Season 7, Episode 11
"Being able to sit down and write lyrics in response to [Isabella's] interview , I found myself writing more than I meant to. Once I started writing lyrics, I unlocked something, I finally got my creativity flowing again"
-Sharon Van Etten, on writing her song, "for Isabella"
Isabella Rossellini, photo by Paola Kudacki
Filmmaker and actress Isabella Rossellini was in a wheelchair. Isabella was born with severe scoliosis, and she had a second surgery to treat it when she was 60 years old. Still, determined to stay active as she recovered, Isabella arranged to see noted ethologist Temple Grandin speak at Hunter College.
Ethology, the study of animal behavior, was a lifelong passion. In fact, ethology was what Isabella had imagined studying when she was young, but there were no universities offering degrees in ethology in Italy at the time. After Temple Grandin’s talk, Isabella noticed that Hunter College had recently opened a graduate program in ethology.
“There were people handing out pamphlets saying that Hunter College just opened animal behavior and conservation,” Isabella recalls. “I said, ‘This is what I’ve always wanted to do all my life!’”
Isabella signed up, and the next week, still in a wheelchair, she went to her first class. Since then, Isabella's fascination with animals has led to a series of creative and educational projects, including her long-running video series “Green Porno,” and her one-woman shows “Link, Link, Circus” and “Darwin’s Smile.” These projects were in part creative refractions of what Isabella learned in class, especially those taught by Dr. Diana Reiss.
“I always said to Diana that ‘Link, Link Circus’ is really [her] class, translated into a theatrical form,” Isabella says. “There was so much information that [she] taught us that I’ve used.”
Dr. Diana Reiss, photo by Elizabeth Nolan
Diana has spent much of her life exploring interspecies communication. A professor, a scientist, and an advocate, Diana underscores that while conservation is important, so is animal welfare.
“People often get this mixed up,” Diana says. “Conservation is a numbers game, based on how many individuals do you need to keep a population healthy. Welfare is concerned for the individual animals.”
One of the strategies Diana uses to activate collective political engagement is to elicit empathy for individual animals. She points out that Humphrey, a humpback whale who she helped rescue in the San Francisco Bay, was wildly successful in attracting both media attention and political action. Diana is particularly passionate about preserving The Marine Mammal Protection Act, which helped populations of whales and dolphins stabilize.
“We’re getting threats to eviscerate this act,” Diana says. “It’s up to the public to start writing to senators and congresspeople to say we don’t want this eviscerated.”
Sharon Van Etten, photo by Devin Oktar Yalkin
The song written in response to the narratives from Isabella Rossellini and Diana Reiss is by Sharon Van Etten. Sharon, who is an actor as well as a rock star, is a longtime fan of Isabella’s work.
“Isabella takes on very challenging roles and says so much with so little, from very flawed-yet-vulnerable characters,” Sharon says.
The song – titled “for Isabella” – was written as a tribute and as a kind of emotional purification ritual. Sharon often engages dark emotions in her songs, as an act of unburdening and release.
“Because I’m able to get it out, because I’m able to connect with other people, it helps me feel less alone,” Sharon says. “It’s a catharsis, an exorcising.”
Season seven of SongWriter is made possible by a grant from Templeton World Charity Foundation.
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This project was made possible through the support of a grant from Templeton World Charity Foundation, Inc (funder DOI 501100011730, under the grant https://doi.org/10.54224/31681). The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Templeton World Charity Foundation, Inc.