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 song together, because we are both a cause for this pressure and a remedy for it.  Two contrasting experiences I had while writing this song underscored this truth for me.  I was chastised by a hostess for dripping a single drop of red wine onto her kitchen tablecloth – while two weeks earlier my friend Victoria had remarked that she particularly loved the stain on her car's ceiling, because she was almost certain that it was hot chocolate.

Performance Note:

As singers become increasingly familiar with this song, they often begin 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 allowing your gals to lean on some of those A-naturals with a little moxie...and let the chips spills as they may.