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May (Spoken Word)

uploaded: Wed, Nov 14, 2007 @ 9:20 PM last modified: Wed, Nov 14, 2007 @ 9:31 PM (replace)

by	gurdonark
Featuring	Peter Yearsley and Jayson Lang
length	4:05
Recommends	Recommends (7)

“If you can’t get rid of the skeletons in your closet, you’d best teach them to dance”—
George Bernard Shaw

Calendar Girl’s “May” is a great lyric which she sings with gusto and her customary skill and verve.
Yet I thought it would be fun to do a track which uses the lyrics to “May” as spoken by two readers.

My theory is that, divorced from its melody, the words of “May” speak to the listener in a different way than when sung.

I enlisted the help of two kind readers, Mr. Peter Yearsley, who has made some lovely recordings for librivox.org, and Mr. Jayson Lang, age 7, who, rumour has it, is a major musical influence upon mixter JLang. My thanks to these two gentlemen for their excellent contribution to this project.

Among the birds on this piece is the mockingbird who sits regularly atop my chimney, who is recorded from the fireplace grate. The teapot is my wife’s.

In my vision, this poem is recited
in an outdoor setting, in a suburban Summer setting in what the English so quaintly call “the garden”. I have a vague image of someone lost between the passing years and childhood. I have in mind Denis Thatcher, the footlights to a Gilbert & Sullivan opera, and a host of foolish things we called the 20th Century.

I encourage everyone, too, to go read the lyrics themselves and to hear the many great remixes of the actual “May” song, which may be found at:
http://www.calendarsongs.co...

If you’ve not climbed onto the Calendarsongs train, let me encourage you to book a ticket in the CC class.

In the meantime, I offer this trifle to amuse—and perhaps cause a suburban daydream or two of its own.

Welcome to my backyard Calendar Girl poetry reading.