songs of some birds
by richibi
“Untitled“ (1939)
_________
having wondered only recently about
bird song, whale song, can these be
considered singing when they are
essentially language, we think, and
not codified, technically constricted,
I see pertinently appear a study
suggesting birds follow a pentatonic
scale, our own musical basis,
harmonics between birds and
humans are apparently identical
this suggests that harmonics in
nature are as fundamental as
mathematics, we have somehow,
humans, diverged from what we
think of as singing, left rhythm
and tonality from our conversation
to produce uninflected prose and
monotony, language at the level
of atonal, arhythmic expression,
for better or for worse, corruption,
or refinement, evolution
I wonder, again, if prose is not
bad poetry, or has poetry evolved
into prose
should we feel shame or ingenuity,
do birds have their own divergent
degrees of poetry, do some, most
maybe, veer also towards the less
exacting prose
do some birds not sing, in other
words, or only sometimes maybe,
when mating, for instance,
something like how we croon
when we’re dating, put on our
very best airs
Richard
Richibi's Weblog 