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the Nightingale Song
Feb. 10th, 2005 08:37 amThe soundtrack to my morning commute happened to be a hastily-grabbed cassette of Toad the Wet Sprocket's Fear album. I've got these old wine boxes (the wooden ones, with twine handles and metal clasps) filled with old tapes, and it was one of the first ones I saw that appealed.
I'm listening to it, and I get to "Butterflies," and I think of the time I saw them live, back in college, in the Duke Ellington ballroom. There wasn't much in the way of tech, but I remember that song being lit with the brightest yellow light the techs could muster out of the Fresnels hung above the platform stage, and I remember being hit with this wall of sound, and being utterly smitten with the noise and the strange, solid harmonies of it.
The next song in the album sequence, however, is the one that provoked the memory, but I got to the office before I could let it play. It's "Nightingale Song," and it's this acoustic sort of ululation, a loud strident joyful daring little song that is over before you even feel like you've begun.
Acting classes in college were sometimes hard nuts to crack, emotionally speaking. I was 19, 20, and 21, and I didn't have nearly enough life experience to dredge up any real semblance of emotional depth. It was a difficult realization to make, too: I'd had plenty of terrible, awful, wonderful experiences in my life thus far, considering, but not enough perspective. I was chaotically mired in the boundaries of childhood and rebellion and the first tastes of independence. There was no sedimentary layer of muck for me to trawl, for resonant measure. A lot of my classmates felt much the same - we were too young, and there was really no support system in the department for the days when we'd walk, still teary-eyed, from that shabby, cold, cinderblock room, gasping for air and feeling like we were going a little crazy. Sometimes we outright hated our professor, and as is only normal for many performers, there was a bit of the self-loathing, too.
I could've taught the course by the time I was done with that program, but I would have much rather been ablt to perform the exercises, the repetition and the activities of Meisner. Every now and then, I'd have a breakthrough, and it was quite possibly the biggest natural highs I've experienced, but they were also very, very rare.
John Tovar was one of my classmates, and he used to bolster himself for the days of loathing by singing "Nightingale Song." He was a wiry, open-faced guy with a beard and clear eyes, a quick huge smile, eyebrows expressive. His singing voice was great, his gestures slightly reminiscent of a standup comedian's, especially when standing by the back doors to the building, having a smoke.
After a time, I joined in, and we'd sing it together, our battle cry for the acting class - the 1.5 credit hours we all dreaded and yet secretly wanted so badly to beat down and make our own.
I'm listening to it, and I get to "Butterflies," and I think of the time I saw them live, back in college, in the Duke Ellington ballroom. There wasn't much in the way of tech, but I remember that song being lit with the brightest yellow light the techs could muster out of the Fresnels hung above the platform stage, and I remember being hit with this wall of sound, and being utterly smitten with the noise and the strange, solid harmonies of it.
The next song in the album sequence, however, is the one that provoked the memory, but I got to the office before I could let it play. It's "Nightingale Song," and it's this acoustic sort of ululation, a loud strident joyful daring little song that is over before you even feel like you've begun.
Acting classes in college were sometimes hard nuts to crack, emotionally speaking. I was 19, 20, and 21, and I didn't have nearly enough life experience to dredge up any real semblance of emotional depth. It was a difficult realization to make, too: I'd had plenty of terrible, awful, wonderful experiences in my life thus far, considering, but not enough perspective. I was chaotically mired in the boundaries of childhood and rebellion and the first tastes of independence. There was no sedimentary layer of muck for me to trawl, for resonant measure. A lot of my classmates felt much the same - we were too young, and there was really no support system in the department for the days when we'd walk, still teary-eyed, from that shabby, cold, cinderblock room, gasping for air and feeling like we were going a little crazy. Sometimes we outright hated our professor, and as is only normal for many performers, there was a bit of the self-loathing, too.
I could've taught the course by the time I was done with that program, but I would have much rather been ablt to perform the exercises, the repetition and the activities of Meisner. Every now and then, I'd have a breakthrough, and it was quite possibly the biggest natural highs I've experienced, but they were also very, very rare.
John Tovar was one of my classmates, and he used to bolster himself for the days of loathing by singing "Nightingale Song." He was a wiry, open-faced guy with a beard and clear eyes, a quick huge smile, eyebrows expressive. His singing voice was great, his gestures slightly reminiscent of a standup comedian's, especially when standing by the back doors to the building, having a smoke.
After a time, I joined in, and we'd sing it together, our battle cry for the acting class - the 1.5 credit hours we all dreaded and yet secretly wanted so badly to beat down and make our own.
We sing the nightingale song alive
Streets never border further than my sight
We sing the nightingale song alive
We might be different but our hearts won’t lie
And little ever changes if anything at all
But the song rings loudly through these halls
We sing the nightingale song alive
We might be different but our hearts won’t lie
And little ever changes when you view it from the sky
And the damage we encounter the earth just passes by
And little ever changes if anything at all
And we remind ourselves how small we are
