Song Redemption

A koholā — what the Hawaiians call the humpback — dropping to six hundred feet and opening the jaw. The note that comes out travels at the speed of water, fifteen hundred meters per second, carrying unattenuated through ocean basins to ears two thousand miles away before the singer needs to surface. Every male in the hemisphere sings a version of the same song. Every season the song changes. No one calls a meeting. The new phrase appears in one ocean, spreads west to east through the population within months, until the hemisphere has learned it and is already beginning to alter it again.

The koholā composes a new global song every year. It has been doing this since before we had language to describe it.

What needs to be said? The koholā asks with its whole body, then answers with sound that outlasts the breath.

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