Ooooh the wolves at my door

Solo text that is emerging.  Or, where the Ensemble piece is taking off for me.  This might be included in the Spring Ensemble production, a version of.  I started working this in January, showed it to a few people.  It has been keeping me busy as a soloist in the studio. It is the beginnings of something.

Wolf  Solo

c. 2014 Celeste Miller

Once Upon A time

there was

 A little girl an old woman, a little girl, an old woman

For this part of the story, we only have two choices

So we'll go with:

Little girl.

She lived with her father at the edge of a deep, dark forest

(Classic: Absent mother, deep, dark forest)

They lived in a sweet little cottage with a sweet little garden

Enclosed behind a tall fence and a locked gate

to keep them from the gnawings in their hearts

Everyday when her father left for his job as either a

woodcutter or tuba player, he said to her:
"You can play in the garden

but whatever you do

You must not go outside the gate.

There are wolves in the forest."

huck a chuck

So, of course, that's all the little girl ever thought about.

One day, after father left for his job as either

a woodcutter or tuba player

There was this pretty little flower just outside the gate...

"Huck a chuck"

"Oh, no, please don't eat me!"

Bargain, bargain, bargain

"Sing me a song and I won't eat you.  Yet."

So she began to sing her mother's fool proof, guaranteed, best ever,

lullaby

bye bye baby bye bye.

Tray blah tray blah cum qua keen wah

I'll huff and I'll puff

Tray blah tray blah cum qua keen wah

I'll huff and I'll puff

Wolf's eyes getting heavier and heavier

"Huck a chuck! Huck a chuck!

Where do you think you're going?

I told you to stand still and sing me a song."

Tray blah tray blah cum qua keen wah

Wolf's eyes getting heavier and heavier

Face to face snout to snout

Beating of large grey wings

Teeth

The better to see you with my dear

Huck a chuck huck a chuck

Spine tethered to the moon

Mouth is an archway, a door for gleaning

An old soul smell

Time is a winged wolf

Teeth hiding a smile lurking behind every yawn

I’ll huff and I’ll puff

Keep your back to the door

"Who’s there?"

"Its just me."

"You ain’t alone."

Huck a chuck huck a chuck

'Where are you going?

I told you to stand still and sing to me."

"It's not me going anywhere old wolf,

It's you drifting away."

Cough

Tray blah spine tether moon huff puff wha

 Like spitting out broken teeth the words are all wrong

What was it her mother had said?

"Wolves attack only..."

"It's true", her father interrupted, confidently, from a great distance

Polishing his axe, or his tuba,

"Wolves attack only if they are hungry."

And this wolf’s whole effort seems to have gone to keeping those magnificent wings aloft for its ribs stuck out, lackluster fur and pale eyes

Her mother’s advice: “When you are asked how you are, say 'fine and that’s a lie'.”

Sing!

Trey blah creeping closer to the garden gate

Her father always told her:

"Say please when you open the latch.

You shall not fall, you will not drown.

Ride the grey wolf, hold tightly to his fur.

Trust the wolf but do not tell them where you are going."

What was stolen from her was the ability to pull words from the air, though she could still see them all around her. She could pull aside the veil for others to see them, for others to take them but it came to be that she could only borrow what they discarded huff puff warming hands with borrowed breath

It was so cold and so still that you could hear the humming of tiny wings as worker bees clustered around their queen, flapping hundreds of wings to keep her warm, abdomens vibrating at 12,000 beats per minute

When the wolf began to sing....

(Hard to really recreate a wolf song from her vocal cords but what she heard, like a bad connection was:)

Come dance with me

Gonna be alright

No one see us running

No one looking for you tonight

We’ll sleep in our clothes in the forest by the river

We’ll forget everything we know

And dance

Hold each other

Til the   light

Gonna be

Come learn to dance

Learn?

Dance?

Come learn to dance?

The freight train in the distance

Dance?

Learn?

The prettiest flower in the forest always out of reach.

She longed to train with the wolf

she longed for the intense training it would take to find a new alternative home in the four-legged turned out hip position

A sensation of power almost like enlightenment

The retraining of muscles, if done wisely, increasing the charged interior space of a body infusing the psyche with some

Shhhhhh

Once not twice, not three times not an umpteenth time

Once

There/not, here

There

Was

Not Will be, Has been, or Is.

Was.

"How was your day," asked her father over soup.

"Fine and that’s a lie," she replied, without thinking.

#

Credits:

"Say please when you open the latch.

You shall not fall, you will not drown.

Ride the grey wolf, hold tightly to his fur.

Trust the wolf but do not tell them where you are going."

Adapted from Neil Gaiman, "Instructions"