On Birdsong
If my readers wish to understand bird-music, they must assume that birds are not automatic musical boxes, but sound-lovers, who cultivate the pursuit of sound-combinations as an art, as truly as we have cultivated our arts of a similarly aesthetic character. This art becomes to many of them a real object of life, no less real than the pursuit of food or the maintenance of a family.—Walter Garstang, Songs of the Birds (1922)
Poison, in proportion, is medicinal.
Medicine, ill-meted, can be terminal.
Brute noise, deftly repeated, becomes musical.
An exit viewed from elsewhere is an entrance.
An exit viewed from elsewhere is an entrance.
