Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

‘Give me my lute in bed now as I lie,
And lock the doors of mine unlucky bower.’
-- Gascoigne


birds use tools.
a crow will use a stick
or a length of wire
to retrieve food.
or drop stones in a pitcher
til the fox can get a drink.

a crow with a forked tongue,
cut in man’s hand,
can talk.
speaks, that is,
words, sounds, mimicry.
the cry of the mimic.

birds build nests
of all sizes, shapes
& materials.
mud or sticks
leaves & needles
hair & a downy lining.

the bowerbird builds a flat mat of grasses on the ground. vertical pieces are fitted through the mat to the ground. walls are made a piece at a time. the dark blue bowerbird holds his head to the side & grasps the straw in his beak to add to the wall. when he has created something of a hallway, two parallel walls, he applies a roof.

this is the skeleton of his bower. the naked structure. still to come is the decorating. the satin bowerbird collects the color blue. religiously? romantically? insistently. what bright objects he finds he arranges outside the entrances of his bower with an emphasis on what he deems the front door.

he will happily use manmade objects for their lasting bright colors: a blue toothbrush. bottlecaps. bits of glass and plastic. a comb. eyeglasses. blue yarn or string. silk violets. a glass eye.

from nature you could expect: blue flowers. birght blue parrot feathers. dark blue bowerbird feathers. a chance orange or yellow to complement blue. fruit and berries. stones and moss. the display is arranged and pruned efficiently.

the bowerbird paints the inside of his bower with a concoction of mashed up berries and bird spit. he picks up a twig or piece of treebark in his beak and paints the walls of his boudoir.

the bowerbird marshals his objects obsessively. he throws faded or fallen from favor decorations away and replaces them with brighter specimens. he has to guard against marauding competitors who swoop in to steal the flowers of his garden.

when his calls and mimicry attract a potential mate he picks up his most impressive decoration and does a dance.

the bower is kept up some eight months of the year. he never leaves to care for the young of some nest he’s filled. he doesnt build nests or feed mouths fresh worms. his is the duty of mating and making art.

female bowerbirds are mixed greens and greys with light and dark highlights. some percentage of the females shop for a mate. a quarter of them. the other three quarters show a memory for the best mates of the past. the male will take all he can get to enter his berry-painted parlor. he will mate with almost anything makes its way into his bower.

the bowerbird builds his bower in about the same place each year. they live up to twenty years. each year with a new shrine to themselves and their prowess.

it takes four or five years for maturity to turn green youth to dark blue satin feathers. immature males also build bowers and will attempt to mate. bowerbirds flock together for their tropical winters. the only other time the males mix with females or others. so engrossing is the art of their love.

female bowerbirds build nests, incubate eggs and nurse young, usually two or three. all chores all told.

the female bowerbird spots a pile of bright blue objects and lands on the forest floor nearby. she remembers this one from before. he’s yakking up a storm. singing a bevy of songs. his objects are very beautiful among the moss of the forest floor. he holds a glass eye in his beak and dances wildly entreating her come into his parlor. she hops around to examine some of his colorful objects. she moves a bottlecap with her beak. he ululates and hops madly with the blue eye staring cold from his beak. she is lured by the unblinking eye in his beak into the bower where they mate.

Damn! I just love this. The last paragraph is especially amazing.
The whole thing.
A really good read
I got a little tangled up on the paragraph that starts "it takes four or five years for...." but aside from that, this just really hit me good!
Nice one, Mind bum
Thank you for sharing it...
H

students at the university of maryland were presented with the project of making a robotic bowerbird. a remote controlled animatronic lady bird. man has been making mechanical birds for all time. cuckoo clocks to music boxes to whirlybirds. this one, the robot satin lady bowerbird, lacks locomotion but posseses the power to ruffle its feathers, turn its head move her wings in a stationary location. they made six and shipped them to australia for research.

the robotic superstructure is taxidermically covered with the feathers of a real female blue satin bowerbird.

presumably it does not require the male’s song and dance to get the female into the bower. it might be attracted by bright blues and painted walls.

it’s no surprise for the bowerbird to come home to a beautiful bird in his boudoir.

she faces out his front door. so great is his excitement he grabs his trusty glass eye, dances birdly joy and screeches. her feathers ruffle. her head turns and her wings flap. he is unbridled. he flings the glass eye to the ground and ducks to the back door. to gain entrance.

he attempts to mate with this delighting prospect until a researcher comes to retrieve the robot and what’s left of her feathers. the researcher is forced to resort to stamping her feet and yelling to break the bowerbird’s spell and scare it away. for a moment it looks like the bowerbird has his eye on the researcher.

H-

thank you for your most gracious praise.
many thanks.

i pruned the paragraph you mentioned. see if it meets muster. or clarifies.

and looky. an additional episode.

amazing what can happen on the subway.

hey hest & mindbum... we're having a word jam right now... got a few minutes? why don't you come stop by and jam with us? http://scroll.org

hope to see you there! - we're looking for word-minstrels... heh

(hest is right, mb - i agree....this is a really cool write... nicely done! thanks for sharing it!)

thank you doreen.

it's almost science. heh.

Hey Mind Bum, it clarifies nicely.
Mostly I just wanted to say how much I like Episode Two.
The whole thing....really good stuff....
H

The bird of the bowery sings of sadness
a feathered leo gorcey in the bum mornings:
" youse guys, hey fellahs, goombas,
see, it's like this, wise guy,
TAKe DAT YA DOITY WAT!"
Bowery bird flies off
canoli and cheap chianti

In spite of ( and partially because of) the parody by PZ (trembling "neath the nail"./Pope/ above), this is a strong piece of avian probing, mindbum.

You have all the chops necessary to carve out some of those Baudelaire-ian caves of darkness Charlie so ably chiseled.

There is a nice contrast here ( in your poem/prose piece) between your lyrical soarings--which, at times might be called:

" . . .O Better than all treasures/ That in books are found . . ."

--and your matter-of-fact ornithological tone.

These are "Drops so bright to see . . ."


Good stuff.


Zlatko

h-
thanks. i'm glad part two satisfied.

pereZ-
i ride the train each day to the Bowery stop on the JMZ. walk two blocks past any number of this century's boweryboys. and crawl through the iron gates at 222 bowery to work. it's amazing how bulbous and red an old drunk's nose really gets. i've seen things that shame WC's schnoz.

and i'd spell rat rat. not wat.

i've been wondering about what's a bowery bird anyway.

zlatko-
thanks for your appraisal.
i have worked hard and bloodied my chops many times.
intersting, i've never thought of chops in terms of writing.
i mean, yes i have some jew's harp chops. and when i play with the boys they shine. but chops for writing? i like to bake porkchops.

but the bowerbird goes to show what a little research, some imagination and love can do.

i'm not exactly bubbling with satisfaction on this one. it's too new to be happy with. and i wonder should there be more science? is it too much science? does anyone give a shit? and who was gascoigne anyway?

Dear MB:


It seems to me that if a jazz musician can have chops, so can a writer.

After all, we "bop around the melody" too, don't we?

As for your questions:

1. Gascoigne is easy to look up for any attentive reader.

http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/gascoigne.htm


2. Science and art should blend, of course, but don't feel limited to canceling further blending. I don't know about you, but I meddle with my pieces, sometimes for years. I might make a hundred little changes. That can bloody your chops indeed; I agree.



Zlatko

I love this bird. He gets used as an example of all kinds of interesting animal behaviors.

Your essay was well-written and I enjoyed reading it.

It dismays me that bowerbirds seem so terribly intelligent, and yet all they're really doing is following a pre-programmed set of mating behaviors. I guess throwing a mechanical bird into the bower and watching the male bowerbird repeatedly attempt to have at it is conclusive proof that all they are doing is obeying instinct, and not reasoning anything out. You'd think the bird would smell that the mechanical bird is not real, or allow some other clues to lead him to that conclusion, but he doesn't.

Here's another weird bird story for you:


I once had a very large cage filled with about 12-16 zebra finches. One handsome male finch was originally paired with a gray-ticked female. He seemed content with his choice for a while. They did most of the pairing behaviors and he began building a nest for her. Then, I introduced a few more birds into the environment, including a standard-colored female.

I had actually intended for her to mate with another bird. He turned out to be too young, or ignorant of the mating practices. His mating call wasn't complete and tended to trail off on a series of unrelated notes.

The first male bird immediately took a serious interest in the standard female, and I started observing some very odd behaviors. He seemed to alternate quite a bit between the two females. If I turned on the lights in the middle of the night to surprise them, he was almost ALWAYS with the standard female instead of his original mate. During the day, he was more "tactful" and even resumed nest-building for female number one.

One day, I sat and watched them all day long. I couldn't tear myself away, because the male bird was building TWO nests -- one for female number one, and one for female number two. He'd carry up a bit of straw for number one, then fly down to the bottom of the cage and carry up a bit of straw for female number two. Then, he'd do another one or two extra straws for female number two, until female number one started calling him. The females have a gentle, babylike cooing noise they use to invite the males to nest.

I was astonished.

Once the nests were completed that evening, he innocently settled down with his first mate, but sure enough, once the lights were out, I heard some rustling around, and when I flicked the switch, he was in with the second female!

Over the next few days, he gradually abandoned his first mate, a little at a time, until eventually he was spending all his time and energy on the second female. They turned out to be my strongest, "alpha" pair in that colony, and were quite fertile, until finally the female died a few years later.

The first female was really despondent. She did not mate with anyone for well over a year, but stayed in the nest built for her by her original mate. Eventually, she did find a mate, and they laid three eggs. Only one hatched, and she gorged that chick until he became quite strong and healthy.

I studied up a bit about the zebra finches and decided that coloring was the determinate factor in the male bird's chocie of a mate. The females and males have a specific pattern around the eyes and beak that mutually attracts them. My gray ticked female lacked certain elements of the pattern, while the new standard female had them all.

I noticed that, even when I had a wide variety of zebra finch color
types sharing the same cage, like tended to mate with like. My two white standard finches took to each other immediately. I searched in vain for a gray-ticked male for the abandoned female, but never found one.

Bird behavior is deceptively anthropomorphic. My male bird's behavior seemed carefully considered and even reasoned out, but was it? I still do not see why he did not simply abandon his first mate immediately and completely, once he found a more suitable partner. What was all that alternating back and forth about?

Mindbum, if you study birds and know anything about this, I would appreciate your feedback.

When doing a parody of your "poem" in a Jimmy Cagney dialect, I'd spell rat, WAT

You have some talent in a type of Emersonian mode, but I'd rather read a poem about say, the construction of the subways in New York.......or a Bridge...o wait you did the Bridge already....A Fairy? now wait I mean Ferry.....Yes where the Staten Island Fairy meets the Mouth of the Rock Hudson...!

u go girl.

mind

this is everyting you could ask for in an article. It has point and resolve. I love the bird conceit.

If you think that is an article, or it has resolve, or that the trite image of "bowerbird" ( colloquial phrased as well) is some form of poetic "conceit," then it is unlikely you have ever read effective, rational prose with understanding or any authentic poetry that makes use of a "conceit."

now wind up yr wit ( or what's left of it) and let's see how it strikes