I wakе up by a haunting sound: intensely familiar yet one I’ve never heard before. Strange. As my mind slowly unfolds everything is rhythm:
ko-o? ko-o?... ko-KOO! ko-o? ko-o?... ko-KOO!
Each phrase begins with two identical, short questions, followed by an even shorter but tense anticipation (a perfect sense of drama – what else is the pause!) and then kaboom: the last ‘ko-KOO!’ falls like an axe. 4 eighth notes, an eighth rest, a single eighth and a quarter note. Or something like that.
Vivo. Tempo di Marcia.
I'm starting to realize it's a bird: a uniform, uncompromising, ultimate bird call. There is no softness to it and the seduction aspect is executed orderly, in formation, minus the dance. It starts out politely: ‘Comment ça va?’, waits for the one ellipsis, and then delivers the only possible answer – sharp and swift, like a matador's coup de grâce.
A turtle dove, I’ll have you know! Streptopelia orientalis.
Compared to our Bulgarian ‘gugutka’, Streptopelia decaocto, the Japanese species comes out as dominant, inevitable, deadly, like a trumpet announcing the start of a battle. No room here for hurt feelings and naval gazing – discipline and duty above all else, this is the way. Action!
The song of the Bulgarian gugutka? Something like,
Goo-goo – GU? -- Goo-goo - GU?
She also poses questions, but there is no answer in plain sight. She asks, circles, and again – question after question. It's like she has lost something or someone, or she has gotten lost herself.
Hard it is, moving in 5/8. Much more twisted and idiosyncratic, danceable and flirtatious, tense, unbridled rhythm. Tons of potential, nature, vino, women, genes, a sea of possible answers. .. BUT THEY NEVER COME!!! To our ‘gugutka’, as to a French philosopher, it is more important to suffer, endure, and master the right question than settle to an answer.
‘If I succeed to invent the right question’, she thinks, ‘and pose it at the stoa, then everyone will love and trust me, and everything will fall into place’. . ..
‘Why You? ‘
‘What now?’
‘Where Are we going?’
‘How Dare They?’
Streptopelia decaocto has a hard time concentrating. Spinning and spinning, squaring the circle. Kindly, insistently, obsessive-compulsive-ly.
Like rocking a baby.
Like the mesmerizing oscillation of ocean waves.
Like a debutante’s waltz.
Like the fall of an autumn leaf.
Like the obsessive swaying of a mentally ill person.
What are you waiting for, my dove? If you keep asking, won't you keep getting answers? Many answers, different answers… no answers?
Are you choice overloaded? Do you suffer from a dependent personality disorder? Of aboulomania?
Is Decaocto sick or is Orientalis mental?
How have the Japanese managed to teach their cuckoo to hear and obey, to be efficient and to pick The One Answer? How have the Bulgarians managed to convince the ‘gugutka’ to sit down to a drink or two for some sweet bullshit chitchat, as there is always time for business?
And what will happen if a Japanese streptopelia meets a Bulgarian one? Will the former ground the latter, will the latter soften the former? Will they try to take over the world? Will they enter into a bar? Will they even recognize each other?
Goo-goo – GU? -- Goo-goo - GU?
@ april 2022, Tokyo, Japan