Monarchs

Cities and Memory - remixing the world

"I often wondered if I was a migrant, until the day I recorded these monarch butterflies in Mexico in March 2015 for an art project. I was surrounded by thousands of monarchs, known for their long annual migration between Mexico and the United States, and at the same time, I was mourning my grandmother, who had passed away in France, back “home”.
"I knew I would miss the ceremony and the family gathering (as many other family events before). I already had missed my grandmother's last year, hadn't sat with her and held her hands because I had left my home country to settle in Latin America in 2001, and never returned, except for very short holidays.
"I was thinking about the choices I had made that had brought me to this place, at this moment, alone with the migrant monarchs flying around me. I was in awe, and at the same time feeling guilt about being the one who had decided to be far."
Recorded by Christine Renaudat.
Part of the Migration Sounds project, the world’s first collection of the sounds of human migration.
For more information and to explore the project, see https://www.citiesandmemory.com/migration
IMAGE: Channel City Camera Club from Santa Barbara, US, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons