HOW CAN WE LISTEN ACROSS species, across extinction, across harm? How does echolocation, the practice many marine mammals use to navigate the world through bouncing sounds, change our understandings of "vision" and visionary action? Is social media already a technology of bounce, of throwing something out there and seeing what comes back? This is where we start our trans-species communion, opening a space to uplift the practice of listening even more than the practices of showing and proving and speaking up. Listening is not only about the normative ability to hear, it is a transformative and revolutionary resource that requires quieting down and tuning in.
Once upon a time there was a giant sea mammal, who weighed up to twenty-three tons, swimming in the Bering Sea. In 1741, a German naturalist "discovered" Hydrodamalis gigas swimming large and luxe, at least three times bigger than the contemporary manatee. Within twenty-seven years, the entire species was extinct, killed on thousands of European voyages for fur and sealskin. So she knows what we know. It is dangerous to be discovered.
What do we know about this subungulate mammal, related to elephants and aardvarks? She had blubber and was hunted for it. They say she couldn't sing. The only sound was her breathing, but she could hear for miles and miles and miles. What a loss for listening. How can we honor it, the archive of your breathing? Some say your death was only incidental; you were so conveniently located on the favorite path of sealers and fur traders between Russia and North America. Those twenty-seven years were like a gold rush, fueled by the desires of fashionable Europeans for fur hats and coats. A fashion trend sparked by colonizing North America: a supposedly endless supply of fur. They were on their way to get sealskin and fur. They would kill you and eat you during the journey there. Does that make anyone feel better? Keep anyone warm? That your extinction-the first known extinction of a marine mammal caused by humans-was collateral in the pursuit of other deaths? Oh you rough mermaid, what are you teaching us about breath? Oh massive vegetarian, what do we do now that our listening is that much smaller? I think you are more than evidence of the deadliness of a world in which skin is for sale at a premium.
What can I do to honor you, now that it is too late? I would honor you with the roughness of my skin, the thickness of my boundaries, the warmth of my own fat. I would honor you with my quiet and my breathing, my listening further and further out and in. I would honor you with the slowness of my movement, contemplative and graceful. I would try to be like you even though they say it's out of fashion. I will remember you. Not by the name (written in the possessive) of the one they say "discovered" you after generations of Indigenous relationship. I will say once upon a time there was a huge and quiet swimmer, a plant-based rough-skinned listener, a fat and graceful mammal. And then I will be quiet, so I can hear you breathing. And then I will be breathing and you'll remind me, do not rush. And the time in me will hush. And then we will be listening for real.
And you rise up. And you fall loudly. And you toss and turn. And something about this climate makes you sick,doesn't it? And I am listening too. Because of what you do and its direction. How you fall and the sound. Where you go and how quickly. These tell me something about what is coming in a sky I can't see yet. And I love you for all of your splashing. What you did with your body, how you made it a drum. And I say your play and your thrash are prophetic. And I say your name is a verb, a demand. And I offer my days to your urgent instruction. The weather is changing. Yes. I understand.