A Very Wibbly News Flash
Early in 2006, Rachel Tanenhaus made an online journal post titled, "A Very Wibbly News Flash". That post was brief, but emphatic:
CUTE PEOPLE ARE CUTE
WIBBLE WIBBLE WIBBLE
KTHXBYE
When I first read this post, a commenter had noted that it was almost a haiku, and had edited it to produce the desired syllable count and nature reference. I, however, preferred the original post to those edited versions. For one thing, utterances in English tend to have fewer syllables than in Japanese, so 17 syllables in English is actually quite verbose, compared to a classical Japanese haiku. For another thing, any attempt to wedge a "spring brook" or the like into Rachel's carefully worded message would only dull its effect. "WIBBLE WIBBLE WIBBLE" is a potent distillation of joy and eagerness, while perhaps nothing expresses the urgency of the moment better than "KTHXBYE".
So, adding a couple of extra words to Rachel's post ruins the whole thing, but stretching out those 14 syllables into a two-and-a-half-minute song? That's brilliant. Or silly. I forget which. This was in fact my first successful foray into composing for voice. Once upon a time, I was as besotted with Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and Poe's "The Bells" as any sullen, pretentious teenager, but my efforts at setting those poems were thwarted by my then-inept compositional hand, and their prodigious length. "Prufrock" goes on for, what, three pages? Way too long for me. A not-quite-haiku is much more suited to my attention span. I have since set a few longer poems, but nothing longer than a sonnet at this point.
Many thanks go to Rachel, who graciously gave me permission to set her post to music, even though she might not have known I was serious at the time.
A Very Wibbly News Flash also exists in a version for voice and string quartet.
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