I first thought to invite Francisca Benitez on a sound-oriented boat journey because her amazing multidisciplinary artwork so often engages sound,
or its absence. (performance of Pier 54: Soliloquy in Signs, 2014, Photo by Liz Ligon)
A few weeks earlier I had seen her perform with her frequent collaborators, the Stop Shopping Choir,
and our idea was to go to U Thant Island,
a tiny scrap of land in the shadow of the United Nations building, named for the former Secretary General.
I have been close to the island before, but for this mission, we would actually need to get Fran on land, not easy with the crashing waves and my delicate boat.
She had a little gift for the island, a tiny Chilean pepper tree, a Huingan from her home country.
Perhaps it would do well out here among the cormorants or at least among their guano.
Also, I was thinking of another idea, to record the sound of the cormorants.
When I looked it up earlier, I was amazed. Did they really sound like that? Perhaps I had never been close enough to hear.
When we approached the island, we found out why. Although the seagulls stayed to yell and yell about our arrival,
the cormorants took flight and hung out a few hundred feet away.
Fran noticed something similar about the Huingan tree and the cormorant when she looked them up online the night before. Both are classified by the International Union for Conservation as ‘Species of Least Concern’ because they do not appear to be facing any imminent environmental threat.
Perhaps U Thant will do as well for both of them.
We paddled back to Greenpoint as the day advanced
and had breakfast at Fran’s favorite spot.
Here is what a cormorant sounds like if you can get up close:
But here is what things sounded like to us that day:
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