I feel like combining myself with the earth and the waters and nature in general is a huge part of how I walk through the world, and the older I get the more I can define it, understand how it happens and really embrace what it can mean.  I like to think that the trees and birds and the earth and the waters can enjoy what I'm doing, at least in some sort of way, as I enjoy what they are doing.  I'm glad to find I'm not alone in these feelings.  Lately I've been endeavoring to find ways to describe them in words and I'm getting better at it I think.