#305 | Storytelling Is An Emergency w/ Sophie Strand

Last Born In The Wilderness

[Intro: 11:43] Writer, poet, and essayist Sophie Strand joins me to discuss the "emergency of storytelling" in our climate disrupted present and future, and the subjects she explores in her upcoming book releases, 'The Madonna Secret,' and 'The Flowering Wand: Lunar Kings, Lichenized Lovers, Transpecies Magicians, and Rhizomatic Harpists Heal the Masculine.' Sophie and I entered this conversation a bit fuzzy, a little stunned. We acknowledge this from the get go. We were processing devastating news that morning: Hurricane Ida crashed and dragged itself from south to north across the East Coast, overwhelming the infrastructure, shutting down the grid and flooding cities. We discuss how climatologically, ecologically, we can feel how things have shifted tremendously — in the Northwest where I live, and in Hudson Valley where Sophie lives. While, personally, I tend to explore this broad subject on this podcast, Sophie writes about it. In her essay 'Storytelling is an Emergency: An Ecological Reading of Scheherazade,' she writes: “We are entering into an ecological A Thousand and One Nights of climate change. We are entering into a series of stories that are desperately trying to save their teller: the earth, Gaia, the biosphere, whatever word, for you, encompasses the sum total of spherical, gravity-bound life. Will we like King Shahryar, halt our violence, and begin to listen to a new, non-human kind of story? Will we let these stories change us and reform us? Ultimately, it matters not whether we do or do not. This series of stories will not depend on a human scribe. It will be written into the stone mantle of the Earth itself.” (https://bit.ly/3B4CJ6A) Sophie Strand is a writer based in the Hudson Valley who focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. But it would probably be more authentic to call her a neo-troubadour animist with a propensity to spin yarns that inevitably turn into love stories. Give her a salamander and a stone and she’ll write you a love story. Sophie was raised by house cats, puff balls, possums, raccoons, and an opinionated, crippled goose. In every neighborhood she’s ever lived in she has been known as “the walker”. She believes strongly that all thinking happens interstitially – between beings, ideas, differences, mythical gradients. Episode Notes: - Read the transcript of this interview: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/sophie-strand - Learn more about Sophie and her work: http://sophiestrand.com - Follow her on Facebook and Instagram: https://www.facebook.com/sophie.strand1 / https://www.instagram.com/cosmogyny - Sounds by Abel Takan WEBSITE: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness DONATE: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast / https://venmo.com/LastBornPodcast BOOK LIST: https://bookshop.org/shop/lastbornpodcast EPISODE 300: https://lastborninthewilderness.bandcamp.com BOOK: http://bit.ly/ORBITgr ATTACK & DETHRONE: https://anchor.fm/adgodcast DROP ME A LINE: Call [phone] or http://bit.ly/LBWfiledrop EVERYTHING ELSE: https://linktr.ee/patterns.of.behavior