Parshah Rabbit Hole - Beshalach: The Song of the Sea and Mary Poppins

Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to Hashem. They said:
I will sing to Hashem, for He has triumphed gloriously;
Horse and driver He has hurled into the sea.

This is the principle for all songs in the Torah except for this song, referring to the list of Haman’s sons, and the song listing the kings of Canaan who were defeated by Joshua. These two songs are written in the form of a half brick arranged upon a half brick and a whole brick arranged upon a whole brick, i.e., one stitch of text over another, and one blank space over another. What is the reason? So that they should never rise from their downfall.

The ten sons of Haman and the kings of Canaan are written in the form of a half-brick over a half-brick and a brick over a brick. Such a structure does not endure.

This means that all the rest of the songs are about G-d having freed the Jews from painful circumstances, and having brought them out of the hands of the nations, and when G-d takes them out of pain, this is considered spaciousness. Therefore these songs are written as a half-brick on top of a brick and a brick on top of a half brick. Because when it is in such a form there is spaciousness, and such spaciousness is appropriate for all the songs in which G-d released them from restraint and delivered them from the hand of the enemy. And even though G-d redeemed the Jews from Egypt, Egypt was not completely destroyed, it was just that the Jews were brought out and were unrestrained from there exile.

And this is what is alluded to in the verse, "then Moses and the children of Israel sang this... to G-d", meaning, that the song was about the greatness of the miracle that was done for them, because "zos" (feminine form of "this") represents the part of each thing which is the recipient, meaning that the life-force that it constantly recieves from the source returned "to G-d", to the source of nature, and then [the sea] automatically split, and there was no life force left in the sea....and it is known that the life-force of all things are the letters of [the name of] that thing, because "by G-d's word the heavens were made (Psalms 36:6)...therefore in the splitting of the sea everything returned to its root and the letters returned to their root and the sea remained without life-force and its existence was nullified. And that is why the song is written as a half brick [of text] on top of a whole brick [of blank space], which is a space void of letters to allude to the nature of the miracle, that the letters retreated to their source.

We throw kasha to the birds on Shabbos Shira because they are called expert singers, because there is nothing that can sing like birds in all the creatures except for humans, because the dominion of the birds is air, and music comes from air, and therefore, the only way to play a musical instrument is with air. And also a person who has big lungs can sing well because the lungs are full of air. And this is why the songs in Torah are written in the form of a half brick [of text] on top of a whole brick [of blank space], so that there will be air in between.

Some have the custom of giving wheat to the birds on Shabbos Shirah, but this is not right because their sustenance is not your responsibility.

There are those who protest against the custom of throwing wheat to the birds on Shabbos Shirah, because "their sustenance is not your responsibility"(Magen Avraham). But it seems to me that "Minhag Yisroel Torah" - we are not doing work for them but for ourselves. It is said that the birds sang along at the sea, and therefore we do something nice for them. If so, the intent is to commemorate the joy of the song of the sea, and there is no issue. And there is an opinion written that since the intention is for the purpose of a mitzvah it is permissible.