Laura Lethean: 6 – 11 November, 2023
Laura Lethlean is a published playwright and theatre maker living and working on the lands of the Wurundjeri, Woi Wurrung and Bunnurong people. Lethlean used her residency to work on a play she is developing, based on Val's life and work.
Laura Lethean at the birdbath (Clancy Walker, 2023)
When I first encountered Val’s writing, I wrote this:
If all the worlds’ a stage,
then the most beautiful play to have ever been made
is the high stakes production of the natural world
Aeons in the making.
The symbiosis of its players,
their trust in chain-reactions
and precise cooperation
allows miracles
before your eyes! in real time!
Perfectly arranged to meet the tides,
to let the great stories play out
the greatest stories of all time, like
The moon’s tidal pull
exposes white sand
a nocturnal crescent against ink-dark ocean.
There’s enough room
for a thousand tiny orbs
to be laid and buried here
beneath temperature-balanced silicon.
Then,
emerald shells emerge!
The shoreline laps- a first, precarious dash.
Population numbers sustain bird life
These are stories without justice or revenge
or good or evil
These are stories about taking and giving
Stories we have forgotten
that we are a part of
We’ve made up other stories instead, like
The one about saviour and sin
about a father and son
and a Deserved Consciousness
About eternity beyond death
Stories about being chosen, made in His image
about never having to give back
all we take
But the real story has no main characters
It’s devised from an ensemble
and its rules are self-evident:
returning releasing
nourishing converging
growing creating
withering returning
Our made-up stories
our make-believe separations
our dualities
have almost doomed us
A new story has begun:
precision uncommon
affiliations vanishing
chains un-tethered
patterns altered
In real time. In our time. On our watch.
Faster than we understand
But we must understand
Because if all the worlds’ a stage,
we stand to lose the most beautiful story to have ever been told
Aeons in the making
View from the residency cabin (Laura Lethean, 2023)
The more I walk down this path, towards Val’s ideas and life, the less I want the journey to end. Perhaps, if I’m lucky, it never will. I would describe Val’s writing as elemental, in that, to me she is articulating truths which are fundamental, necessary, essential for survival. It’s a relief to read her work.
As I read Val’s writing, I discover landscapes that I’ve glimpsed within my own thought processes. In her descriptions, she illuminates these places of instinct, nourishing ideas with the water of language.
One of the memories I keep from my visit to Plumwood Mountain (November 2023) is walking the driveway, from the house to the road and back again. I had just read Val’s thoughts on ‘walking the land’. She writes ‘there was a time not too long ago when humans existed and survived through a thorough knowledge of the quality and changes in the land they walked upon’. Perhaps this reminder that we are ancient, that we evolved not alongside, but intertwined with the natural world, is where this feeling of essential truth originates from. She writes about people being ‘of the earth’, not accidentally here at all.
It’s odd to be writing this a few weeks after my visit to Plumwood Mountain. I am currently sitting in a shipping container in central Footscray. The container has been converted by the local city council into an ‘Arts Box’, a space for artists to create work. When I was staying on Plumwood Mountain, Val’s writing was echoed in every stone and leaf. It flowed. Now, in the city, her writing feels urgent. The stark contrast between the two settings emphasises the city’s alienating effect on the human animal. As I glance out of the window, I wonder, does it cross the minds of the passers-by, even once, that we are of this land? But of course, this is what Val was attempting to critique- the ingrained alienation that results from duality-obsessed Western-style thought (and the damage that kind of thinking does to the earth’s ecology).
When I was reading the introduction to Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, I noticed a small moment of doubt from Val. In it, she questions whether philosophising over dualities is the best way to enact change. Having now visited her home, I observe her ideas ricocheting far beyond her own life, time, and place. The beauty of Val’s writing is that she does not ask us to be crushed under the weight of her legacy, instead, she gives us tools that we can use to shape our thoughts, and create lasting change.
I happened to be visiting Plumwood Mountain at a time when the land was about to be handed back to the Walbunja people of the Yuin nation. Ruby and Clancy, the current caretakers of Plumwood Mountain, explained that as Val’s house is now ‘heritage listed’ (bringing into play another peculiar duality existing within Australia: ‘colonial’ history and ‘indigenous’ history) the forest will soon be under the care of those first peoples. Plumwood Inc. will lease the plot on which the house stands. In this way, I can see Val’s writing becoming instrumental. This is the power of her philosophical theory. She worked to convince western thinkers of the wisdom that, it would seem, the first peoples already carried within them. Because of the structures of power now dominant within Australia, I wonder, without the meticulous philosophical theory laid out by Plumwood, would the handing back of the land have happened?
I am only just beginning this journey of understanding, but with Val’s help, I’ll continue down this path. As I am a playwright, my role (if I am to have one) is to write about Val, her ideas and her life, in a way that makes sense to an audience. My ultimate ambition would be for audiences to experience the relief of truth in Val’s ideas, as I have. A lofty ambition, I know, but a suitable one to concoct atop a mountain.
Laura (Clancy Walker, 2023)