Birds Sing

Why Birds Sing

As I write, birds are full with song. They sing as the early morning air not only enters their fragile frames, but as it leaves.

Birds sing with alternating lungs, some in harmony with themselves.

Their songs declare forcefully, beautifully: I am alive, I am here, hear me.

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I Sing To Release My Inner Realm Of Silence

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Birds are important to me. When I was six years old I was often taken to visit my father who lived alone in a thin-skinned long pale-yellow static caravan. During the winter and spring a growing motley family of small birds he bought from the one pet shop in town would fly freely around inside. Canaries, budgerigars, finches... The place was full with chatter and song. During the summer my father waited for the perfect spell of warm dry weather, and when the time felt right, released them all to fly free.

A year later when I was seven I was given a young variegated canary to take back to my home where I lived with my aunts. The bird who I cared for sang each day at the top of his voice for seventeen years by the side of the piano, eventually outliving my father. The bird heard every note I played, far more than any human would. My learning, my simple tunes from childhood, through my teens, to adulthood. The bird heard every secret of my heart, my sadness and joy, my journeys of hope, my odysseys of love.

My father and the bird, my friend in song and music, taught me the importance of living outside a cage. I am fortunate to enjoy a garden lined with hedges, shrubs and trees. Birds come and go freely to eat the nuts and seeds I leave each day.

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Art is significant for each of us in different ways, depending on our personal history, our temperament, our thoughtfulness, and our experience of beauty. As I gaze at 'Birds Sing' I ponder on how such fragile, small creatures express themselves so powerfully, and how their instinct to declare outweighs their need to cover and protect themselves with a blanket of silence.

The two birds face outward in a rich world of shape, texture, and colour. During a period when the pandemic of 2020 cast its long shadow upon the human landscape, 'Birds Sing' reminds me of the world of nature, the importance of each voice, the joy of freedom, and that together, with song, we can better face the challenges ahead.

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An extract from the full size image follows below.