Late Stage Stalingism 2

It’s been a spate of clear days with colourful sunsets. The starlings won’t be around for much longer, so there’s an element of making the most of the displays before they stop for the warm seasons. It was so much stiller and warmer this time. I sat on the beach against the wall as the sun went down in its premature misty way in a blaze of neon red.

The gathering around the pier consisted of all sorts. Someone was playing jazz guitar on the promenade. Someone was playing music from a speaker on the beach itself. The man and woman next to me smoked a pungent joint and talked of upholstery. I saw the moment the first long swirl of starlings arrived. It was soon joined by more that were flung in like confetti.

The tide was on its way out so there were no threatening high waves being tossed up. A girl talked to her stylish smoking friend about how her brain felt like it was on overdrive at the moment, processing everything super quickly. As if to demonstrate her agitated mental state, she soon suggested they move on.

There were some dorky French teenagers throwing stones into the sea, trying to hit a pink buoy. I watched their game with some investment. I would’ve liked to join in. That buoy was the perfect distance away from the shore for such a game. I wondered if there was a danger they would hit the buoy and the stone would bounce back at them. Maybe the ultimate goal, the 147, the 9-darter, would be to hit the buoy and then catch it on the rebound.

The collective gait of the teenagers was so endearingly awkward. A game like this is on the edge of maybe feeling too childish. A couple of them only joined in sporadically. One of them caught my attention in particular. He had nascent facial hair, long sideburns, what could only be described as a “mop” of greasy hair. He wore jeans (they all wore jeans) and an oversized leather jacket. He radiated an overwhelming pathos: absolutely barraged by hormones, dealing with this holiday situation, not knowing what anything means anymore, what is cool, what might get him mocked by those he calls his friends. I wonder if any of them registered the starlings. At one point I worried actually that they might make the birds the targets of their stones. But they never got close enough.

I had a walk along the pier, took a few token pictures and videos, fearing I would drop my phone. The wind was mild today though. I noticed that the starlings were more diffuse than the last time when the wind had been fierce. Maybe this means they respond to the wind as they flock together; they’re driven into a more cohesive hive mind by the outside force of the wind. When left to their own devices, they wander off by themselves?

I left the pier before they had gone in to roost. People were still oohing and ahing in different languages at the close range whooshing as I went. I wanted to walk along the beach and see the sunset reflected in the low tide. Amy called me as I walked through one of the busier parts of the seafront. She said it sounded like I was in a club. I realised I had been in my own world with my headphones on, listening to The Magnetic Fields.

I’d been thinking about her, about absences, about loneliness to some extent – because it is often a solitary journey, this sunset starling walk. In the winter of 2020/21 I did this walk a lot when I wasn’t seeing anyone at all for months on end and it was a peaceful practice. I’m not so alone now but it still often has an element of melancholy-adjacency.

I was walking past the old pier. The sand line was just about being revealed by the retreating tide. There was a girl writing in a notebook. It turned out this was my friend Scarlett, so I said goodbye to Amy and sat and talked to her for a bit until the light faded and it started to get chilly.

Late Stage Starlingism

 

Though the light had grown dimmer, there was still plenty of time before sunset. I went down to the sea at a leisurely pace. Often it’s a rush to get the last scrap of day before the sun goes down and the starlings go in to roost. But today I could take it easy. I saw some early, smaller murmurations at the old pier, teardrop shapes in the distance smudging the horizon. Very inconspicuous, from a distance it's a nonchalant natural phenomenon. 

I think about what other people make of the starlings as they go about their sunset experience. For some, it will be a sprinkle of unexpected interest added to the general dusky romance, rather than the main focus it is for me. I think about why the starlings amass around the cold, old pier before moving on to the warm, new one. It’s a quibble in the wider mystery of these nightly congregations. 

I wonder what difference the weather will make to the flavour of the murmurations. It’s windy today, clear but a little hazy. I’ve become attuned to the habits of the sunset here. I know now how rare it is to actually see the moment the sun goes below the horizon. There’s usually a cloudbank that gathers to spoil the party. And today was no different. A layer of misty cloud made a premature horizon for the sun. It seemed to set in midair. And so, before the official setting time, we were left with a sunless sky. 

I toyed with the idea of sitting on the beach and watching the starlings from there but it was too cold and windy. I needed to keep on the move. I saw a cameraman fall over and drop his equipment as he was backing away from the high tossed waves. I was the closest person to him. I couldn’t think of anything useful to say, so I didn’t say anything. Maybe I should've just acknowledged the fall in some way? He quickly rearranged himself and seemed fine. Someone was shouting something from the pier. For a moment I thought they knew me. Or they might have been shouting something unhelpful to the fallen cameraman, like “timber!”. 

I made my way along the pier to get close to the birds and perhaps take advantage of a bit of shelter. A feeling I’ve had more than once when going to see the starlings is that I’m so cold I want to cry. Sometimes this mingles with the emotional hit of seeing thousands of birds twisting and turning as one and I’m not quite sure what it actually is that’s making me cry. At least once it’s been very entangled with how the motion the starlings make is such a profound reference to the waves below them. And when the birds come so close you can hear the whoosh, it sounds like the waves crashing in a way that mirrors the alignment of the movements. 

There’s a very resounding, symphonic impression of everything in motion together. The white noise of the wind and the waves, the white spray of the breakers that reach down as far as the arcade on the pier. There’s a resonance of meaning. There’s the salt of the sea whipped into your eyes to mingle with the tears. It all gets rather interconnected, the different senses bleeding into each other to form an undifferentiated assault of cold, wet nature.