The Nearctica Waltz
I perform a cappella singing and spoken word at the Woodview Coffeehouse in Lecanto, FL. My singing is scatting -- i.e., wordless -- and I make up the tune as I go along. No two renditions are the same.
Most of the Woodview performers are musicians singing their own or other people's work. As I listened to them over the months, I had a hankering to write a song, something that had particular music and lyrics.
Last year, an especially hefty swarm of love bugs (Plecia nearctica) gave me my opening.
"The lucky in love spend about three days together gorging on nectar and pollen, gleefully snorting tailpipe exhaust, flaunting their marathon lust on the breezes," wrote Amber Mobley last year in her St. Petersburg Times article, "Feel like telling them 'Get a room'?" "Lacking the decency to get a room, these two are intimate the entire time. Eat, copulate, repeat."
"The Nearctica Waltz" received its public premiere this past August at Denvention 3/Worldcon. I'd performed it during the speculative poetry panel and introduced it as, "a musical poem with visual aid," because I'd printed out an 8x10 of this photo and held it up for the audience.
My Friday night audience at Woodview needed no such explanation. This fall the love bugs made a rather modest (as it were) appearance in my area -- nothing anywhere close to the thick, lusty clouds last year that made me say I feel a song comin' on!
(My skill in writing music is mediocre at best, but I wanted to get the general idea down.)
My blog entry with typed lyrics is here. You can hear Friday night's (Oct. 3, 2008) rendition here.
The Nearctica Waltz
I perform a cappella singing and spoken word at the Woodview Coffeehouse in Lecanto, FL. My singing is scatting -- i.e., wordless -- and I make up the tune as I go along. No two renditions are the same.
Most of the Woodview performers are musicians singing their own or other people's work. As I listened to them over the months, I had a hankering to write a song, something that had particular music and lyrics.
Last year, an especially hefty swarm of love bugs (Plecia nearctica) gave me my opening.
"The lucky in love spend about three days together gorging on nectar and pollen, gleefully snorting tailpipe exhaust, flaunting their marathon lust on the breezes," wrote Amber Mobley last year in her St. Petersburg Times article, "Feel like telling them 'Get a room'?" "Lacking the decency to get a room, these two are intimate the entire time. Eat, copulate, repeat."
"The Nearctica Waltz" received its public premiere this past August at Denvention 3/Worldcon. I'd performed it during the speculative poetry panel and introduced it as, "a musical poem with visual aid," because I'd printed out an 8x10 of this photo and held it up for the audience.
My Friday night audience at Woodview needed no such explanation. This fall the love bugs made a rather modest (as it were) appearance in my area -- nothing anywhere close to the thick, lusty clouds last year that made me say I feel a song comin' on!
(My skill in writing music is mediocre at best, but I wanted to get the general idea down.)
My blog entry with typed lyrics is here. You can hear Friday night's (Oct. 3, 2008) rendition here.