aka Sonnet 135

Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy 'Will,'
And 'Will' to boot, and 'Will' in overplus;
More than enough am I that vex thee still,
To thy sweet will making addition thus.
Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious,
Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?
Shall will in others seem right gracious,
And in my will no fair acceptance shine?
The sea all water, yet receives rain still
And in abundance addeth to his store;
So thou, being rich in 'Will,' add to thy 'Will'
One will of mine, to make thy large 'Will' more.
Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill;
Think all but one, and me in that one 'Will.'

Anyone care to postulate what the Bard meant by "murderous shame?"

I think he meant this TOTALLY differently than the world has interpreted it - which is why I read it the way I did.

A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion;
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue, all 'hues' in his controlling,
Much steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created;
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
     But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,
     Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.

aka Shakespeare Sonnets 1-13

These Shakespeare sonnets belong together So I recorded them for you today Sir William lectures a young man about The virtues of storing his seed away  (I wrote that!)

     It is my belief through research and reading that William Shakespeare's sonnets were written to (or about) another "Will."

     This Will - as was pointed out by many - was most likely a young man he spent quite a bit of time with as Writer, Director, Owner and Operator of his own Acting troupe - a member of the cast used to portray the female characters.

     As such, Shakespeare would have known this other Will for many years and seen him grow from the age of 11-13 to perhaps 30 or older.

     THESE Sonnets - 1-13 - I theorize - were probably written after Shakespeare walked in on a younger Will while he was getting busy with himself. MORE likely (again - just an educated guess) - young Will was ALWAYS sneaking off to take care of some pressing business, and this motivated Shakespeare to give him "the talk."

     Many an article I read pointed out how these sonnets are completely in the order Shakespeare intended them to be placed, and they put a lot of weight on the fact that certain ones were given certain numbers for a reason. I suggest that the reason there are 13 of these - and the reason they are at the front of all the sonnets, is that the age of 13 is typically the age of puberty. Since ALL the sonnets are about sex and beauty, and love (and hate) - it seems only logical to put the ones about masturbation at the beginning. But - that's just me thinking - not trying to sound scholarly at all.

_______________

edit 9/18/2011 --> I've done a lot of research since RECording these sonnets and have changed my mind about who the voice of elder poet is for these 13 sonnets. It's part of a screenplay I'm working on and although I haven't changed my interpretation at all I have placed them into an interesting scene that involves Queen Elizabeth - but most of you will have to see the movie to know what I'm taking about - maybe in about 8 or 10 years?

________________________

     To me - this is Shapespear's version of "the talk." And the writers of the masturbation (sex talk) scene from Weeds thought they were being original?

     There is NO denying that THIS grouping of Sonnets is ABSOLUTELY about the "evils" of masturbation.

     I hope you enjoy this reading!

multiple takes - multiple voices

I stumbled today (for the first time ever) on my muse for imitating someone, so I decided to RECord it - this is very boring and its a bad imitation that I'm still working on.

saw the rewrite 20 minutes after I recorded my last version, so I went back and did it agan - by heart!

old and young

multiple takes - the very last one actually fits the video without editing

RECORD #600  Yay!!!!

Would someone would like to add sound effects and music or turn this into a video?  It's a lot longer than I thought  I forgot that it is DOUBLE SPACED pages that you count for time in a script.  This probably should be broken down into two acts.

I hope I made this entertaining enough!  To me, the story already is entertaining on its own.  Personally, I would love to hear Joe read as Lucius and others read the other parts, but y'all weren't in my RECording studio, so I did all the parts on my own.  Don't ask me to tell you where the accents are from - I don't know myself!

You can either listen to this without any visual aids, or d/l and unzip the script here:

http://www.hitrecord.org/records/367046 

This recording has come into my posession, and since it seemed related, I thought I would RECord it here. I should not reveal my source, but only say he goes by the code name "shallow esophagus."

a possile continuation of the Traffic Report?

Joe - This is a mystery caller conversational call in with room for you to fill in remarks. If it doesn't make you smile just a little then I failed at what I was trying to do. Of course, I blame KREC for wrecking my comedic sensibility too!

should I develop this story further?

William Shakespeare's Sonnets have been in public domain even before they were published in 1609 by someone else.

I made a few mistakes on this one, but I wanted to get this recorded in one reading without breaks.  I don't think I lost any of the meaning in my accidental remix of the bard.  These four sonnets are a series and belong together.  I have not yet discovered who is speaking to whom (in the real world), but the anguish and pain expressed at breaking up and possibly getting back together is so deep, that I was moved to do a voice over.

This is a poem by William Mickle (1735-1788) and it has nothing to do with anything other than my own research into a screenplay I am at the beginning of writing concerning Shakespeare's sonnets.  I thought maybe some of you here might also enjoy this poem, which is why I am RECording it here.  It is about the 1st Earl of Leicester, Robert Dudley (24 June 1532 – 4 September 1588) and concerns his alleged murder of his first wife.  You can read the entire poem here:

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/cumnor-hall/

by William Shakespeare.

To me, at least in the screenplay about the sonnets I am developing, these 4 sonnets are Christopher Marlowe telling William Shakespeare "goodbye" in a letter he writes on the eve of his assasination.

This is just to show the concept - JeffPeff would mix this oh so much better! The idea is to show the dichotomy between the "perceived" Prince Charming who wrote the letter and the "actual" Stalker who wrote it.

This is merely to give to all an idea where this is going - the final version wil be a boy's voice reading this part instead of mine.

this was my 6th take - is this what you had in mind Diane? Let me know how you would like it improved or changed - okay?

I like the way Psalmist sang the song, but I wanted to add my own flair of dramatics to this tale of The Rebellion of the Cookies. Could someone draw a troop of cookies in arms marching? Or a battle scene like the one described in the poem - with Santa running for his sleigh and both him and the reindeer in bullet-proof vests?

Narrator and Azure...........todd68976

Bobby................................Logan

Kate..................................Sabine

sounds pretty cool through headphones!

In which Azure's voice gets pitched up.

Narrator and Azure...........todd68976

Bobby................................Logan

Kate..................................Sabine

I realized after I RECorded the last one that I was being less honest in my interpretation than I meant because I was focusing too much on the accent. This reading is closer to how I think the sonnet is meant to be read.

The issue here is that a loved one is about to leave to run off with someone else that he sees as more closely matching his philosophical outlook (true minds). The"remover"is the third person mentioned in the sonnet. "Bear it Out" is a colloquialism - which means the same thing as "stick to it." The poet is giving the loved one a piece of his mind and a lecture about how the loved one is supposed to act - which is counter to the way he is acting. Lots of sarcasm in this that I left out of my last reading.

Not the same interpretation most have - but it's mine.

More interesting things about this sonnet...

The word "marriage" in the first line is tied inextircably to the word "impediments." Impediments were objections to a marriage that were allowed to be brought up during the standard three postings of the bans in public. Incidentally, Shakespeare himself was married after the posting of only one ban - but then again, his fiance was already pregnant!

"alters" comes up three times in this sonnet. Typical to Shakespeare's writing, there is a double meaning. Not only is the main meaning, "changes", intended, but there is the added meaning of the place where the vicar would issue the marriage vows or before which a couple being married would kneel - the alter. It's not an open meaning, but I think it is intentional nonetheless since Shakespeare opens with the word "marriage." I am prety sure he wishes the reader to have that image come up in his or her mind.

The LOVE Shakespeare is describing is that sometimes termed, "Agape" love - a true love which is not to be confused with that Love a married couple share - or even the love a mother has for her child. Another term for this is Brotherly Love, and still another way of putting it is that Love God has for all his children. It is sometimes called unconditional love, and this is the place where the poet in this sonnets finds himself at odds. He KNOWS his love for the person being addressed in this sonnet is unconditional, yet is trying to convince him to not go off with someone else but stay with the Poet. How can this be unconditional? Well - it would take reading the rest of the sonnets to understand this point, so I'll just say that The Poet's love in the sonnets is actually a jealous sort of love.

Love is compared to the North Star in this sonnet. "Every wandering bark" is his term in this sonnet for all the ships which sail the ocean and the people on board them. The north star is the only star that is "FIX-ED" and is used as guidance by taking measurement of it's height. Whe the poet says "Whose worth's unknown" he is saying the loved one doesn't understand the value of Love though he sees it and measures it every day - pretty deep stuff, huh?

Not to mention the fact that by bringing up ships, he is in turn bringing u the Sea - and by bringing up the sea, he is calling to mind that vast ocean of Love that is all around each and every one of us. But since I mentioned it, I'll also say that by doiing this Shakespeare is reminding the person he is addressing in this sonet of just how VAST that love is - how indescribably HUGE his love is.

Also, the poet i addressing a 'specific' "wandering bark" in this sonnet. He is comparing a ship that explores to a person that wants to explore - the person he is addressing. In other words, the poet is saying to the object of his affection that even as he explores new adventures and other options, the poet's love will remain steadfast.

"Love's not time's fool" is a way of saying that real love doesn't change with time - it is forever. Rosy lips and cheeks are merely words to describe a living and breathing human, which must - as we all must - eventually die (within time's bending sickle's compass - or it's sphere of influence - come). Even though we die, our true love lives on - and Shakespeare wrote several times in the sonnets that the purpose of the sonnets was to preserve "the youth's" beauty and his love for him - permenance through publication (just in case anyone wonders whether or not Shakespeare intended to have these published - he did).

Finally, the word "proved" in this does not have the meaning you are familiar with. What it meant back in Shakespeare's time, was "tested." There are a few more sonnets in the series where he uses this term, and it always means the same thing in each sonnet. Another word would be "challenged." So in the couplet of the sonnet, Shakespeare is saying that "If anyone claims that what I have just said is wrong, then it would be like they were saying that I never wrote anything, or that no man ever loved (another person)." So to one possible chalenge, Shakespeare pre-emptively issues two counter arguments.

I only memorized this sonnet because I am writing a choral arrangement to it - I'm close to finished, and I'll RECord it soon!

SONNET 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come: Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom.    If this be error and upon me proved,    I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

(Note: there are only 10 syllables per line with exceptions - which means that in the 5th line "fixed" is pronounced "fix-ed." The 6th and 8th lines (in order to match) are 11 syllables long and have soft, or feminine endings (which is "almost" like only having 10 syllables - Shakespeare did this often). In the 7th line "every" is "ev-ry" Finally, there are two options in the 12th line. Since "bears it out" would have been a commonly used colloquialism, it could have been pronounced, "bears 'tout." The other option is that the pronunciation of "even" is "e'en." The reason I propose two options even though I prefer the second for line 12 is due to iambic pentameter, which would allow for either change without affecting the underlying feet. In my choral arrangement that I will soon RECord I took the liberty of making line 8 10 syllables by dropping the "al" of "although" - it made more sense musically to do that than add in an 8th note that wouldn't really be heard anyway. I'm not done yet, so I might add it back in before I RECord it - just to remain true to the original.)

Record number 1000!

(I applied a cheap noise reduction to this to eliminate the ambient noise, which is why you hear the electronic sounds.)

Lawrie, if you want to hear something different from me, please let me know what by way of direction.

I read this along with Joe speaking in my ear, so it should match pretty closely.

I've collected the VO stems of the only 5 guys who have contributed updated stems in time to Joe's reading so far - including Joe - and placed them into a spatially distributed mix. The only thing I have done with this is adjust the basic levels to put everyone at about the same volume, and given them specific places on the stage at the front of the house - two voices are split far left and right, two voices are split half-left and half-right, and Joe is in the center.

This needs more guys. The ratio currently looks like 4:1, Women to Men. For a more even mix, more guys need to contribute unprocessed stems of them reading at Joe's pace.

All the female stems I've heard so far are outstanding - I just didn't include them in this mix because I only did this mix as a call to the guys to contribute.

sync up the beginning and the rest will follow - this is as close as I've been able to come to matching Joe and it is almost a perfect match other than in a few minor places for a millisecond, give or take.

I started this on Thursday, January 12, 2012 and spent all my waking hours designing, downloading, cutting, pasting, re-cutting, re-pasting, moving, re-normalizing, and basically everything conceivable in sound editing, to produce this 3-minute vocal mix.

It contains, as the title indicates, 70 tracks (2 are not used in this, but if I can figure out how to make a surround sound recording, one of them wil be - watch for that - coming soon - hopefully!).

These tracks are comprised of 41 hitREcorders who did a damn good job of trying to match Joe's voice-over track. What they didn't achieve, I did my best to compensate for through the "magic" of mixing. I think I came pretty darn close!

5 of the male vocals were pitched up and down to create 10 additional tracks. 5 of the tracks in this mix are dedicated to a "top" channel - which would be really cool at a live presentation of this sound track if the audio engineer figured out how to make it work in a surround sound "plus" format. It is included in this in normal stereo

Three hitRECorders RECorded their kids (DianeFT, Sabine, and Jess Pillmore - their kids are Josh, Julia, Arwen, Logan, and Griffin) and their voices make up an additional 8 tracks. One of the tracks is my extra recording, which I used sparingly throughout. That accounts for most of the tracks - I lost count somewhere along the way.

One final track I'll mention is a public domain playground recording:

Public domain Douzen Kids on a Playground Artist: Stephan

http://www.pdsounds.org/sounds/douzen_kids_on_playground

This was definitely time consuming and tedius work, but I think the results were worth the effort.

I hope you do too!

-Todd

I am not sure if this is surround sound since I have no way to listen - would someone please let me know if this comes out as surround sound?

I have also just provided a zip of all the indvidual channels in case someone else wants to attempt to mix them into surround sound. It is here  (http://www.hitrecord.org/records/642249

Public domain Earthquake sound effects  http://www.mediacollege.com/downloads/sound-effects/disaster/

Public domain Douzen Kids on a Playground

Artist: Stephan

http://www.pdsounds.org/sounds/douzen_kids_on_playground

source:

page 156

The Fables of Aesop Ballantyne Press "now again edited and induced by Joseph Jacobs." LoNDON. Published by David Nutt in THE Strand, m.v.cccl.xxxix. (1889) http://www.archive.org/details/fablesofaesopasf02aesouoft

originally written by William Caxton in 1484

Thomas Nash wrote this in 1592/3 ot thereabouts (it wasn't published) for The Earl of Southhampton,  Henry Wriothesley, who was nineteen or twenty years old at the time. William Shakespeare also wrote for the same Earl at the same time, dedicating Venus and Adonis to him. This relationship of the two poems is what first attracted me to Nash's Dildo (to put it tongue-in-cheek - although that also has its own weird meaning now that I think about it when such a phrase is associated with a dildo - oh well).
Apparantly, these two long poems were written at the young Earl's personal request seeing as how they both seem to have the same general theme of passionate and mysterious sex. That Nash and Shakespeare were using the same patron at the same time kind of shows that Nash and Shakespeare probably knew each other pretty well.
It's in the public domain, and I got the text of the unpublished manuscript (it's actually two unpublished manuscripts written years after Nash wrote it - apparantly copied by fans of the poem for preservation - these original manuscripts are in the Bodleian Library and the Inner Temple) from a few different sources on the web. Its official title is The Choice of Valentines. Its subtitle is The Merry Ballad of Nash His Dildo. If you can't understand my reading (I only made a few minor errors, like saying 'stipes' instead of 'stripes,' and at one point in my reading chose to repeat a word for emphasis) and wish to find the text to read yourself, I'm sure you may do so by searching the internet using your favorite search engine.
I found the poem to be funny. That's why I decided to do a reading of it. Perhaps I'll do my own reading of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis at some point in the future, but I found this one to be a little more entertaining and enjoyable than that one. It was difficult to tell at times which of the characters was speaking in my almost nineteen-minutes reading, so I made an effort to be vague about that as I read it. In some cases, either of the main characters could have been saying the words, and they have a slightly different meaning if you choose to hear one or the other character as the speaker. I like this ambiguity, but at the same time wish Nash had been a little more clear.
I also found Nash's reference to Tamberlaine ('Tomerlin', as he wrote it) in his poem to be a reference to Christopher Marlowe. I think this reference has some intrigue which I plan to explore further.
I also found his reference to "dancing school" to be interesting. The term, "dancing," as I have learned, was a euphamism for sex in the 16th century. Seems it wasn't much different back then from what it is today.
Nash's use of "he" and "him" (and "her" and "she")throughout this poem does not always refer to a person - I thought I'd mention that just in case you get a little confused about the meaning of those particular pronouns.  Nash makes great use of other words such as 'spirit,' 'soul,' 'nectar,' 'mouth,' 'hill,' 'wheels,' and many others in this poem which are also not used with their surface meaning. Oh yeah, I should mention that "hackney" is a horse for rent. "Jade" also refers to a livery stable horse for hire.
I don't think there is much opportunity to remix this one, though you are welcome to if you wish. I suppose you could act it out - but if you did it would have to have an NC-17 rating - it would probably even get an "XXX" rating in the US, even though its literary value is without question. I suppose one could do an animation and apply symbolic representation of things, but I think that would detract, since the words already do that. Still, there is probably a way to remix this, and if you are encouraged by my reading to do so, I'll take it as the compliment it is!
I performed it merely for your entertainment, that's all. It's a very long poem, but no longer than any sitcom on TV today. My suggestion is you listen to this poem after you flip through the channels on TV and find nothing on the 600 or more channels you have available, since I'm almost certain (provided you are not a Nash Scholar) you've NEVER heard this poem before, and it is bound to just as good as a re-run of an older TV sitcom that you have seen already.