Lamento/Interstellar

“Lamento” is the name of this song. In Portuguese it can be understood as the noun form of “lament” or the first-person conjugation, “I lament/I am lamenting;” here both meanings apply. A lament for the condition of the waters that are so disturbed, so desecrated, so dishonored daily, like the chemical plant-pocked Mississippi River and the Earthblood/crude oil-soaked Gulf of Mexico (www.louisianabucketbrigade.org). Like the waves gulping the ongoing nuclear spill at Fukishima, Japan, now in it’s tenth year (Fukushima Meltdowns Turn Ten, Still Getting Worse | Dissident Voice). Like the nightmare-horror story crimes against Nature and humanity that have choked out life in the Niger Delta for generations (Oil companies bring pollution and loss to Nigeria's Niger Delta communities | Earth Journalism Network). This most recent spill off the coast of California. While I understand that there is so much more to whalesong than lament, it is clearly an element of their expression so I let this song moan through as one of the streams of healing release, as always giving the blues their due. Lamenting the torturous journey that so many millions of Africans made over and into these Kalunga depths, hearing their voices gush through my own as I offer myself up again to the tales they want to tell through me, this time wordlessly.  

Within 5 minutes of dropping the hydrophone into the water for the first time on the way from Caravelas to Abrolhos (yes, I finally made it to Abrolhos!), this song started gurgling up. What I am able to write or speak about that moment of hearing so many whales singing at once, filling the ocean with a sound that is the definition of otherworldly, will never contain the strangeness, the astonishment, the sublimeness of that experience. I’m not trying to tease or be mysterious or provocative; there will be audio attached to this post and others as soon as the excerpts have been cleaned up and mixed for quality by the sound technician whose hands they’re in now. Right now I just need to expel, to discharge enough of the glory from the center of my chest to make room for more, always more. I’m writing but I’m not saying what it is, really. I’m sharing in this way because unlike Smokey, I believe a taste of honey is better than none at all.

Breathing, breathing, breathing, listening, listening breathing. To something that can be compared to nothing else. Hearing a few whales sing at once on a recording is already fantastical, altering, but this choir of dozens live and relatively close to the boat I’m in is representing other dimensions of reality. Interstellar. If I had to name the song they’re conjuring I’d call it “Interstellar” (Star Trek IV was right). I hear the lament and I hear alarm, alarm about the lack of krill, the return of the excessive traffic and noise pollution in the seas after the reprieve of the first phase of the pandemic, alarm about the humans, the humans, the humans. I also hear joy, spunk, optimism, jokes, love. And I go back to intense, haunting concern as my overall impression of the moment; it meets my own concern and after a few minutes this song sings itself with my throat. It’s pulsing through the water via the aquatic speaker that I’ve finally been able to purchase for this work (stay tuned for a whole gratitude post) and as soon as it rings out through the depths, the whales respond. Their song shifts in response to my voice, and in a flash of turquoise-filtered light, we are in jazz together. We’re singing and in the distance, on the horizon, whales are breaching left and right. The only other time I’ve been able to do this was two years ago, on borrowed equipment with just a few hours to experience the exchange with whales who were not visible at the time. Now, with great care for the volume and intention and energy I transmit, in moderation and with limits on legal times for interacting observed (but most importantly letting the whales dictate the flow) I can release my voice as medicine into the water repeatedly when they’re  nearby and say definitively which ones I’m “songversating” with.

This video is just a taste of that honey. It’s one side of a story so multifaceted I wouldn’t dare claim to understand all that it contains and I’m thrilled with just the living and the sharing of it—whatever comes beyond that is gift, it’s all gift, treasure. There are actually two whales on the scene, circling and lingering beneath the boat as we exchange riffs and I continue to flesh out the form of this composition. The whale that’s not visible is right next to the speaker that’s suspended about 30 feet down. It’s my third day at sea in the waters between Caravelas and Abrolhos, 5 days after the first notes of this song presented themselves as another gift from the Source. The whales are not singing what I’m singing but what they’re singing is informing where I go with the notes, and sometimes they chime in from the surface with a spout of air that taps me into that ancestral breathing and is the rhythm I hear under the tune. The rhythm is the breath, I hear it so clearly all around my voice, around their voices, under and over the surface of the water. Soon there will be more here in the form of recorded audio. Until then may this drop of magic sweeten your way.