Words and Music Evening, March 21st
Pam's evening of words and music on Thursday 21st seemed to me to be a successful one, and an enjoyable one.
It's not an easy thing to get together something like this, and I know Pam put a lot of effort into choosing poetry and words, as well as music, to include and especially trying to co-ordinate what other people wanted to include.
So – when we eventually got settled down (!) - we listened to the Spring bit of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, and then threw me straight into the words bit with a recitation of the sort of spring that happens in January.
Pam had given out a number of short quotations to people who would be prepared to read them – and I realised as the evening went on that she'd chosen quite carefully who read what. Chris read from Pablo Neruda: “You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming”; this took me instantly to my garden where the flowers have – in the last few days – not been cut but have been trashed by the neighbour's fence renewal process. The weather is hardly Spring-like – and my garden certainly won't be a spring one until at least next year.
Depressing as that thought was, 'When we Were Very Young' provided the antidote: “She turned to the sunlight / And shook her yellow head / And Whispered to her neighbour / Winter is dead”. What should I whisper to my neighbour?
Ian had brought with him a big book of verse, and pretended to read from it. I know he was pretending, because his poem 'Spring' didn't rhyme: “Boinggg”.
Cliff's quotation also gave rise to lightness (with the coming of the longer days?) “The first day of spring was once atime for taking young virgins into the fields... to set an example for nature to follow. Now we just set the clocks an hour ahead and change the oil in the crankcase.”
We'd put up with 8 minutes of a piece of music I'd produced (part of an album, by the way “The End of the Unicorns” or “Endings and Beginnings” - not available on any label!). This piece included a selection of bird-sounds all of which might be encountered on a spring day in Wanstead Park. We now listened again, with an emphasis on trying to identify the bird-sounds. (not necessarily songs). So we ended an entertaining evening with a quiz/competition, and I was rather surprised just how well the ad-hoc teams did in their identification processes.
As usual, the winning team had the goodness to share out their prize, and many of us ended up scoffing that other sign of spring – Easter Eggs.
You may like to have a look at Pam's own website of Poetry, Stories and other Writing; it is available here.
Thanks, Pam.
Paul Ferris 22 March 2013