Minnamurra Rainforest In Reciprocity Song
Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus began in 2018 as a way to celebrate, praise, give gratitude, live differently, and feed the Earth. She was created as a way for humans to sing our Earth songs as Earth singing together in a wave of and for Earth. Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus is an invitation to sing with the voices of Earth Community, with a “YES” and more, remembering being part of an animate Universal Chorus. The invitation is to sing at dawn around the world on 1 April yearly creating a wave of song embracing Earth. The invitation on one level, there are many others’ you can see on the website www.earthsongwave.org, is of the deep imagination moving between the worlds of possibility, myth and dream. What and who else might be woken, fed, by our song? Over these years Earthsongwave has travelled to 52 countries that we are aware of. What will her reach and embrace be this year? Please share and spread this song seed. As usual, there will be some beauty contributions to blogs coming your way.
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We are beginning our approach to this fifth Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus later than usual as l currently find myself abducted by beloved death in or near Buddaroo National Park, New South Wales, Australia. I often find myself in Minnimurra (Plenty of Fish) Rainforest and in the mysts of Cambewarra (Mountain of Fire). I am a long way from my ‘native’ Scotland/Alba as many of my forebearers found themselves, like me, drawn across ocean’s sails, or engine wings, and not always by choice.
I am listening to origin choruses sensing into ancient songs voicing from Earth before The Great Forgetting and abductions. I am listening in pockets of wildness who remain despite an onslaught of destruction over a tiny second of Universal time by certain white human’s hands and machines for human extraction and consumption one way or another. The aliveness of tastes and smells, gazing into different colours and textures, listening to sounds in such pockets resonate in and awaken my very core cells. In one instance, as a friend and l walk very slowly, like a walking equivalent of the ‘slow food movement’, l’m listening, feeling, touching whilst a number of people speed past as if they're ticking a ‘done that’ box in a pocket book noting, 'visited Minnamurra Rainforest'.
Minnamurra Rainforest Song
Another time, l’m stopping to listen to the dense myst song dripping from and to lower scented eucalyptus leaves as, unknown to me, birdsong rings out. I feel their songs singing me even as an occasional car drives fast nearby in Cambewarra and wonder why this sopping wet myst filled mountain was named Mountain of Fire by the original people here. As l find my body herself quite literally singing, vibrating, and pounding with aliveness, l wonder if this body feeling is how our ancestors experienced life daily on Earth before we withdrew our senses to the head mind and lived in a kind of false ‘rational’ way. I’m curious if the Mountain of Fire the ancient ones related with was/is the fire that rises from Earth into a remembering body. Sometimes the myst rising on the mountain looks like smoke.
Here, l see none of the original human culture, the Wodi Wodi people who, as far as l can research currently, were in this area living in sacred reciprocity with the land here for eons speaking a variant of the Dharawal language. I wonder where they live now, whether any remain in a pocket anywhere at all. So much is gone, many Earth lives including humans and human cultures destroyed/extinct already, as much expressions of and relations with land and Pacific Ocean. I’m here in this land honouring, and with deep listening grief songs of what happened here and my birth culture’s part in it, of complexities, of convict ships here and to America whilst slave ships passed the other way. I’m listening for longer lingering memories in the deep imagination of the land and ocean and body flesh.
As l do so, l’m also wondering about the origin of each of us here and now, not only on a cultural level, but in a soulcentric way; soul as our unique eco-niche, the particular aspect of Earth we are born to live into the world that is pre/pro-formative healthy culture, though lived in through culture. What of the fire rising from Earth is entering this body now. What and who is wanting to be born through each of us now, whose/what song?
Whilst in Australia, l’m staying in a place originally called by Aboriginal (Ab-original) heritage ‘kiarama’ meaning "place where the sea makes a noise" and “the place where the mountains touch the sea”. It is now known as Kiama with the tourist Kiama ‘blowhole’ which, like Minimmurra Rainforest, is likely ‘ticked off’ visitor’s pocket book lists these days. The ancient name kiarama is invisible, even on Google, is not mentioned now anywhere that l have seen. I’m broken open by the experiences of the land herself and the ways of living of the white people here today with such invisibility, including myself, of such a past. I am broken open with both beauty and horror here. Such a big heartbreak crack to live down and sing into; feel all and be with rather than fix, escape, cut-off, fly, change, control, as in the current flatland dayworld dominator ways; rather ‘stay with’. The current extraction culture, whilst mining deep, is very thin but not in a magical kind of way though perhaps spell caught. It has no depth, or width creating shallow trauma individualised breathing. We need to learn once more to offer time to our original soul notes, to breath more deeply, root down, open to life fire rising.
One theme of this year’s Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus is an invitation to sing between worlds; the worlds between the living and the dead, the extinct, sacrificed, lost, the contorted to fit a particular Earth-destroying norm; to listen and offer grief songs for origins and longings that Earth’s way be born from this transformational time. To sing, one might also say, to those of us who are living a dead life in a flatland culture; offer a song of life. I note that we currently have humans living a dead life and increasing numbers of dead humans who are not sung or honoured. It is time again to sing songs who are in touch with sensitivities of Earth (and therefore our own birth breath); those with an ear and voice to the heart of the world, the holy ground on which humans walk in a bigger conversation with Earth and Earth Community. I believe these sensitive ones, maybe most of us, do not ‘fit’ a particular already skewed way becoming contorted as our miracle Earth is too. Perhaps an Earthsongwave can turn the song around in a healthy life enhancing way.
Budderoo National Park Symphony
Now, where l am in Budderoo National Park, l remember human and more-than-human origins and am sung by their breath through my body. Here another theme is singing between the worlds of wild places and the everyday monotone culture, breathe song back in. Such wild places are crucial for even beginning to remember the songs of the animate, conversational ‘more-than-human’ world and there-by remember our own wild songs in Earth’s dreaming; how to sing them.
One of the songs l remember here in Cambewarra is just that, the song of breath herself; of my being breathed by her breath weaving me into her Earth mantle. My breath is not something l ‘own’ like a property; breath is not my ‘own’ as if it’s ‘mine’ to be mined for another kind of exploitation or, indeed, ‘self-improvement’ project in order to live a ‘happy’ life. Rather, how can l learn once more that breath, and breath creating song, is always in the flow of Earth’s service. I’m reminded of a way of breathing through the deep imagination; breathing in the sky (which we also are, and all the eons of beings who created it being breathed in now), breathing out into rooted trees rising. I wonder how the ancient ones experienced breathing the breath of song. Remembering my ‘Earth origin’ distinct from cultural origin, even today; to listen and feel for who the original note of me is that l am Earthborn to sing; one who is likely way beyond human comprehension at this time and being called forth in these times. Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus is a way for us to remember our origin song and wave in together.
Where in your own being might there be a pocket of memory of your own original note, your eco-niche song? Perhaps lost or found in ships across oceans or taken into other’s hands both coloniser/colonised, slaver and enslaved, patriarchal and more, distorted yet perceived as natural or norm. The beauty and the terror of all, vulnerable and courageous. Furthermore, just to complexify further, what if these too are all Earth’s voices; what if we humans are, as l believe, Earth moving, listening, singing and more. What on Earth is she up to, and what/why now?
My invitation is to be with it all, let these kinds of songs have you/us. Let them take you through breath anew, maybe in ways remembered that have not been felt or heard for eons. Let Earth breathe you, sing you in a way that can only be Earth born into the ways of your unique origin needed today for Earth and human evolution. Let us die to who we believed ourselves to be in an unhealthy Earth-killing culture.
Meantime, l continue opening, feeling into, the mountain singing me as a beloved’s death cracks evermore deeply and l stay with the multi grief songs. I will lose everything l love, as you will too; this could happen in any given moment and not necessarily tomorrow or some future date (as l now realise l thought), but now. Knowing and feeling that closeness, what song is longing to sing you with the gift of breath that has you right now? What/who of you is dying to be who you are in this Earth.
Cambewarra, Eucalyptus, Kookaburra and Myst Notes
Now, l’m here by the mountain, in a "place where the sea makes a noise", “the place where the mountains touch the sea” feeling and listening for origin pocket songs needed to sing and be sung by them; songs as ancient Eucalyptus trees, their scent releasing in the dripping myst entering my skin, nostrils, eyes, to the core of my cells now buzzing. I’m here where spider’s webs are becoming visible hanging magically between sopping wet and wide branches. They remind me of the connecting webs of seen and unseen worlds for feasting in; let’s sing between these worlds too in this year’s Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus. Rich rotting dank wood and decaying leaf songs are composting under my feet. I too find myself being sung by this mountain and see; feel this pocket of breath life fire expressing herself through my body. The Kookaburra’s original laughing song echoes with dripping leaves, and so sings the body of ‘me’.