A Quote by Sylvia Townsend Warner
Oh, I am all for singing. If I had had children I should have hounded them into choirs & choral societies, and if they weren't good enough for that, I would have sent them out, to sing in the streets.
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To me singing is a joy. Choral singing is a delight. Welsh Choral singing is more than a delight. The Treorchy Male Choir is the best in choral singing. How then can they be described except in superlatives? They are without equal.
Today I am amazed at the things our children have done and their wide range of interests. They are all living their lives and not the ones I would have planned for them. But I have learned that their lives are theirs, not mine, and in living their own lives they have given me experiences and an education I would never have had if I'd been fool enough to make them do what I thought they should do.
If I had my way, I would build a lethal chamber as big as the Crystal Palace, with a military band playing softly, and a Cinematograph working brightly; then I'd go out in the back streets and main streets and bring them in, all the sick, the halt, and the maimed; I would lead them gently, and they would smile me a weary thanks; and the band would softly bubble out the 'Hallelujah Chorus'.
I wasn't sent here to find angels! I wasn't sent here to dream of them. I wasn't sent here to hear them sing! I was sent here to be alive. To breathe and sweat and thirst and sometimes cry.
If I had married a woman intelligent enough to guide me, to rule me without my feeling that I was ruled, I should have taken good care of my money, I should have had children, and I should not be, as now I am, alone in the world and possessing nothing.
Teaching in Providence and Oakland, I realized that the first thing is that it wasn't good enough to come in and assume that I had what my students needed in terms of knowledge and skills. I also had to show them that I was their ally. I had to show them that I was concerned about them, wanted to relate to them, and that I was fundamentally on their side.
If you had a magic wand today, and you had one wish - to wipe out all the drug dealers, take them all off the streets and put them in jail, no trial, everybody who sold drugs would automatically be convicted. You know what's going to happen? There's going to be new ones. Why? Because the drug users are going to create them.
We were not having any fun, he had recently begun pointing out. I would take exception (didn't we do this, didn't we do that) but I had also known what he meant. He meant doing things not because we were expected to do them or had always done them or should do them but because we wanted to do them. He meant wanting. He meant living.
We did a show called The Orphan Train, during the depression, when families didn't have enough money to support their children, they'd put them on the train and hope someone would pick them up who had enough money to support their children.
I had the good fortune to be able to right an injustice that I thought was being heaped on young people by lowering the voting age, where you had young people that were old enough to die in Vietnam but not old enough to vote for their members of Congress that sent them there.
I was never a kid who dreamt of being a performer. I started singing the songs because nobody knew who I was or cared at all. If I wasn't going to sing them, nobody was going to sing them, so I had to step in and fill that role myself.
When I had my first experiences of choral singing, the dissonance of those close harmonies was so exquisite that I would giggle or I would tear up, and I felt it in a physical way.
I had to sing. I couldn't not sing. If it was singing to a living room full of people or an auditorium, it didn't matter. I had to sing. I was meant to sing.
What I didn't understand was that the personal and the political go together. I felt at the time I had to sacrifice my children's present for their future. It seemed an either/or. I didn't realise that by being with one's own children I would have had a better understanding of the ones who are not my own. I was thinking of them but I didn't spend the time that they needed from me. It's a tribute to them that they came out so well.
I saw my dad doing it and thought to myself, 'I can do that.' I would be backstage watching him and running around the country with him singing to children. He would sing songs that taught children really good morals: like, 'Teaching Peace' was a song he used to sing to kids a lot.
Where was I?""A different island," said old Tallow. Her voice was stern, but there was an ache in her look that Omakayas had never before seen. "An island called Spirit Island where everyone but you died of the itching sickness- you were the toughest one, the littlest one, and you survived them all.""You were sent here so you could save the others," she said. "Because you'd had the sickness, you were strong enough to nurse them through it. They did a good thing when they took you in, and you saved them for their good act. Now the circle that began when I found you is complete.
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