Storytelling and the Climate Crisis #2
Great storytelling is a gift, a sanctuary, a relief, and at its best, a sense of being deeply understood. To be able to escape into the lives of others can be a delicious and cathartic pleasure, and I envy anyone who has not yet enjoyed the genius of Mike White's The White Lotus season 2.
All the pleasure of beautiful surroundings, beautiful people, clothes, cars, food and wine, Mediterranean water, idyllic weather - and things go very wrong. Nothing about the climate crisis - and that was a part of the relief.
Nothing directly about the climate crisis either, in one of the most moving and important films I have seen in a long time, EO, written and directed by Jerzy Skolimowski, co-written by Ewa Piaskowska, and part of the season's BAFTA candidates in many categories. I feared it would break my heart but instead it brought me closer to the part I deny and bury - because what would happen if we started caring more about living creatures? Please if you can, watch it. It is sparely told, beautiful, and what I loved so much about it and why I am writing about it here, is that it is the high art of filmic storytelling, without sentimentality but with all the force of love and compassion.
And when I watched it, I felt a great inward sense of relief, that my latest novel POD, is in this same tradition of empathy with another species of protagonist.
Published in paperback in the UK (and Commonwealth) at the end of January, and in the US in February, the story follows and entwines the lives and fates of several different cetaceans: a female spinner dolphin abducted by an exiled gang of bottlenose males; a mature male humpback whale who sings warning to his kin to keep them away from the terrors of shipping lanes - and an abandoned military dolphin who instead of dying of his wounds, finds salvation in the truth. There is a giant Napoleon wrasse, sole survivor of a fishing genocide, there is an amoral and worldly remora (those free-riding fish who stick onto larger more charismatic animals but who deserve their own show) and other ocean creatures, the lives and biology and ecosystems of whom I researched in as much detail as I did for the honeybees of The Bees, now in the development at the National Theatre.
I'm especially grateful to the early readers of Pod who have connected with such emotional force that they've posted about it and want others to read it too. Many have commented that I call the cetaceans in the story 'people', and as soon as they think of whales, dolphins, even fish - as sentient individuals, the story becomes compelling and moving.
Black Beauty, the novel about carriage horses by Anna Sewell, was published in 1877 and changed the public's perception about how they were, and should be treated. Without Black Beauty, would we have the Lloyds bank horse? We need animals, we need to feel connection. We don't want to look at the transport truck going to the abattoir, and we certainly don't want our children to see what happens there. We don't want to see it either. It's ob-scene, off-stage, things too bad to depict to an audience in ancient Greek drama. We want a presentable relationship with animals. We want the story of Cap'n Birdseye, not an empty ocean. We need stories to help us grow up.
The word 'anthropomorphic' is often referred to with a certain disdain, but to imagine ourselves into the experience of another, is actually what we crave. Because we ourselves are less alone when we can do that. When mobile phones first became a common sight and I returned to London, my home city, after living in Los Angeles for some time, I was struck by how many people were talking on them in the streets. It was as if we had all been so lonely, that when the opportunity arose to connect, we could not stop doing it. It is as if we are all frightened of feeling ourselves, of the loneliness that brings up. We shudder from that intensity, we want to lower the stress by filling the void with a tombola of snack-sized distraction. But when something big and powerful enough comes along, a great series, a great film, a great story - and please god a great comedy - we fall into its hold with gratitude.
I have been asked to speak on storytelling and the climate crisis, several times now. I've been a bit of plankton, or whatever is smaller than that, at COP26 in Glasgow, and done it there. I've addressed Asian business leaders at the House of Lords, and an audience of programme makers at BAFTA. I'm on the other side of three novels - The Bees, The Ice, and now POD, and the research joins up. The story of a laying worker (and therefore criminal) in the hive led me to the plight of all pollinators. Pollinators introduced me to climate change, which in 2015 was happening most visibly in the Arctic. I researched, visited, and then wrote a novel set in Svalbard. Anyone interested in geopolitics will find much to study there right now.
And The Ice led me to study whales and dolphins, which took me into the ocean of the world, where no matter what humans dictate to each other about territorial waters and fishing rights, is a world without barriers, and about which we still know so little - and affect so greatly. As the ocean warms and acidifies, migration crises proliferate - just as they do on land. If people cannot eat, cannot live, if there is warfare, they will move. They will displace other people, and compete for resources. There will be strife. And the essence of drama, is conflict.
Three non-fiction books I highly recommend, all great reads and world-widening:
The Mind of a Bee by Lars Chittka, which is like a little glimpse of the power of the universe to create such wonder in such a tiny creature;
How to Speak Whale by Tom Mustill, which gives me hope the human dream of inter-species communication could happen in my lifetime, https://www.tommustill.com
and also Rewilding the Sea by Charles Clover, founder of Blue Marine Foundation.
A better world is possible, is happening. Telling powerful, satisfying, but not always comfortable stories - is surely part of that work.
I hope you have enjoyed my newsletter, do let me know if anything particularly resonated with you. I am always happy to hear from others using various forms of storytelling to communicate the climate crisis.
Laline