I wrote “Pavane for the Nursery" long ago, when I was 24 years old, just out of college, married for a year, childless. Now I’m 67. What is stranger than the passing of time?

If I told you that I wrote this song yesterday, you would believe me because the music itself is somewhat removed from the way we usually think about chronology, eras, epochs.

Hearing it, when would you guess it was written? It had to have been written sometime after about 1930 because it has an identifiably American sound, a style of musical expression that didn’t exist until about then.

The music is also somewhat outside the familiar song genres. It doesn’t quite fit into the realms of Tin Pan Alley or Broadway or the Beatles or Joni Mitchell, let alone anything to be found in the current Top Forty.

For you, at this moment, it’s here and it’s now. It’s brand new!

For me, this thought elicits the same pleasant little shock that comes when I reflect that I am more than 50 years older than the students to whom I teach French.

I always get a laugh from the students when I refer to myself as their school’s 'Oldest Living Teacher.'

When we’re happily splashing in French together, gargling pronunciations, tossing the language back and forth like a beach ball, venturing into the deep end of the pool as we attempt to discuss abstract topics, I feel like an equal, an insider, part of the gang, a member of the team, one of the group.

Sure, I’m the teacher. But when we tackle something like “Qu’est-ce que c’est le but d’art?” (What is the purpose of art?), my opinions are no more valuable than anyone else’s.

We laugh a lot in my classes and laughter is a great equalizer. Last Thursday, for some reason, we started speaking in “les voix amusantes” (funny voices). We spoke French, yes, but we did it using our versions of famous funny voices: Mickey Mouse’s falsetto, Gabby Hayes’ toothless old prospector, the ominous growl of the Grim Reaper, Porky Pig’s stutter: “Buh-dit, uh, buh-dit, uh, Bonjour!”

It was hilarious. We laughed like a bunch of little kids, though these young people are fourteen to eighteen years old!

When we philosophize or laugh together, we are not conscious of age differences. But when I think about it … I have lived a half-century longer than they have. A half-century! I can hardly believe it. Time is strange.

If you want to follow the lyrics as you listen to today’s song, here they are:

Pavane for the Nursery by William Jay Smith

Now touch the air softly, step gently. One, two.
I'll love you 'til roses are robin's egg blue;
I'll love you 'til gravel is eat-en for bread,
and lemons are orange and lavender's red.

Now touch the air softly, swing gently the broom.
I'll love you 'til windows are all of a room,
and the table is laid, and the table is bare,
and the ceiling reposes on bottomless air.

I'll love you 'til Heaven rips the stars from his coat,
and the moon rows away in a glass-bottom'd boat
and Orion steps down like a diver below,
and Earth is ablaze and Ocean aglow.

So touch the air softly, and swing the broom high.
We will dust the gray mountains and sweep the blue sky,
and I'll love you as long as the furrow the plow,
as However is Ever and Ever is Now.

To hear Carol Marty singing Pavane for the Nursery, click on the link above.

To see a PDF of the score, click on the link above.

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
Feb. 12, 2017