This is a recent portal (about two years ago) into the dawn of my creative collaboration with Gerda Wilson.  It was very exciting for me, after growing up in her choir, to discover I could get to know her as a fellow adult and even contribute to her projects.  She the brilliant music composer needed lyrics and story adaptation for a Native American Lore: “A Tale of Bear’s Tail”.  The tale goes that once upon a time Bear had a long, beautiful tail and was very vain about it.  Fox was just as vain about his tail, and so the opening song planned for the musical is called “Beauty Contest”.  The actors playing Bear and Fox (members of a children’s choir) have solos and then the choir leads into the next scene with a foreboding chorus.

Here are my lyrics (and if you are very lucky you are in the right city to hear them sung to Gerda’s music!)

Lovely and long; how do you go on

With a tail less glossy than mine?

Give yours a wave, see how it goes like a rat tail

Slithering, dragging and dithering

Flopping so feebly in snow

That’s such a laugh!  How can you be proud

Of a tail as black as a coal?

Soot has no glow; look how well mine

Dizzies and dazzles, fizzes and frazzles

Yours turns to ash in the snow

CHOIR:

Beautiful tails

Flashing in cold sun

Flip, flip, flip

The frost has come

Guard what you possess

And what you love

Nip, nip, nip

From winter’s glove