Tony Novak's space

Margot Fonteyn was a great dancer (the wikipedia page) who is credited with saying “The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one’s work seriously and taking one’s self seriously. The first is imperative and the second is disastrous.” She died in 1991.

The tribute song by Eddie from Ohio moved me from the first performance when I heard it in the mid-2000s and every time since. I added emphasis to phrases that I’ve tried to incorporate into other communication.

Margot Fonteyn you’re a dancing Eleanor to and fro

who would know you ever touched the floor

Margot Fonteyn know for now and evermore

you’re looking great in tights and bows

your palm contains the front ten rows

you had the moves but no one knows

that your legs were touched by the hands of God

but your heart stands on its toes yeah, your heart stands on its toes
Wheels of misfortune a retired nurse down south living on a memory

living hand to husband’s mouth

when most call on a pension and act senile and mean

you pirouette as Juliet and look like you’re eighteen
Chorus

smallest things can cause a change like a bullet to the spine

and who would know that wasn’t planned you act like it’s all fine

should I need a private maid would you please be mine?

roll me through your garden and push me from behind
Chorus
but this ain’t how it happens for queens and cavaliers

you know something we don’t your ending’s not down here

Please take a few minutes today to consider Odetta who would have been 80 years old today but passed away in late 2008. She is among the most powerful, most inspirational and most-respected role models in American culture over more than six decades. It seems that every artist and leader of our generation was influenced by her. Even Bob Dylan said “the first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta”.  She is perhaps most famous for her role in civil rights movement and her popularizing the songs “We Shall Overcome” and “This Little Light of Mine” (a pop version, certainly not the best combined version, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzyBvMuccyw).

She’s been a significant influence on me since my teens. My favorite was perhaps her rendition of “Midnight Special” that left you feeling like were really sitting there in a Mississippi jail cell listening to the sound from distant tracks. I finally met her about eight years ago; it felt like being in the presence of a saint.

Some of her last recordings are signing “This Little Light of Mine” at http://www.bethabe.org/odetta1.mpg and “House of the Rising Sun” at http://www.bethabe.org/odetta2.mpg in 2008 at the Music has Power Awards. Even though her body and voice were weakened by cancer, you can still feel the influence she has over the audience.

When she died, I posted a short message on my blog titled “May we know this together” http://novaktony.wordpress.com/2008/12/07/odetta-may-we-know-that-together/. I hope that powerful language like the passage she uses here may continue to influence my writing. This concert is available on Folkalley includes a version of “Goodnight Irene” at http://www.folkalley.com/music/livefrom/odetta/ with Tom Paxton and Louden Wainwritght III which of course has personal significance to the Novaks (my mother’s name; she died at a young age in 1972). In this version, she even pokes fun at football.