Kent and Wonder discuss the documentary Every Little Thing about a sanctuary for wounded hummingbirds in the city of Los Angeles founded and run by a woman named Terry Masear. Themes that emerged were dedicating oneself to a life of service, what it takes to confront mortality, when does telling the truth serve no one, what does it take to nurse and nurture, and how ritual infused with beauty hallows one’s life. Astrologically these themes correlate with the 6th and 8th houses and the planets Venus and the Moon.
Distribution: Video on Demand, more info
Director: Sally Aitken
Run Time: 93 minutes
Music Credit: spacedust by airtone
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:13.513] Kent Bye: Hello, my name is Kent Bye. Wonder Bright: And I'm Wonder Bright. Kent Bye: And welcome to the Story All The Way Down podcast, where we're diving deep into Sundance 2024. So we're going to be digging into 36 different documentaries. And today we're diving into the third of six of our sub theme of Faith and Ritual. Today's episode is on a piece called Every Little Thing, which is a part of the US documentary competition by Sally Aitkin. And so yeah, Wonder, take it away for the synopsis.
[00:00:40.365] Wonder Bright: Every Little Thing. Amid the glamour of Hollywood, Los Angeles, a woman finds herself on a transformative journey as she nurtures wounded hummingbirds, unraveling a visually captivating and magical tale of love, fragility, healing, and the delicate beauty in tiny acts of greatness. A film of joy and wonder, Every Little Thing offers profound truths in a deceptively simple story. What does it mean to care for another? And what impact does this act have on us? Intending to these fragile yet resilient hummingbirds, Terry Masear finds a sense of healing from her own past. Her diminutive patience, brought into sharp focus through the breathtaking, beautifully detailed photography, become memorable protagonists in their own right. The viewer becomes emotionally invested in Cactus, Jimmy, Wasabi, Alexa, and Mikhail, celebrating their small victories and lamenting their tiny tragedies. The compassion and empathy that Masear shows her Lilliputian charges serves as a lesson to us all, a reminder that in the smallest of acts and in the tiniest of creatures, we might find grace. And that is another beautiful synopsis from our Sundance programmers, this one by Basil Tsiokos.
[00:01:56.195] Kent Bye: Yeah, Every Little Thing, this was a really beautiful film, especially all these close-up, slow-motion shots of the hummingbirds. It was just really quite enchanting, the hummingbird being one of the smallest birds there are, and just to see them flapping their wings 50 times a second in slow motion, and just to see how much love and care that Terry, this hummingbird rehabilitation, I didn't even know that was a thing, that anybody was doing this.
[00:02:25.658] Wonder Bright: I think she might - well, no, she can't have made it up because she does talk about that woman that she learned everything from, doesn't she?
[00:02:31.622] Kent Bye: Yeah. Yeah. So apparently this is a thing where when people find injured hummingbirds, they feel compelled to do something and to help. And so there’s, like, these hummingbird hotlines where Terry's on the other end and receives like five thousand calls a year.
[00:02:45.330] Wonder Bright: Five thousand calls a year. Exclamation point. Exclamation point. That's what my notes say. Exclamation point. Five thousand calls a year. How many calls a day is that?
[00:02:57.199] Kent Bye: Well, I just did the math in my head. Wonder Bright: Thank you. Kent Bye: It's 13.68, but there's hummingbird season and not hummingbird season. So it's probably way more than that. I don't know how long the season is, but there's probably times that are more active than others, I imagine. But we're talking about like at least 13 calls a day. There's a lot of the film where she's just talking to people and she is just stepping people through what they need to do to help these hummingbirds. But more than anything else, you get this sense of somebody who has really dedicated their lives to serving these little creatures and to take them in and to have them in these little, it's like a hospital, like you're in a bird hospital, watching all the different stages of recovery and all the personalities and character of all these individual birds that you're tracking. And she does a great job of naming them and describing their condition and describing the character and the traits of the birds. So you really feel like these birds are proper characters by the end of the film that you've been watching and their progress throughout the course of the film, all annotated by Terry, who's this master healer who's trying to rehabilitate all these hummingbirds. So just such an enchanting film.
[00:04:11.224] Wonder Bright: It is enchanting. And it's wonderful because the natural beauty is in the middle of Los Angeles, which, you know, typically doesn't get a lot of credit for being such an extraordinary place of natural wonder. Although I always think about Barbara Kruger, who in an Art Forum interview is asked what she prefers, New York versus Los Angeles. And she says, “well, I like New York for the culture, but I prefer L.A. for the botany”. I think this film is a really great expression of why that might be. And Terry has a beautiful home and it's in a very nice neighborhood. So this is an expensive home in an area of L.A. that has a lot of forested region around it. It's just a beautiful location. So you have all this natural beauty set against the backdrop of Los Angeles in varying spaces of urban area and the natural forest canopy around Terry's own home. But then you also have Terry, who is this incredibly sort of, like, salt of the earth, really pragmatic, very direct, dry, person who kind of narrates what she's doing as she goes about her day and then she's talking to these birds. The overarching experience for me watching the film is an appreciation of beauty and that there is this exalted expression of that. But it's coming through the being of Terry Masear, who is this just very practical, hands-on person. There's an everyday realness about how she interacts with this extraordinary space that kind of makes it right-sized, like attainable, like something anyone can do it. And you have that experience when she's talking on the phone with people who call her emergency hummingbird hotline because they've got an injured bird and they don't know what to do, and her commentary, her asides about the people who've called in, she's wonderful on the phone with them. And then she will sort of just unpack - the way that a co-worker might do to another co-worker. She's obviously used to having the camera people in the house with her over time. And she's being really frank about how people don't know how to handle this situation and they're captivated by the hummingbird because how could you not be? They're extraordinary creatures and they really want to do something. They feel called to do something and they often are just making terrible mistakes and doing things wrong. And she just sort of stays on the phone with them and talks them through and she's just very practical about it. So she's compassionate with them, but she is very real with us, the viewers, as we're watching her talk about her day-to-day actions.
[00:06:56.958] Kent Bye: Yeah, watching the film just feels like a healing balm just because there's so many different aspects of the film where it's just a gorgeous, beautiful film. So much of the character of Venus, the beauty of these birds, but also just I think in terms of the other significations, the 6th House, which often refers to “misfortunes, troubles, bad luck, illness, disease, accidents and injuries, servitude”. And so these are all significations from Demetra George's book of Ancient Astrology and Theory and Practice, some of the top ones she gives from traditional astrology. And so she's really in service of these birds, but there's also this dimension where the film is always on the cusp of the 8th House. We don't know whether or not each of these birds are going to make it, if they're going to survive. She has her intuition about some of these birds and sometimes she's correct and sometimes she's incorrect and surprised about the recovery. So you kind of go on this journey of seeing which of the birds are going to recover and the ways that she's able to just be with the birds and do whatever she can to know from all the many years in her experience where are the signifiers that she needs to see to indicate that they're progressing towards the pathway towards a full recovery? So we talked about how the 6th House is illness and the 1st House is health and so there's a way that she's trying to revitalize the 1st House nature of these birds to get them to a healing place so that they can eventually release them back into the wild and be set free. But yeah, it's quite an epic house that you had mentioned. Her home is absolutely beautiful. All of this work that she's doing is happening in the context of her 4th House home. It was just like a completely magical place that she was at doing all this work that seemed to be the sanctuary for hummingbirds.
[00:08:46.078] Wonder Bright: Yeah, it's like I can't help but notice it, but it's not, like, a defining feature of the film. It's just that the film couldn't exist in the absence of this beautiful home, which you would need to have a home that has the space to create a real sanctuary like this. So it's a sanctuary for her, but it's a sanctuary for the birds as well. And neither of them exist without the other. So, yeah, the whole thing is just beautiful in that way. And also the filmmaker doesn't make this point, but as somebody who's gotten very into gardening since I moved in with you, I have become aware of how bird populations across North America are being decimated because of the amount of lawns that we have and the lack of shrubbery and trees. So, our native insects are dying and as a result, our native bird populations are dying all across the country. And I did look it up and over the last, this is a quote from somewhere, I can't remember where, but over the last 50 years, North America has lost a third of its birds. And most bird species are in decline. So what Terry's doing is really vital. It's really important. Like actually just of hummingbird species alone, 60 hummingbird species in the Americas are currently threatened. So what Terry's doing is vital because these birds are not going to survive without us, without us starting to pay attention to these things. So in this way, this film does fit within that new reckoning that we're having around climate change, which you know, you could see as being a part of the Saturn Pluto conjunction. Obviously, it's long been building, but it's getting very loud now. But this film doesn't focus on that as the problem. It focuses purely on this solution. You know, like, what do we need to do if that's the case? Well, we need to pay attention. And Terry is paying attention to these tiny birds. And as she does so, we do so.
[00:10:49.129] Kent Bye: What are some of the other significations that you see are really coming out in this film?
[00:10:53.190] Wonder Bright: I totally agree with you, for me, this one is a 6th House act of service all the way down. We have the attention to animal life, which is something that was a really common experience until farms became a big agricultural project rather than family farms. This is a food industry that's distanced us from the source of food and from the source of the land, taking care of the land and taking care of the animals on it so that we can live in relationship with all of these creatures. And this film really just asks the question, what if you are paying attention? And what if you're paying attention to the very smallest kind of creature that you could? And what does that mean? Like, what happens when you do that?
[00:11:42.682] Kent Bye: And for me, some of the other significations that come up are a lot of themes of the Moon, of nurturing. I'm just going to read this section from Richard Tarnas' Cosmos and Psyche where he talks about the Moon. He says that it's "the matrix of being, the psychosomatic foundation of the self, the womb and ground of life, the body and the soul, that which senses and intuits, the feeling nature, the impulse and capacity to gestate and bring forth, to receive and reflect, to relate and respond, to need and to care, to nurture and to be nurtured, the condition of dependence and interdependence”. That's a good summary of the interdependent nature for these hummingbirds that would die without the nurturance and care. And throughout the course of the film, there are some other moments where they're tapping into the backstory of Terry, although it's very brief and ephemeral and I'm having trouble to even articulating all the different discursions they have fleshing out her character. But they do go into her former relationship with her husband a little bit to get into the 7th House dimension of her past. But also she has these precognitive moments where she's having these visions of this house that she's living in before she moved in. But there's also this little section where they go into a little bit of her past and her traumas of 4th House wounding that she has growing up, but it doesn't go into very much detail. You just get a sense that there was some childhood trauma that maybe is impacting her of how she's now this Chiron transmuting those wounds into becoming a healer. So it's like this wounded healer where she's been wounded, but now she's healing these birds. And so there's this Chiron theme that's running throughout the film as well. So yeah, I'd love to hear any other reflections on the significations.
[00:13:27.165] Wonder Bright: Well, I put this under this first section of Faith and Ritual because there's so many ritual acts that Terry goes through, even though she's this very sort of salt of the earth pragmatist. She involves herself in her daily tasks and her service in some really ritualistic fashion. So like, for instance, when a bird is injured, she has to take them through something she calls flight therapy. And she uses the same twig for that flight therapy that she's been using for 15 years. And she calls it her wand. It’s, like, a magical wand that's going to teach these birds flight once again. And we get to watch her working with this one bird that's injured and teaching it and the acute attention that she's paying to this bird is very much in the vein of what you've just described around the moon and that experience of nurturing and that experience that - like, I always think about the moon, as it nurtures while it's orbiting the earth. So where is it in our lunar expression? Do we orbit something else or do we seek to be orbited? And she has that devotion that is a very ritualistic expression because she's doing the same tasks over and over again for different birds that she will then, hopefully, they'll live and recover, and then she releases them into the wild! And she might never see them again, although some of them she reports she does see them again. But it's the task itself. It's the ritual itself of expressing that devotion and then releasing them back into the wild that is so powerful. And so this is why I've included it under this Faith and Spirituality, because I think there's so many different ways for faith to be expressed. It isn't necessarily through religion or even anything that is necessarily spiritual. My own mother is self-described agnostic, but some of my deepest experiences of being connected with what I would call spirit was just her drawing our attention to the natural beauty that we would be surrounded by. You know, she goes out on a walk every morning and sends a haiku about the things that she's seen accompanied by a picture to our circle of friends on our messaging app. So for me, there's this aspect of faith or faith based expression that is not dependent on religion, but can be really like a deep commitment and connection to nature and the natural world and to being in right relationship with those things. And that to me is what this film offers.
[00:16:07.960] Kent Bye: Yeah. I have a question for you because there's this aspect of the 9th House, which is around both the philosophy, but also justice and truth. There's this dimension of Terry where part of her service is to sometimes withhold information or to withhold the full truth because she's interacting with these birds who are in some ways, some of the main characters of the film. Obviously, Terry is the protagonist, the main, main character of the film. But the other secondary characters that are coming in are these volunteers who are coming in and wanting to have a good outcome of whatever happens. And so she finds that she has to sometimes withhold aspects of the full truth of the condition because the people who are bringing these birds never want to hear that the bird is doomed towards death. I mean, sometimes she thinks that might be true, but sometimes the birds will surprise her and not actually be on the trajectory towards death that she expects, and they're actually able to have a full recovery. But when it comes to relating to these volunteers, she's found that she has to withhold specific information or to keep it as a secret or to tell them something that will placate them, but she kind of remarks a couple of times that people really can't handle the truth when it comes to some of these situations, that they want to know that they've done the right thing and they've done the best they can, even despite the condition of the bird, maybe beyond the point where she's able to reasonably do anything. So I feel like there's a 9th House truth, but if there's a Saturn or what is that withholding? How do you make sense of that kind of withholding of the full truth?
[00:17:42.265] Wonder Bright: Well, I mean, I think actually, as an astrologer, sometimes you're seeing things that look quite difficult for a client or indicate something that's maybe not great, but it isn't necessarily your job to tell people everything, you know. Like, you've called them volunteers, but these are people that have called in because they've found an injured hummingbird. They're not exactly volunteers so much as they're people who have found a hummingbird and they want to give it to Terry so that she can rehabilitate it and hopefully set it free one day. So it isn't necessarily in the bird or Terry's best interest or the person's best interest to tell them, you know, well, this bird isn't going to make it. She's going to treat the bird regardless of whether or not it's going to make it. But part of her telling us or the camera people that, “I don't tell them my intuition is that this bird is going to die”, is that she's telling herself that. because she's going to be the one that has to deal with that firsthand in the moment. And it isn't necessary for her to tell that other person. I mean, we say the truth is going to set us free. And, you know, earlier we talked about Sugarcane, which is a film where it's really important and vital that people tell the truth. But we also have to be really careful who we tell the truth to, because not everybody, as Terry points out, can handle the truth. And we might be wrong anyway. She says that, you know, so like what would telling the truth serve? I think that is a really vital part of anybody who is seeking 9th House wisdom. A part of the thing that we have to consider is who does this truth serve? And if it doesn't actually serve someone, does it need to be told? you know, there's a reason that astrology was a hidden teaching for so long. There's a reason for occult teachings in general, because sometimes these teachings, which belonged to mystery schools, you know, it's not for the feint of heart. When I got this cancer diagnosis - as an astrologer, I knew going into last year that I needed to pay attention to my health. But I didn't know that I was going to get a cancer diagnosis. I just knew enough to be concerned. And I saw the doctor more last year than I'd seen a doctor in maybe a decade. And so when I got my colonoscopy screening, it was just a routine colonoscopy, which by the way, PSA, if you're 45, get your colonoscopy, everybody. Early detection is key. So how much is too much to know? I don't know that it would have served me to like be able to see in my chart earlier that this exact thing was going to happen to me in the exact way that it has. So I think it’s, like, how much of the truth is necessary? What does the truth serve? I guess is my answer. And sometimes we don't need to know everything.
[00:20:58.986] Kent Bye: Yeah, that makes total sense. And, you know, as I reflect on this piece and think about what I'm bearing witness to, there's just the amazing nurturing spirit of Terry with her ability to take care of these birds in such a loving way. And also just the range of personalities of the birds that she's able to identify. You really feel like as you're watching the film, there's the character of these birds that have their own personalities that she's narrating and describing. And for me, they all look exactly the same and I wouldn't be able to discern any of these personality traits. But for her, she's able to really dive into the nuances of the personality of the birds. And so they really feel like characters that are being animated by the narration of Terry, which I think is a whole other dimension of this film on top of the beautiful slow motion captures that we have of the birds that we're able to directly witness the majestic and enchanted nature of these birds. But I feel like Terry is the narrator of the personalities and the character of these birds. It was highly entertaining. So, yeah, what are you bearing witness to?
[00:22:08.355] Wonder Bright: I want to bear witness to the same thing. Just Teri Masear’s absolute rapt devotion and ability to just stay the course, and be good humored about the circumstances, and to engage with her birds, and the people who call the hotline, and, obviously, the camera crew, and through the camera crew, us. To really engage with this subject matter about which she's a complete domain expert. She's written a book which is how Sally Aitken’s even discovered her in the first place. It's called Fastest Things On Wings. Is that right?
[00:22:48.703] Kent Bye: Fastest Things On Wings: Rescuing Hummingbirds in Hollywood.
[00:22:52.445] Wonder Bright: Brilliant. So yeah, just her like devotion to this subject matter, I think is absolutely enchanting. And I'm really grateful to Sally Aitken and her crew for bringing it all to life for us.
[00:23:06.231] Kent Bye: Yeah. And if we start to think about this film to be prescribed, it feels like the 6th House themes are, like you said, they're going all the way down. So maybe you could articulate how this could be a remedial measure in that sense of the 6th House.
[00:23:20.089] Wonder Bright: I guess I would say that it's a remedial measure for the 6th House in that spirit of really being able to find a task that you devote yourself to or a series of tasks that you devote yourself to in a day. And especially if those tasks have to do with any kind of like animal husbandry or taking care of animals. And also just that aspect of taking care of wild animals, because that's a really key part of this film. She's not trying to tame them or keep them as pets. In fact, it's sort of like a key thing that she wants them to get better, but she wants them to get better enough so that they can leave. And I mean, that just feels like a remedial measure for humanity in general, really. Like, what if we didn't try to, like, attract people and animals and things so that we could then own them? What would it be like if we just could love things as they actually are?
[00:24:22.048] Kent Bye: And I feel like there's something about the experience of the 6th House where there's a potential where it could end up in death, an 8th House expression where you don't recover or you end up in a 1st House context where you make a full recovery. So I feel like throughout the course of this film, there's this tension between the unsettled nature of being in that 6th House place where you don't know whether or not these birds are gonna make a full recovery or whether they're not gonna make it. And there's some moments where Terry has to bury some of these birds that don't make it. And you see some of the birds and their plight and their journey. So I feel like there's something about that 6th House expression where you see the potentiality of death versus the potentiality of recovery that I feel like is really coming up for me as I think about this as a film.
[00:25:15.203] Wonder Bright: I'm so glad you said that. It really touches on something that I was thinking about when I was talking about my cancer diagnosis and how I hadn't predicted it. I hadn't predicted exactly what would happen at all, you know. And on the one hand, I want to just say that somebody with more medical astrology, because that's actually a branch of astrology, somebody who actually has a much stronger background in medical astrology, probably could have seen something like this. But I don't have that lineage. Although now I would really like to learn more, I got to tell you. But I also philosophically, just I… There is something about timing that ultimately can't be predicted. It's something along the lines of what you talked about in our first episode around Richard Tarnas talking about prediction, where there are certain things, you know, like, astrology, kind of on the surface, and I think it has a reputation that is much maligned for trying to cultivate a reputation for this hardcore prediction, or this like idea of, like, you can just say what your fates are going to be and then you can just see into the future no matter what. And I think there are many times where I'm just amazed at the weirdness and the miracle of like how accurate astrology can be in certain circumstances. And yet at the same time, some of the things that astrology does the best are it just points to the mystery of things. And I think there's something essentially human about being able to sit with those mysteries. And 6th House mysteries like illness are some of the biggest mysteries we can sit with because we don't know what the outcome is going to be. There is this space where if we know that just having a strong will and a desire to fight and a strong spirit, that isn't enough. But we also can see that sometimes if you don't have it, it's the thing that devastates us. So there's a space where knowing prevents you from believing. And that's that space that I think Terry is riding really beautifully when she doesn't tell the people who want to bring these hummingbirds into her, that this bird is not likely to make it. Because this is why that truth doesn't serve. Because it's actually this deeply mysterious thing. And I think that's part of the revelation for me about the way that my doctors have been with me. Because they're so kind and compassionate, and they have so much grace, but they're also really humbled. in a way that I don't associate with doctors or people of science in general. They have this deep humility that comes from being with miracles and with death every day. And that ability to be humbled in the face of what we do not know is a story that we really do get to see Terry live out with these teeny little birds whose whole life rests in her hands, literally in her hands. And there's something really powerful about watching her bring some of them back to life and the others she buries in her back garden. And she tells us their bones are so light that they'll be decomposed in just a few days.
[00:28:41.142] Kent Bye: Hmm. Yeah, as I was talking about hummingbirds, I was of course, at the same time thinking about our own lives and the situation we're in and how close it is to be facing death and when it comes to something like cancer, and how there is this element of just pure faith of trying to really hope for the best and remain optimistic and positive and not only for our own lives but thinking about this theme of Faith and Rituals that we have for this film and how apt it is because Terry really has to carry that faith of possibility that some of these birds can make a full recovery, even despite all of her skepticism about how bad some of these injuries might be, this real Saturnian aspect of facing the limitations or constraints or the injuries that some of these birds are having. But she has to maintain that faith because she has to give it the due diligence and see if the spirit of the bird is able to make that full recovery. And, like I said, sometimes the birds surprise even her in terms of how they're able to turn out. So there's something about that fundamental tension of the 6th House and the healing journey of whether or not it's going to go down the path of the fates towards death or towards full recovery. So, as I was listening to you speaking, there's a part of the back of my mind where I'm like, I don't actually know if you're going to survive this cancer, and I don't know if some of these conversations we're having will be some of the last that we are able to dive this deep into some of these topics that we're talking about, and, so… yeah, there's a reality to the intensity of the possibilities for where this all goes that just really sitting with and sometimes when I let that hit me, it hits me deep in the chest and just gets me into this… spot where I want to deny that as a possibility and want to escape that as a possibility. But knowing that it's that 6th House experience of actually needing to stare death in its face, because if no action is taken, then that's where the journey will end up. So yeah, I just wanted to add that because something that came up, I just want to articulate.
[00:31:12.386] Wonder Bright: Yeah, I mean, I feel the same way. And, I just keep thinking about our nephew, Theo, when I told him that I was ill. Do you remember the first thing he said?
[00:31:25.830] Kent Bye: He said, are you going to make it? Or what did he say?
[00:31:29.212] Wonder Bright: He said, are you afraid? And one of my heroes, Karla McLaren, who wrote this book called The Language of Emotions, What Your Feelings Are Trying to Tell You, she says that fear is an emotion that's telling us to pay attention because something's happening and we need to be really alert. So I'm really grateful that we're having these conversations because it's part of the process for me of being really alert and paying attention. And that's why I felt like Every Little Thing was a kind of medicine because Terry is paying such acute attention to every little thing. And I know that my body is ill. But I feel really alive right now. You know, like, I actually feel more alert than I've felt for a number of years. And I think it's partly because I'm so afraid. And I'm just really grateful that you're here with me in that and that we can be present together.
[00:32:43.567] Kent Bye: Me too. And I'm just really grateful I had an opportunity to go on this journey of watching all these films and doing this really crazy idea of, just, talking about all of them. Wonder Bright: Again. Kent Bye: Again. All right. Well, that's all that we have for today. And I just wanted to thank you all for listening to the Story All The Way Down podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast, please do spread the word, tell your friends and consider signing up on our newsletter over at Story All The Way Down just to keep track with what we're up to and to see where this goes in the future. So thanks for listening. Wonder Bright: Thank you.
