About five years ago after a particularly grueling practice session of the Dvorak cello concerto, I found myself walking home through the streets of Boston, enviously imagining the beautiful unselfconscious voice of a songbird, a voice untrained by any external concept of beauty, yet glorious and perfect. As a teenager raised in a beautiful rural area, I turned often to nature for solace, and it was easy to recall the little warbles of joyous self expression, and the clear and simple calls from the tree tops at dawn. Comparing my musicianship to that of a songbird, I imagined how strange it would be if a bird were to practice and perfect as I did, if after each call she would analyze and reflect to herself “hmm, that last pitch was a little sharp, maybe more volume on the trill, perhaps I should phrase towards the lower notes.”
Realizing that a songbird is capable of virtuosity and nuance was the pivotal moment that allowed my deepest musical voice to began to emerge out from under the oppression of my dictatorial brain. My visceral and instinctual expressive nature became the teacher of my body and mind, giving a focus and direction to distract and occupy my thoughts so my soul could find some measure of expressive freedom.
Two days ago, camping on the northern Massachusetts coast near Plum Island, I snuggled up in my sleeping bag ready for a peaceful sleep. Moments after closing my eyes, I was engaged by a strange and magnificent sound; a beautiful bird with an incredibly elaborate and ever changing call. From high chirps, low warbles, to screeches and caws, this bird could do it all. I tried to track the different calls to see if there was a repetition or order, and to figure out what species it was, but I could not make sense of it. It seemed that the range was too large for one single bird. Late May being the height of bird migration on Plum Island, it is a time when avid bird watchers gather with their binoculars to spot migrating herons and nesting piping plovers and killdeer, and hundreds of other species. When I began to notice that the voice systemically repeated each call two to three times, then moved on to the next, I became convinced that some bird call specialist was reviewing the calls for the next day, and drilling the calls with the assistance of a recording. Yet why was it directly overhead? I drifted off to sleep, too tired to answer these questions.
I was awakened at five in the morning to an enormous chorus of birds from every direction, each singing their species specific song, and amongst all of them that versatile and especially loud soloist singing two to three repetition of every single song. Was this a bird after all? But what sort of strange bird? My brain searched for an explanation. I began to imagine this was some way of assisting migration and that the state government was piping the calls through some speaker system, probably attached to the large column of lights leading up to each bathroom. After listening for several minutes to the dozens of different bird calls one transforming into the next, I began to pick out a few familiar calls from specific birds such as the robin, crow and seagull. Then I noticed a car alarm, a cell phone ring, a backing up truck and a cat meow thrown in the mix. Despite the early hour, I found myself laughing out loud, amused and awed at what clearly was a very talented animal.
As I lay in the tent smiling and laughing, I had incredible gratitude for his presence and I felt a profound kinship with that little mockingbird nested in the tree above. I also thought I could learn from his calling out with unabashed virtuosity, with a repertoire and vocal prowess developed over years of being located in one of the most bird-rich areas in the country. I saw a connection between his collage of calls and my own daily routine of virtuosic imitation, my current Folkfire CD project being a mosaic of short “bird calls” from cultures around the world. I even felt a resonance with the mockingbirds lack of belonging to any one group of calls, yet belonging in a way to all of them. As the hub in the center of the wheel of chirps and warbles, his voice unified and centered the cacophony of sound. While looking like a great showman, in truth, the mockingbird gives up the comfort of anonymity and group belonging and is at once both totally alone and individuated while at the same time a great unifying, selfless voice.
On that pivotal evening five years ago the memory of a songbird helped me rediscover my authentic voice. This week the mockingbird taught me to understand what it means to have this voice.