“Tell them we’ve been talking to you through the bones.”

“Tell them we’ve been talking to you through the bones.”

That’s what I heard when I finally sat down to try to shape this into something communicable: this answer from the whales—a starting point. I have been, for the most part, stunned into wordlessness, dumbed by the awe that has crested over me in wave after wave as I’ve surrendered myself to this Whale Whispering  journey, this ancestral journey, this Nature walk, this water way. And despite the promises I made for regular updates--I truly apologize for not honoring them--the way to translate this into written language has eluded me until now, and I have just had to breathe through this extended pause in the word flow, be quiet enough to really hear and understand what I’m hearing. I wasn’t equipped to relay this in any way that made sense before bowing fully to the requirement that I transform in order to be an appropriate vessel for these messages and fit on all levels to see this work through. I’m still very much inside that process (it is ongoing, it is lifelong), and I have in the past few months settled into a level of consistency with my self-care practice that has allowed me to cleanse sufficiently and deepen my meditation to the point where I have a much clearer sense of what this project truly is, what I’m really doing. I began this work with the intention for it to bring healing, and always understood my own healing to be central to it, but I see now that I had only an inkling of how powerfully my interaction with the whales would impact me. 

That inkling began to expand into a different kind of knowing once I found my second whale bone in August. The vertebra I had found on my first Whale Whispering expedition, in October of 2018, was confirmation that I was on the right path, that the connection was real, that the deepest, most ancient magic was at the core of this whole undertaking. When I found the 6-foot rib , early into my second sojourn for the project, I knew that it was the staff I had been envisioning carrying with me each time I went to sea, and, as I wrote in the last report before this one, it assisted me in fine-tuning my telepathic connection with the whales to the point of being able to identify them before actually seeing them from the boat. To the point of understanding that all they wanted from me, on that trip, was the offering of my songs, and after that, my wholehearted and practical commitment to self-healing before encountering them again for the 2020 season. I didn’t have a notion of how the mental link I had made with the whales would continue to work on me after I left Brazil in October, didn’t have a sense of the intensity of the power surge that had only begun to reveal its effects when I was actually on the water in the presence of the whales. It wasn’t until I got back to the States that it started to rock my world. I‘ll come back to that rib bone, as it came back to me, after a while, and note that in September of 2019 another humpback whale vertebra was gifted to me by a friend who had found it on the beach in northern Bahia. Everyone joked that soon I would have a whole skeleton in my possession, but I was still without any that I felt I could safely bring back to the States without fear of confiscation by either Brazilian or US Customs. 

In October, after 2 and a half months of swimming and diving daily and embarking to be with the whales up to three times a week, I returned to New Orleans with several portions of new compositions for the project and a lingering tingle of the majesty of humpback whales that was on full display during my last encounter with them. I immediately got sick with sinus and respiratory issues, which had become the norm in recent years; every time I got back to New Orleans after any significant time away, I got sick. Seriously sick. When it happened after my return in October, I got a very clear message that it was time for me to move. While the idea had been rolling around in my head for a while, it wasn’t anything I had planned on doing so abruptly, but the message was clear: time to be closer to family, and time to get out of what was one of the most enchanting, glorious, fecund and environmentally toxic environments I’ve ever been in. It was as if I’d developed a whole new level of sensitivity to the myriad factors (mold, chemical spills and run-off, oils spills and smoke from the refinery in Chalmette) contributing to health issues I’ve had over the years, and the blessing, the cleansing, the spark of healing that my time with the whales had provided made it impossible to ignore the signs that this was no longer an environment in which I could thrive as a full-time resident. My darling New Orleans. Someplace I love with my whole heart. This project, from its inception, has included the incorporation of the environmental issues in New Orleans and surrounding areas as integral to the central theme, and that continues to be the case. After weeks of being ill, I began the preparations for my move, which happened at the end of December, a few weeks before I set out for this most recent trip to Brazil. The swiftness with which I made the decision to move and carried it out was a surprise to so many in my New Orleans community, and I found myself frequently explaining that I was simply “following the guidance.” In retrospect, I can see that I was being guided out of an environment that would become even more of a health risk for someone like myself who has asthma and numerous allergies, as the Corona virus has run rampant through Louisiana, and New Orleans in particular. Now my heart aches with missing the place I called home for 17 years and the people I love there, and I am full of concern for the ways in which both communities and the environment will be impacted by the fallout from the virus. And…I am thankful to know with absolute certainty that I’m right where I’m supposed to be.

When I set out for Bahia in early January, my focus was on doing shows and staying mostly in Salvador and wherever the music took me, with 2-3 weeks of my 10-week stay dedicated to Whale Whispering. As the whales are currently in Antarctica and won’t return to Brazil until June, I envisioned spending a few weeks in Praia do Forte, where the project and its host organization, Instituto Baleia Jubarte (the Humpback Whale Institute) are based. In that time I’d be working on reviewing and editing footage from the previous trip and listening to recordings of the whales and beginning to identify and pull out some of the patterns I might use in conjunction with the compositions I had begun, with the support of my main partners, Enrico Marcolvaldi, Director of the Institute, Eduardo Melo, also from the Institute, and Dr. Marcos Rossi Santos. After a few weeks of being back-and-forth between Salvador and Praia do Forte for a weekly gig at the Tivoli resort, it became clear to me that I needed to spend as much time as possible in Praia do Forte. Though the whales weren’t there, the people were, and as I began to make deeper connections with local folks who are natives of the region, who have lived with the seasonal presence of the whales and who nurture the cultural/spiritual traditions that keep them profoundly connected to the ocean and rivers, I understood that this time was about being as present with them—and with that place—as I could. Their stories and practices, and the story of Praia do Forte, have everything to do with the ancestral voices I hear echoed in the whalesongs, and in taking the time to begin to know them, I learned so much about myself, and what I’ve been called to do. I met Andiara, who has revived and maintained the tradition of the Presente de Yemanja (offering for Yemonja—and Oshun) that was spearheaded by her father until the time of his passing, just in time to participate in this ritual with the local Candomblé community. I was embraced by Nati, one of the few natives to own a restaurant on the main tourist strip in town, who open-heartedly supported my work by feeding me almost daily, and Dona Rosa, proprietor of a small B & B where I stayed through a horrendous bout with the flu and by whom I was cared for with herbal teas and baths and syrups as if I were here own daughter. These and so many other connections opened my eyes to the undercurrent of life in the village, where everyone is related and some of the stories that are held by the elders reach back to the beginnings of the nation itself; this time I laid down a root that I will surely be cultivating for the rest of my life. 

It must have been tapping into the roots of the village that made me feel like I was finally ready to go to the castle, Castelo Garcia D’avila, a 16th century fort that is significant for its place in the colonial history of Brazil and infamous for the legendary tortures of enslaved Africans that took place there. One of the main tourist sites of Praia do Forte, I had managed to avoid the castle in my almost four years of frequenting the region, wanting to go when only I felt fortified and prepared to face the lingering energies there. When I did, with councilmember Alexandre Rossi as my guide, I poured libations for those who had suffered there, sent up prayers for the spirits and the earth itself that had witnessed such brutality. In the chapel, the only fully intact original building on the grounds, I felt the centuries of prayers that had been uttered, and I sang for the ancestors, those Africans and their descendants, those Tupi people whose lands were invaded and usurped. From the hill where the castle sits there is a perfect view of Tatuapara Bay, where the ships came in, where the humpback whales were slaughtered for their meat and blubber. Where their bones were discarded and left to be swallowed by the tide. Where I continue to find the bones of those beings who heard the laments of the enslaved and kept a record of them in their songs. 

The stretch of Tatuapara Bay that flanks the Tivoli resort is the boneyard, and where I spent most mornings during my time in Praia do Forte. Before I knew the history of that cove, I had already identified it as one the most mellow and less populous beaches in town, and therefore one of my favorites, and after I found out what had happened to whales there, it became sacred ground/water to me. There is an impenetrable peace that hangs over the area, somber without being sad, despite the countless slaughters that took place there, as if the whales had left their bones as medicine for the beings who would come behind them to those waters, leaching the energy of their gentle grace, creativity and power into the very essence of the region. I went for a dose of that medicine every morning, often on the beach at sunrise for meditation and prayer, then singing to the water as I swam through it, humpback-style. The fisher-people know me, and without conversation understand that I’m the mermaid-on-the-job; they’d smile conspiratorially when they passed me as they rowed out on their way beyond the reef, sometimes saluting Yemanja, or calling out, “sereia!” (mermaid). Often I’d be the only person in the huge expanse of water, free-diving anywhere from 10 to 15 feet depending on the tide, rocketing down at a 90-degree angle then gliding parallel to the ocean floor when I reached the bottom, letting my womb pass over the bone-rich sand to soak up the healing vibrations of songs from centuries past. And on Thursday nights I would add my voice to the tincture, projecting with intention to the waters from my weekly open-air show at the resort, keeping the flow circular, trusting and blessing the flow, healing self and others, self and waters with my own song…

Other waters called to me as well during this sojourn, and for the first time in well over a decade I returned to Imbassai, the next village up the coast from Praia do Forte, a more verdant and much sleepier town where rat-sized frogs own the night and the river is the main attraction. There’s no reef cradling the beach there so the waters are rough and don’t allow for the snorkeling, diving and lazing that Praia do Forte’s beaches offer, but the clear, vibrant waters of the Imbassai river form a perfect swimming hole just before the point where they meet the sea. As a daughter of Yemonja and Oshun, places where ocean and river come together have always been especially charged power sources for me. For several days, thanks to a generous courtesy stay at Lagoa da Pedra pousada, I laid myself down in that rushing mixture of sweet and salt and held on to the stones in the middle of the current so that I could rest with my ears submerged and still breathe. More songs, and so much more healing came through those waters, including a clearer understanding of how to shape this work into shareable blessings in a retreat context, and how to work directly with the waters to pass the healing on to others in need of (and ready for) that level of release.

The songs are coming! The songs are coming! Not one of them is complete at this point, and it’s been a challenge and a joy to free myself from the pressure to force the creative process in order to have something to show for the time I’ve been putting in. As my connection with the whales and my relationship with the waters and my understanding of the project deepen, layers are gradually being added to the songs that began as snippets. They deserve and will have their own post(s), soon. I’m so acutely aware of the anticipation many people have a round this project, particularly those who have supported it financially and otherwise, and part of my own healing journey inside of this has been to acknowledge my difficulty in breaking through what I have experienced as writer’s block while also trusting the timing and the pace of everything. One of the most consistent messages from the whales has been to go slowly, and despite the remorse I feel at not having honored the commitment to provide earlier and more frequent updates, I’m so thankful to now be sharing from a place of having taken the time to truly engage my own transformation as inspired—and required—by Whale Whispering.

I turned 50 in Praia do Forte in March, and marking that milestone has also served as a tremendous motivator for committing to the changes my body and life require in order for me to live healthy and well and to be an appropriate channel for this sublime inspiration and co-creation. Reaching the half-century point is a gift, life itself is a gift; any present beyond this most precious blessing is lagniappe, as we say in New Orleans, a little something extra. Every whale bone that’s come to me has felt like a special treasure from the whales, from the sea, from the oriṣa, but this last one blew my mind. The rib I found in a tidepool right at the water’s edge in August turned out to be cracked in two places and broke into three pieces when I pulled it out of the water. I held it intact to take pictures showing the size of the whole bone, but opted to leave the two shorter upper pieces in the water and keep the longer “staff” as I knew it would be a challenge to carry all those heavy bones and then try to reconnect them. Reluctantly, I left them. The staff was left in the care of my fellow whale whisperer Marcos when I left for the States in October. A few weeks before my birthday, in late February, I was walking along the beach and saw something familiar flash in the tide. I honestly got lightheaded when I realized what it was and my mind flooded with the understanding of what kinds of odds had to be at work in order for what was happening to be happening, but there it was: the tip of the rib I had left in the water 6 months earlier. It came back to me, just as I was lamenting the fact that I had a collection of whale bones but none small enough to sneak back into the States with me…This top part of the rib, which is sitting in my lap as I type this, is about 16 inches long, and was easy to wrap inside some clothes and bury in my suitcase to slide past customs. So now I have a whalebone on this side of the water. I keep it under my pillow at night and so often I hear the whales’ voices in my dreaming. The bones have shown me that as important as anything else related to this project is the simple sharing of what I experience as it unfolds; the whales want me to describe the immense magic that is so integral to this journey with them, and I feel so privileged to join them in relaying that it is real and accessible to whoever is open to it, a radiant force that we can call upon anytime. As in now.