Elephants communicate with each other over long distances using infrasonic communication. At 21Hz, these low frequency calls lie below what we could hear with the human ear. And in this ultra-low rumble they sing, like whales, to each other. I imagine it sounds like the low buzz of a plucked bass string, deep and bulbous. A woman named Katy Payne was the first to discover these songs. I listened to her talk about it on the radio last night as I cooked myself dinner. She described families of African Elephants as if they were her own relatives. And although Katy can't hear her elephants' songs with her human ears, she can feel them. When the elephants are communicating, she said, the air throbs.
As I stood in my Portland kitchen bathing scalloped potatoes in boiling milk, I wanted to wrap myself in that feeling. I've been to Africa once. I can still picture the savannah and imagine a sound so deep and full it fills the enormous air, silently. To think of the world filled with sounds, sights, feelings, and ideas larger than our senses can comprehend is humbling. And it's astonishing.
In the songs, she said, it was clear that elephants had community, culture, and relationships. When we discover animals are talking to each other, she said, we assume the main purpose is mating--birdsong, whalesong, it's all seen as courtship. After long descriptions of the intricacies of constantly evolving elephant songs it seemed like a limited, even laughable, perspective. Katy chuckled with the interviewer. Perhaps it wasn't elephants who were more complex than we thought; maybe humans were simplier. Perhaps the "communication is for mating" theory could apply to our own chatter.
I am single again and living alone. That means more time for radio programs and lots of quiet. With all the talking that goes into courtship and the belabored "communicating" that goes into a relationship and a break-up, the aftermath can feel like expansive nothingness. But I'm thinking these days that standing still in the silence, like Katy did, can be the beginning of a discovery of something else--a low-frequency throb. It's something bigger than I've known before. It's humbling and it's astonishing.
2 comments:
give it a couple of months and what feels like nothingless will turn out to be filled with ideas and classes and crafts and walks in the park. you'll see. being alone, once you break through the barrier of feeling lonely, is totally empowering. take it from me. i'm practically a professional.
You write very well.
Post a Comment