Stephen Alexander:
Bye Bye Blackbird (2025) [1]
'The blackbird cannot stop his song ...
It takes place in him, even though all his race was yesterday destroyed.' [2]
Like many other birds once common in back gardens across the UK, the blackbird is now rarely seen or heard; populations in England, particularly in urban areas, have been in sharp decline during recent years, with some reports indicating a shocking 40% drop in numbers in London since 2018.
So I was particularly saddened to find the body of a young male blackbird lying dead by the roadside, with a deep wound ripped across his breast (hard to blame such an injury on the Usutu virus).
Is there, you might ask, any point in reflecting upon the bloody remnants of a feathered creature lying exposed in this way; of taking a photograph of what Lawrence describes as the ragged horror of a bird claimed by death and passing into darkness?
I think so: not because I wish to aestheticise the moment or fetishise violence and suffering. But because I think there is a connection between him and me and by memorialising this blackbird in the only way I know how (with words and images), perhaps it allows his song to echo for just a bit longer.
Notes
[1] The artwork features a photo of a dead blackbird by the roadside superimposed on the cover of the sheet music for the song 'Bye Bye Blackbird', published in 1926 by Jerome H. Remick,
written by composer Ray Henderson and lyricist Mort Dixon.
[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'Whistling of Birds', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 23.
