The Things That Make Us Truly Human Will Soon Become More Precious

Because Tiu de Haan creates very special things, very special experiences happen to her. She is convinced that rituals are something we very much need, as they shift our perspective of everyday life around and teach us that the world is quite a magical place.

You have a beautiful and unusual home that even has a name.

My home is a boat named The Calder Lady, because in the 1970s it sailed on the River Calder. Later it was converted into a restaurant. It's very beautiful and bright, as it has large windows, which is very unusual for a boat; most boats have small, round windows so water doesn't get in. I bought it in 2016 and it's been my home ever since. The Calder Lady is female, and she is especially feminine.

Why?

Because she has many curves, because she's soft, pleasant. I live in the middle of London, Bank station in the financial district, which is also one of the oldest parts of the city, is just a few minutes' train ride away, Tower Bridge is twenty minutes on foot. I'm surrounded by the metropolis, all the follies of capitalism are right in front of me. But my boat is a refuge of peace and quiet. When I bought her, the former owner told me: "You take care of her and she will take care of you." I took this very seriously. The only problem is that I feel so comfortable here that I don't want to go anywhere anymore.

Your neighbors are swans, cormorants, and also other boats.

I live in a marina where we pay rent for mooring. These boats don't sail. There are about a hundred boats here in total, divided among individual piers. There are twelve on mine. It's a very friendly neighborhood, no one locks their front doors, we all help each other.

London is a city of art, museums, galleries, concerts, creativity, and I like it because different cultures mix here. But sometimes I really feel like I'm in the countryside, as there are two farms near my boat.

Do you think you'll ever sail with it?

No. It's too big. And I don't know how to navigate a boat. It has a large keel because it's designed for river navigation, and it could run aground in canals. But sometimes I really do think that I'm denying her true nature, that we should sail down the river together on an adventure.

When I follow your Instagram posts, I'm getting to know a completely different London – full of domestic animals, vegetable markets, gardens...

I was born in the English countryside and only later my family moved to London, where I grew up. I've had a romantic relationship with this city since forever. Although I've lived elsewhere in the meantime and I've traveled a lot, this is my place. In every period of my life I've gotten to know it in a different way. In my twenties I worked in television, later I was a singer and I got to know a completely different, more nocturnal city again.

London is a city of art, museums, galleries, concerts, creativity, and I like it because different cultures mix here. When I walk the streets, I can hear at least fifteen languages. But sometimes I really feel like I'm somewhere in the countryside, as there are two farms near my boat where they have many domestic animals and you can work as a volunteer. Nearby there's also a market where farmers sell vegetables, there are community gardens nearby, painting studios, pottery workshops...

You're a ritual designer. What does that mean? You work for large organizations, hospitals, collaborate with neuroscientists and individuals.

I made up this title myself. What I do, I would actually rather call a moment maker, but it sounds strange. Ritual sounds too solemn and ceremonial, yet moments don't need that to become powerful and memorable. What do we remember from the past – individual moments, and those that imprint themselves most in our memory are usually something completely ordinary, small, tender. So I create moments that people will remember, that will change them at least a little and offer them a special experience.

I became a ritual designer because of everything I experienced in life, because of losses, love, sadness, beauty, learning, and travel.

I was raised by artists. My father was a musician who lived in different countries and had a very romantic imagination, romantic with a capital R, as he was always making up fairy tales and saw the world as a wondrous place. Mum was a painter, extremely sensual and spiritual. When I was six years old, she taught me how to meditate. Every celebration – birthday, Christmas – she could turn into a special experience. Perhaps also because she spent her childhood as a refugee without a home, as her parents fled from the Russians when they occupied Estonia.

My parents' parents were also artists and bohemians. Painters on my mother's side and musicians on my father's side, so it would really be strange if, for example, I had become an accountant. That would truly be the craziest rebellious act.

My mother suddenly died when I was eighteen years old. Her heart stopped and I was with her at the time. It was a huge shock for me. I remember that in the middle of all that chaos, my heart closed. It was as if it was covered with a layer of ice. I stopped feeling and crying. Her death, and also the way she lived – all of this led me to realize that I needed to learn to grieve, to feel, to understand who she was, who I am. When I started learning about rituals, I realized that my university studies and my intellect wouldn't help me with how to grieve, remember, understand a life rich with experiences. I decided I would start exploring this unknown territory and dedicate my professional life to it.

And how did it all begin? How did you design your first ritual?

Twenty years ago I rented a treehouse in the forest and invited twelve people to spend two days there together. They were really different – two psychologists, two businessmen, a photographer, a drummer, a massage therapist, a trainer, founders of a large company... I set myself the task of taking them through different experiences, and my goal was that when it was over, their eyes would be shining.

And?

They really were shining.

What happened to them in the forest?

Very simple things. For a while we were together in complete silence, then some had their eyes blindfolded, others were their guides, we told each other stories, swam in the stream, individually they went into the forest and returned as animal beings. There were many different experiences, some physical, some imaginative.

But they were all very connected to nature, to returning to nature. Why is it that whenever we want to experience something unusual, almost a mystical experience, even for a moment, it most often happens in nature, in the mountains, in the forest, on a meadow, in a lake?

Because nature is always connected to wonder. Only in nature do we realize that there are things bigger than us. Whenever we look at the night sky, we have that feeling, but unfortunately in cities we can no longer see the stars. Just the fact that these people were in the forest for 48 hours without a phone and connection to the outside world was a special experience for them. There's a quote I often use in my work, from Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander's book The Art of Possibility: "In a universe of measurement, you set a goal and strive to achieve it. In a universe of possibility, you create a context and let life unfold."

A ritual is a frame around a moment. Imagine you're in a gallery and you're looking at a painting in a frame, it's clear to us that within this frame there is art, an artwork to which we pay attention. If you take this frame and move it into your imagination, adapt it to a specific time and place, then fill it with light and color, perhaps with sounds and tastes, with words, thoughts, shape it so that it has a beginning and an end, you will create a ritual and turn a moment into a work of art.

Of all the people who came to my first event, only one participant was a parent. He later told me that the experience in the forest changed his relationship with his daughter, as when he returned home, he connected with her in a different way, as if he understood again what it means to be a child. He started playing with her in the yard, they crawled on all fours and from this perspective he saw the world quite differently.

So I got the idea and invited parents and children to my next event to play together in nature.

You also create rituals for individuals that can heal their wounds for a few moments, help them grieve, give them hope to move forward in life. The story about the boy whose father died when he was two years old, which you told me about, I found so wonderful.

This boy's mother asked me to prepare a ceremony for Father's Day that would include seven friends or godfather-like figures she had chosen to be male role models for the child as he grew up. We went to the park and each of these men helped the boy climb the stairs to the slide, made sure he slid down safely, and made his vow. One promised to visit every other weekend and play with him. Another said he would take him for his first drink and to his first football match when he turned 16. This ritual gave the godfathers an opportunity and space to show the boy love and dedicate themselves to him.

I thought to myself, what if I added something special to rituals like birth, wedding, and funeral, since they don't necessarily always have to be the same. And so I started doing weddings and funerals. The rituals we know are always connected to life or death.

But most of all you deal with rituals that we all know and can hardly escape, but you design them in a completely different way.

I thought to myself, what if I added something special to rituals like birth, wedding, and funeral, since they don't necessarily always have to be the same. And so I started doing weddings and funerals. The rituals we know are always connected to life or death.

I also did other things, for example a friend asked me to marry her to herself, and I created a very special event, there were more than fifty of her friends at the wedding. This wedding soon went viral and many English and American newspapers wrote about it.

But of everything, I most enjoy doing funerals.

Are they always different, depending on the wishes of the deceased or their loved ones? Which one seemed most special to you?

If you're religious, the ritual of a funeral is always the same, but if you're not, there are different possibilities. Very often this is such a sad event for relatives that they have a hard time dealing with it, so they usually choose the established path. But many already wish during their lifetime that their funeral would be different, and they ask me to direct it in a way; after all, it's the only thing we all know will happen one day.

For example, I designed a funeral for an elderly man who had three sons, and they had grown closer in the few years before his death. He was a cheerful man and sometimes also liked to drink a little. When the sons asked him what kind of funeral he wanted, he told them he wanted them to plant an apple tree on his grave, and when the tree bore fruit, his sons should make cider from these apples and call it "Scrumpa" and drink it in his memory.

When he died, the sons hired me to organize the funeral. We planted an apple tree, and people who came to the funeral wrote a memory or a wish for him on a paper leaf and then hung these leaves on the tree. The yellow, cardboard coffin was decorated with a photoshopped image of the father and the three sons dressed in brightly coloured uniforms as if they were the Beatles on the Sergeant Pepper album, which had been his favourite, and for the funeral itself, I dressed as the fifth Beatle. Their friend sang Neil Young's song Old Man, all three sons made heartfelt speeches, and then we all went to a wonderful feast in a nearby orchard.

Rituals have been part of humanity since ancient times, even when our ancestors lived in tribes. How would you explain their meaning anthropologically?

Rituals connected the community. These could be events in which the entire tribe participated, where everyone was equal, regardless of social status. Rituals also connected people with changes in nature. We always honored the change of seasons, the longest or shortest day of the year, harvest, cleansing of the body or home, birth, love, death... Today there are new rituals connected to climate change, digital detox.

At Moorfields Eye Hospital they asked me to create a ritual where families of those who died and donated their eyes or corneas to others would meet with these people who can now see. This is truly a new ritual, a 21st-century ceremony, as such operations weren't known before, and yet this ritual is also about the ancient human need for how to honor life, love, and death.

There were also mandatory rites for teenagers when they transitioned to adulthood. They might have to go on a long journey, and often they would have to undergo various physical and psychological trials. It was a time when they separated from the family and had to show psychological and physical strength. Today, in our culture at least, they largely no longer exist, but I think young people need them. There were also many rituals around childbirth, as it was once very dangerous for both mother and child.

This year you prepared the most massive ritual to date in Ljubljana and it seemed especially interesting to me because you drew from a Slovenian fairy tale.

I found a book in English with Slovenian fairy tales and Slovenian mythology, which fascinated me, it's so rich and special. In it I read a story about how on Midsummer's Night you have to go into the forest and pick up seeds from the ground, put them in your pocket, and then you'll be able to hear and understand the language of animals. Since I had to design this ritual right on Midsummer's Night, this story was excellent inspiration.

In June there was a week-long Hearth Summit conference in Ljubljana, which hosted more than a thousand world change leaders, visionaries, thinkers, and creators from a hundred countries. Among them were politicians, activists, neuroscientists, judges, academics, teachers, students, people working for charitable and non-governmental organizations. The main theme of the conference was how to maintain your vision and retain your energy and well-being. How to thrive, rather than burn out.

On the summer solstice, on the longest day of the year, we gathered with participants at four in the morning at Novi trg by the Ljubljanica, instead of seeds everyone got a crystal that they put in their pocket, and then I whispered the whole story about Midsummer's Night and that this is the time when we can hear animals speak. Those closest to me then turned and whispered the story to others. With these crystal seeds in our pockets, we continued along the Ljubljanica, we all had candles in our hands, which we lit for each other and looked into each other's eyes by the light of the flame. We walked all the way to Špica, where there were some bonfires around which we gathered and watched the sun rise. It was a very special moment and for many participants, that morning had a profound impact.

The more artificial intelligence develops, the more the desire to live without technology grows. The more artificial intelligence takes over the field of creativity, the more we want to write by hand again, play guitar, garden, paint...

It was incredible that the birds sang so loudly that morning, as if you had hired them.

I know, and I didn't even pay them. (Laughs.) On the way to Špica, a cat joined us and accompanied us the whole time, and at the end a gray heron flew over the whole group of people.

I really fell in love with Slovenia and Ljubljana, it seemed like an oasis in this capitalist world to me – you have free universities and free lunches for children in schools, free healthcare, and you were one of the first countries to recognize Palestine.

We're losing real rituals, it seems like they're from some other time, yet there are thousands of videos on Instagram where influencers show their morning rituals, cleaning the apartment rituals, makeup rituals, exercise rituals...

We must be aware that habits are not rituals. We often hear people say: "My morning coffee is a ritual." In a way it is, but we should add another layer of something more meaningful. I learned a lot about all this from the late Sobonfu Somé, who was a very special keeper of rituals of the Dagara tribe from Burkina Faso. She said: "Ritual is to the soul as food and drink is to the body." But if the soul is not involved, it's not a ritual, it's just a routine.

She also told me that their funerals are an entire re-enactment of the person's life who died. At her grandmother's funeral, for example, she saw a small elderly lady who was playing her grandmother get up and start wrestling with people. Sobonfu didn't know what it was about, so she asked someone from her grandmother's village what was happening, and he told her that her grandmother, when she was younger, was the best wrestler in the village who won her wrestling matches with all the women and then with the men. She only found out about this skill of hers at her funeral. Imagine if your funeral consisted of moments and stories from your life. Imagine what they could be like.

A ritual is always connected with a sense of wonder. This is easiest to explain if I say there's a big difference between pilgrimage and hiking. They seem similar on the surface, but pilgrimage is a different experience, which is not connected only with you and your ego, but it's precisely about your ego disappearing on the pilgrimage path. It's about being connected with something bigger than yourself – and that's a ritual.

We talked earlier about how things that would connect the community are disappearing from modern society, also because of all the technology that surrounds us, but research shows that interest in social networks is slowly declining among Generation Z. The more artificial intelligence develops, the more the desire to live without technology grows. The more artificial intelligence takes over the field of creativity, the more we want to write by hand again, play guitar, garden, paint... I think the things that make us truly human will soon become more precious.

You really are an optimist...

I don't think this will happen overnight, but at some point the things that artificial intelligence won't be able to create and that are based only on human experience will become more sought after.

Artists also talk a lot about rituals, as they help them in creation, mystics also wrote and spoke a lot about them – just these days I read a really good book by English philosopher Simon Critchley about mysticism.

Rituals help us transition into different states than we know in everyday life, and artists create most easily in a state of divine inspiration. How to achieve it? Every artist has their own way. Writers like to talk about how at such moments they have the feeling that someone else is writing through them. These are moments of inspiration, but muses are very fickle lovers and artists can perhaps entice them with rituals. These are very interesting and still mysterious to us.

Just yesterday I was reading an article written by a neurologist about how wonder is beneficial for the brain, how good it is that we experience such moments. Alain de Botton also writes a lot about this in the book Religion for Atheists, in which he writes that rituals connected with belief and religion once maintained emotional intelligence and encouraged people to feelings of gratitude, thanks, and kindness.

You also have clients you receive on your boat.

I like to say that my boat does half my work, because they really feel good here and relax. It seems to them like they're not in the middle of a huge capital city.

What do sessions with individuals look like? Are you like a therapist then?

I'm not a therapist. My clients usually also go to therapists besides coming to me. I help them believe in themselves, look at things from a different, more metaphysical side. Sometimes they have problems at work, other times they're dealing with disagreements with a partner, sometimes it's someone who's overwhelmed with work and has forgotten what they really want from life. They want to be more confident, more curious and open.

Every story is special and individual and my task is to send them on an adventure. For some, the adventure is just being without a phone over the weekend, to others I suggest lying on the couch and listening to an album from beginning to end, visiting an exhibition, spending half an hour in a gallery looking at just one painting, talking to strangers on the street. We used to do this, but today it seems we no longer have time for it. But who convinced us of this? These are small interventions that force them to do something outside their comfort zone.

When we first met, you told me an unusual story about a performance that was created just for you and which you became part of almost by chance.

Odyssey Works is an American art and experience design organisation that has existed for 20 years or more. They create transformative experiences for an audience of one. At the beginning they research the life of the chosen person for four to six months and then create a special experience or journey for them that sometimes lasts 36 hours, sometimes longer. Every other year they publish a call for applications, which anyone can apply to, but they only choose one from many applications. At that time I was just 49 years old, it was a turning point in my life – that's how old my mother was when she died. I filled out the application form, which is full of personal questions, but I never believed they would choose me.

What kind of questions are these?

Various and there are really a lot of them. What's your relationship with your parents? Your favorite place in your city? Your least favorite place in your city? Which food do you associate with childhood? Your favorite song? Favorite album? Which novel have you read more than twice? What's your relationship with money? Are you often afraid? Of what? When were you happiest? When were you saddest? Which character from a book you read as a child would you most like to be? I sent the longest application form they had ever received.

As soon as they chose me, there were even more questions and they asked me to give them contacts of ten people who know me well, and they questioned them in detail about me. They started reading my favorite books and cooking from my favorite recipes, they went to my favorite places and listened to my favorite music...

Who are the people who composed this portrait of you or your biography?

It's fifteen artists from different parts of the world. And then they created a precisely directed experience just for me based on all the things they learned about me. I flew to Switzerland and was then driven to France, stayed in a chateau, they created a special van in which we had a picnic. They made me up as a 75-year-old woman and took me into the future. I had a special experience in the forest when they buried me up to my shins in the ground and I was like a tree... It's hard to describe these things because you have to experience them.

They created everything with such generosity and kindness and yet kept thanking me the whole time, which I found strange until I realized that when we do things for others, we actually experience a particular kind of gratitude. And one more thing – everything was free.

A ritual is always connected with a sense of wonder. This is easiest to explain if I say there's a big difference between pilgrimage and hiking.

Do you think they really highlighted and recreated the right moments, just right for you?

Very much so. Even things they didn't even understand. Everything around the experience was also miraculous, my plane on the way to Switzerland flew through a rainbow, that had never happened to me before. They took me on a pilgrimage path or Way of the Cross, which had twelve stations and at the top was a chapel devoted to Santa Maria, and my mother's name was Maria. When I walked this path, he chapel at the top was full of candles and messages giving thanks, and each one said Thank you, Maria, Thank you, Maria… As if I were thanking my mother.

Did you think a lot about life during the event? Is it scary that so many people you don't know at all know you so well?

I was strangely calm about it. They knew me so well that they even knew I liked to take a little siesta n the afternoon, and at one point in the experience, I was taken to a “nap van” that was like a cozy den where I could rest a little. Everything was so intense that I'm only now reflecting on what happened to me in the forest, on the pilgrimage path, in the castle, because there were also many small things that I didn't even notice at the time and are only now coming back to my memory. What transformed me most was the kindness of these people, that they created and did all this just for me.