Somehow six weeks passed in the time it takes a wave to kiss the shore yet 2020 started eons ago, and the Whale Whispering time warp remains in full effect. I started so many blog entries during my stay, but have yet to post any because they’re all incomplete; as much as I tried, I could not get to the words about what I was living, I could only breathe through and be present for the living of it. This time around there was heartbreak that blew my chest wide open like an exploded dam, all for the sake of the flow, shattering the last vestiges of my resistance to complete surrender to my path. I had to go elemental, submerge, truly begin to establish fluency in the language of water, sometimes with words, sometimes without, and be much more focused on that exchange being with the whales, the water itself, the spirits accompanying me than with other humans. I had to listen intently as those Middle Passage journeyers really began to make themselves heard and felt, and be quiet within myself to absorb everything and expand with it, be taken by the current to the healing source inside.

It was obvious to me from early on that whenever I started to post again, it would have to be at a different level of personal exposure than it had been before, and I had trepidation around that. I was concerned about establishing the proper balance between how much to reveal for the sharing to be an effective offering of healing support to those who might read it and need it and maintaining my privacy as a shield for the sanctity of my process from anyone who does not appreciate and honor it. How much to share? What to include, what to hold back? Eventually I came to understand that it was less about getting to specific answers to those questions on a point-by-point basis than it was about settling into a degree of self-trust that would allow the words to wash through me, knowing that what was supposed to be expressed would be expressed and what was not would not. So I did not post at all while I was in Bahia this time—I hardly even journaled, which is so rare for me. But the waters hold the record of my experiences and their impact, and the songs speak for themselves. It’s important to note that I was still with out a camera/film crew for the majority of the outings on this trip due to budget and Covid-related restrictions, so most of the photos and videos I have are snippets that are not of a professional quality, but do provide some visual/audio record of what happened along the way.

Now that I’m back to the States and settling in, feeling just how much of a metamorphosis I’ve been through since I was last in this haven of nostalgia and familiarity that is “home” (quotation marks because Bahia is certainly home for me as well), that trust is present in a way it hadn’t been before I went through this most recent trial-by-water, and I can write with much less fear of sharing too much or too little. And I must write. That’s an integral part of the Whale Whispering assignment, since detangling the writer’s block I’ve struggled with over the years is critical to the sacral chakra work that this whole project represents (more to come on that). I begin with the end, my final meeting with the whales before traveling. Of course it’s not an end at all, just a punctuation point, and this order makes total sense because it’s 2020 and it’s whale time and time is no-thing—they insist that I continually emphasize that in the way I share about my connection with them. There are cycles and rhythms and measurable patterns of occurrence to be sure, but easing into a practice of acknowledging and marking these fluctuations outside the traditional constructs of time is a liberation that will support the growth being required of humankind at this juncture. See, I write myself down into that reminder after starting off about six weeks and 2020. Flow.

My heart was agape (read that both ways) as the schooner trudged out to sea and I assumed what has become my regular post on the prow--elevated, front and center, panorama of blues stretched all around me. I had and have been vacillating between a sensation of having been utterly gutted and being (as a result) free of obstruction from experiencing the Presence of Love that nurtures continuously and never harms. My intent is on sinking, evaporating into the latter to the fullest extent possible because I have had enough of suffering, on behalf of myself and my ancestors. The cresting and dipping of the boat through the waves is a rocking that, without fail, brings me into touch with balance, so I was able to give myself room to feel the pain of regret and loss while simultaneously experiencing the infinitely gracious and irresistibly uplifting generosity of Creation as flying fish flitted silverly over the water on either side. The whales had begun their southern migration well before that day; it was already the end of the season and unusual for the whale watching excursions to still be operating, as whale sightings were becoming rarer and rarer. There was speculation that this could be the last tour of the year, and there was no place else I was going to be but on that boat since before the sun rose and set again I would be on a plane heading from spring to autumn.

Adilson (the captain) and I were side-by-side as has become our habit, he on the lookout for blows with his hawk-eyes as I psychically descended into the water visualizing then tugging on the silver energetic cords connecting my heart to the hearts of the whales, greeting and summoning whoever would come to meet us that day. I emphasized in my messaging to them that I really needed their medicine at that moment, busted up as I was, and that this was our final opportunity to connect in physical form until next season. There was a palpable sense of concern onboard as the possibility that no whales would be sighted loomed large, and as we got further from shore and the heat of the day came from higher in the sky, that vibe only intensified. There were several children present and they all wanted to know when the whales were going to show up (???). I had been singing the songs I usually use to call them, but there was nary a sprinkle from a blowhole on the horizon. The tour guide came over to Adilson to say that we were nearing the end of the second hour and since the clients had been told the tour would last about three hours (I know, Gilligan), it would be necessary to turn back toward shore soon. I had never been out to see the whales and gone so long without a sighting, but I didn’t doubt as the captain made eye contact with me and told Tais we’d give it another half hour before turning around. He and the crew who have led whale watching expeditions for over a decade have repeatedly expressed their confidence in my ability to connect with the whales, and we’ve had multiple chats about the power of affirmative thought on that prow.

When he looked at me, I had a flash of understanding that it was my job to call the whales—that if I didn’t do it right then the season would end with a disappointment for everyone on board, and I would have missed an opportunity to send out through my chest the intensity of emotion that had been churning there for days. I had been singing to them, reaching out to them as I usually did, but suddenly I realized that I hadn’t been singing with the same feeling that I’d communicated to them from my heart. Cha. When I tell y’all that these beings are possessed of supreme wisdom and sensitivity and know and are actively engaged with and supporting what I’m doing, I’m not speculating. They know. I’ve said it before, and I realize I may lose some of the scientists and skeptics following this stream at this or some other point, but I’m here to tell it as I live it, like it is, so that those who don’t know and are open to knowing can hear it from someone who is experiencing it firsthand, day after day after day at sea. And so that those who do know, or believe it but don’t quite know, can have access to yet another space where it’s affirmed: reality is so much more sublime than the modern, Western, patriarchal, white supremacist paradigm would have any of us experience. Thank the ancestors the setting for Whale Whispering is magical, mystical Bahia, so not one single person directly or peripherally connected to this project there bats an eye even halfway when repeatedly presented with the degree of spiritual phenomena seeping from it; it’s just a matter of fact. The captain and the crew know that when I’m on board, the whales are showing up, irregardless of how many days may have gone by without them making an appearance. I’m stating this with such confidence not out of arrogance, but from a place of being utterly humbled by the certainty that has settled over me in the wake of what happened next, which dissolved any tufts of doubt that may have been clinging to the edges of my consciousness.

Adilson and I had both been commenting from the time we embarked that we could feel the presence of the whales (it’s BIG, like they are—if you are tuned in to them you definitely don’t have to see them to know they’re near). They simply were not showing themselves to us, and I swear, once I got clear about why, the message was basically: You are not here to do half a thing. You are not accessing the essence of the healing your ancestors managed to conjure through the journey in slaving vessels across these waters by holding back the truth in your heart. Whew. Whoa. That is exactly what I had been doing, not consciously, but certainly in part because I was on the tour boat and not a private charter that day and didn’t feel inclined to make a show of such raw, intimate feelings in the presence of strangers with camcorders and cell phones at the ready, people with no idea who I am or what I was doing. When the clarity struck and I remembered that this was about me and the ancestors and the whales and anyone who was present to witness it was supposed to be there, I grabbed the rope connecting the bow to the mast, closed my eyes, threw my head back--and sang. I sang out the end to a pattern of sick, broken love, I sang for every soul that had endured the wretchedness and the terror of a “slave ship,” I sang for every supremely intelligent, compassionate, wise, joyful and generous whale that had been slaughtered without honor or regard for their majesty as their oil was used to fuel the fires and build up the structures of colonization and enslavement. And before I finished singing, Adilson was signaling to Rodrigo, who was at the helm, to turn the boat west in the direction of the whales he had spotted. It was like that. When I got down to the real business at hand, they showed up immediately.

And when we reached them, it was exactly the scene I had envisioned when I put out the initial call that day: the whales and the dolphins together, a cetacean send-off for my last day, because the party is always infinitely more lit when the dolphins are on the scene, and they definitely have their own thread in this story that I will get to the telling of as the flux dictates. I sang a few Yoruba chants and a few of the songs I’ve composed for the project thus far, and they all danced in appreciation as usual, then dove, waving tails in appreciation. It was a long dive, and as we waited in anticipation of their resurfacing, the raucous excitement that had taken over the boat lulled to a hush, then I began to sing a different song.

I’ve noticed that the whales are particularly responsive to the spirituals I bring to them. They feel the depth of emotion encoded into those songs; their bodies move differently when it’s a spiritual I’m singing. This day I pulled up my very favorite one as they combed the depths, in part because I connected to their perspective as they dove, and placed myself in the position of hearing my own voice from above the surface of the water, singing with complete focus, full of all the sweetness I could generate to thank them for their presence, for their lessons, for the healing. “Over My Head” is the song that, for me, epitomizes the genius and the resilience of the genre and of the people who created it, insisting on beauty, focusing on it, continuously weaving it through the experience of enslavement, and like most spirituals, its impact lies in both the exquisiteness of the melody and the profoundly resonant simplicity of the lyrics:

Over my head, I hear music in the air

There must be a God somewhere

Over my head, I hear (singing, praying, etc.)…

I sang it with my whole soul, and it seemed like there was no other sound in the universe but my voice and the thwack of the waves, and I was floating as I sang, already positioned several feet above everyone else. And then it was happening—not with the quickness registered in this 6-second video captured by one of those cell-phone-in-hand-folks on the boat (thank you!), but, from my perspective, in the most grace-filled slow motion—this 30-something ton being projected its body from the water in what was so clearly its form of applause for my singing, then swooned and smacked the surface in its descent, setting off waterworks that sent our boat to rattling and everyone to cheering. And my breath caught, even as I compelled myself to keep singing, because I saw with ease that part of its intention was to meet me at eye level, to make the whole effort it takes to leap like that in order to look into my eyes and silently say, Yes, child, that’s what we mean by singing. And then that was it, that was the farewell, and the whales began to move away from the boat. But as we powered up again and started back in the direction of the shore, the dolphins gathered to accompany us, leaping over each other directly under where I sat, basically clamoring to get as close to me as possible, occasionally jumping up almost high enough for me to touch them through the net that hangs down from the bow. Eventually all but one of the dolphins fell back to show some love to the other people on the boat who were in a fit of wonder over their proximity. For me, this wasn’t a new experience. In fact, every time I’ve encountered dolphins while singing, they’ve done the same thing, come to swim under me while I sang. There was one who stayed with me when the rest of the group peeled off, though, bouncing over to the side I was sitting on as the captain marveled next to me. Then it too leapt, turning onto its side while airborne so that it could look up and right into my eyes with one of its own. Oh, the depth of consciousness, of knowing, of complexity in that eye and all it communicated. Adilson mentioned it over and over as we were returning, that and the whale’s breach, so close to the boat, while I was singing. He had seen what I saw in both those looks. The affirmation, the celebration of what I’m doing, because they know. The whales hold the record of Trans-Atlantic slavery in their griot songs, and these beings understand the correlation between the brutalization of both whales and humans on a mass scale and the cultural precedent for global abuse of and disregard for the natural environment that was established during that time when millions of humans were dragged, screaming, across the oceans. And the dolphins, well…I realize as I write this that I’m going to have to do some “backtracking” to give all this the context it deserves. Maybe that will be the next post. They are the ambassadors.

Anyway, this dolphin who positioned itself on my left side, the side of my heart, said so much when it gazed into me. I’m still settling into comfort with sharing this unfiltered for whoever may decide to read it because I know it will have some people writing me off as crazy and delusional, but I am being gifted with these experiences to tell the truth about them, and share the healing that springs from them. One thing I know is that the captain of the schooner, who has been working at sea for 30 years, will corroborate all that I’m saying, because he saw and felt it too. I plan to interview him for the documentary during my next stay in Bahia. He was looking right into the dolphin’s eye too when it basically said to me, We see you, Star. The messages generally don’t come in the form of words; they come as knowing imprinted on my mind, they come as feeling, then I translate that into human language to be able to share them. But there was one word that definitely resounded clearly in the look that dolphin gave me on that day when I had set out truly feeling down on myself about my shortcomings and recent mistakes: Star. This dolphin relative, and the whale who breached before it, handed me a treasure that day, one that I can never lose. In my early adulthood, on my first journey to Bahia, when I received Yemonja, I was given a name in Yoruba, and that name remained when I was crowned as a priest of Yemonja 12 years later: Irawo Omi. It means Star of the Water. I’ve related to it and understood it and appreciated it in so many ways and on so many levels over the years, but it was if a million layers of sky water (clouds) suddenly parted over my head and a beam came down from the stars themselves to illuminate my orí (head, divine consciousness, inner knowing) with the unprecedented lucidity that this was the calling, the destiny I had been named for. It was never as subtle as a metaphor; until I poured my life into this communion with water and the beings of the sea, dedicated myself hook, line and sinker to this journey of returning to understanding myself as an aquatic creature adept at synthesizing and sharing the healing blessings of omi (water), the true meaning of my name remained out of reach to me, always slightly over my head. But no more. I know who I am, I know what I’m doing, I know the job I’m on, and it has only ever been to shine, no matter what story the world tries to feed me about myself. Thank the whales and the dolphins, I will never not know again.

And then, on the way back to shore…the ancestors gave me a new song. I’m working with it, shaping it up, will be recording and posting some version of it shorty. It is a belly-of-the-beast song, a bowels-of-the-ship song, a survival song. The chorus:

As long as we keep on breathing

and sing our way across this sea

as long as we know in our hearts

we have the Power

we will be free

Again, whew. I have so much more to say, to share, more soon, but for now I’m just overflowing with gratitude, so immensely thankful…And open. Aṣe.

Over My Head

A Brief Detour to the Gulf of Mexico…

Jam Session, Part 2