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Wednesday, April 04, 2007
"The Telephone" revisited
[I'm not feeling great today...thought I'd use the down time to share a post from my other blog from last year. I love the picture as much as the topic...]
Does nostalgia ever just run up from behind and smack you silly?
I'm sitting here just before midnight, getting things ready for the new school week. I'm leafing through a book of Robert Frost's poetry, deciding which ones would be good to have the kids look at this week as we begin our study of World War I. And suddenly I am transported to 1970, Crawford High School in San Diego, sitting in the massive choir room and singing an exquisite piece of music. One of the most memorable musical experiences in my high school "career" was performing a compilation entitled "Frostiana," a set of seven of Frost's poems set to intricate harmonies. Those seven poems live for me in a way no others do, a testament to how our brains are wired to store music in a way we will never store the Table of Elements or how a bill becomes law (without Schoolhouse Rock, of course!)
And so, as my eyes fell upon these words, my heart sang them... accompanied by the sweet strains of a hundred or more voices who were also adding the same ones to their own scrapbooks of the heart...
Does nostalgia ever just run up from behind and smack you silly?
I'm sitting here just before midnight, getting things ready for the new school week. I'm leafing through a book of Robert Frost's poetry, deciding which ones would be good to have the kids look at this week as we begin our study of World War I. And suddenly I am transported to 1970, Crawford High School in San Diego, sitting in the massive choir room and singing an exquisite piece of music. One of the most memorable musical experiences in my high school "career" was performing a compilation entitled "Frostiana," a set of seven of Frost's poems set to intricate harmonies. Those seven poems live for me in a way no others do, a testament to how our brains are wired to store music in a way we will never store the Table of Elements or how a bill becomes law (without Schoolhouse Rock, of course!)
And so, as my eyes fell upon these words, my heart sang them... accompanied by the sweet strains of a hundred or more voices who were also adding the same ones to their own scrapbooks of the heart...
"When I was just as far as I could walk
From here today,
There was an hour
All still
When leaning with my head against a flower
I heard you talk.
Don't say I didn't, for I heard you say--
You spoke from the flower on the window sill--
Do you remember what it was you said?"
"First tell me what it was you thought you heard."
"Having found the flower and driven a bee away,
I leaned my head,
And holding by the stalk,
I listened and I thought I caught the word--
What was it? Did you call me by my name?
Or did you say--
Someone said 'Come'--I heard it as I bowed."
"I may have thought as much, but not aloud."
"Well, so I came."
~~Robert Frost
From here today,
There was an hour
All still
When leaning with my head against a flower
I heard you talk.
Don't say I didn't, for I heard you say--
You spoke from the flower on the window sill--
Do you remember what it was you said?"
"First tell me what it was you thought you heard."
"Having found the flower and driven a bee away,
I leaned my head,
And holding by the stalk,
I listened and I thought I caught the word--
What was it? Did you call me by my name?
Or did you say--
Someone said 'Come'--I heard it as I bowed."
"I may have thought as much, but not aloud."
"Well, so I came."
~~Robert Frost
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