Nora the Piano Cat ... Accompanied by Me Thinking About Animal Sentience

All of us are travelling an evolutionary arc, individually and As One. Many of us don't really know what we believe about many aspects of the fragment of the Universe that we live within. An inquiring mind is a normally functioning mind. For writers of fiction it's important to get to know our own inquiring mind. What do we really believe about this and that? I mean really believe.

Contemplation. Reflection. Hope. Dedication. Resolve. Planning. Intent. Creation ... What do we know about the sentience of some animal species? Elephants, whales, dolphins, horses, dogs ... littleCats? Really, not many of us know very much at all. If you are a writer of stories and your stories include animals as characters - important characters, minor characters, background charactors, it doesn't really matter - then you do need to be clear about what you believe about animals and their consciousness, before you write about them. In this way you can be true to you the artist.

... And So To Nora the Piano Cat

I've been thinking about Nora the cat a lot recently. (Full disclosure: I love Nora!) Nora 'plays the piano'. Which opens the question - are some animals artists? I have blogged about animals as artists.

And I particularly love Nora playing in a piece specially commissioned for her by the Klaipeda Chamber Orchestra, conductor and composer Mindaugas Piecaitis.

What if ... It's a Creation through Interaction?

Coming to know another species' sentience is complex and subtle. Legends tell us about the sentience of other species, other beings. So do fables and parables, teaching stories and true-life stories. So many. So, so many. So many stories. So many animals.

Honoring more full disclusure ... I have two cats here and now, and have had the privilege to have been the 'owner' of many cats over the years. With every one of these littleCats that came to share their life with me I saw an emergence of sentience. Not just a growth in relationship ... but a growth in sentience.

What if ... animal sentience in a littleCat, say, is partly created interactively by me and the littleCat together, and is not 'just there'? In which case ... if this is the case ... then ... what happens to me? For, surely, if the littleCat is growing in sentience then ... 'something' will be happening to me also. Right?

Reuben was His Name

By the way ... I once had a littleCat who wanted to play the piano. He was an older cat. Long life lived so not much of 'Time' left to him to live. I watched him tentatively jump up onto my piano stool and reach with a forepaw and touch the keys and make sound. Several times. Each time I saw him do this I felt in that space of reverant resonace within me a sense his 'intent to aspire'. Reuben was his name. 'Death' is not the end of the thread of life that each of us is. Thus 'aspiring' to be 'more' is evolutionary within the arc.

I never encouraged him or mentored him. I think now I should have. Reuben was the littleCat who also shared with me one of his dreams. I 'dreamt' it, but it was his. The shapes were 'spikey'. The colors were 'different'. As was the dance of movements together. Other littleCats, indeed all of them, have taught me the privilege of loving. Not the privilege of being loved ... but the privilege of giving love, of loving. That is a great teaching to be Given.

Whales ... and Crickets ...

Thousands of composers integrate songs of animals, and of Mother Nature Herself, into their compositions. Whale songs are pervasively popular. My favorite is Ocean Odyssey by Adam Goddard. Robbie Robertson, the great American musician and composer of Mowhawk heritage has slowed-down crickets on a track called Twisted Hair on his album Music for the Native Americans. You can listen to that below. His Facebook page explains a little of what was done to integrate the choir of the crickets - "... the crickets were recorded and pitched down/slowed down. Native American opera singer Bonnie Jo Hunt accompanies Robbie and the crickets."

And Back to Writers

Right now I have some characters who are animals come to visit me or find me. And so I have been thinking about animals and their sentience. For, I want the voice that I give them to be true to the story that came to find me.

Namaste! I bow to and honor the light within you!

Asking Are Some Animals Artists?

Can cats tell stories? Well ... lots of animals tell stories when they are in stories. But that is because people authors put words into their speaking mouths. I have not personally had the experience of one of our littleCats telling me a story. Though I once received a dream from one of our littleCats.

Once upon a time ... in 1997 or thenabouts we were peeps to a littleCat called Reuben. I was taking piano lessons and I practised for hours and hours each week at home. One day, in this Once Upon A Time, I watched Reuben jump up onto the piano stool and stare at the keybard and tentatively begin to reach out to it with his paws. And again a few days later. And then he started to tap the keys. Thoughtfully, as if ... "reaching".

I came to feel that he was "aspiring" ... in the sense of ... if there are previous lives (and thus lives to come in this vastness we call "Time") ... that Reuben was aspiring ... "reaching" to be "more" en-souled consciousness. And thus, as part of that yearning journey, reaching towards being an "artist". For art is Creation.

So ... it's a really interesting question to me as an artist. Can they be? Or, are they? What do Bozie the elephant and Suda the elephant and Cholla the horse and Justin the horse and Nora the cat have in common? And what might they have in common with me? And ... with you?

Well ... they are all artists - painters and piano players. They can all be communed with on YouTube. Along with many others.

Let us take a Little Communion with Some of the Fauves Wave II

Let us then commune with Justin the painting horse, Cholla the painting horse, Nora the piano cat, and Suda the painting elephant.

Cholla

Justin

Suda

Nora

The question remains ... are some animals artists? And if they are? Or, if they are not? What does your answer mean to you? And .. how final is your answer to yourself? Hah!

Namaste! I bow to and honor the light within you!