Celebrating the ones who are hungry, hungry, hungry
Dublin resident Niamh Sharkey’s charming story explores absurdity and tension in delightful balance. Image source: Candlewick Press.
(4 min read)
In 2003, author and illustrator Niamh Sharkey published a picture book titled “The Ravenous Beast,” a lighthearted tale about the insatiable appetites of several species.
Transformed into a five minute animation by Candlewick Press, the creatures strut around boasting that they’re “hungry, hungry, hungry.” Large and small, they meet on a grassy hillside and set out to prove themselves by consuming items like houses, boats, castles and tents and everything in between.
There’s even a whale in there (you can see her at minute 3:47) who consumes a number of things, including an entire sunken pirate ship.
In a recent spring-cleaning, I came across the book again and remembered how much my children had enjoyed this story when they were little, especially the lyrical repetition at the end of each animal’s ravenous feast, a variation of the Ravenous Beast’s initial declaration:
Gobble it up! Swallow it down!
Now THAT’S what I call hungry!
Now THAT’S what I call hungry
I’ve spent over a decade on a kind of literary pilgrimage, looking for hungry people who are a bit like the ravenous creatures of Sharkey’s creation.
Not in a predatory or competitive sense.
But in a hungry, hungry, hungry sense. )See how words fail me here? I’m still trying to articulate this.)
I found some of them too. In the pages of books, mostly. But elsewhere as well. Writer’s festivals. Creative conferences. Streaming TED talks.
These people are not your average hungry.
We all know what it feels like to be hungry on many different levels
Oh, they know all about the pyramid of need — the basic physiological hungers for the necessities of survival, the driving urge to secure those necessities in any way possible, and once secured (or maybe whether or not secured) the nagging hunger to find belonging, respect, and some kind of meaning.
But the hungry, hungry, hungry people I was particularly looking for — the ones I found in the pages of books, mostly, but elsewhere as well — their hunger drives them far beyond the base of the self-centered pyramid of need.
Hungry, hungry, hungry
Maybe they’re just the lucky ones.
I don’t know.
I don’t think so.
I don’t think the hungry, hungry, hungry ones are immune to physiological deficits at the base of the pyramid. To regular needs for food, sleep, oxygen, intimacy, and homeostasis.
Mortality bites, sooner or later.
No amount of wealth can protect us from terminal disease, in the end.
Enchantment. Meaning. Art.
So yeah, these are not super-humans who never suffer illness, longing and loss.
They’re subject to mortality, disease, accident, heartbreak — just like the rest of us.
But it seems like they’ve learned to channel their hungry, hungry, hungry into the creation of enchantment.
It seems like there are some people — regular mortals living among us — who have learned to channel their hungry, hungry, hungry into the creation of meaning.
It seems like there are some people — again, just regular mortals — who have learned to channel their hungry, hungry, hungry into the creation of art — whether transcendent, dramatic or ludicrous.
You’re sending signals to me
Maybe that’s you. Maybe you’ve channeled your hungry, hungry, hungry into enchantment. Meaning. Art. Maybe you’re trying to do that right now.
There’s something else about these hungry, hungry, hungry people. Something that I noticed in over a decade of searching for them.
They send out signals.
All day, every day, in the cacophony and cognitive dissonance that makes up the cultural landscape of our global village, you’re sending signals into the datasphere.
Salvation. Light. Lullaby.
They might not always be the loudest signals.
They might not always be the most obvious signals.
But to a certain kind of individual, receptive to that particular frequency, they sound like salvation.
To a certain kind of individual, teetering on the edge of the abyss, they sound like light.
To a certain kind of individual, alone in a crowded city, they sound like the hum of a lullaby from the divine mother herself.
Getting hungry enough
All day, every day, in the cacophony and cognitive dissonance that makes up the cultural landscape of our global village, there are some frequencies worth listening for above the others.
And if we listen long enough and hard enough, if we’re hungry enough, then …
perhaps, perhaps …
we’ll hear those frequencies that guide us towards what we’re most hungry for.
Perhaps, perhaps we’ll be able to join the ravenous beast and say…
Now THAT’S what I call hungry.
(This is part three in a twenty part introductory series exploring the intersection of frequency, resonance and nuance, first published on Medium.)