"A tune for the heart"
The cicada sang his monotone song. A long screech into the silent night. The beauty is in the intervals, he says to me, and I agree. His matting call seems to remain unanswered, forever futile. The sound echoes across the cityscape just as it does on country landscapes. It occured to me that if cicadas still exist, they do because we are either impotent in the face of nature, or humanity has more poetic flare than I thought. At least to me, their sounds are hardly a bother. I lay in bed listening to him sing his screeching tune and I sleep soundly, yet a slight rattle could keep me awake all night. He stops. I know he will be back shortly, but I can’t help but think this might’ve been it. I’m not enough an expert in the subtleties of his song to know if he just sang his glorious finale. I'm not enough an expert in cicadas to know if he stops only if a mate is found or he drops dead. That's how I think it works. I can't imagine someone who sings to passionately for so long simply packing his things away and going back home for the night.
He starts his song again. What a perfectly timed interval. Just enough for you to think he was done for. Maybe all the lady cicadas were already sad, imagining his dead body laying on the ground. Maybe they felt bad for him and went "Oh, no... I was just playing hard-to-get, and now he's dead!". Just as the thought of regret crosses their minds, he picks it back up.
The Japanese have many words for the sounds of things. "ミーン", the Japanese would write. They have a symbol for a prolonged vowel sound, so that's very convenient. "Mi~n" is how you might romanize it. Or maybe "miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin", I don't know, I think I prefer the latter.
Sometimes, he goes "min- min- min- miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-". That's a highlight of the symphony, that rhythmic cadence. Evolution appreciates music. Music and seduction are forever intertwined, in essence. This particular song is monotone. Some cicadas sing a two-tone song. They might go "oooooooooooo-eeeeeeeeeeee-oooooooooooo-eeeeeeeeeeee". That's probably so there's no confusion between different species, A female cicada from species A showing up to mate with a species B singer. That's ineffective, unproductive. Evolution is effective, by definition.
The way I see it, the two-tone cicadas got the short end of the stick. The variation isn't stable enough as to not be annoying. Maybe that's evolutionarily more effective. All the lady cicadas are so bothered by that drunk singing that they flock to get it over with. They couldn't bare to hear that tune until he dropped dead, as much as they would enjoy it if he did.
On the other hand, the one-tone song is beautiful, it's all about rhythm. Short intervals create an almost human beat. The long intervals are so bold, most human composers wouldn't dare attempt in their songs. The ladies listen to it with pleasure, the poetry inclined, cicada and human alike. That sweet cadence fills their hearts, that stable tune fills their thoughts.
"min- min- min-", it stops.