I’m sitting in my bed at 11:01pm, beginning to write. Dakar, Senegal. 30 feet or so from the ocean’s edge. The other day, we went on a boat and saw whales off in the distance.
I’m sitting in my bed at 10:56pm in Dakar, crying, heaving, whisper screaming from my throat. I’m playing the recording of an Instagram Live between adrienne maree brown, Alexis Pauline Gumbs and Michaela Harrison. Michaela Harrison, songstress, is known as The Whale Whisperer. In Brasil, off the coast of the Bahia state, she is using spiritual technology and physical technology to record the whales' songs and to sing back to/with them. On the Instagram Live, she plays the recording of a recent encounter with the whales.
The whales are wailing, she says.
The whales are crooning from the depths of the waters. She describes anguish, lament, disappointment and divine compassion. In the sounds, as the whales' voices ripple and echo through this body of water, Michaela sings back–in the sounds, I hear the voices of my ancestors and I start to cry.
It is uncontrollable. My lips, eyes and chest bend and curl. I can feel them. I weep.
Amidst the bubbling rumbles of the ocean, the masses of water shifting and turning as the Earth moves and the moon pulls our molecules. Salty eyes. Salt filled tongues. Somewhere, somehow. I hear a man speaking. His words are indecipherable. I hear children crying. I hear a mother wailing. I hear the voices of lost aunts, mothers, uncles, sisters, fathers, brothers, babies. They are crying, but they are also speaking to each other, and to me, to us. I can hear their whispers twirling out of the deep belly rumbles and cascading calls of the giant sea creatures. Their sacred tones hold the depths of history, the depths of my cells and body, and the depths of the stories of this Earth. As I listen —and cry — I feel like I’m on a different planet, or curling my ear into a separate dimension. I cry with relief, pain, sadness, grief. I cry for our meeting. An audible reunion. An overwhelming sensorial experience.
“I didn’t think we would meet here, like this… but I’m so glad we did. We have.”
I cry into their voices, a sonic hug. We are here. And I cry, because they were always there. Waiting for us, singing for us, swimming to us. Violet unction*. Thank you, Michaela, Alexis, adrienne. Thank you ancestors. Thank you sacred sea creatures. Thank you.
It was clear to me before, but now it is viscerally clear in my body, the whales are our ancestors. We belong to them. They are the keepers, guardians and messengers of (after)life. Their songs carry the voices of our spirits to the surface. I hear their screams. I hear them wail. I hear them whisper and speak and question and cry in the belly of the ship. The whales are our teachers, our guides and angels. Our ancestors are calling us to the sea, to retrace our steps. They are calling humanity to reckon with the violences of the past and present, to envelop our spirits with love and transform lifelessness into connection. They are asking us to heal, to listen, to feel, to love ourselves and them. They are asking us to know who we are and where we come from.
*See Dionne Brand’s poem, “Verso 55".