I had an unexpectedly profound experience in July of receiving very clear guidance from the trees and it seriously reorganised my reality š
Iām going to write about that next but I realised thereās some āme and treesā backstory to fill you in with before I embark on this latest chapterā¦
In 2008, I caught my first song. Prior to that I had wrenched some songs out of me, as much a cathartic, therapeutic process as anything creative. A way of expressing the otherwise incommunicable. I had found a way of allowing myself to be āseenā in my truth that felt easier than having honest conversations. And a way of cryptically expressing certain secrets I didnāt want to have to keep.
But when If Trees Could Talk fell out of the ether, it was different.
It poured into me and through me: something that already existed in its entirety.
My role was immediately evident: to ātranscribeā and catch this piece of wonder. Later, there was a refinement process - of deep ālisteningā in order to tweak some words or bits of melody I may have misheard in the original download - but the song essentially arrived fully-formed.
I have since likened this process to excavation: you happen upon some buried treasure and, although itās immediately fairly obvious what sort of thing you have discovered, there is a slow and delicate process of dusting, brushing and scraping required before you can marvel at it in all its dimensions.
Later I reflected and realised the seed for the sentiment for this particular song had been sewn in 2005 when I spent some time in Northern California. In particular, when I took a breathtaking stroll through Muir Woods: a protected pocket of the vast Sequoias, often known as Coastal Redwoods, that once lined most of this coast. More than any human-made cathedral I have been in, the presence in this place was staggering. I felt hushed into awed silence and my mind struggled to grasp the scale of these toweringā¦ ābeingsā was the best word I could find to describe them.
Dwarfed by āGeneral Shermanā in Sequoia National Park, California 2009
Learning that some of these extraordinary trees live to over 2,000 years old I was amazed to imagine that they were actually on earth at the same time as Jesus! Some years later, I stood with another Sequoia āGeneral Shermanā, the largest living tree on earth (by volume). At approximately 2,500 years old, this vast repository lived concurrently with Gautama Siddartha, the Buddha. Unbelievable!
I wondered what on earth these silent witnesses would be able to communicate to us if only they could speak.
At the time, that seemed like a hopeless wish, an impossible dream. In the follow-up Iāll share how surprised I have been to actualise this āfantasyā.
(Feel free to listen to the song while you read the rest of its genesis storyā¦)
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Of course the history of me and trees goes back much longer. Like many children, climbing them was one of my favourite pastimes. And when my mother relocated from London to live in the middle of a woodland in Somerset, I spent a lot of my weekends in a treehouse or wandering through the towering beeches surrounding her cottage, awestruck.
Iād found a way of stopping my overactive brain in its tracks šš¼
At secondary school, one of my closest friends nicknamed me āTreeā and still calls me that to this day. When she first heard this song she interpreted it to be about me. I quizzed her about this recently and she said it was twofold:
Firstly, my contradictory nature - being both highly voluble and verbal (I would NEVER be so stingy as to use one word when ten would do) - yet those that are close to me encounter some mystery or secrecyā¦ a dark-horse-ish holding back. Sheās completely on point with that. Iām often quite a mystery even to myself!
The second aspect she pointed to is the profound wisdom that can flow through me at times (whilst at many other times Iām entirely capable of being an absolute moron). Although as I get older I find it easier to acknowledge this wisdom, I still have no idea where it comes fromā¦ (though there will be significant clues in part two.)
In my early twenties, I escaped a 9-5 air-conditioned office job for 3 weeks in Bali, meeting up with friends who were back-packing around the world. What struck me most on a bus through some jungly landscape was how thirsty my eyes were for ātreeā and their vibrant greenness. I stared out of the windows for pretty much that entire 4-hour bus journey through Lombok: a starved woman, inhaling chlorophyll through my eyes.
In my later twenties, by which time I was well-and-truly weary of living in one of the largest cities on earth, I remember sitting on the top deck of a bus in solid traffic and longing to have more of the natural world around me. Suddenly, like the way your eyes adjust with a Magic Eye picture, the many large trees lining the Brixton streets came into focus. I was amazed to realise how many magnificent trees there ARE in central London. Yet they can easily fade into the background amidst the bright colours and lights that dominate the over-stimulating cityscape. From that moment on, I decided to consciously focus on the trees, the plants coming up through the cracks and began to see just how much the natural world IS present in our cities.
I didnāt discover until many years later that I was in fact living in āone of the worldās largest urban forestsā! According to the Greater London Authority, this forest of London comprises of over 8.4 Million trees.
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Although I sang If Trees Could Talk to close friends now and then, I essentially sat on the song for almost a decade, somewhat awe-struck by it and uncertain what to do with it. In 2016 I crowdfunded with Amy Bisazza and recorded and released our first mantra album as EARTH. It was a huge achievement and expansion, including an album launch at Triyoga in London. I felt totally ready for this - yet the idea of putting out just one of my own songs still filled me with dread. The stakes felt so much higher - both coming out of hiding in the safety of our duo and bringing my tender heart out of hiding with my own words. My inner critic was reverberating with projections of āWho does she think she is?ā kind of vibes.
In 2017, after spending two months deep in the Welsh woodlands on an extended nature retreat, I couldnāt ignore that the trees themselves seemed to be imploring me to get the song out into the world. Of course I could be deluding myself but honestly it felt like that. At a fundraiser organised by a friend, one of the auction prizes was a day in a recording studio. It was impulsive but in that moment I suddenly realised this was a way I could ātrickā myself into moving forward: I think I pledged about Ā£250 and won the day in the studio. Somehow the excuse that I was supporting the protection of the Southern African white lions allowed me to āindulgeā myself by recording my song.
So when I released it in 2018, it was for the trees, not me. I wasnāt that happy with the production (would I ever be?) and I was wracked with self-doubt but it seemed to be needed. And thankfully, I got another worthy cause to hide behind: Extinction Rebellion kicked off just at that moment and I decided to pledge all profits of the song to it. I also ended up singing it live on Southwark Bridge at the first XR blockade in London, significantly unnerved by the row of policemen behind me. As a perceptive songstress sister laughingly commented:
āVaishnavi Brassey the protest singer: whoever saw THAT coming?!ā
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I had had a vision of a film to accompany this song from early on. I remember downloading some stock footage for it in 2012 but not following through. Having worked at the BBC and in film production in my twenties, I have unfeasibly high standards. I needed someone professional and competent to bring through my extravagant vision which I envisaged something of the style of Peter Greenawayās The Pillow Book with various other ambitious influences. But so many things changed during lockdown and one gift I have seen many times over is people deciding to take matters into their own hands.
Perfectionism getting relegated to the back seat in a time of adversity and limitation.
And so, while largely in bed during 2022, I decided to use an upcoming deadline for the first Climates Film Festival to push myself to just get the vision out there, however imperfectly. As far as I was concerned, once I had completed it and submitted it for the deadline, the process was over. I had finally brought through this film after 10+ years of imagining it.
I went along to the screening and found the experience - especially the subsequent Q&A process - so excruciatingly exposing that I didnāt return to attend the awards ceremony. The other films I saw were much more professional and I felt I had achieved my goal. I had won against my harsh Inner Critic Chorus and highly-vocal Perfectionist Panel and made the film. So I was more than surprised the following day to discover that this simple film - that in my mind fell so far short of my original grand vision - had won an award!
You couldnāt make this up but the prizes for the Climates Film Festival were in factā¦ TREES!
The festival organiser kindly came round and presented me with this most adorable patio apple tree. I had no idea that trees could be portableā¦ which has very much suited my lifestyle of recent years. The fruit is remarkably delicious and, at time of writing, she is laden with imminent apples. Because this tree is my height Iāve developed such a sweet relationship with her. I can see her in her entirety and witness the incredible seasonal changes she goes through. Each winter I canāt imagine there can be any life left in the bare bones and each spring she bursts forth with vibrant green buds miraculously.
This tree also helped me finally put down a heavy load of shame I had been carrying around it taking me so very long to get from catching this song in 2008 to releasing it in 2018 and then to finally creating the film in 2022. Witnessing her slow annual cycles of expansion and contraction I realised the highly obvious: that in ātree timeā I have actually moved rather fast!
If you havenāt heard the song, you might - by now - be impatiently wondering what DO trees say, then?! Well that would be giving away the punchline of the whole song so you can find out belowā¦ in the āaward-winning filmā š
And, as of July, I have received a major upgrade in my understanding of what it is trees have to say. Hopefully Part Two will bypass ātree timeā and come forth soon enough to not leave you hanging in suspense.
And, as a result of this recent experience, Iāve been wondering if I might have to create an updated version of this song with a new bridgeā¦.