I would never!
/Last Friday night I once again had the pleasure of performing at Really Matters Theatre, an open mic kind of thing at Southern Arc Dance, and as threatened promised I performed “I Would Never,” a patter song for a Groucho-like character in Mike Funt’s raucous A Day in the Moonlight.
Before I share the music with you, I’m going to reiterate a couple of Lichtenbergian principles, to wit, GESTALT and SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION.
I wrote this piece about 20 years ago, so you might think that it was ready for ABANDONMENT to an AUDIENCE, but that is because you imagine me to be some kind of artist who begins at the beginning, goes until the end, then stops. Well, technically I did stop when Mike decided the project wasn’t important enough to keep belaboring me about the head and shoulders until I got it done, and that’s where we picked up last week.
What I’m saying is that all the testing of the lyrics and especially the big finish that I worked through as I learned the song would have taken place during rehearsals of this soon-to-be hit Broadway show. (Well, off-Bway.) (To start with.)(Lin-Manuel, call me.)
Here is the printout of the lyrics I was working from, even on the day of the performance. (No, I did not memorize this monster.)
Some of this is printer’s marks, i.e., going back into the word processing file and make the first downbeat of each line bold (so I could see it), but notice all the edits to the actual text. There were four pages of this, and mostly my editing consisted of realigning the names of Thurgood’s paramours so that they were alliterative with their failings, making the thing easier to sing and perhaps remember. (That had been deliberate from the beginning, but I was not consistent.)
I also switched the Ivana/Vanessa verses because I thought Vanessa’s punchline (“She’d grab both her buttocks and scream”) was a better button for the piece. (It was.)
This is exactly what GESTALT is: Taking a look at the shape of the whole, and making adjustments to nudge it closer to the final product (SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION). It took me a moment to unlearn “Maggie” being toothless after 20 years, but that’s me all over, thinking about how much easier to make it for the next guy.
Anyway, here is the score, and here is the music:
Enjoy!
