#2-004: The Chaotic Forager: Discovering the Music of Nature with Gabrielle Cerberville

🌿 Exciting News! Just had the most fascinating conversation with Gabrielle Cerberville on the Mother Tree Network podcast. 

🍃 Gabrielle's journey began during a composition program where she felt the urge to infuse more nature into her music. This led her to an inspiring artist residency in Iceland, where she delved into the magical connection between nature and music. 🇮🇸🎼

🌱 During the residency, Gabrielle explored the fusion of nature and music through biodata collection, using devices like the Plantwave to translate electrical signals from living things into captivating MIDI compositions. 🎹🍄

🍄 One of her most fascinating creations, "Fungal Chapel," incorporated sounds from mushrooms and other natural elements, captivating audiences and sparking wonder at the breathtaking harmony of nature and music. 🍄🎶

We delved into her innovative musical practice and her passion for chaotic foraging.

Here are 3 key takeaways from our discussion:

🎶 Musical Innovation: Gabrielle shared her journey of integrating nature into her music composition, using biodata collection to translate electrical signals from living things into MIDI and create music. Her use of technology in music composition is groundbreaking.

🌍 Chaotic Foraging: We explored the rise of foraging during the pandemic and how it became a way for people to connect with nature while at home. Gabrielle's insight on foraging transcending traditional settings sheds light on new perspectives for urban foraging.

💡 Ethical Influencer Marketing: Gabrielle emphasized the importance of trust and ethical considerations in the products she aligns with and promotes. Her approach to brand sponsorships serves as a model for ethical influencer marketing in today's digital age.  She says, “ It's difficult to be an influencer who is trying to get you to buy less. Most influencers want you to buy more.”

Enjoy this thought-provoking podcast episode, and be prepared to be inspired by Gabrielle's creativity and passion! #MotherTreeNetwork #PodcastEpisode #Innovation #Foraging #InfluencerMarketing

GUEST BIO

Gabrielle Cerberville, aka @chaoticforager or "the Internet's Mushroom Auntie," is a forager, mycologist, composer, and outdoor educator. Her entertaining educational videos on social media, where she shares her knowledge of edible plants and fungi, have been viewed by millions worldwide. Gabrielle has lectured extensively on the importance of ecological awareness and land knowledge, and believes that ethics and knowledge must go hand-in-hand to support a sustainable future. Just a few of their current projects include a book, a TV series, and a Ph.D at the University of Virginia in music composition and computer technologies. You can find her at www.chaoticforager.com, or on all socials as @chaoticforager.

 TRANSCRIPT

Aminata Desert Rose:
Hey, everyone. It's Aminata, Desert Rose, Plant Walker firewoman, and I am here today with a very special guest, the chaotic forager, also known as Gabrielle Serberville. Welcome, Gabrielle.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
Hi. Thanks so much for having me.

Aminata Desert Rose:
You are welcome. So, people are probably wondering what the hell is a chaotic forager, And I promise you, I will get to that name. But first, Gabrielle, tell me, what's good for you today?

Gabrielle Cerberville:
Man, you know, today, I woke up and I made tea, and it was just very good tea. And so I've just been sort of carrying that through my morning.

Aminata Desert Rose:
You know, it's it's always the little things that people say when I ask them that question on the show. You know? Mhmm. It's

Gabrielle Cerberville:
like Yeah. And it's just the perfect day for it. The temperature is lovely. It's kind of gray out. It's it's just like a good day for fuzzy socks and a nice cup of tea.

Aminata Desert Rose:
And I have to say, you're one of the few people I know who would be like, it's the perfect day when it's gray out or anything. You know? Most people I know are like, give me sunny days. So tell me about that. How do you how are are you someone who appreciates all the seasons?

Gabrielle Cerberville:
I really do. I I I really appreciate seasonal change, especially those little sub seasons, you know, where it feels like spring but also like summer, where it feels like fall but it's starting to feel like winter, and you just get those unique smells. And, I mean, as a forager, I'm always looking at, I'm always looking at seasons based on, like, what's growing as opposed to, like, what's the what does the month say that it is. So, like, right now, it's it's sort of the end of nut season. It's the end of fruit season. Everything's pretty much going to bed. And, you know, when I go outside, I can, like, smell people's campfires and, I can smell, like, rotting leaves, and it's just I love this time of year so much.

Aminata Desert Rose:
Wow. I I just I you love people's campfires and the smell of rotting weeds and everything going to bed?

Gabrielle Cerberville:
Yeah. Absolutely. There's just something, it there's something just really lovely about, the fact that the world is always changing around us even when even when it feels like time is moving slowly. It never really is.

Aminata Desert Rose:
You know, I just wanna pick up on that. Here we are in the Northern Hemisphere. We're moving heading into winter as you said. You know, you look at what's going around rather than the month. And I I went ahead as to chaos because what you said, what you liked was, you know, when it's spring, but there's a little bit of summer in there or this fall, and there's a little bit of winter in there. So tell me about tell me about your name, the chaotic forager.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
So my name actually, has changed since I started on social media. So when I started on social media, I used a screen name that I had used across a few other, just like a few other websites. I was the chaotic cat lady because I tend to bounce around with all these different interests, and, I can never just keep, like, one vein going in a conversation. And I also have 2 cats that I love very much. And I was working in a vet clinic at the time, so I was the chaotic cat lady. And then over time, as I started making these foraging videos and the platform that I had had built was starting to grow more and more, It didn't make very much sense to be the chaotic cat lady anymore, but I realized that I had brought the chaos into my foraging, so I changed it to the chaotic forager. And at the time, I was not on Instagram at all, and I didn't know

Aminata Desert Rose:
One second, Gabriela. I just wanna let everyone We met via Instagram.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
We met via Instagram. Yes.

Aminata Desert Rose:
Gabrielle is one of the new people in my life, who and I was saying to her at the beginning of the show that, I'm interested in people who are reaching for another, 5th dimensional new earth consciousness, either through their practice or, you know, how they're being. And I sensed in her videos that this is a woman who has a relationship with the earth that is not in this current paradigm. So continue.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
Yeah. So, you know, I wasn't on Instagram at the time. I was only on TikTok. There was a very small but very enthusiastic, community of foragers on TikTok and just a lot of people who wanted to learn. I mean, I started at the beginning of the pandemic when nobody could go outside, like, nobody could go out and be with other people in the ways that they were accustomed to. Everybody was sort of forced to stop and nobody was accustomed to doing that. Everybody was working. Everybody was going to school.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
Everybody was living their busy lives. And when they were forced to stop and not allowed to leave their homes and not allowed to go to the grocery store or see their family or their friends, they the only thing that you could do is look out your window. And when you looked out your window, the same window, every every single day for months months, you started to notice that, hey. I have a tree in my backyard that I knew was there. I just never thought about it before. I wonder what that tree is. Hey. There's something growing over here.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
It smells kinda good. Oh, I have berries in my backyard. Can I eat those? And so people started asking these questions that they'd never had time to ask before. And so there was a community of us on TikTok who were very excited to answer those questions for people, and it became something that you could do even if you couldn't go out to a restaurant or go out to a movie with your friends. You could still go for a walk in a park. You could maybe even do a socially distanced hike with your friends because you could stay far enough apart. So, it was a it was a kind of remarkable time to be an outdoor educator.

Aminata Desert Rose:
Wow. Okay. So we know that you forage, and forage means that you go around. Tell me what forage means to you. What definition would you use?

Gabrielle Cerberville:
So, to me, foraging is a process or a or a relational process of, going out into a natural or unnatural environment with plants, fungi, whatever, and then collecting food or craft resources. So, a lot of people think that in order to forage, you have to have a forest. You don't. You don't have to have a forest. I have many forager friends who live in New York City and forage on the city streets. I I have a lot of friends who live in very urban areas, and at the time, I lived in an urban area, and I did a lot of urban foraging. So while I wouldn't forage everything in a city, there are many things that are safe to forage and a lot of things that people plant in their landscaping as ornamentals are actually food.

Aminata Desert Rose:
Agreed. Agreed. I was at my neighbor's, as an example, and she had lamb's ears.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
Yeah. Mhmm. Oh, yeah. Byzantium make lovely tea. The tops taste like pineapple.

Aminata Desert Rose:
Wow. I'm I'm so sad I missed out.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
Get them again next year.

Aminata Desert Rose:
And that is the beautiful thing about them is that, you know, these perennials as they come back and they're they're friends for us. Mhmm. Okay. So you are a chaotic forager. We know you're chaotic because you like change. Mhmm. Yeah. And you appreciate change.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
I need change. I thrive on change. I get I get too stuck if I have to just do one thing all the time.

Aminata Desert Rose:
Mhmm.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
I've noticed that in my in the jobs that I take, in the, in the creative things that I do as a musician. I've noticed that in my foraging habits. I tend to not get stuck in routine Mhmm. Very easily.

Aminata Desert Rose:
Mhmm. Mhmm. And even with this kind of temperament, you've been able to, build a business for yourself Mhmm. As as a, quote, unquote, influencer. And and I think that's amazing doing something that you love, you know, using platforms that are, you know, plus and minuses on these platforms, but you you using it on the plus side. Mhmm. So, tell me about that a little bit. Like, even if you're someone who thrives on change and chaos, tell me about, like, how do you make it work for you? Like, how do you make a a practice or business out of what you do online?

Gabrielle Cerberville:
It's a great question. So I knew very early on that I was not gonna be interested in doing a lot of things like selling merchandise. I didn't want something with my face on it. I didn't wanna come up with stuff for people to buy so much, unless I knew that it was something that people were really asking for that would help them in their daily lives. It's difficult to be an influencer who is trying to get you to buy less. Most influencers want you to buy more. And, so I I field all of these, like, brand offers, sponsorships, and things like that for, like, crap that I don't think people need. So I try to stick to, if I do take, like, a brand sponsorship, I try to stick to things that are services that people absolutely do need or that people will will use every day.

Aminata Desert Rose:
Give me an example. Give us an example.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
So one that I did was for, Google Lens. So Google Lens is an app on your phone that can be used to, narrow down a plant identification. You can also use it to identify other things in your life, but, I've done a few ads for them where I show how to use the AI to help you identify something. Now would you be able to identify something and then eat it? No. You'd have to do other things first to make sure that what you have is what the AI says that you have, but it's a great tool for beginners. It can jump start, your ability to find something in a field guide if you have no idea where to start. You know, another example would be the cell surface that I use. I have an ad for my cell phone service, coming out because I use I use my phone all the time when I'm in the forest to navigate, to research things, to, you know, get into my community and use, like, like, community science apps and things like that.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
So stuff like that, I will do. If you want me to, like, sell plastic crap that has been manufactured by people who aren't getting paid enough for it. No. I'm not going to do that, and I'm never going to do that. So Yeah. It's just a it I have to be very, very picky because it's not just about making money now. It's about instilling trust in the things that I tell you are worth purchasing and the things that I won't tell you to purchase.

Aminata Desert Rose:
Right. And and let me ask you this because I've struggled with this, when I walk around with my phone or not my phone. Mhmm. So, because when I walk around with my phone, I could say, yes. I'm having it just in case, but it becomes this, tether to, to to not the moment. It's a tethered to the next moment. So I wonder how do you balance that?

Gabrielle Cerberville:
So when I'm out foraging and I I have, like, a very specific goal or I just wanna be out in nature because I don't just go outside to forage, I go outside because I'm a part of nature and I need to, like, plug in. I will turn my phone on to airplane mode because I don't want anybody interrupting me that doesn't need to be interrupting me. And then if I need to check my I need to check my location or I need to look up and make sure that I have that scientific name right, or I need to, upload something to a, like, a science community, then I'll turn off airplane mode and I'll do that. But it allows me to have my phone with me so that it's there when I need it, but it's not constantly pulling me out of the moment.

Aminata Desert Rose:
Yeah. Yeah. And, I love that you you keep mentioning science community projects, and it just sounds like you're you're plugged into some kind of larger community that you're serving. Tell me about that.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
Well, I this is actually something that a ton of people are involved in, but, I will often use an app called iNaturalist, to yeah. And it's a community science effort that is, centered on, collecting observations from the public for scientists to then use in research. So it's pretty cool. I don't use it as much as I should. My partner is actually very good with uploading things to iNaturalist. I I have a huge backlog that I need to that I need to identify and upload, but it's a great project because if you don't know what something is, you can use their built in AI to kind of help you narrow things down, but there's also this community of of, like, researchers and experts who will go through the observations that you upload and give you research grade identifications. And then researchers can actually pull specific data and use it to aid in their own research. So it's a it's a huge, it's a huge thing, and it's also just really great for for scientists.

Aminata Desert Rose:
Yeah. It's like the the light side of AI.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
Yeah. It is. It's the it's the thing that we should be using it for.

Aminata Desert Rose:
Instead of spying on us surreptitiously, we're, like, turning on consciously saying, hey. I wanna share this with you and

Gabrielle Cerberville:
Or, like, stealing artist's work and stuff like that.

Aminata Desert Rose:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, we gotta talk about arts, Gabrielle, because I don't know how many people on the world know that you are a musician and that you're in a PhD program for, music composition and computer technology.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
Yeah. I often joke that I got famous for the wrong thing, but I I got an I got my bachelor's degree in music composition. It's chaos. It's all chaos. It's all connected. I got my bachelor's in music composition from Butler University in 2014, and then I took a few years, and I just worked. I just I freelanced. I worked regular jobs.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
I worked at a vet clinic. I was a veterinary surgery assistant for a while. I was an office manager. I did just all kinds of weird stuff. I worked in a in a Jewish community center as a babysitter. I did all kinds of weird stuff. I was a Montessori teacher for a while. And then in 2020, I decided that I was gonna go back to school, so I got my master's at the, at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
And then I Was

Aminata Desert Rose:
it in composition?

Gabrielle Cerberville:
It was. It was in composition, and I had a great time there. And that's really where I started to recognize that my musical practice needed to incorporate more nature. It needed to that needed to really be the driving force behind my art and it had been for a long time, but that's really where I where I started to see the path a little bit more.

Aminata Desert Rose:
So so as opposed to them being 2 separate worlds, like the plant world, plant fungi world, and then there's music composition, you brought them together.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
I brought them together. Yeah. I had experimented a little bit with that in 2017, during an artist residency in Iceland, where I was really interested in

Aminata Desert Rose:
Did you just say Iceland? Yeah.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
I lived in Iceland for a few months in 2016, 2017. In the And then I went back. Yeah.

Aminata Desert Rose:
In the warm months?

Gabrielle Cerberville:
Oh, no. In the cold ones. It was dark, and it was cold, and the wind is so cutting. It just eats through your bones, but it was it was beautiful.

Aminata Desert Rose:
AKA why it's called Iceland.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
Yeah. You know, you hear the thing about, you know, Iceland is green and Greenland is icy, and that's true, but Iceland is also very icy in the winter, you know, feet of snow. It was it was quite an intense experience, but, I started, really playing with my with my art there and playing with natural sounds, playing with, like, you know, field recordings, installation, these different ideas because I'd had all of these different interests in, like, visual arts and sculpture, but I was in a music composition program. And so I was learning about John Cage, and I was learning about Yoko Ono and and, I mean, all of these, 20th century musicians. And so it was really, it was really fun to sort of step out of the academic music for a while and really think about what if I did this? What if I started playing with sculpture and creating more, integrated art pieces that weren't necessarily all about the music, that were about the experience. So, so that I guess you could say that's really where that started, but then coming to Michigan and rebuilding a lot of what I had to leave behind in Indiana, because I had to find all new foraging spots. I had to get to know the local area. It was really it was really just a time of of massive discovery, and then I stayed in Michigan for an extra year after graduating with my master's, applied to different programs, ended up here at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia, and now I live in the Shenandoah Valley, and it is a beautiful place, and I get to kinda do it all over again.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
You know? Now I'm finding new spots again. I'm, exploring a different environment. You know, I moved from the mid the Midwest to the mid Atlantic, so there are different things that grow here. There are different growing seasons. It's really just kind of remarkable to, to experience so many different parts of the world and to figure out what wants to be created and what can be found here.

Aminata Desert Rose:
Yeah. So okay. So this thing about, let's talk about this music and sounds and I think you called it biodata. Mhmm. Yeah. Called biodata?

Gabrielle Cerberville:
I did. Yep.

Aminata Desert Rose:
How would you say what you're doing, what you're learning is, like, blowing up our conception of music or is blowing up our conception of, you know, nature. Like Sure. Yeah.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
So something that I think is is probably true for for most of us is when we think about music, we are recognizing that there is a person who is trying to tell us something through the creation of that music. They are using pitches and rhythms and all of these different aspects of of sound that we call music to, to communicate something to us. And I am less interested in telling an audience something through constructed sound. I am more interested in allowing an audience, allowing participants to experience what nature has to tell us. So, one of the ways that I like to do that is by, a process of biodata collection. So I will use small devices. I'm using one called Plantwave right now that you've probably seen on Instagram or Facebook or something. It's just a small device, you know, about the size of your palm, and what it does is it picks up the electrical signals given off by living things, by creating a circuit.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
So you've either got 2 little little clips or you have 2 little TENS pads, like the sticky pads they put on you in the hospital.

Aminata Desert Rose:
Mhmm.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
So you create a circuit by placing them on or in a mushroom or a plant. The device translates collects those electrical signals and in real time translates them into MIDI, which is a musical computer language. And then from there, I can take that MIDI data, and I can assign it to synthesizers. I can assign it to, drum pads. I can do anything with it in order to, let the data

Aminata Desert Rose:
Speak.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
Mhmm.

Aminata Desert Rose:
Yeah. So what about if you put those little pads or those little pinchers on people? Because we are all emitting. Mhmm. Are we are we emitting, like what are we electronic pulses? What are we emitting? Give me the language.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
So, typically, it's it's referred to as galvanic response. And so it's just, like, kind of proof of life, if you will. And we have it. Anything that's alive has it. I actually took a couple tens pads, and I stuck them on my cat's toe beans, and he did not like it, but I did get cool sounds from from his from his little feet. It was very cute. So, yeah, we're if you're alive, your body is going to prove that through, like, your pulse, through electrical impulses. The surface of your skin is just full of electrical impulses, something that you might, like, even call, like, your your personal vibration.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
So I recently brought my master's thesis work, my my big work to a conference in Ohio. It's a piece I call Fungal Chapel, so it uses biodata, from mushrooms, and they're, like, on an altar. There are also some sounding sculptures that I built because I love to weld. I love to work with wood. And one is, like, an offertory, so you you go find something from nature, and you offer it to the installation. It becomes part of the installation forever. There's another water pouring exercise, and it's all amplified, so it makes really beautiful sounds. It's just this meditative experience, but I took it to a music composition conference.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
And so everybody was just really interested in how the mushroom thing worked, and it was without fail.

Aminata Desert Rose:
Because you went to music conference, everybody was interested in the mushroom, not the water. What do you mean

Gabrielle Cerberville:
by any because I had, you know, all the cool technology, you know, I had my little plant wave hooked up to the mushrooms and they were like, how is this working? Like, what's going on here? And without fail, all of them would remove the clips from the mushrooms. And when you do that, you're holding them in your hands and you're you are now the thing that's being sonified, And they would hear the change in what they sounded like versus what the bus room sounded like. And it was always just super fun to see that kind of come over their faces. Like, I had no idea that I could sound like this. So it was really fun.

Aminata Desert Rose:
Do people sound good? Do they sound discordant? Do they vary?

Gabrielle Cerberville:
It varies. You know, a person who just came in from a run is going to produce a lot more data for me to play with than somebody who's been sitting on the couch playing a video game.

Aminata Desert Rose:
What about someone who's been meditating versus someone who's sitting on a couch?

Gabrielle Cerberville:
I would assume that it would be similar, but maybe even less. I'll have to I'll have to test that. You've given me, you've given me something new to to play with.

Aminata Desert Rose:
Well, the reason why I asked is because, one of the things for me that's that we have an opportunity for this time of year being heading into winter is rest, more rest, more rest, and more rest than we normally think we can afford to do. And I was just saying, but resting isn't Netflix binging or Mhmm. You know, it's it's something it's pulling your attention. Well, yeah, and it's pulling your attention back, actually. You know? It's like retracting all that outward attention and even closing the eyes into another kind of attention.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
You know, I've heard it said, and I agree I agree with this, that resting is work. And I think it's because it it takes effort to rest, to rest effectively. It's also something that I struggle with because I am somebody who likes to be moving all the time. I get an idea and I wanna go do it right away. You know? I I decided 2 days ago that I want to paint my living room and all I can think about is how much I wanna paint my living room and I wanna, like, go get this paint and do it right now. But I was just sick and my body needs to needs to rest. I don't need to be going out to the hardware store. I don't need to be getting up on a ladder and painting my living room right now.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
So it's, it's always a challenge for me to pause to, like, center myself to even just, like, download all of the data that has been accumulating in my head for days or weeks or months, you know, from the last time that I truly rested. It's it's challenging, but but it is important because, otherwise, you just slowly lose your mind.

Aminata Desert Rose:
I'm wondering about this because you use the term download the data. So tell us, what is downloading the data look like?

Gabrielle Cerberville:
I think for me, when I'm in the midst of a project or an idea, it's very difficult for me to to be in my body all the time. And I I really need to be intentional about it, or I'll realize that I've been very out of touch with myself for a long time. And I've definitely had that happen before. And I think that it's good to have specific time where you don't have anything that needs to be done. You don't have a task that needs to be accomplished, and you just sort of reflect on everything that you have already done, everything that you needed to sit down and think about or needed to sit down and process. So maybe it's less downloading. Maybe it's more just processing. You know, our lives are so busy, and my life is super busy because I'm self employed.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
I'm in a PhD program. I'm writing a book. I have got I have so many things that I have to be doing all the time, but I also, I also found that when I started writing my book, all of my thoughts were just such a huge jumble that I needed to sit down with them for a while and actually think about, like, what is gonna go on this page? Like, what is in my mind right now? How can I how can I make order of this? And so having intentional time where where I'm not doing something, and my my job is to sit and process and put things back in order in my head is important.

Aminata Desert Rose:
Yeah. Yeah. And I can see how just how it would it could take support. So for anybody out there who's chaotic, you know, who has a tendency toward movement, you know, that's a space that you're comfortable in.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
Mhmm.

Aminata Desert Rose:
Yeah. I could see how stillness could need something. Mhmm. Absolutely. I wanted to ask you about as you know what? Let's take a break. It's been so good having you here. I have a couple more questions for you, but let's go ahead and take a break, and we'll come right

Gabrielle Cerberville:
back. Perfect.

Aminata Desert Rose:
So we are back on the Mother Tree Network with our beautiful, amazing guest, Gabrielle Serberville, who is also known as the chaotic forager on Instagram. So, Gabrielle, you talked to me earlier about sound dinners. And Yeah. You're you're such an interesting person that you're combining food and sound and and nature. So talk to us about that. I feel like it's kind

Gabrielle Cerberville:
of like when you're when you're a kid and you have different friend groups, and you just want all of your friends to come over at the same time, I feel like that's my whole art practice. I just wanna play with all my friends at once. So I, in the let me see. It was the summer of 2021. I was invited to an artist residency in Port Austin, Michigan, which is right up in the thumb, right on Lake Huron. It's a beautiful area. And I decided that what I wanted to do for that residency was something called a sound dinner. So I decided I was going to collect field recordings and forage for food in the same locations over the course of about 2 weeks and then it was all gonna culminate in this dinner where I would write a basically, like, hour and a half long, like, album almost, like with, like, several tracks, and then I would combine that with a 9 course dinner made of all the things that I gathered.

Aminata Desert Rose:
Okay, Gabrielle. Yeah. First of all, an hour and a half album. That's long. And then a 9 course dinner?

Gabrielle Cerberville:
Yes. I work well under pressure. So I and, of course, it's all self inflicted pressure. So every time I complained about it, I was just like, I have nobody but myself to blame for this. But Three courses

Aminata Desert Rose:
would have worked for me.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
I I have too many dessert ideas. I can't fit them all into 3 courses.

Aminata Desert Rose:
I love dessert ideas.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
Yeah. I love desserts. And so I it would it became a whole it became a whole production, and it grew and grew, and it it involved, like, collecting objects as well, and collecting trash and creating this whole table display, and I went all in with it. And it was it was great. It was in June, so the strawberries were in season. So I was picking wild strawberries on the beach. There were just, like, so many, so many beautiful sounds to pick up. It was a a really lovely area.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
You know, I I drove around. I got all these sounds. I got all this food. I wrote new recipes. Everything was foraged, except for, like, you know, sugar and flour. But I I made this meal, and I it was all it was all done in 2 weeks. I managed to pull it off. And then 1 minute before we were supposed to start, a tornado hit that knocked out the power in that area for 2 weeks.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
So I went from having this great setup, you know, I had my my PA system all set up. I had the dinner. Everything was ready to go, And then suddenly, like, nobody was there because everybody was checking on their houses, and we had to delay by a couple of hours, but we ended up doing it by candlelight in this beautiful barn attic. And we borrowed a speaker from somebody's car that was Bluetooth so it didn't have to be plugged in. And we made it work. We made it work, and it was great. But then the following year, in 2022, I decided I wanted to continue with the project, and I wanted to do it in a different place. So I did a whole new album.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
I did a whole new dinner, new recipes in, a place called United Plant Savers in Ohio, which is just south of Athens.

Aminata Desert Rose:
I know them. I know someone who's a I know someone who's a fan of that.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
Love them. They have a residency that they actually call the deep ecology residency. So my deep ecology project fit perfectly there. So they have a 10 day residency. So then I had to take y nine courses and my my hour and a half of music, and I had to do it all in 10 days instead of 14. But that one went much better because there was no tornado, and I had power and a kitchen that that worked. So it was great. I had a fabulous time there.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
United Plant Savers is the best forever and always, and I'm hoping to do more of these dinners. Maybe I'll give myself more time in the future so I won't have to cram it all into 2 weeks, and maybe I can sleep.

Aminata Desert Rose:
Well, if if you had your druthers, Gabrielle. So now we're gonna think beyond what exists currently. But if you had your druthers, what would people do differently or think differently about nature and music or about humans and nature and music?

Gabrielle Cerberville:
Oh my god. The most important thing that I wish people could get on board with is the idea that we are nature. We evolved alongside all of these things that we see as nature, and it was not until quite recently that a relatively small subset of the world decided that human beings were superior to and should therefore be separate from nature, and that nature was a resource to be used by humans who are decidedly not nature. For 1000 of years, human beings have worked with nature in order to survive, in order to thrive, and in order to keep balance. You know, when you look at the various ecologies of North America, it is apparent there there is the signature of indigenous people is everywhere in how fire was used to control and manage ecosystems, how, you know, herds of buffalo would had had a clear path to go where they needed to go, how they had grasslands. Like, that was that was human intervention that allowed for those ecosystems to thrive and exist. It has not been it has not been very long that this anthropocentric idea that we should conquer nature has been in place, and I think the best way to recognize that we are part of nature is to see just how how well we can live while relying on nature.

Aminata Desert Rose:
What do you mean by that, relying on nature?

Gabrielle Cerberville:
So, you know, for me, I rely on the natural world to supply a lot of the food that I like.

Aminata Desert Rose:
Mhmm.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
So I rely on nature. I rely on certain trees being in an area in order to find the mushrooms that I like. I rely on blueberry bushes to be there year after year so that I can continue harvesting blueberries. You know, I rely on that patch of of ramps to be there year after year and for the soil to remain relatively undisturbed in order to keep eating that food that has become a part of my diet. And if let's say there's a there's a piece of land in your city that is undeveloped undeveloped, you know, there's no building on it. Maybe it's a wetland, and a developer might look at that and say, I could put a bank there, and then that place will become valuable. What I am proposing is that if we learn what is on that land and who is on that land, it is already valuable, because that is no longer just a barren piece of land that has yet to be developed. Cold virgin.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
Fully. Yeah. It is fully developed with what is growing on it and who is living on it. That is valuable. So if I know that that's the place where I pick blueberries, then maybe I am more inclined to care about it. Maybe I'm more inclined to care for it. If I know that my backyard produces, you know, x y z plants or or mushrooms or whatever, then maybe I care less about the lawn, and I care more about, you know, re rehab it like, rehabituating it to, you know, wild plants that are good for pollinators, that are good for birds and other animals, and that are also good for me as a part of nature.

Aminata Desert Rose:
Wow. Thank you for inviting us into that vision and and that way of being that was here

Gabrielle Cerberville:
Yeah. Not too

Aminata Desert Rose:
long ago. Yeah.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
It's it's unfortunate. I think that, a lot of the, a lot of sort of what people have perceived in in the past several years about foragers and foraging is it's a very, it's a very white male dominated field, and we have, like, so many wonderful people to thank for shifting that narrative. You know, people like Alexis Nicole. I can think of other, like, wonderful female foragers and foragers of color, and some really lovely respectful, white white males who do forage, like my friend Sam Thayer. And there is this idea that foragers are resource driven. You know, they are still capitalists. They are just, you know, doing it in nature instead of doing it with money. There's a lot of resource hoarding.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
There's a lot of greed, unfortunately, in in foraging. And I think what a lot of us want to see happen is we want people to realize that there is an abundance of food. There is just so much out there, and that doesn't mean that we need to take everything that's out there. It means that we can invite others into this way of life because more foragers means more people to steward what is there, to protect it and nurture it, more people to clean up trash in otherwise abandoned areas that have not received, like, human love in a long time.

Aminata Desert Rose:
Wow. Powerful. Thank you for that vision of abundance and generosity. Thank you for doing your incredible creative work blending food and music and sound. We appreciate you. And if people wanna follow you or stay in touch with you, what do you want? Where do you want them to how do you want them to be in touch with you?

Gabrielle Cerberville:
Yeah. So you can find me on all socials as chaotic forager, and, I also have 2 different websites. I really need to start integrating that more because I have a website for my music and a website for my foraging stuff, but, you can either find me at chaoticforager.comorgabrielleserberville.com.

Aminata Desert Rose:
Beautiful, Gabrielle. Well, I hope to be able to hear more of your music and feature that next time we get together.

Gabrielle Cerberville:
Sounds great. Thank you so much.

Aminata Desert Rose:
You're welcome.