THE MAN WHO SPOKE TO WHALES
They tell of a man who spoke to whales
In love with the silence of a desert land
Stood on the shore in the mist and wind
With the whales’ lament in his mind
Not a human voice for miles around
Only the ocean and the wind
And the silences within his heart
And the hungers in his mind
He was a big man, a big man
So big he’d stop the wind
He played the loneliest bass note
You ever did find
His hair was long and wild
Wild like a storm
And the sound of a whale
Was tattooed on his arm
He was a man of the West Coast
The cold current was in his eye
And all the sounds of wind and whales
And the seabirds drifting cry
He was a man made for haunting
His shadow was salt and wild
But the sound of the bass note
It was undefiled
He was a big man, a big man …
They say the West Coast can make you crazy
It just climbs into your mind
Something in the salt-burned light
Makes contentment hard to find
It makes a man take comfort
In the lonely art of crying
Makes him want to know what lies
The other side of dying
He was a big man, a big man …
They tell of a man who spoke to whales
In love with the silence of a desert land
THE MAN WHO SPOKE TO WHALES
People who enjoy the harsh climate, landscape and character of the West Coast tend to be eccentric. This is a purely fictional character but you might well meet him playing his double bass in some smoky West Coast pub and living a solitary life in a small white-washed cottage – almost anywhere along the coast.
I have an image in my mind of this big man with his wild hair streaming out in the wind, bowing whale calls on his double bass at the shore line, the waves crashing down: literally ‘calling up’ the whales.
[Written for BRYDON BOLTON and the strange and wonderful voices of his double bass.]
- Barbara Fairhead