Why is bird sexuality any of your business?

I’m not interested in birds. At least, I wasn’t. Not consciously. Last week I had a dream: my feet, clad in dirty, broken Nikes, dangling over the abyss. Not a mysterious, dreamlike abyss, but a cavity in the earth resembling a stone throat with parts covered in dark green moss. It was bright, but the light was sleepy and silent, as if its source were not the Sun, but rather a luminous tension in the air. I sat on the verge of the pit, waiting for the birds. I sensed that if they didn’t show up, something bad might happen.

Then I heard them: the chirping echoed from the dark caves below, rising like a wave. My heart skipped a beat; I anticipated their arrival any second. Instead, a figure too large to be avian materialized at the bottom of the pit. It was a human wearing a green bird costume. He was a biologist, the only survivor of the Dyatlov Pass incident. He claimed that there was nothing mysterious about his comrades' demise; there had been a fire in the tent, and things got horribly messy. Since the incident he had lived in the pit, dedicating his life to waking up birds prone to oversleeping. He explained that this species struggled to awaken on its own, which disrupted their mating cycle and had nearly driven them to extinction.

"When will they come out?" I asked, as the chirping grew louder. “Soon. I'll hurry them up,” replied the survivor of the Dyatlov Pass expedition, and he withdrew to the black hole where the birds were oversleeping.

Despite its oneiric appeal, the stone vortex from my dream actually exists in physical reality. I visited it in February this year with my friend Moss Garcia. My feet, clad in dirty, broken Nikes, dangled over a 478-meter-deep pit as we waited for the birds. We went there to see birds called "huahuas"—with its silent "h's," the name sounded like something a bird might call itself. 

In the evening, flocks of huahuas returned to the pit. They dived into the abyss with an eerie, choreographic lightness, as though they were being sucked into the cave by the mountain's inhale. It made us fantasize about what we would witness in the morning: how the birds would be spit out from the earth's maw with the same aerodynamic grace and scattered across the predawn sky as the last stars faded from view. The next morning, we woke up at 5 a.m. and returned to the pit. But the huahuas had overslept.

We sat on the edge of the abyss with our eyes closed, meditating to the symphony of screeching arising from the depths of a subterranean tunnel half a kilometer below us. The sound bounced off the cave walls and pierced the dense morning air with a haunting reverberation that swelled into a sonic tsunami at the pit's edge. I recorded it. I believe Moss Garcia did too.

A deep, philosophical hole, the cave contains thousand-year-old stale air mixed with molecules of batshit and moist minerals. The chandeliers of stalactites cast phantasmagoric shadows, their sharp limestone icicles shaping a spooky sci-fi scenery. Under the dim light, the contours of the cave's surfaces present a panorama of organs and body parts in a state of constant formation, rendered in a Baconesque smear. The smooth stone warts grow into chimerical toes and penises, then into arms sprouting from the ground; you can even catch sight of gentle movement from the developing fingers and limbs. Through the viscous echo of dripping water, it’s possible to distinguish a gentle breath.

Caves are inherently haunted. Their hauntedness is embedded in their very essence; it was there before the cave, it formed it. Their extreme interiority makes you feel like you are witnessing something that wasn’t supposed to be seen, like being inside someone’s innards or observing a stranger giving birth. 

The same week the Dyatlov Pass incident survivor appeared in my dreams, Moss Garcia hosted his radio show themed 'Outsider Muzak' on WCSB Cleveland. For this program, I made a song titled 'Why Is Bird Sexuality Any Of Your Business?' The name was inspired by an essay from a book I read recently, 'Death by Landscape' by Elvia Wilk. In the text, Wilk mentions a sensationalized story about white ibises whose mating behaviors were altered by high mercury levels in their habitat: "One frequently circulated image shows a pair of male ibises strolling together along a shoreline, looking very gay indeed.” 

While searching for this image on Google, I came across articles with titles like 'Study Says Pollution Makes Birds Gay,' 'Mercurial Love: Mercury Pollution Turns White Ibises ‘Gay’—Or Maybe Just Confused,' 'Bob Gosford’s Bird of the Week: The Gay White Ibises of Florida’s Space Coast,' and 'Will Gay Bird Study Lead to Better Gaydar?', among others. 

Wilk's essay counters alarmists who moralize about birds' sexuality based on human biases, falsely interpreting their gay behavior as proof of a toxic environment. She suggests that while pollution does negatively impact animal hormone systems, white ibises might actually relish their new carefree, childless lifestyles, much like many people do. This makes me reflect on the Dyatlov Pass incident survivor’s behavior, which revealed his speciesist arrogance— the conviction of a human who believes he knows what is best for the birds better than they do.

I listened to the huahua meditation recording: their chaotic tweeting hypnotized me into the abyss of the H-hole, a true music underground. The cavern with its tall catenary arches and sprawling balconies, molded by giant fingers. Otherworldly architecture, abandoned in a different temporal dimension, visible only to time travelers who must observe it from afar to avoid disturbing the delicate fabric of the moment. The sound is growing. There are no straight birds in sight.

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I handpicked tracks from the Moss Garcia’s program “Heartbeat in the Brain” for this playlist, but more than half the songs aired are unavailable on Spotify. You can listen to the radio show every Tuesday from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM Cleveland time.