In early May 2018 for a couple weeks, while I lived in LA’s Laurel Canyon, a mockingbird set up shop atop a utility pole just across Gould Ave from our cottage. He spent his time flitting and flipping on his perch, calling out across the hills for a mate. His ritual became mine as his plaintive entreaty, an amalgam of a few other Canyon bird calls, echoed through the Canyon. My little friend single-winged-ly changed my perception of mockingbirds.
One glorious day, he attracted a partner. The calls ended, another phase of his life began, and the natural creation cycle renewed. I wrote this track later that year, in my then-Brooklyn home, reflecting on Southern California as New York emptied of birds for the winter.
Up until my Canyon adventure, I had only heard mockingbird calls in Brooklyn, where they mimic car alarms, and ambulance, police, and fire sirens, among a host of other human-generated alert tones. The mockingbirds there were trapped in an acoustic cage of our making; their calls echoes of pure NYC distress. I felt pity and empathy for the Brooklyn mockingbird, simultaneous to a tinge of sorrow for a City that can’t escape its own din.
The birds who take their acoustic cues from their immediate NYC environment don’t know that their calls aren’t avian or aren’t reflecting romantic aspects of city life. They only know a sense of incompleteness and prehistoric mission. Knowing how sensitive they are to our actions, it becomes that much more incumbent upon us to be stewards of beauty. If that responsibility is humanity’s post-historic mission, then the jury’s out as whether we are truly succeeding in building cities with a sense of reverence for the natural.
Laurel Canyon, despite its crush of human density, somehow still provided birds their own acoustic space. This literal harmony with nature is the core value of the California dream. I wish I could have afforded to stay, because that place meant everything, and turned my view of urban humanity around.
“canyon songbird #7” celebrates my friend’s struggle, self-determination, and ultimate triumph, and this video celebrates all the excellent birds in my life, highlighting recent encounters in my new Florida home.
Most of the invective thrown at Florida is unwarranted, because the state shares California’s elevation of nature and reverence for preserving natural space. Yes, there is tension between development and preservation as almost anywhere that’s great to live. The majority of land here in Southern Florida, however, is disallowed any human development. As a result, you will chance on thriving wildlife in even the most pedestrian places.
Fwiw, my mockingbird mate makes an appearance here on the “electric line” lyric. The rest of the birds gracing the video were filmed in Florida, from Miami Beach to Lake Worth:
Roseate Spoonbill
Laughing Gull
Cormorant
Mockingbird (Laurel Canyon, CA)
Nanday Parakeet
Cattle Egret
Little Blue Heron
Crow
The shots up in the clouds were taken from my “migration flights” from NYC to Palm Beach this year.
Here’s to all the songs that show us the lives we are to lead.
Westy
20241104
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LYRICS 20201009.2022, 20220505.1312
i believe in my dream i believe in my dream in my song, i believe you'll see all the lives we are to lead searching for futures well, that’s just a waste of precious time destiny doesn't ring the bell, doesn't tell you you've arrived songbird on an electric line only knows he's incomplete caught up in his lookout for love all his faith on endless repeat may never know magic of a returned call (but) never turns tragic never sounds small
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