Magical Birds

Many years ago now. my good friend Alex sent me a mix CD of some of his favorite songs.   That CD worked its way into a very regular rotation of my driving music, and introduced me to many new artists who I have since grown to love.  One of those artists is Wax Mannequin, a Canadian, one-man, “strange-folk” musician wonder.  His music truly defies classification, and his lyrics have inspired many photos of mine already.

It was not surprising then when I found myself in the grip of inspiration listening to his new album, and Broken Friends in particular.  I will note that while the video faithfully produces the song, the accompanying video is remarkably inharmonious with the song, and I find it downright distracting.  But it does allow you to hear the beautiful music and words.

The lyrics are so deep, mysterious, and evocative that images immediately spring to mind whenever I listen to it.  Birds are, of course, nearly always present in these images, and the song has a healing feeling to me… the kind of healing that produces pain before it gets better (like cleaning a wound), but ultimately deep healing nonetheless.  I tried to reproduce a few of these with Katie recently, who completely got what I was trying to portray.  Very observant readers make recognize the white bird as an egret shot from my day at Bolsa Chica; in my opinion the most beautiful bird, hands down.

The lyrics we were paying closest attention to come at the end of the song:

There’s a white-hot bird shooting straight over everything

cutting clear through your body with its heart at your need

there’s a night sky bird settled there in the evening

you can sleep in her body, settle down now, settle down now settle down

And here are the photos with some detail shots!

White Hot Bird

White Hot Bird – detail

White Hot Bird – detail

White Hot Bird – detail

White Hot Bird – detail

Night Sky Bird

Night Sky Bird – detail

Night Sky Bird – detail