Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Writer and naturalist, author of the best-selling H is for Hawk about training a goshawk.
On the island
Eight records
it just destroys me. Every time I hear it, it reduces me to tears.
Capriccio Extravagante Orchestra
whenever I want to write, it's one of those songs that always puts me in the mood to start conjuring words.
It's basically about someone realizing that no matter how hard they work and how hard they try, they're never going to be a genius.
Variations on a Theme by CorelliFavourite
It evokes a particular time in my undergraduate life frighteningly well.
It still gives me chills. It's such a howling marvel, this song.
Birdool loved music and he used to dance up and down the table yelling to it… this is his favorite track.
It will always put me in a better place if I'm feeling antsy or anxious or unmoored.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:32What's your approach to nature writing and why do you think it works?
I love being in the company of someone who'll point at a flower and say, This is this flower, aren't you lucky to have me to explain this to you? But I don't know, I j I just kind of want to bring a little bit less coldness into it. My work is quite often, there's a lot of memoir tied up in it too. So you get an eye into the natural world and you get a little look into my heart as well.
Presenter asks
3:29You once said that animals always wreck your assumptions. What did you mean by that?
One of the deepest things about what I try and do with my work is to talk about the way that when we encounter the natural world, when we encounter an animal, for example, we're always bringing to it an extraordinary amount of human meaning. What I try and do is just sort of say, look, this is what we bring to animals. And if you're really lucky, if you kind of keep those meanings in your head, you try and understand what those meanings are that we've given an animal, sometimes you can look past them and see the reality of the creature that's really there, these bizarrely alien, phenomenally peculiar and beautiful creatures. And I really, really treasure those moments when they happen. And that happened to me last with an albatross. I remember looking at this albatross in New Zealand and thinking about, you know, poetry and the sea, and this albatross looked right down its squid-cutting beak at me with these amazing, dark, Madonna-like eyes. And the entire world just was made new in that moment. You know, they can be almost religious, those moments. They're phenomenal.
The keepsakes
The book
John le Carré
I've been known to lie in the bath and read them out loud with all the voices. The way those books fit together, their mechanisms are like Swiss watches. I adore them, and they will be the ones for me.
The luxury
I have this thing about luxury sheets and duvet covers and blankets and things like that. ... really luxury bedding is my luxury choice.
Presenter asks
7:32What did developing the skills of falconry teach you about yourself?
Oh, an awful lot. I was a bit clueless as a child. I sort of thought everyone was like me. I later discovered that people aren't all the same. But I think Fulcru taught me a lot about agency and about respecting other minds. So, you know, when you're sitting there with a hawk that is very distrustful of you, sitting on your hand, you have to really get inside their head and understand that the way they see the world is not the way you see the world and what they want is not what you want. And that, I think, was a very important lesson in really dealing with everyone. But I learnt it first from hawks, which is a bit backwards. Most people do it the other way around.
Presenter asks
23:46How do you look back at the relationship with Mabel now?
I think I did a good job with the taming, and I think we built a very strong relationship. But I didn't do myself any favours, I think. It sort of pushed me very, very fast towards a point where I was scouring away everything that was human inside me in favour of this image I had of what it would like to be a hawk. So I wanted to be this ferocious, fierce, bloodthirsty, rage-filled creature. And of course, you know. Why is that? Because they're not sad? Because they lived in the present. You know, there was no past, there was no future for that bird. She lived always in this eternal present. You know, she was full of life for me. She didn't even represent death. She sort of felt like she was boiling with life. But she really, I think, represented all the rage that's in grief. For me, there are many different ways it can manifest itself. And one of the ways it did for me was rage. But I didn't want to feel it myself. I was leaving myself feel it through the hawk. So I was using her in a way. And I think that really was the great sadness of that experience, was there's a recognition, eventually I realized that I was using the hawk to be me. And I wanted to be a hawk. I wanted to swap ourselves out. And that was really messed up. And actually, she was this bird and didn't really deserve any of this kind of metaphorical stuff laden on her.
Presenter asks
29:41What do you think your father would have thought of your success?
I think he would have been really quite proud. You know, he always thought I was a bit quirky in the same way I think that he thought he was a bit quirky and I think he would have been quite pleased that I found a place in the world.
Presenter asks
31:29Why was it the right time for you to come out as non-binary?
I just, I don't know, I just thought it was time. You know, and it's such a, it's weird, it's just such not a big deal in some way to me because, of course, I've felt like that my entire life. You know, as a child, you know, I was climbing trees and doing all sorts of boy things and also feeling fine about being a girl at the same time and realized, you know, very, very long time ago that I was both inside my soul. And then as I got older, the sort of available ways to sort of present myself got kind of cannalized into I had to kind of dress up in a certain way or do this sort of certain way. And there was a sort of sense that there's a kind of performativeness to that that always felt a little bit off. Naming it has actually made things really settle down inside myself, saying, look, this is who I am. This is how I'm going to present myself. There's no mismatch at all anymore. There's no sense that I have to perform a role. It's just me. And that's so relaxing. I'm happy as a clam.
“And that happened to me last with an albatross. I remember looking at this albatross in New Zealand and thinking about, you know, poetry and the sea, and this albatross looked right down its squid-cutting beak at me with these amazing, dark, Madonna-like eyes. And the entire world just was made new in that moment.”
“And as I watched it, it was like a man putting on a coat. It opens its wings and flew away. And we saw it later, it flew right through the camp and tried to catch a jay right above my head. And I just remember thinking that it was like a coin falling through water, this silver and grey bird just tumbling through the leaves.”
“I realized that I was using the hawk to be me. And I wanted to be a hawk. I wanted to swap ourselves out. And that was really messed up.”
“I gave a eulogy and I looked out over the people, all of whom had known and loved dad, and realized that I'd been an absolute idiot, that basically human hands are for other hands to hold, so they're not just purchase for hawks.”
“Naming it has actually made things really settle down inside myself, saying, look, this is who I am. This is how I'm going to present myself. There's no mismatch at all anymore. There's no sense that I have to perform a role. It's just me. And that's so relaxing. I'm happy as a clam.”