Why I Pity the Woman Who Never Spills

I'm not sure there's a woman anywhere who hasn't experienced pressure to act, look, sound, and perform flawlessly, which is why Joan Wolf Prefontaine's poem is funny and tragic and triumphant all at the same time. It is fitting that women should sing this musical setting of her poem together, because we are both a cause of this pressure and a remedy for it.

Two experiences I had during the composition of this song underscored this truth for me. In one instance, a hostess publically chastised me because a single drop of red wine slid down the outside of my wine glass and onto her white kitchen tablecloth. In the other, my friend Victoria pointed to a particular dark stain on her car's ceiling and told me she loved it because she was almost certain it was hot chocolate.

Performance Note:

As singers become increasingly familiar with this song, they often start adding blues inflections to some of the A-naturals, either flattening the pitches so that they lie "in the cracks," or singing actual A-flats. This is especially true in passages which contains a little attitude, like "Levis and lips." I considered officially flattening some of those renegade A-naturals, but I decided not to because they aren't true A-flats; they are really "blues-inflected A-naturals."

So although choral singing usually involves making a choir’s vocal production as uniform as possible, this piece is not about conformity! I suggest leaning on some of those A-naturals with a little moxie, and letting the chips spills as they may.