Living, Being

A film about slow living.

There is a hedge down our road. On particular days in mid-Spring, just after the rain when the sun is shining, dozens of snails emerge to feed and mate.

Neighbours file past one by one, heads bent to their phones or immersed in music, treading a well-worn thoughtless commute. When I first noticed the snails I just had to stop and watch them, glistening in the morning light. Each time I passed, when the weather was right, I made a point of stopping to say hello and count them.

I was speaking recently with Anna Rose about paying attention to the natural world, and she asked me if everyone is capable of noticing or if it is something I have trained myself to do. I’ve been thinking about that a lot since.

Regular readers of Urban Nature Diary will know I have written about the intersection between the natural world and attention before. It’s an important topic, because noticing is fast becoming a lost art. With our attentions now almost entirely owned by billion-dollar corporations, we exist only to consume content and purchase cheap crap. There is no space in late-stage capitalism for simply sitting in a garden or a meadow with a cup of tea and a good book, or watching starlings murmurate against a winter sunset. Idleness is of no benefit to corporations. Moments of quiet earn shareholders nothing.

To notice is to resist. To stop and look is to lift your head from the grinding wheels of corporate industry and take a moment for yourself. To take a stand for individualisation, for personality, for humanity.

To me, snails are the definition of slow living. They’re in no rush. They’re not stressing about getting the new iPhone on midnight release. They’re not obsessively checking social media for new likes and follows. They’re not endlessly pursuing The Next Big Thing or trying to appease their boss or feeling insecure about their fashion sense. They just are.

A while ago I spent a few lunchtimes filming the snails in the hedge, just for fun. I wrote a poem, of sorts, to accompany it. I’ve never been much of a poet and the resulting lines are clumsy but I tried to encapsulate something of the futility and impossibility of a world focused on endless growth.

As a cold wind disturbs the black reservoirs here in North London, the snails are bedded down for the winter. At the same time, millions of us turn to the shops in the weeks before Christmas, filling our baskets with mountains of cheap plastic ultimately destined for landfill. The pressure is mounting to stack gifts high, and our waking hours are overloaded with advertisements begging us to consume more and more and more.

This season, I encourage you to take a step back and live a little slower. Choose gifts that are kinder to yourself and to our planet: re-used, long-lasting, or experience-based. Give generously but thoughtfully.

I am trying to slow down this month, to be present and mindful. It’s a neverending battle against the pull of tech enterprises who would rather I was anything but. Taking a long walk without my phone, putting my emails to the side and rejecting Black Friday deals are small steps towards it, my own microresistances against the ceaseless noise of distraction.

You can watch the film here.