Words matter, and made me rich

As writers, we, who I confidently speak for here (probably creating consternation among colleagues), consider ourselves in command, in dominion, of this shared language.

The tortured language is employed here to illustrate how the writer’s choice molds meanings. As singers, another club I’m in, we often buttress shaky egos, oversized as an occupational necessity and in enhanced need of securing stabilization, with an innate belief it is our breath itself birthing life into some writer’s wandering words, turning the trite profound or the pompous more palatable.

It goes both ways of course; simply reference William Shatner’s version of Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man,” alternately arriving at the ears as boldly brilliant or as an unforgivable transgression, in contrast to someone like Billie Holiday singing pretty much anything. What gets lost here is credit deserved of the words themselves; their own sound, structure and rhythm.

Whatever literal point almost lost in this particular writer’s indulgence was well-illustrated to me twice recently, once by one of our area’s premier musical artists and scholars, and again by a teenaged boy visiting from England, politely goaded into performance by peers.

Montpelier’s Michael Arnowitt, one of the region’s best jazz and classical pianists, presented “The Poetry of Music” at JCOGS as part of the Vermont Humanities Council lecture series during the second week of April. Other than some playing he did on the house piano before the lecture, the presentation relied largely on recorded illustrative examples and Mike’s own voice as he compellingly laid out the relation between the structures of music and words, “the same building blocks of progression,” from Kubla Khan to Eleanor Rigby by way of Shakespeare, Joni Mitchell and James Joyce, as well as E. E. Cummings and Rodgers and Hart. “Lecture” has an earned negative ring to it, but this one took on the feel of a suite. “Poems should have the same rhythmic lift or ‘swing’ as we say in jazz,” Arnowitt said. His presentation did as well.

A few days later, I was performing at a private event for a group of teens visiting from the U.K. on a late season ski trip, and we rolled out our British numbers in the aged manner of “Hey! Do you kids like the Beatles?”

Only the oldest of the chaperons fully shared our enthusiasm, it seemed. The kids called out a boy’s name when we asked if anyone wanted to join us, but he waved it off. As we were wrapping up, he was suddenly before us, wearing themed pajamas, as many of them were, thickly bespectacled and emboldened with a “this is going to happen” posture.

“Whaddaya wanna sing?” I asked.

“Elton John’s ‘Your Song,’” he said.

We had just played it two songs before, but the young man meant business, his shyness stripped and a singer’s ego blooming through the shaky start that grew solid, with the words not mastered but infused with a feeling, the effort seemingly soothsaid well in advance by Sir Elton. Words matter. They are what has made me rich, but they also enrich beyond their dictionary definitions. You know: yadda, yadda, yadda.

John Wilson is a comedian, singer and former lift attendant at Stowe Mountain Resort. Comment on this article at stowereporter.com, or email letters to news@stowereporter.com.