The Road Goes On
I have long struggled with finding an online home for my writing and original work. I’ve tried blogs, social media, email lists, and Patreons - but with the ever-evolving nature of internet life, all have felt quite unsuitable for the kind of stuff I produce. Bemoaning the difficulties of being a so-called ‘content creator’ in an age of content saturation, a friend recommended that I check out Substack - which specialises in supporting the work of writers and podcasters, as well as providing useful tools for filmmakers. As these are all central to my current work, it felt like a good opportunity to make the jump.
Emails are a big part of Substack’s strategy - sending posts from pages you follow directly to your inbox. This is something that always made me uneasy. Despite having a sizeable email list, I rarely use it out of fear that it is a bit too invasive. As my work has shifted a lot through the years, it’s important to me that folks have an opportunity to meet my work as it currently stands, to decide if you want to go deeper.
Who am I?
I’ve been and done a lot of things through the years. I was a theatrical actor in my youth, but left the stage to pursue a passion in Tibetan studies. I converted to Buddhism at the age of 13, and spent 20 years studying and practicing in the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. In the 2010s, I completed a comprehensive training in Tibetan Medicine, including a half-year internship in Nepal, and shortly after began teaching on a range of topics under the auspices of my teachers.
But beginning in 2019, my life began to change dramatically. I met my now-husband, moved to London, and began laying the groundwork for a career in the UK. Then Covid hit. My clinic closed, my social life disappeared, and I was left with a lot of time to assess my life’s trajectory.
It was around that time that I received an offer to write a book. The topic was relatively open, but something related to my work in Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan Medicine was expected. I began by writing about Tibetan nature spirits - a topic that had long interested me both as a practitioner and a scholar - and their connections to health and the environment. We came up with the title, ‘Unseen Beings,’ and I began writing.
My preliminary research kindled a long-standing love of History, and I became absorbed in works on Environmental History and the History of Medicine. I decided to reach out to one of my favourite scholars - a specialist in the History of Tibetan (and broader Eurasian) Medicine - for academic recommendations. She suggested that I apply for a Masters at the university where she teaches, which just happened to be quite close to my home in London. I applied, was accepted, and graduated with a distinction late last year.
Juggling a book contract and a Masters dissertation was no easy task, challenging me on many levels as I ventured down countless rabbit holes. My perspectives on the past, the exchange of knowledge, and our relationship with the environment shifted dramatically, leading Unseen Beings to evolve quite a bit in the process. Ultimately, the book became a study in our relationships with those we fail to see. Many of the ‘unseen beings’ I discuss are not wispy sprites or invisible ghouls, but simply beings that we struggle to see as ‘beings.’ Plants are perhaps the starkest example of this, as I discuss in the book.
My relationship with plants was a particular trigger for these news avenues of inquiry. As a traditional medicine practitioner(-turned-scholar), I was trained to relate to plants as sacred healing tools, but it was only through working with them directly that I came to see them as persons - as collaborators in the healing process. Reading the works of scholars like Stephano Mancuso, Suzanne Simard, Monica Gagliano, and Paco Calvo completely transformed my approach to plants, and forced me to reconsider the importance of so-called ‘animistic’ ontologies in helping us negotiate the lived experiences of non-animal organisms.
The basis of Unseen Beings is, of course, my own position as a 21st century human living through the perils of the Anthropocene. Climate anxiety is what brought me to my desk every morning - the fire that propelled my tapping fingers across the faded keys of my laptop. I believe strongly that the stories we tell, about ourselves and about our place in the more-than-human world, have a profound impact on our lived experience and, most importantly, our behaviour.
If we want to see a brighter future, we need to understand how we got here, identify the root causes of our crises, and establish a suitable path to recovery. This approach is explicitly medical in nature, ultimately inspired by my background in Buddhism and Tibetan Medicine. But I think it’s a useful and important model to follow in a world of stick-on bandages and chasing spot-fires.
I was terrified in the lead-up to the book’s publication. While I tried to remain optimistic, I was terrified about the kinds of responses I would get. I felt like an imposter, as many often do, and I can’t say that feeling has entirely gone away. If my intent had been personal validation or success, I think I would have abandoned the project around mid-way through. But the work really wasn’t for me - it was for the proverbial ‘unseen.’ For the animals, plants, fungi, rivers, mountains, spirits, land, and even humans that we fail to see as persons. While I cannot speak for them, I can do my best to help us tune our antennas to maybe hear what they have to say.
My academic work has mostly centred around Tibetan eco-daemonology, or ‘nature spirit’ paradigms, and the ways they inform human societies and relations with the more-than-human world. I am currently awaiting responses for Ph.D. proposals, and hope to be able to continue my research, which I feel is quite important - if quite niche.
Another area that I do quite a bit of work in is Tolkien Studies, specialising in historiographic and eco-critical approaches to Tolkien’s work, as well as the ontological impact of mythology. Again, stories are really the main point here. We cannot change the world with data, because data doesn’t compel us. It doesn’t enchant us. We can’t calculate our way into a brighter future - fidgeting with the minutiae of exploitation to sustain it for as long as possible. We can only be changed through relationship, enchantment, empathy - the very domain of stories.
New Developments
Over the past six months, I’ve been slowly working towards a longtime goal of becoming a filmmaker. Given my proclivity to stories, I am naturally quite interested in determining the most effective means of presenting stories to the world. I considered trying my hand at writing fiction, but my distant background in performing arts (I was a musical theatre actor for many years) always draws me back to dramatic media. Film is an incredibly valuable medium, especially for making ideas accessible to a wide audience.
At this point, I am principally interested in non-fiction cinema (i.e. documentaries), and am working on a few projects based in part on Unseen Beings. I will begin production on some smaller projects in the months to come, and am working on securing funding for a larger project, with details forthcoming.
In addition to writing and creative projects, I will continue (as always) to teach and work with clients, which are an important part of my work. But my hope is to move towards more evergreen content - like my Unseen Beings Podcast, which is now available on YouTube and most streaming platforms. I also want to dedicate some energy to this Substack, utilising it as a means of sharing thoughts and writings with a more intimate group of interested people (yourselves!). Your support is greatly appreciated.