You probably heard about this – Tilikum, the 23-foot long 6-ton orca who swims in a tank at SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida.  He’s among the largest orcas in captivity and it seems that he’s not happy about it.  On Wednesday February 24, Tilikum pulled trainer Dawn Brancheau underwater and didn’t let her up.  In the past twenty years he’s contributed to the deaths of three trainers.  SeaWorld was recently bought by the Blackstone Group from Anheuser-Busch InBev.  Killer whales are big money.  Tilikum will probably never be released – his sperm is too valuable.

Here are a couple of links:  an article about SeaWorld, Tilikum, orcas, money and breeding.  Here’s The Woeful Whale, an article by Gay Bradshaw in Psychology Today about Tilikum and captive animals.  Bradshaw includes this quote from Jacques Cousteau, “There is about as much educational benefit to be gained in studying dolphins in captivity as there would be studying mankind by only observing prisoners held in solitary.”

O.k., a slight shift:  I love Laurie Anderson.  Probably too much.  Jen thinks that her work is dated.  Maybe the music is, but the stories are fantastic.  I love them.  At Boulder, I listened to United States Parts I-IV while I printed in the darkroom.  My first performances had me trying to copy the cadence of her “voice of authority.”  She has a thing about whales and Melville.  Here are her lyrics to “Mach Twenty”:

Ladies and Gentlemen.  What you are observing here are magnified examples, or facsimiles, of human sperm. Generation after generation of these tiny creatures have sacrificed themselves in their persistent, often futile attempt to transport the basic male genetic code. But where’s this information coming from?  They have no eyes.  No ears.  Yet some of them already know that they will be bald.  Some of them know that they will have small crooked teeth.  Over half of them will end up as women.  Four hundred million living creatures, all knowing precisely the same thing.  Carbon copies of each other in a Kamikaze race against the clock.  Now some of you may be surprised to learn that if a sperm were the size of a salmon it would be swimming its seven inch journey at five hundred miles per hour.  If a sperm were the size of a whale, however, it would be traveling at fifteen thousand miles per hour or Mach twenty.

Now imagine, if you will, four hundred million blind and desperate sperm whales departing from the Pacific Coast of North America, swimming at fifteen thousand miles per hour, and arriving in Japanese coastal waters in just under forty five minutes.  How would they be received?  Would they realize that they were carrying information?  A message?  Would there be room for so many millions?  Would they know that they had been sent for a purpose?

This was performed in the late ’70’s, early ’80’s.  In 1999 Anderson did a full evening called Moby Dick. It made me sad because it sucked.  She was repeating herself.  She was making objects with uber-digital-NASA tech that were replicating her RadioShack analog tapehead instruments from thirty years before.  I was thinking, well, maybe artists are only allowed so many ideas in a lifetime?  Maybe she’s just run out.  But then her next show, Happiness,  was amazing and it had a moment that stands as one of my all time favorite art/theater moments.

Here’s another whale story from Anderson’s album, The Ugly One With The Jewels and Other Stories.  It’s called “John Lilly.”  Lilly was the man who claimed he could talk with dolphins.  It seems like a song for Tilikum and Dawn Brancheau.  Here’s an excerpt: