Aquamarine* (for Earth Day 2023)
Among the many, many learnings Bahia has offered me, one of the most distinctive has been the understanding that not only is it possible to fall in love with and carry on a whole relationship with a place, but the same is also true for a color. The shades of aquamarine I have met on my countless sojourns there have left me drenched in reverence for the ways the Bahian waters express themselves through that palette. They are the inspiration for this newest song in the Whale Whispering canon, which (as is obvious from the rehearsal shared in the video above) is still very much a work-in-progress. Such generosity, such abundance, so much sustenance—Odoya! Maferefun Yemonja…Offerings, millions of offerings year after year, infinite prayers sung and flung to the waves on the petals of roses, daisies, baby’s breath…What else could the waters connected to and flowing through this Bay of All Saints be, but utterly sanctified?
I want to keep it these colors. A few posts ago I wrote about the travesty of the oil washing and clotting up on the beaches of Praia do Forte, and that wasn’t the first time it had happened. Part of this work is definitely informed by the trauma I and so many others have experienced as a result of living through numerous oil spills in Louisiana, including the BP Deepwater Horizon debacle, of which today marks the 13th anniversary, and smaller spills on the Mississippi that left me wheezing, achy, and nauseous in my second-floor apartment six blocks from the river. There are so many images of obsidian sludge smothering the wildlife of the Gulf of Mexico imprinted on my mind, and I remember my neighbor May, a young lawyer who represented her Vietnamese community in New Orleans like a boss as the fisherfolk reeled from the impact of the disaster on their livelihood. I recall the sea running black and then, during another oil spill just two years ago, the water itself catching fire. Fire on the water, what a strangeness…And somehow, beauty in it all: that blazing ring of marigold only enhanced the art already emanating from the waves. In Bahia, I love all the colors that the waters of the bay relay; the indigo information in the more profound reaches of the Atlantic move me immensely, as do the teals and turquoises of the spans between the coast and the deep. Still, something about the liquid gem that the ocean becomes close to the shoreline stirs a primal force in me, one that feels integral to the very core of my identity.
Even when I was a young child, my birthstone held a special resonance for me. I always had aquamarine jewelry, and was aware of how it kept me connected to an ocean I rarely saw in person before my adolescent years but inherently understood to be central to my journey in this life. The adults around me had a clue that this Pisces baby needed to rock that vibration form early on, and I’m so thankful that they knew. It’s a stone that’s known among energy workers to support entering, exploring and remembering the Dreamtime, and has been revered for millennia as a protector of seafarers, bringing serenity to its wearers. These days I’ve scaled my jewelry purchases way back, and as much as I appreciate and enjoy working with them energetically, I can’t help but understand the whole industry around crystals as an iteration of the larger obsession with extraction that robs the Earth of the treasures she surely has reasons for holding deep inside. For the past few years I’ve been having visions of a movement to return the majority of the crystals to the earth and encourage trading rather than buying the ones that remain above ground as a way to phase out the mining of them. Something like crystal swap meets—is this already happening?…Anyway, the waters, particularly in Praia do Forte, remind me of my stone, remind me that I’m home.
“It’s Not Easy Being Green.” The first line of this new song was inspired by Kermit The Frog’s greatest hit. That Muppets classic has always felt to me like something the planet might sing, as deforestation rages on. Ray Charles also put his stamp on it, infusing it with soul and adding new dimensions of significance around race, difference, a sense of belonging and the lack thereof that made it even more poignant than Kermit’s wistful, lonely rendition. If it’s not easy for the Earth’s earth to remain green, it’s just as hard for her waters to maintain the hues and qualities that speak to a safe and healthy ecosystem. Once “Aquamarine” was a whole song, I realized that it’s also a nod to my prismatic (LGBTQIA-plus) family, particularly the trans and beyond-binary folks who have been catching so much hell for insisting, by virtue of their very existence, that the sweeping spectrum of gender expression be acknowledged and respected.
It came through in a way that feels like it does justice to the water and the whalesongs with their myriad layers, this tune, despite its brevity, and once the current arrangement is complete and recorded to my satisfaction, it (along with the other songs form the project) will be mixed with humpback melodies before being shared with the world. I wrote about receiving my first verbal message from the whales in one of the first entries on this blog. The phrase they dropped on me at the very beginning of this Whale Whispering odyssey bears repeating here (and everywhere, as far as I’m concerned) since it made its way into these lyrics and I certainly want to give the whales their credit. In answer to my question about what they wanted me to tell humans on their behalf, they lasered “Get off the oil” into my mind, a response that came to me as clear as the water that was eddying around my ankles as I walked along the beach. Here are the lyrics in full:
It’s not easy being aquamarine;
you’re not really blue,
you’re not really green,
you’re always representing for in-between
surface and depths, horizon and sky,
you’re so transparent yet so much more than meets the eye, oh,
Aquamarine, when you’re truly seen,
you’re celebrated for the clarity of Dreaming that you bring…
Speaking of clarity, don’t you love the water this way?
Not black or grey, “Get off the oil,”that’s what the whales say, hey—
Aquamarine, Aquamarine, you’re just exactly what you were meant to be:
crystalline!!
Like basically all of my original music, this is a Love song. I am in love with aquamarine, and funnel my creative capacity into supporting its right to glow in tropical tones and sustain the lives that dwell within its constantly transforming reflectiveness. This piece was composed between the craggy edges and the underwaters of my favorite tide pool in Praia do Forte, known as Redonda (Round). There’s all the poetry and zero mystery in my preferred swimming/diving spot being the one named for its circular shape, a reminder of the Oneness, circle of life. May the circle be unbroken. May aquamarine remain, unapologetically prismatic in its revelation of the nuances, the astounding diversity of possibilities contained within the rainbow, so far beyond the seven colors we can perceive with our eyes. May I, in my breaking open, be awake to the pains of my past and confront them courageously, facing down the remnants of sadistic wickedness reverberating through my womb via my mother’s mother’s mothers’ mothers’ mothers’ wombs, with compassion for us all. Snatching my/our power back from the lies of a society that stays trying to convince us and the world that we don’t deserve to love ourselves. May I, in opening my heart to these Blues, be exponentially expanding my awareness of—and my access to—wholeness.
*Featured in the video are Marcio Pereira (guitar) and Nino Bezerra (bass). Filmed by Gil Camara at his home studio in Salvador, Bahia, Brasil.
**Please take a few minutes to visit https://www.oceana.org and sign all the petitions on their “Take Action” page!