SONG: “Birds Are Digging”. (OGG version here.)
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: Based on “How A Black Fossil Digger Became a Superstar in the Very White World of Paleontology”, NPR, 2 Feb 2026, as used in the post “Black South African digger becomes paleontology star”.
ABSTRACT: Seems like I had a productive spurt and then wound up hitting a fallow patch. Hmm.
I had music for this song sometime in the middle of February — two tracks of guitar (done in MIDI, but made as a replica of something I was playing on the couch with a real guitar). I added an organ and a basic drum track and then… the only science story I knew of that was worth making a song about was this paleontologist. I love the stories of people who become renowned experts in a field after entering as, like, dishwashers or floor sweepers (like Hui Neng, the Zen patriarch). And add the South African element of this story… the guy had a serious uphill battle to get respect, I’m sure. Yet he climbed.
There is something about that persistence, also, that made me think of the persistence of dinosaur remains, and the persistence of birds scratching in the dust. I’ve raised chickens, and I’ve been out on the South African veldt and watched little hornbills come out like miniature dinosaurs to scratch in the dust… or just to stand there and watch me watching them.
The image of the digger watching the birds while appreciating the details of shared anatomy between them and dinosaurs, and simply appreciating the persistence of shapes through millions of years, the persistence of persistence.
The thing is, my words for this simply refused to coalesce into a “normal” rhymed-couplet lyric. It wanted to be modern free verse.
And at the same time, I’ve been listening to Thomas Mapfumo and Toumani Diabete lately (someone let me get near the Pandora station during a dinner party, is what happened) who are two African artists who are not afraid of long songs that sort of meander a bit, with different sections that fit together in ways that are not the ways of American pop music.
I mean, they’re both more structured than this, and based on having improvisers who are playing off each other in a live setting, and who spend a lot more time polishing parts.
But this is also me pulling out a lot of music I listened to from an early age and trying to use a few of those techniques. Penny whistles, massed vocals, kalimba (I wish I had the one from my parents’ house to record with here — this was a MIDI loop I made), drum polyrhythms.
And dinosaur anatomy.
“Therapods” are birds and dinosaurs, the kind with two legs with claws.
“Distal phalanges” are the little bones in toes and fingers.
“Orbit” is an eye-socket.
“Fenestrae” literally means “window,” but is an opening between the nose and eye on a dinosaur or bird skull that helps shape the sound of their calls.
I like the poetry of the names of the parts.
Anyway, there is hidden inside this song a four-minute pop song with rhymes and a punchy bridge around a hooky chorus. If I’d had more time and freedom to sing badly, I might have been able to make that happen while keeping the penny whistle and all that. Instead, it is this more dream-like thing.
I still owe a cover for missing the deadline last month. On we go.
LYRICS:
There were birds – before you were here
And after you’re gone – at every dawn
there will be birds[CH] With therapod claws
Birds are digging
On distal phalanges, digging
The dust will polish them clean…Gripping the dust over years and years
I will not forget you
I will not give this up, I will not give this up
I will be digging[CH] With therapod claws
Birds are digging
On distal phalanges, digging
The dust will polish them clean…
[CH Antiphon] (White stones, brown sand, our world, expands)
(White stones, brown sand, our world, understanding)Over time, we understand
Every footstep in the sand
The orbit, the fenestrae
the cavities by nose and eye[BRIDGE] Singing fills the cavities by nose and eye
Singing fills the cavities
Singing fills all the empty spaces
Every space …
birds are digging
Outside the window, the birds are digging[CH] With therapod claws
Birds are digging
On distal phalanges, digging
The dust will polish us clean…
(White stones, brown sand, these bones expand our understanding)
(White stones, brown sand, these bones expand our hearts)
With enough time,
The dust will polish all of us clean…Birds are singing
Phalanges singing(White stones, brown sand, these bones expand our understanding)
(White stones, brown sand, these bones, we understand them)
(These bones, we understand them. We understand them)