#21 - animals
You can listen to the playlist on Spotify or scroll to the end.
The writing below is largely copied from words scribbled into a notebook on a flight from Johannesburg to London a few weeks ago, as England and Spain played the Euros final. “Please sit back, relax, enjoy the flight, and have faith that football is coming home,” the pilot announced. It did not.
[July 15, 2024] Last night I found myself calling my parents, one by one, texting close friends, one by one, deeply profound words like “BABY ELEPHANT!”, like an over-excited child who knows excitement, knows it better than the rest of us who’ve grown weary of mundanity and too jaded to notice its gifts, but does not quite know how to express it with linguistic complexity.
I’d been on a safari earlier in the day, at Pilanesberg National Park in South Africa. Many who know me can probably recall me exhibiting a similar though perhaps toned down excitement over the sight of a random animal somewhere sometime. A bodega cat, a stray dog, a flock of birds flying over the park. Or the way my eyes and heart can light up with a baby in the vicinity, smiling across a crowded, otherwise dreadful subway car, or making it impossible for her parent to focus during prayer.
In a way, going on safari was an extended version of those experiences; the constant marvel, thrill, and joy that can be provided by the sheer miracle of life. But it was something else, too. Towards the beginning of the safari, we watched two elephants play fight (or play, or fight) as the humans in the van speculated. I had no idea what they were doing, but I didn’t care, I was completely irrelevant. I felt three tears roll down my unfortunately dried up skin (it took me too long to realize it was going to be winter in South Africa) and I often cry, but it felt like the appropriate response here.
I can’t really recall seeing animals in their natural habitat to this extent, relatively free of human structures and centricity, just going about their life, intruded on only by these annoying foreigners thinking their stroll in the park is content for a Substack newsletter. I’d seen my fair share of Animal Planet and National Geographic as a kid, but something about being there provided perspective, or broadened it, perhaps, or just a humbling for a human.
When an elephant and a baby elephant (!) first strolled by, the ranger had to remind us to temper our excitement and lower our voices, so the elephant doesn’t get protective over its child and attack us. How come they don’t attack all the animals around? someone asked. The bambis and antelopes and zebras and hippos? Oh, they’ll only kill the humans, the ranger responded. Yeah, fair enough, fair enough, fair enough.
As I expressed my quite simple excitement and joy to my family and friends, I struggled to really go beyond one or two-word exclamations, thinking more descriptive expressions would follow once the wave of emotion and exhaustion subsided.
But I was so happy on and after that 3 hour ride that I wanted to pocket that feeling, wrap it up safely in whatever medium could best capture it. And I do think I was excited to see animals I hadn’t seen since I was a kid, if ever, and outside the often miserable confines of a zoo. To see multiple species co-habitating, hear the ranger explain the distinction in the species native to the continent.
But I think a precious part of it cannot be expressed by reflections about what humans have done to the environment, or the spontaneity of not knowing what or where you’ll see next, or the chorus of excitement when one person on the van first spots an animal, then another, then another. A part of it is just that it’s, well, a baby elephant, you know? (The baby elephant is now a metaphor; I’m a fan of all the animals of all ages.) And how beautiful is it that the mere sight, the mere existence, of another living being can cause such shared wonder and enthusiasm?
This joy I fail to describe, obviously, was not uninterrupted. My increased appreciation for the natural landscape only furthered my disgust at what we’ve done to it, what we continue to do. The same stories: profit maximization, theft, displacement, the disregard for life.
And South Africa makes every experience far more complicated, anyway. My two weeks here have truly been a gift of a lifetime, and deeply troubling in ways that will similarly always stay with me. The legacies of settler colonialism and apartheid, in fact the present-day extensions, wherever I go, at a time when the genocidal horrors of settler colonialism must, of course, already be top of mind.
I thought about that too, on the safari, as I did before and after and know I will continue to for a long time. And I’ll write and think and talk more about it, too, I’m sure, as I will the full and wide range of experiences I’ve had in Pretoria and Johannesburg, both positive and negative. But I want to let myself let in and hold tight the moments of joy and beauty that remind us that they’re worth protecting, preserving, and texting all your family and friends about. So I’m writing it here.
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This playlist, the 20th (!), is of course, songs titled after animals (and also birds and instincts?), though mostly not actually about them. It starts with All Dogs Go to Heaven, a track off Dean Blunt’s The Redeemer, an album I just recently recounted to a friend was my soundtrack for going into the radio room alone in undergrad, studying, spinning records, and feeling dramatic. Not quite sure why, but I was obsessed with Imperial Gold. Birds of a Feather is by the boundlessly talented Aaron Marcus-Willers’ band Aquamarine. You should all absolutely listen to the full album, Two Perched.
I added “(and insects)” because I wanted an excuse to include Butterfly Net as well, which was one of my favorite songs off one of my favorite records last year. Caroline Polachek invokes such beautiful imagery here, captivating in its simplicity. There’s another version of it with Weyes Blood, which made me revisit her breathtaking NPR Tiny Desk Concert. In #12 - the outsider, I mentioned that Titanic Rising is one of my all-time favorite albums (and also mentioned Aaron + boygenius, a few parallels there).
That Dean Blunt record I often played in undergrad was from my past professor Pierre’s record collection, temporarily stored in our radio room. Pierre recently worked on a project I am naturally incredibly excited about: Dial Radio, an online radio where anyone can submit their playlists to broadcast. Of course, I’ll be making and sending in a few, and I hope you’ll share the timings with me if you’ll be sending in your own as well. I promise to give them the attention I gave the zebras and giraffes. And if you’re ever looking for music yourself, you know where to tune in.
Okay, a final piece of bonus content: Hamza Namira’s live performance of Asforein (Two Birds) from his Live From Home show during lockdown days, which is very on theme for this newsletter. I recently rewatched the entire show while slowly packing a suitcase, then immediately wanted to start it all over again.
10 songs
(Spotify)
All Dogs Go to Heaven - Dean Blunt
Birds of a Feather - Aquamarine
Lions - Mina Tindle
Zebra - Beach House
Dark Horse - Other Lives
Butterfly Net - Caroline Polachek
Rhinoceros - The Smashing Pumpkins
Dog Rose - Arlo Parks
Sparrow - Big Thief
Me & My Dog - boygenius