Bird Calls and Childhood Prayers: Notes on Yearning
Music Monday 4: The Desire to Belong
There’s something hauntingly beautiful about Nick Mulvery’s “Cucurucu” that perfectly captures the emotional landscape of The Path That Takes Us Home. Both works explore the profound human desire to find our place in the world, to understand where we truly belong.
The very title “Cucurucu” — which Mulvery explained is meant to be “a noise a child would make” or perhaps a bird call — speaks to something primal and universal in our search for belonging. Like the French cockerel’s cry or its roots in commedia dell'arte theatre, it transcends language and culture. This wordless yearning finds echoes throughout my novel, where characters must sometimes move beyond words to express their deepest hopes and fears.
In “Cucurucu,” Mulvery paints a scene of childhood memories — a boy beneath a piano, watching his mother’s feet as she plays, feeling that deep “ceaseless longing” to belong. This yearning echoes throughout my novel, where characters navigate a world on the brink of transformation, each seeking their own form of belonging in the face of unprecedented change.
The song’s dreamy, ethereal quality mirrors the novel’s exploration of faith and destiny. When Mulvery sings “all of my manhood is cast down in the flood of remembrance,” it speaks to those moments when we must let go of who we thought we were to become who we’re meant to be — a central theme that runs through the heart of the story.
The recurring “Cucurucu” refrain feels like a prayer or mantra, much like the way my characters hold onto their beliefs and hopes in the face of uncertainty. It’s a sound that means nothing and everything at once, much like faith itself — inexplicable yet profound.
Both works grapple with questions of legacy and memory. In the song, childhood memories serve as anchors to identity and belonging. Similarly, my characters must reconcile their past with an uncertain future, carrying their memories like talismans as they step into the unknown.
The gentle evening dusk that opens and closes “Cucurucu” creates an atmosphere of transition - that liminal space between what was and what will be. It’s in these twilight moments that both the song and novel ask their deepest questions about belonging, purpose, and the eternal human search for home.
As the mother in the song tells her son why “your father's strong,” we see that strength often comes from acknowledging our yearning rather than denying it. This vulnerability-as-strength is something my characters must learn as they face their own moments of truth.
In the end, both “Cucurucu” and The Path That Takes Us Home remind us that belonging isn't always about place — sometimes it’s about purpose, about finding our role in a larger story. And sometimes, paradoxically, it’s in accepting our yearning that we finally find our way home.
