The Language You’re Fluent in — but Forgot How to Hear | Louis VI | TED

We humans have stopped listening. Wow, you all really listen to that. (Laughter) But it's true. There's a language out there that we all know how to communicate really quite well, but we’ve tuned out of. One we’re innately fluent in, yet forgotten how to hear. I truly believe the key to solving many of our crises as humans is relearning to listen to this language. What I'm talking about is the sounds of nature. I want to take you all somewhere real quick, if that's alright. I want you to close your eyes and make a mental note of how you feel right now. You can be happy from the week, stressed. It is a Wednesday in the middle of the week. Charmed already from my London accent or annoyed by it. Just be honest. Now close your eyes and open your ears. (Nature sounds) Mmm... How do you feel? Different, right? A bit better, maybe slightly more relaxed. I saw quite a few smiles playing across people's faces. You were just transported to West Papua. That beautiful melody was a hooded butcherbird, which, believe it or not, is carnivorous. Didn't think predators could sing like that, right? (Laughter) So what's happened? Is it that you're all nature geeks like me? Maybe. But it's probably because we're all evolutionarily hardwired to nature's sonic language. See, we're so hardwired to it, so much so, the birdsong, choruses of birdsong, the percussion of insects, the symphony of amphibians has all been shown scientifically to trigger your parasympathetic nervous system, aka make you feel relaxed. You probably also noticed you were in a forest and a tropical one at that. It might seem obvious to mention, but that was just from you using your ears. Look at you flexing your fluency already. It's possible the birdsong makes us feel relaxed because it's been... a genuine signal from Mother Nature that there's no predators around. But it can't be all relaxing. (Lion roars) Hearing this from an unseen lioness near you in the dark, trust me, triggers a cascade of fear. But one that's also practical and proportionate. Eerie, unusual silence does the same thing. It's no wonder that we're seeing a rise in anxiety in cities. We may be unknowingly subjecting ourselves to an evolutionary stress. See, nature sound does something to us. It's often hard to put into words, true, but our nervous system understands it like a remote control. Blindfold on, I bet I could put any one of you in a biodiverse environment, and you'd be able to tell me if it was dawn. (Nature sounds) The middle of the day. (Nature sounds) Dusk. (Nature sounds) Or nighttime. (Nature sounds) That coo right there was a potoo, which is a crazy word worth looking up when you get home. Each of these was recorded in the exact same place in the Amazon rainforest. The more biodiverse, the easier it is. There's an even deeper level. There are still First Nations trackers alive today that can tell you there's an unseen predator moving through the forest in a northwest direction, just from the change in birdsong. Our ancestors were polyglots of ecology. (Birdsong) To listen was to know. Inattention was literally life-threatening. Our ancestral grandmothers and grandfathers lived in an attentive relationship to the songs of other species, contributing to conversations that span back millions of years. But that fluency is still in you. Why, for our entire evolution, listening has been a big part of our compass. But now we turned that off. It's no wonder that we lost our bearing. So what's this got to do with solving crises, Louis? I'm glad you asked. (Laughter) Now my path to standing before you here today is an unusual one. I'm not exactly from a place abundant in natural charms. Born and raised in grimy old north London, more common to hear sirens and music -- good music, I might add -- than birdsong. Growing up in Ends, my love of music led me down the path to becoming a musician. But I'm standing here today as a massive nature geek.

Nice to meet you. Even though I grew up in a city, I've always been fascinated by nature from day dot. Yet it was something that me and my friends had the least access to. Yet many of us had ancestry from nature-rich places. For a long time I felt that these two worlds I had to keep separate. How would you market a rapper that can talk to you about the complexities of h with a full-blown degree of zoology? But during COVID, my amazing mom and sister really persuaded me to combine the things, the damn things, a couple more swear words I might add, but I won't say. See, sound was the common denominator between my two loves. Yet... if there’s over 55 percent of us humans living in cities and rising, we don't get to experience this. If I wanted people to reconnect to nature, I needed to bring these sounds back. So I built these omnidirectional mics. These right here, I bring with me wherever I go. When I'm not being mistaken for an alien with a probe, I record. The first time I did this, something crazy happened. I put my headphones on. And I disappeared. Not literally, of course. (Laughter) But I wasn't an individual anymore. I was plugged into an overwhelming, highly synchronous chorus of aliveness. See, listening to these sounds... (Nature sounds)... didn't just tell me information. It made me feel... like... something like a soup of life, a language that my DNA knew that I fundamentally understood, not as Louis, but as a human. Surely this could be a new tool for people, particularly people from the diaspora, to reconnect to the places that we're from that are still abundant in nature there. See, remember, for a long history of colonialism, extractivism the transatlantic slavery diaspora have been pulled not just from the lands we're from, but from the nature there. Sounds as common as the rising sun to our ancestors are now our extinct in our experience. But that's happening to all of us, wherever we're from. Reconnecting to nature is fundamental if we're to have a future on this planet, because planetary health and our health go hand in hand. See, nature sounds are so important to us as a species. We evolved not just to hear the information, but to have an emotional response to it. That's probably why music is so powerful for us. It transcends barriers. Where words fail, it adds meaning. It resonates. Many scientists believe music predated language in humans, inspired by mimicking the songs of Earth. But we are relatively new on the scene as musicians. Try telling a nightingale or humpback whale that we invented music. Mother Nature is the original artist. Going back to that hooded butcherbird, I can imagine that mimicking moment. (Nature sounds) (Soft electronic piano sounds) What's crazy is I did nothing to this, and I recognized this, I was like, this is G Phrygian, which is C minor for those that ain't geeky in music like me. But let's check with the harmonies. (Music continues) OK. I can imagine people hearing this and being inspired back in the day to get musical with it. But we've got to check the chords. And obviously, what is a song without bass? (Bass guitar sounds)

(Sings) Oh yeah. You can meditate till you levitate High off life till you’re featherweight Try and fly till your feathers hurt But listening to the world that made you Will be how we elevate Reconnect and things will change I know things are shades of grey But the future green if we make it Get your melanin till your level raised Let’s take a breath, let’s ventilate Who you are inside is so OK Just close your eyes, do this simple thing Nature loves when you’re listening Happiness is the realest rage Give time to Mother Nature mate All she needs is a simple thing Nature loves when you’re listening Yeah yeah yeah Listen to this world Says the hooded butcherbird Tell you so! Woo! Yeah! Listen to this bird Says the hooded butcherbird, tell you so butcherbird Yeah Listen to this bird Listen to this... Listen to this bird This hooded butcherbird (Applause) Yeah. And that's my theory of ornithology. (Laughter) Scientist geeks like that one. So it's not very common for someone where I come from to get to go to a rainforest, let alone three in the space of a year. Trust me. But I was lucky enough to be invited to West Papua, to Dominica, or Waitukubuli, as it’s more correctly known, where one half of my family are from in the Caribbean. And the Sarayaku nation, deep in the heart of the Ecuadorian Amazon, with the Moth Collective. Each of these is an indigenously stewarded place, past and present, and a biodiversity hotspot because of it. When we were in the Amazon, the Kichwa people taught us about Kawsak Sacha. It means "living forest. " Now it doesn't just mean the toucans, the jaguars, the tapirs. (Nature sounds) The many frogs you can hear right now. No, it means the trees, the rivers, the rocks, the soil, the fungi, the air, everything. Just like the planet, the forest itself is a living organism, and we are like the organs singing our functions to each other. How good does nature sound without colonialism? See, listening to these beautiful sounds of thousands of lives and universes they inhabit... of course it’s Kawsak Sacha. But of course it's why it's so hard for us to connect in places devoid of these orchestras of life. We're in a climate crisis, a biodiversity crisis. There's wars, there's genocides, there's depression, anxiety on the rise. But at the heart of it all, we're in a crisis of inattention. We're like apples that have forgotten the tree we come from is alive. That not only is it alive, but it bears many other fruits. 8. 7 million, to be exact. 8. 7 million other species that we share this planet with. (Nature sounds) This is a nightjar, that sounds like a laser. How many songs and cultures

and stories are we missing? We're not so neatly separable from nature, and listening to it doesn't just tell you that. It makes you feel it. Being more attentive to nature's sonic language... might help us better exist with it, because listening requires embodied respect. But we've stopped listening so much we've almost not noticed we're making it silent. We run the risk of future generations thinking that silence is normal. (Sighs) That's a bit embarrassing. We've only just met, and I already owe you lot an apology. Now I've hopefully helped you listen, I'm afraid you can't unhear. You'll go outside and you'll notice the beautiful birdsong. But you'll also notice the drilling, the beeping, the scraping, the burning and the silence. You can't unhear the symphony of nature, but you also can't unhear what we're doing to it. But that's OK, because noticing is the point. We don't just stand to be aware of what we might lose, but what we stand to gain in a nature-filled future. Awareness that nature ain't a luxury, it's a necessity. Our membership in life's conversation is not one just to be observed, but one we're part of. (Nature sounds) So go out there and change not how you see the world but how you hear it. And changing how you hear it, hopefully you'll never see it the same again. Thank you. (Cheers and applause)