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           For some time now, whenever I spot an Amazon Alexa machine in someone’s house, I sneak over and, when no one is watching, tell it: “Alexa, wake me up with whale music at 6:30 tomorrow morning.”

 

          That’s how it started, anyway, by which I mean my interest in whale music.  Then I started listening to it myself, on my phone.  You can find a lot of it out there on the internet.  I started turning it on as “white noise” when I went to sleep.  It worked at first, but then I found myself listening to it, and that’s not what you want when you’re trying to fall asleep.  But I couldn’t help trying to distinguish the different voices and trying to make some sense of it and trying to figure out what they were thinking and feeling and saying to each other, and so on.

 

          Then, as luck would have it, my wife bought me a CD called “Song of the Whales” from the Nature’s Relaxing Sounds series.  I am grateful for this present, though I suspect she may be starting to have second thoughts about it.

 

          The CD package is somewhat unusual in that it lacks any information about the sounds.  Where was it recorded?  What sort of equipment was used?  What kind of whales made these noises?  What scientist or naturalist produced the recording?  Nothing.  Nada.  No clue.  The one thing it does tell you is that it is “Not Subliminal.”

 

          And that’s the truth, brother.  You can fall asleep to the soft and distant crooning beasts you find on the internet, but this is the hard stuff.  “Song of the Whales” is more like Ozzy Osborne.  There are certain kinds of music that make you automatically turn up the volume, like Wagner or the Rolling Stones,  just because it doesn’t sound right otherwise, and this whale music goes in that category.  I mean, these cetapods have issues.  They’re hungry, or they’re horny, or a tugboat just bumped into them, or something.  And they’re not going to be quiet about it.  You want to crank it up and listen.  You need to.  They want you to listen.

 

          As time has gone on, sitting in my kitchen soaking in the barking and grunting and the bird-like screams, I have started to recognize the voices of individual whales.  There is the low-pitched honk that sometimes rises at the end as if asking a question and other times ends abruptly as if issuing a command.  He’s a boss whale of some kind, or maybe an elder statesman.  Then there’s the elongated grunt that seems to go on forever and somehow embodies all the pain of existence from the beginning of time.  And you give them names, of course---Ozzy, Abraham, Huey, Dumbo, Leopold.

 

          Completely different are the many voices that shriek.  They can sound like birds or cats, and because they’re so high-pitched, it’s natural to think of them as female, a chorus crying out their eternal dismay.  I call them Meghan, or Juliette or Jennifer.

 

          You start to think you understand them.

 

          Ozzy: “Don’t you just love krill?  I love krill!”

          Dumbo: “Totally love krill.  Krill are great!”

 

          Juliette:  “Don’t play with the sharks, Junior.  They bite.”

 

          Leopold: “If I have to eat another squid, I’ll puke.  God, I hate squid. They give me gas!”

 

          Abraham: “Sometimes I wonder if I’m not really a whale, but a man dreaming he is a whale.”

 

          Jennifer: “I like krill, but sometimes I just want a huge biomass of zooplankton.  Do you ever feel that way?”

 

          Huey: ”Meghan, come here.  I want to have whale sex.”

          Meghan: “No.  Not now.  I’m too fat.”

 

          On the TV show “Cheers,” you may remember that Frazier and Diane had a French Day every week (I believe it was Sunday), when they only spoke French to each other.  Sandy and I will be starting Whale Day next Thursday.  I know she’s looking forward to it as much as I am.

 

Copyright2021MichaelKubacki