Falstaff and Me
For Elvis and Judy
by Roscid Cup
In which I explain as clearly as I can why Elvis Presley and Judy Garland are my two favorite singers.
Fat and liquid voice.
Strong but subtly weak, and still.
And so we connect.
Songs reduced to the discrete medium of ink and paper need interpolation, an experiential filter to convolve with words and notes. Then they can relay something original and make its strangeness familiar. Imagination helps. Dynamics and timing help. Knowing the song’s exact point of transfiguration and making it inevitable. Making every note, every word, every succession of words and notes, every change in their timbre, every curl in their formant, every tremulous falter, every expression, every success, every mistake, all so inevitable that no other performance will be as right as this and the song is theirs and the addressee cannot tell whether the artist is interpreting the song or the song is interpreting the artist.