Willows, part 3

Here are the words to these "Wind in the Willows" songs I've been posting about (excerpts from Kenneth Grahame's book (published 1908), edited and selected by me (2004)):

     1. The Riverbank
     "This is the real life for a gentleman! Talk about your old
     river!" "I don't talk about my river," replied the patient Rat.
     "You know I don't, Toad. But I think about it," he added
     pathetically, in a lower tone: "I think about it all the time!"
     The Mole reached out from under his blanket, felt for the Rat's
     paw in the darkness, and gave it a squeeze.

     2. Mr. Badger
     "Very long ago, on the spot where the Wild Wood waves now, before
     ever it had planted itself and grown up to what it now is, there
     was a city - a city of people. They built to last, for they
     thought their city would last forever. People come - they stay
     for a while, they flourish, they build - and they go. It is
     their way. But we remain."

     3. Dulce Domum
     "I know it's a - shabby, dingy little place," he sobbed forth at
     last, brokenly: "but it was my own little home - and I was fond
     of it - and I went away and forgot all about it - and then I
     smelt it suddenly - on the road, when I called and you wouldn't
     listen, Rat - and everything came back to me with a rush - and I
     wanted it! - O dear, O dear - and when you wouldn't turn back,
     Ratty - and I had to leave it, though I was smelling it all the
     time - I thought my heart would break!" The Rat stared straight
     in front of him, saying nothing, only patting Mole gently on the
     shoulder.

     4. The Open Road
     When Toad's violent paroxysms possessed him he would arrange
     bedroom chairs in rude resemblance of a motorcar and would crouch
     on the foremost of them, bent forward and staring fixedly ahead,
     making uncouth and ghastly noises, till the climax was reached,
     when, turning a complete somersault, he would lie prostrate
     amidst the ruins of the chairs, apparently completely satisfied
     for the moment.

     5. The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
     Breathless and transfixed the Mole stopped rowing as the liquid
     run of that glad piping broke on him like a wave, caught him up,
     and possessed him utterly. He saw the tears on his comrade's
     cheecks, and bowed his head and understood.

     6. Wayfarers All
     Forgetting the Rat, they slid into passionate reminiscence, while
     he listened fascinated, and his heart burned within him. With
     closed eyes he dared to dream a moment, in full abandonment, and
     when he looked again the river seemed steely and chill, the green
     fields grey and lightless. Then his loyal heart seemed to cry
     out on his weaker self for its treachery. "Why do you ever come
     back, then, at all?" he demanded of the swallows jealously. "And
     do you think," said the first swallow, "that the other call is
     not for us too, in its due season? In due time, we shall be
     homesick once more for quiet waterlilies swaying on the surface
     of an English stream. But today all that seems pale and thin and
     very far away. Just now our blood dances to other music."

As you can tell, this is not anything resembling a dramatic story. If you haven't read the book, you'll have no idea what's going on, or who any of these characters are. Even if you have read the book, these little blurbs will take some unpacking to figure out. They're not meant to make sense narratively. They're like snapshots of particularly poignant moments.

This morning, while reflecting on what I was going to post today, I decided to change the title of this piece. I wasn't very happy with the title being the same as the book plus a subtitle, and now three years too late I'll give it a good title: "Illustrations for The Wind in the Willows: 6 songs for male voice and one or more instruments." Longer, but more appropriate. That's the idea - that they're musical illustrations.

I was planning on writing about why I picked each of these "moments," and why I edited them down the way I did. (A few of them are unedited apart from proper nouns replacing pronouns; others I've cut out a phrase here or there; others are combinations of bits that were originally several pages apart.) But it occurs to me that to do that, I'd have to explain the story and the characters and analyze the book and give everything context. And you'd be left with fragments of a story instead of the stand-alone prose-poem-type-things that I've tried to fashion. So I'll just leave them as they are and let them be.

Next time: I'll (probably) finally talk about the music.