Dr. Jane Goodall and What Apes Teach Us About Grief, Sound and Connection
- 2 days ago
- 8 min read
Ken Breniman is a queer author, licensed clinical social worker, yoga therapist, and thanatologist guiding fellow mindful mortals at the threshold of life, death, devotion, and (r)evolution. His work blends neuroscience, primatology, Celtic wisdom, and psychedelic integration to invite braver ways of being human.
In this reflective field report, Ken Breniman shares his encounters with orangutans and chimpanzees through sound, grief, curiosity, and stillness. The article invites readers to reconsider intelligence, connection, and what it means to listen across species.
“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” – Dr. Goodall
Dr. Jane Goodall, thank you for your famous last words. These ancestral words followed me into the rainforest. They echoed through the humidity of Borneo while I cleaned orangutan night dens, hauled fruit through the mud, and learned that rainforest heat can turn a human body into a walking salt lick. I questioned whether a queer grief therapist and singing bowl practitioner had any business wandering into the emotionally complex world of captive ape care.
Yet there I was at the Matang Wildlife Centre for a month of volunteer service through Project Borneo. Singing bowls in hand.Heart full of planetary grief, curiosity, and something harder to name.Trying to listen more than perform.
This is my qualitative field report. Not an academic paper. Not definitive science. Certainly not spiritual propaganda. Just an honest field report from a wobbly human animal attempting to reconnect with our evolutionary relatives through vibration, attention, grief, curiosity, and sound.
Observation one: Aman and the possibility of curiosity
At the wildlife center, there was an alpha male orangutan named Aman. Massive. Quiet. Intentional. If you have never looked into the eyes of an orangutan, it is difficult to explain the experience without sounding slightly unhinged. Extended eye contact is generally considered inappropriate in ape encounters, yet they do not merely look at you. They regard you with a presence that commands your respect.
One sentient being evaluating another across some ancient evolutionary bridge. One afternoon during my lunch break, I introduced my metal singing bowls to the orangutans resting in their outdoor enclosures. I remained at a respectful distance on an observation deck above.
There is an ethical tension anytime humans introduce enrichment into captive or rehabilitative animal spaces. I did not want to anthropomorphize, though, as an animistically inclined empath, I cannot promise I always succeed. I did not want to force interaction. Only offer the possibility of it.
So I simply played. Softly and intentionally. Aman approached and stayed. Despite the oppressive jungle heat, he sat calmly beneath the observation deck during these daily sound baths. Over time, I observed what appeared to be deep attentiveness. Not hyperarousal. Not distress. Not food-seeking behavior.
Stillness. Curiosity. Tranquility. This became our shared lunch-break ritual. I played from above while Aman sat below in the soft grass. Then something stranger happened. On my last day of service, I gifted Aman a copy of my book, Subversive Acts of Humanity.
He touched the pages gently. Flipped through them slowly. Brought parts of the book toward his mouth in the investigative manner orangutans often use with unfamiliar objects. He paused repeatedly as if contemplating texture, scent, image, or perhaps intention itself. No, I am not claiming an orangutan read my book. But I am saying this: something relational occurred.
Animism is the worldview that consciousness and spirit permeate the living world. This belief system is often dismissed as primitive thinking. Yet many Indigenous cultures have maintained deeply relational understandings of animals, forests, vibration, and interconnectedness for thousands of years. In Borneo, the forest spirit is called The Rimba. I believe both Aman and I were held by The Rimba during this unusual cross-cultural exchange.
Meanwhile, modern industrial humans often struggle to sit silently with one another for even three minutes without checking our phones. What if “primitive” is simply a word misused to deny forms of advanced intelligence we no longer understand?
Perhaps this transspecies encounter was less about a human standing above while a captive primate sat below, and more about two relatives pausing long enough to regard the strange architecture of our paws, tools, and existence.
Might we need to evolve our definition of intelligence, and perhaps more importantly, what advanced intelligence actually looks like? What forms of wisdom have we ignored simply because they do not speak our language?
Perhaps the real question is not whether Aman understood my book. Perhaps the question is whether we still understand the living world well enough to recognize interbeing when it appears before us. Perhaps awe itself is becoming endangered within our own species.
Observation two: Josephine & the sound of grief
A month later, I was invited to bring my singing bowls to a chimpanzee sanctuary. This is where I met Josephine, an older female resident living with a dozen other retirees. Aging. Watchful. Socially attuned. Grieving.
The staff shared that she had recently lost one of her closest companions and had been exhibiting social withdrawal after death hit close to home. On the day of the visit, staff prepared for possible power outages due to facilities upgrades taking place at the sanctuary.
Lights flickered. The chimpanzee community itself appeared excited and preoccupied. Some sought reassurance from the alpha male. Others vocalized loudly. The troop moved back and forth between their indoor and outdoor spaces, trying to make sense of what was happening.
In the midst of all of this, I was invited to introduce a few singing bowls to Josephine and her cohort. After a few dings and rings of the bowls, Josephine did something extraordinary.
She sat with the sound bath for nearly twenty uninterrupted minutes. While machinery noise surrounded us and environmental distractions captivated the others, Josephine oriented herself toward the bowls.
At several points, she attempted to move closer. She clapped her hands when I stopped playing as if asking for an encore. She looked back toward her chimp community, then toward me, then directly into my eyes. Language fails me here.
As a licensed grief therapist and certified death doula, I frequently sit with dying and grieving humans. I have witnessed people orient toward rhythm, touch, music, prayer, humming, and vibration during states of fear, overwhelm, sorrow, and transition.
Josephine had recently said goodbye to a friend. While I cannot know what Josephine was experiencing internally, I found the moment personally moving. She appeared to remain attentive to the sound bath for an extended period, even as other activity was happening nearby.
The bowls seemed to offer this bereft ape a kind of anchor amid environmental disruption. Now, let me be careful here, I am not arguing that singing bowls “heal” anything. That would be an irresponsible overstatement.
But I am proposing something worth exploring. Might some animals, including all of us great apes, naturally orient toward rhythm or sound when given the opportunity? Maybe something deeply instinctual still moves through all of us.
That question feels less absurd the more time I spend observing both ape kin and fellow sapiens. Because humans are not apart from the living world. We are a part of it, a remarkably anxious troop of sapiens reliant on Wi-Fi and still trying to heal old wounds.
Observation three: Grandpa Johnny & the grace of aging masculinity
Then, during another sound bath with a small chimpanzee troop in a forested enclosure, came an unexpected transspecies exchange with Grandpa Johnny. Through plexiglass and fencing, I watched the group gather to enjoy snacks. They were definitely more interested in nourishing nibbles than in what the humans were doing while setting up the bowls.
Within the group was one elderly male who remained reserved and unassuming. Sporting a graying beard and balding torso like an aging champion content with slipping quietly into retirement, he seemed more comfortable blending into the crowd during the somewhat anticlimactic final offering of the day.
Initially, the chimpanzees appeared far more interested in snacks and each other than in us humans or the bowls themselves. Honestly, I found this reassuring. Ape sanctuaries around the world hope to provide lives rooted in dignity, choice, social connection, and as much healthy distance from human interference as possible. Distance and discernment matter.
But after the social excitement faded, the snacks were enjoyed, and the others disappeared back into their air-conditioned bedrooms.
Johnny returned. Alone. He leaned quietly toward the vibrations. Observed carefully. Sat with the resonance. Then, in one of the most hilariously ape moments imaginable, he displayed his genitalia, nodded toward me, and lingered there with unmistakable presence. Chimpanzees are not Victorian gentlemen.
Natural display behaviors can signify many things: dominance, comfort, curiosity, social signaling, confidence, vulnerability, or simply chimpanzees being chimpanzees.
Honestly, as a longtime naked yoga instructor, the display itself did not surprise me. It was the return that stayed with me. Johnny came back after the novelty faded. After the audience had disappeared. After the snacks lost their power.
At one point, Johnny made a soft trilling sound with his lips. This breathy chimpanzee vocalization is often associated with grooming, comfort, curiosity, or relaxed social connection. Hearing Johnny trill softly through the plexiglass and over the bowls made his quiet return feel even less accidental.
Something about the bowl’s vibration mattered enough for him to reengage privately. Suddenly, my entire hypothesis clarified itself: Vibrations travel.
Through fences and plexiglass. Through generators and generations. Through species and grief. Through aging bodies and time itself. Humans already instinctively use vibration therapeutically through lullabies, chanting, drumming, humming, prayer, and co-regulation through voice and touch.
Long before we had language, we had rhythm. Perhaps primal sound was medicine long before language. Some scientists even wonder if birdsong helped sing human language into existence.
The real question is not about singing bowls
The deeper question underneath all of this is not whether apes “like” sound baths. What happens when humans stop relating to apes as spectacles, commodities, entertainment, or biological resources? What if we approached them instead as fellow sentient beings navigating captivity, stress, adaptation, aging, grief, and uncertainty?
Not identical to us. Not mystical furry gurus. Not exotic pets meant to soothe our longing for connection. What if we approached every ape, including ourselves, as kin? Perhaps the greatest tragedy of modern humanity is not that we lost connection to apes. Perhaps we lost connection to our own animality.
We continue racing toward becoming productivity-obsessed mammals trapped inside fluorescent boxes, algorithmic outrage cycles, and endless digital stimulation. Many humans now live in a near-constant state of hyperactivation while pretending this is normal civilization.
Meanwhile, a lone chimpanzee sat through human-made machinery noise and instinctively oriented toward resonance instead of chaos. There is probably a lesson there.
A love song across species
These experiences moved me enough that I eventually turned them into a musical piece titled Simian Sound Bath: A Transpecies Love Song. The song weaves together the stories of King Aman, Auntie Josephine, and Grandpa Johnny into a reflection on grief, vibration, animism, primate consciousness, and interdependence.
It ends with three symbolic bowl rings:
One for who you were at birth
One for who you are right now
One for who you become when you take your final breath
I will be releasing a musical video soon, along with a related ongoing project: Primates, Privilege & Possibility. Because some ideas are too strange for academic language alone. Sometimes song and sound can transcend borders faster than an argument.
Dr. Jane Goodall & y’all, this is my first field report
I witnessed an alpha orangutan choosing stillness during regular singing bowl sound baths, even in oppressive heat. I witnessed a grieving chimpanzee choose resonance over reacting to environmental disruption.
I witnessed an elder male chimp privately returning for vibration after social stimulation faded. None of this conclusively proves anything. But perhaps not everything meaningful begins with proof. Perhaps some things begin with attention.
Maybe Jane Goodall’s greatest lesson to humanity was never really just about apes. Maybe it was about learning how to listen again. Perhaps evolution is not about becoming something more, but becoming humane enough to listen to the hum that was there all along.
Read more from Kenneth J. Breniman
Kenneth J. Breniman, Grief Guide & Mindfully Mortal Therapist
Ken Breniman is a queer author, licensed clinical social worker, certified yoga therapist, and thanatologist whose work lives at the intersection of mortality, meaning, and transformation. Drawing from neuroscience, primatology, Celtic wisdom, and psychedelic integration, he challenges the myth of human exceptionalism while honoring the precious role each of us plays in the ongoing evolution of our species. Ken is the author of a three-body solution and subversive acts of humanity, and the creator of the See-Soul children’s grief literacy series. Through writing, teaching, and ritual-informed practice, he guides mindful mortals toward deeper humility, resilience, and collective becoming.
