by Erin MacNair | Winner of the 2024 Writing Contest – Nonfiction
noun: murmuring
* a soft, indistinct sound made by a person or group of people speaking quietly or at a distance.
e.g., a song, disturbing the curious imbalances inside you, recognized by some deeper part of your soul, thereby changing the trajectory of your life
My first murmur happened at fourteen.
It appeared suddenly, the heavy presence wafting like dark smoke curling from the ancient stereo speakers, the tuner knob set to our river town’s college indie station. This murmuring filled my bedroom with fluttering guitar, chords slightly off kilter — a melancholic dirge with an undercurrent of hope. The lyrics were breathy, often unintelligible, as they bounced off the walls still clad in pretty-boy posters and fashion magazine ads, soon to be replaced with sullen punks and creased album fold-outs.
“Feeling Gravity’s Pull” ran four minutes and fifty seconds long, enough to fill my insides with the song’s irregular edginess. I lay on my bed, one arm hanging off the duvet, one hand on my heart, its beat also a little off. A sKip-skiP followed by a breathless elation. I’d found a sonic manifestation of my crushing depression, an audible echo of my anxiety. I could now listen to it. If I could understand my unhappiness, maybe I could master it. I sat up and hastily scribbled the band’s name on my homework folder.
I met a friend at the local record shop the next day, in search of discord. I flipped through all the R’s until I found R.E.M. There was just one album tucked between the plastic dividers: Murmur.
noun: murmur
* the quiet or subdued expression of a particular feeling by a group of people.
e.g., the clinking backdrop of noises in a cafe as you speak to your father about his mental illness, and yours: coffee cups and spoons clattering on Formica, the swift inhale of a cigarette, the dull hiss of ash as it’s extinguished in a scalloped tin dish
* a low continuous sound, often accompanied by movement of the lips without the production of articulate speech.
e.g., when excited, he silently re-forms words as if to hold them close a bit longer
“It’s a gift,” he said. “You feel things more strongly than others.”
“Gift or a curse? You wouldn’t trade all the heartache?” I asked, defiant, all-knowing despite barely skidding into my twenties. Why would he call this a gift? This inner voice, filling you with all the world’s beauty while simultaneously telling you to throw yourself off any bridge you ever walked over? To mitigate this whispering, constantly pushing you to choose?
“No. I wouldn’t trade it,” he said. “We know things. We see things other people can’t. Feel what they’ll never feel.”
Was he manic now? He’d recently had a revelation after participating in Native American sweat lodge ceremony — as an outsider. He’d said they’d recognized him; seen his inner shaman. I had no way of knowing if it was true, but it was his truth.
His lips moved silently, repeating we know things before he took a sip of black coffee.
“Listen. Doctors try to put you in a box, tick you off their list. We don’t fit in boxes.”
I nodded. My box was labelled clinical depression, his, bipolar disorder. But neither of us had ever been keen on containment. I’d actively avoided it: I joined a band, did some drugs, looked for ways out, graduating early from high school through sheer determination to leave town. I thought if I left, my underlying discontent might too, like a shadow I could step out from underneath.
His non-conformity played out in other ways. He did things like take a clandestine piss on the Capital lawn (thereby pissing on the government) or, during a manic phase, driving as fast as his boxy van allowed on backwoods single-lane highways. The practicalities of our rebelliousness differed, the dangers, too.
“You ever heard of String Theory?” He lit another menthol, thick fingers struggling with the small-wheeled flint of the Bic lighter. I had: the scientific idea that we are not composed of particles, but strings, infinite rubber bands twanging throughout the universe, the vibrations creating what we see, hear, and feel. We’d both researched the idea; not the first time we’d independently tripped across some notion that felt familiar, important. He smiled; his handsome, tanned face lit with optimism. We discussed the merits of this scientific outlier; anything was possible. He circled back before ending our conversation, and told me his tale of “awakening,” somehow assured I’d come around to his way of thinking.
“A gift,” he repeated. Then again silently, to himself.
verb: murmur; 3rd person present: murmurs; past tense: murmured
* say something in a low, indistinct voice:
e.g., she hears the murmured “it’s going to be ok” as she lies on a bathroom floor in Granada, Spain, curled into a question mark next to a toilet, tracing the umber and indigo ceramic floor tiles with one of her fingers.
* make a low continuous sound:
e.g., she murmurs an undulous coo, the reverberating grief-echo recognizable to anyone who’s ever lost someone to suicide.
The details are not important; he is forever in the past tense. His inner voice had become confused — too loud to ignore — he’d thought angels were present. I hope this was true, that they showed him a doorway filled with light.
I’m told I won’t make it home in time for the funeral, not even if I leave immediately. The ceremony is in Wisconsin and 9,949 km away. A rushed affair — my stepmother had not attempted to track me down, but my mother finally had. I’ve just turned thirty-two; I am marked by deep wound, a notch on my heart from where all things will now be measured.
The next day, I travel with my husband and in-laws to The Laguna de Fuente de Piedra, a vast and salty lake in Andalucía, to birdwatch. We emerge from the road-dusted rental truck to find a multitude of whirling birds. Plovers, snipes, swallows, ducks, House Martins, and more birds I don’t know the names of. The most stunning creatures are the flamingos. I’m flayed by their beauty, an overwhelming sea of hot pink. Their backward-bending legs carefully plod through the mud, the flock dotted with black beaks pecking or preening, stalk-like necks a mass of filigree. They move as one giant, fluorescent animal, swaying as they search for food, some breaking free to fly from one end of the lake to another, joining another group. The chicks cry out for their elders, ensuring they aren’t too far away.
My father would have loved this, my love of nature gleaned from his careful consideration of it; his ability to point out the smallest of birds, hidden nests in the bullrush. The din of squawking is relentless. I close my eyes and welcome the screaming, the tittering, the honks — I want to be consumed by noise. When I shield my eyes to look again, swallows gather in the distance like a skittish cloud, folding in on themselves, bodies swaying with uncanny precision, their wings beating out a fluttering hush: a murmuration.
noun: murmur
* in medicine, a rasping or whooshing sound heard in the heartbeat
e.g., the doctor told her it was garden-variety arrhythmia, electrical impulses crossed somewhere, a common abnormality.
I’d likely had it forever. The unease I’d felt in my forties was from my heart, but also my head: anxiety from reoccurring thoughts, sleeplessness, woulda-shoulda-coulda ideation often followed by ruminative drinking. A common abnormality.
I employed a therapist and found a medication that curtailed the destructive inner voice. There were children to consider now. My dad would’ve made a fantastic grandfather, the kind that ferried kids on his back, lumbering along on all fours as he pretended to be a bear. He would have told my kids silly, made-up stories.
Not the story he’d circled back to in the cafe, about when his mania, his “gift,” had presented itself. My brain handles these memories by letting them overexpose — mere shadows, imprints, the edges purposefully blurred. He would have chosen a table at the rear, the corner apex, his back to the wall with a wide-angled view “just in case.” I never knew who he thought might sneak up on him.
I lit my umpteenth cigarette as he began his story, silently repeating as he went.
It was the college championship playoffs. A big game for us, and I was on form, better than usual. There was this moment of quiet in my head, like a pause in a movie? And then…total focus. People describe it as their third eye. All the practices, all the shots I’d taken from the porch step to the rusty hoop nailed to the garage — everything came together. I anticipated the other team’s every move. I stole balls, faked them out, threaded the needle. I hit every three-pointer I took, four from the center line. There was — no one else. I heard the ball hitting the court, the squeaking of my Converse. I didn’t even hear my teammates call for it — the ball was already on its way. It was like having a superpower.
He spoke as if he’d had incredible luck, like someone in love. But the “gift” had ripped our family apart, cost him his first marriage, many of his relationships, lost him jobs. The three-day stints of no sleep often ended with involuntary hospitalization or police reports. Or both.
But I finally understood why he sometimes didn’t want to take his meds. Who wouldn’t want to be invincible? To be that in tune with their surroundings?
I’d envisioned him playing as he spoke — too good to miss, his lanky body moving with grace on the polished wood floor. I paused the reel to zoom in on the moment everything changes, my twenty-two-year-old dad held in a crouch right before liftoff, arms up, basketball yet to be released, knowing there isn’t any audible pop as a switch flips inside his body.
adj: murmurous
* characterized by or giving forth murmurs; disposed to indulge in murmurs.
e.g., she collected outward expressions of her heart: paintings, a carving, totems with which to stay the murmurous voice.
One way to quiet the anxious voice is to steer it. Depressives try all sorts of things: religion, drinking, drugs, crystals, whatever. Things work until they don’t. There is no straightforward path, no hero’s arc. For my fiftieth birthday, I try something new: an astrology reading.
My 12th house is ablaze: endings, healing, closure, spirituality: that which is hidden.
I can feel the heat rising on my neck. I know there is more hidden than healing. My astrologist friend Valerie pulls no punches.
“You’re supposed to deal with some of this,” she says. “See here?” Our shared screen connects her sunny California apartment to my rainy-day kitchen in North Vancouver. “This loop.” There are threads within the wheel, stretching from one area to another. She points to an arced scribble — like a spirograph stuck on one gear — strings made visible. They are darkened with overlap, thickened with urgency.
“Behind this doorway is your father,” she says. “And here’s you.”
“I shut that door a long time ago,” I say quietly, stomach flipping.
“I can see that,” she says, careful with my hurt. “But it’s time to do the work.”
After our call, I curl into a chair in my living room, a little scared, knowing it’s time to peel off the scar tissue I’d so carefully constructed around my pain. I reflect on my favourite photographs: birds caught in motion, flapping wings and bodies like spiral blurs or undulating waves, hauntingly beautiful moments frozen in time. I first saw them in National Geographic; like that long-ago song, I felt the pull of some universal vibration, recognized myself in the dark oscillations. I contacted the artist, Xavi Bau, to purchase a few of his stunning pictures. He has photographed bird murmuration for years. By chance, he is from Spain.