Getting the message across...
Sharing Eco Conversations in Spain.
Recently I went roving down to the south of Spain, for the second gathering of La Concha Conversations. The venue is the exclusive Marbella Club, which recently bought the estate that adjoins its property. The mountain of La Concha forms the backdrop, and also provides Marbella with its own sweet micro-climate – winters are very pleasant. Which makes ocean-side properties ultra expensive.
Sooner than develop the neighbouring land into high-rent holiday cabins, however, it’s being turned into an organic garden. Around it, using different sites, this annual November gathering sees folk with expertise in conservation meet to share experiences.
I joined the event, keen to spread the story of the Bishnoi people and their extraordinary accord with the natural world. Appropriately (for my book is called My Head for a Tree), my panel settled beneath the branches of what has been called ‘The Story-telling Tree’, the audience surrounding us on a ring of straw bales.
By nature I am diffident and people lean close to try and catch what I’m saying. In my ambassadorial role for the Bishnoi something changes; I grow louder, clearer, as though infused with Bishnoi energy. It helps that theirs is such a powerful story to tell.
The audience was affected by it. Hopefully they spread the word. While the book has connected really well in India (I’m invited to take part in two literary festivals there in January), Britain and America are yet to surprise me with keen interest.
Which, of course, is true for almost all books. Review coverage is scarce, which leaves books having to wave their hands and dance for attention on entertainment channels (which include TikTok). And who makes time for serious stuff?
Here’s something that surprised me. The conference included an open-air showing of the David Attenborough documentary Ocean. Attendees bundled up in blankets and settled into deckchairs, facing both the screen and the Mediterranean. It’s a powerful film, urging the ending of bottom trawling and the restoration of our seas. But we were all conservationists, the film had surfed into public consciousness on a media blitz, had a wide cinema release and then was streamed on Netflix. Surely everybody had already seen it?
No. They watched it and were profoundly moved, almost all of them viewing it for the first time. How come? Why hadn’t they seen it before?
The film’s producer Colin Butfield was part of the gathering, so I posed that question to him. ‘It’s true. Yes, why?’ and he looked into the sky for an answer. ‘It broke box office records for a documentary in Australia and New Zealand,’ he tried.
And I asked him where we look after David Attenborough. He’s still going strong at 99, but who’s in the wings?
Attenborough’s unique, Colin answered. He’s without an ego, and has seventy years of film-making in this field behind him. ‘Whoever does emerge next, it won’t be a white man with an Oxbridge accent I can tell you that much.’
Who is there, though, looking more widely, with a moral voice? Where’s our Desmond Tutu?’
He thought some more, and shook his head.
[Alas, Jane Goodall has left our stage after hier 91 year run, RIP. Who’s left for YOU that speaks with some moral authority, particularly on the natural world? Comments - and links - welcome below!]
Recently live is a podcast on Terrence McNalley’s pioneering Free Forum podcast Defending Nature with their Lives . You’ll find me talking about the Bishnoi.
And also, because Terrence is acute with his questions, starting with talking about myself, stuff I’ve never much shared. On mysticism, the constraints of the UK as against the openness of the US, the tightness of academia. Please give it a listen.
The Hackney Citizen is a smart, gutsy, progressive local newspaper, and I love them even more because they’ve just reviewed my new novel The Boy on the Train. I love their pithy summary: ‘Greed is set against Cunning’, and of course an author always looks for a quote. ‘Deliciously twisty tale’ made me smile.