TED talks are always interesting and inspiring...but this one was haunting and beautiful.
Natalie Merchant sings old poems back to life. Her voice has a wonderful, dangerous edge. Like a beautiful, sharp, ornate dagger.You could hold it in your hand and marvel at the silver beauty of it but if you slip it will cut you.
'Natalie Merchant sings from her new album,
Leave Your Sleep.
Lyrics from near-forgotten 19th-century poetry pair with her
unmistakable voice for a performance that brought the TED audience to
its feet.'
I especially like how she sings the Sleepy Giant. Her voice transforms the words and imbues it with a different meaning to me, something regretful about past love affairs and it is deeply sensual.
The Sleepy Giant
Charles E. Carryl (1841 – 1920)
My age is three hundred and seventy-two,
And I think, with the deepest regret,
How I used to pick up and voraciously chew
The dear little boys whom I met.
I’ve eaten them raw, in their holiday suits;
I’ve eaten them curried with rice;
I’ve eaten them baked, in their jackets and boots,
And found them exceedingly nice.
But now that my jaws are too weak for such fare,
I think it exceedingly rude
To do such a thing, when I’m quite well aware
Little boys do not like to be chewed.
And so I contentedly live upon eels,
And try to do nothing amiss,
And I pass all the time I can spare from my meals
In innocent slumber—like this.
