A Language Older Than Words by Derrick Jensen Page B

away with.'"
    I liked so much of what he’d said earlier, but I found myself on a slippery slope of damp squib. I tried to pin him down. I had to know if he thought these experiences were as real as the hat on his head.
    "Being an artist, everything is just metaphors." He paused. "It's safe. If I came out and said these things as pure energy, Id get in trouble. That doesn't happen if you talk about them as metaphors."
    "But are they true?"
    "It doesn't matter. It just matters if they're interesting. If you're going to last, you can't take any of it very seriously, yourself, the universe, anything."
    "Why not?"
    "You won't have a voice. I wouldn't be able to publish. I wouldn't be able to speak. This summer I get to work with some world-famous marine biologists; we'll be doing stuff with humpback whales. Ten years ago these guys wouldn't have touched me with a ten-foot pole, and now they'll work with me straight on. And you know why? Because I've never made any sweeping statements. I've never said that whales are intelligent. I've never taken a stance."
    I guess, I thought, I’llhave Marie Antoinette all to myself: this guy isn't going anywhere I want to go.
    "Everything we're talking about here," he continued, "is very threatening, to the culture, and to people's basic ideas about how the universe works. The trick is to talk about it without shutting people down. How do you breach their defenses? What is your schtick to be able to get them to listen, and to make it so you can continue? I'm trying to change the culture, trying to change the way people perceive their place in the world, but I'm also trying to make a living. How do you do that? It would be very easy for me to get lumped into a box, as somebody who just plays music with whales. And I don't want to get lumped there."
    I understood where he was coming from, but the same phrase kept popping into my head: We're screwed.
    I stepped away from the conversational fire, and asked, knowing well the answer, why the notion of communicating with coyotes, whales, plants, is threatening to the culture.
    "If the Earth is dead, it feels no pain. If the Earth weren't considered dead, we couldn't build the Empire State Building, because we couldn't bring ourselves to hurt the planet so much just to make a big building. The entire culture is based on the belief that the earth is inanimate."
    I stepped even further away, and, because the seminal experience of his life had come in a barnyard in Mexico with a turkey, asked what has caused him to continue to listen to the natural world, at least metaphorically.
    "We need to distinguish between listening and hearing. I believe I listen better than many people, but I still don't hear very well. I have a lot of friends around the world who are able to actually hear the natural world. Still, whether or not we hear, listening is important. Until we start to listen—and, I hope eventually hear—the natural world for ourselves, nonhumans will be regarded as objects. Just the act of trying to listen can change a lot of our perceptions about nature, and that can change the way we live."
    We talked through the afternoon, and eventually I turned off the recorder. After dinner, and after going with him and his wife to a reading in town, I returned to spend the night in the cabin. There, I fell asleep listening to the rustling of the stalks in his garden. About three, a cock began to crow. I shut the window and covered my head with a pillow to stifle the noise, then fell back asleep.
    The next day, riding the ferry back, I stood on the bow and watched the houses float by on islands like so many pieces of beached wood. I wondered how much this trip had really helped. I had no need to be convinced of the metaphorical efficacy of listening to the natural world. The mess of houses, seaplanes, and boats—never mind the floating styrofoam and tiny oil slicks—were sufficient evidence that we’re not listening. But this had more to do with listening