The singer by my childhood window
Growing up in a small town in New Zealand, there was one sweet singing friend I could always rely on. He was a honey-eating sweet-singing loner, and he was perched regularly outside my window overlooking a lush green valley cradling a small river that sometimes swelled when the snows on the volcano melted.
His song entered into my cells and remained there like none other of his kind. It might have been the regularity or perhaps the pure beauty of his voice. Perhaps because he used to sing in the early hours of the morning and because our ears are always open for impressions and suggestions, he was able to make such a lasting impression. As I was fast asleep he was busily inscribing his DNA through song on the empty pages of my child psyche, forming the accompaniment to the early morning hours of deep dreaming. When I now listen to a recording of this bird I am at once transported to New Zealand and filled with a deep longing to be close to the song again. Years later, when I suddenly recall these childhood dreams of flying and imaginary kingdoms, they are always with the backdrop of his song.
I knew that what I heard in my waking hours was only a fraction of the sounds he actually produced. Sometimes I could see his tiny throat and body convulsing with song but my ears could pick up nothing at all. I wonder how many octaves of song and vibration bypassed my conscious ear completely. I wonder what secrets were contained within and if my sleeping mind picked up on some of them.
For most of the time he was a solitary singer. A few years later the only competition he had for the sonic mastery over the valley was my honking saxophone. How his song triumphed over my slow ascending scales stumbling up over a measly 2 octaves. How little he seemed to mind. Sometimes we even made eye contact and sometimes the shine off my glistening Japanese horn caught his iridescent plumes and set him on fire. I remember playing "Careless Whisper" and watching him light up.
The colours of this bird are almost as mysterious as it's song. From a distance it seems black but closer up and under light, all kinds of fantastic green and blue tints are revealed. It is a perfect companion to the New Zealand forest with all it's rich hues. Captain Cook, apart from bringing generous gifts of syphilis and possums to our islands, remarked on how tasty this bird was; they would listen to it, admire it, then eat it. I wonder how it then appeared in their dreams, singing all the way through their intestines perhaps, and if the sailors ever drowned in the same honey that his kind fed on.
I have heard beautiful birds the world over; virtuoso singers and gentle ushers of lullabies from Samarkand to Sydney. In the Black Forest of Germany the nightingales come close in their skill to my old friend but none of these birds could ever move me like the one of my childhood.
The bird I am now paying homage to was given many names. Apart from the Parson Bird and the Koko, many others were invented by man, something that again made me wonder how important the naming really is. Our current name for this winged fellow is the Tui , a beautiful name, but still only a name. I feel the word in my mouth - the tip of the tongue that begins the word and the smile shape of the lips that ends it. This may be seem a like linguistic reverie but imaging this creature as a Tui doesn't lead us any closer to it's true nature, it is merely a common agreement amongst men for sake of categorisation. What it is in fact, this tiny bundle of feather, song, and digested honey, probably has nothing at all to do with the word which describes it. I wonder what it calls itself? Could such a beautiful singer not have a name for itself? We place ourselves at the pinnacle of life on earth, and yet his song seems vastly more complex than those we can produce. Or is it?
Maoris were said to have trained the Tuis to speak. Perhaps he was teaching me something over the years too, something I will never know whether I grasped it or not. One thing is for sure, when he did sing, he really sung his little heart out. Already in that lies a lesson for those of us who choose to use and transform sound through music.
For souls who like to keep to themselves, the Tui is a bird to admire. He led a very solitary life and I can't remember ever bearing witness to his girlfriend or date in the bushes outside my window. There were other things that connected us: his love of honey (given, mine was taken on white bread and with cheese) and his staying up on the full moons.
Is what he sings music? I have a funny CD made by Australians who analyse the song of the incredible Lyre bird and break it down into musical fragments. I think this is a bit like doing Sudoku - a nice little exercise but it doesn't achieve much and the numbers certainly don't need us to play with them. The Tui's song for me is something other than music. Our ears like to pick out musical elements of his song as they tend to connect us and make us feel we might understand something, but when it comes to the intention we still could be galaxies apart.
For some strange reason the note I most liked to play with him was a mid register f sharp on the alto. It seemed to fit best, don't ask me why. Maybe that was the tone of the valley.
Growing up next to his song I never tried to copy it or write it down. I simply listened to it in the same way I listened to waves or wind. The longer I have been away from my home island, the more this song is framed with nostalgia perhaps; but it is a beautiful thought, no matter where I am in the world- whether in another seedy jazz hotel or endless airport security line- to imagine one of his children singing his heart out in a flax bush somewhere in the valley above the river's whisper.
2010