From Darkness to Light

What happens when musicians, writers, scientists and artists from different traditions and disciplines come together to create something? Something new is born, and yet it stirs something in us that feels timeless, even ancient.

I think this is what Samantha Harvey is reaching for in her Booker Prize-winning novel Orbital. When you zoom out far enough, you see all of humanity alongside every living thing, held together by air, land and water, and the only word for it is beautiful. As Harvey put it, this quiet, magnificent Earth, suspended in so much nothingness, reminds us: be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.

Nitin Sawhney’s composition wove together orchestral music from the Fantasia Orchestra and Hindustani classical music. There was the divine Tamilian flautist Ashwin Srinivasan, the energetic and lovable tabla player Aref Durvesh, the beautiful violinist Eos Counsell, and two powerful vocalists, Shapla Salique and YVA. Between the pieces came poetic readings written by Samantha Harvey and performed by a range of guests. They felt like a sequel to Orbital: an astronaut prepares to hurtle back down through Earth’s atmosphere, longing to see her family again, if she makes it home alive. For her final reading, Harvey came on stage herself:

…now falling fast toward grass through sunblind air,
May peace and peace and peace be everywhere.
May peace and peace and peace be everywhere.

There were also two readings by Yadvinder Malhi, Professor of Ecosystem Science at the University of Oxford, on the science and nature of the biosphere. Yadvinder is my DPhil supervisor. I believe we are all artists at our core, and over the years I have watched him embrace that side of himself more and more fully. He reads poetry at conferences and shares his knowledge and love for the Earth in language that sits at the cusp of disciplines. This performance marked his first collaboration with Nitin Sawhney, and he has another one coming up with the artist collective Marshmallow Laser Feast. They created the videos of Earth from space that formed the backdrop to the performance, alongside artwork by Antony Gormley.

The result felt like an ode to the Earth and to the diversity it needs to flourish. The performance was set in two halves, night and then day, and my feelings followed the same arc. At first it made me feel a little sad, but the sadness slowly turned into awe and wonder at the mysteries of the Earth and the universe. As day broke in the second half, I felt stillness, connection and joy, and by the end, when the performers came back for an encore, I was dancing at the back of the auditorium.

I don’t see this as a stand-alone performance. I see it as part of a wave: a wave of people who recognise that art, science, spirituality, diversity and inner peace are all needed to move the needle, to “bend the curve” of nature’s decline towards recovery, and to prosper, heal and live in harmony with the Earth.

Fittingly, this wave began in one of the cradles of human thought. The idea for the collaboration was born earlier this year in Athens, at a gathering convened by the World Human Forum. Its spirit of oneness, wisdom and reverence for life travelled with it to Oxford, where the performance was commissioned by the new Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities as part of its Utopia Now! programme, which brings art and research together to create spaces for community and reflection.

I hope many more people get to experience this performance and join the wave, until it grows into a tide strong enough to carry us, as the ancient Upanishadic prayer asks, asato mā sad gamaya, tamaso mā jyotir gamaya: from the unreal to the real, from darkness to light.

About the author

Tanaya Nair is an ecologist, artist and Hatha yoga teacher from India, currently doing a DPhil in Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford.