15/02/2013 The Review Show

Monday. Have a good weekend. A journey through five centuries in

Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell's epic story turns into cinema. Why do we

keep making the same mistakes over and over. Robert Lepage's new work

sends a troop of actors up and under, forward and back, round and

round. The life of Britten turned around again, this time with the

manner of his death turned again. The The Sound and the Fury: A

Century of Music brings music into the 20th sent treatment

rulebook was torn up, let's make a noise nobody like. In the

bicentinary celebrations who gets the panel's vote, Wagner or Verdi.

Tonight I'm joined by the classical music critic of the Observer, Fiona

Maddocks, Toby Spence and Mark Ravenhill. You can join in the

conversation on Twitter. Cloud Atlas was David Mitchell's booker

shortlisted epic that tells six stories, from a remote 19th century

South Pacific island to a post apocalyptic future. Not an easy

sell to Warner Brothers, but three directors imagined the narrative as

one continuous thread. The film's six stories span different genres

and periods. Unlike the book where each story is begun and resolved

separately, the film weaves all the Strands together. Frequently

jumping back and forth between narratives as key documents are

passed from one story to inspire and pave the way for the next.

What are you reading? Old letters. Why do you keep reading them?

don't know, trying to understand why we keep making the same

mistakes. Tom Hanks and Halle Berry are part of a stellar international

cast. All of whom take on different roles across the six stories, a

device designed to show how the same souls are reincarnated into

different lives. Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others.

Past, and present. By each crime and every kindness, we birth our

future. The film's critical reception has so far been decidedly

mixed. It got no Oscar nomination, but topped the box-office chart in

Russia and China, after a parallel release with Skyfall. But how is it

going to play in the author's home country.

Even just seeing that again you realise how much is measured into

this film. -- meshed noo intoed film. You can say at least the

Wachowski did the Matrix, so that helped. I watched this film again

this morning, I had a hoot. It is so silly n a really joyful way. To

see that cast keep on popping up with prosthetics and wigs and

putting on all these voices and jumping between the different

worlds. I thought it was a great, fantastic romp.

Did it make any sense, Fiona? don't think sense comes into it. No,

it was mad, it had all the stories, six stories that chopped up in

every which way, like a Kaleidoscope. There were moments

when you wanted to tear your hair off because it was too much, but it

was also very funny at times. whole idea, as you run through six

genres making this, every single story has a completely different

look and feel? It is a beautifully textured film. All of these six

streams of narrative that run through it are all given or

presented in a way that matches the genre of the country it comes from.

I felt that it was like a patchwork quilt. Did you find you had an

emotional engagment with each story or not? Only a few of them. The

ones that I engaged with were the English stories, really, the Jim

Broadbent ones. They felt very foreign. They were meant to, I

think. I worried was I just rooting for the home team. I think because

you have to play these different characters, it is actually very

theatrical. You have to find a theatrical way of playing it. I

think Jim Broadbent and others had theatre experience, they were able

to put on the wigs and things and find the emotional line. I thought

more film-based actors like Tom Hanks and Halle Berry, struggled,

they looked uneasy. You were conscious of the amount of make up?

Hugh Grant especially. He was unrecoginsable. I was absorbed, we

will show another clip in a moment, working out who was who in their

different guises. Let's have a look at the characters in action against

Tom Tykwer composed the music for Cloud Atlas Sextet. What did you

make of it? The music worked for me. Did you see the film Perfume Skup

where the music ran the whole way through, it was there as the sense

of smell, the colour of the smell, he got the Berlin Philharmonic to

play the score for that film. I think the music was as important in

this film as well. It was restrained unlike one of those

blockbusters, it didn't tell you how to think and feel t hung back

nicely. The real coherence of the film was the music. Because just as

you were thinking visually that you had gone to our 14th film of the

day, and you were about to be completely confused, the music

actually held it from scene-to- scene, because the music remained a

constant. That whole story of Robert Frobisher? That is that

beautiful moment in for once, where the music to transcend all music is,

in fact, very beautiful music. still couldn't, I had a great time,

I still couldn't really work it out. The film seemed to want to be

telling me something, I really couldn't figure out quite what that

was. Something to do with the interconnectedness of all things.

Then it seemed to say sometimes we are interconnected because of love,

and sometimes it seemed to say because of the choice we make. It

seemed to have about 15 different thesis about the interconnectedness

of it. Then, of course, there was particularly the Korean, the post-

apocalyptic, you had this amazing Chinese star in it called Martin

Bayfiled, perhaps that why it has Duna bay, she was supposed to be

the autonomon, but she was great? Her performance was so wonderful.

Even though the film slows down at the end. She starts as an android

figure, and these enormous eyes fill up with tears, and you feel

amazing about someone you had no sense of until that moment. Who is

the film aimed at? In some ways it is a teenage film, in some ways it

has a lot in common with the graphic novel. Some of the

storylines are adult about ageing. I enjoyed the old aged caper movie

that Broadbent broad found himself in. It is not a film for the Scots.

How did you feel about that representation, I thought not

minutes Mary pop pin's cock niece had a people been so caricatured in

a film. Yes. Who do you think it is for. Is it an action movie, a bit

of this and that. That is where it is so different from the novel in

way. The idea of humanity and links between the past, present and

future? The thing with the Wachowskis, their films feel like

an indulgence for themselves, they make those films for themselves and

not to appeal to anything other than aesthetic. They trust that.

is not high-brow or low-brow it is no-brow, whatever that means F you

want philosophy, it is the wrong film, if you want enjoyment, it is

great money. You want enjoyment and have two-and-a-half hours to spare,

Cloud Atlas opens next Friday. Expectations are always high when

Robert Lepage mounts a new work, Playing Cards 1: Spades is one of

four productions around a deck of cards. Central to the idea is the

idea of a spherical rather than square performance. A 360 degree

performance. French Canadian Robert Lepage has gained the reputation as

one of theatre's bolder innovators, he has created opera, drama, circus,

and film. Now he's giving audiences at the round house in London, a 360

degree experience -- The Roundhouse in London, a 306 degree experience.

It is set in 2003, as America invades Iraq.

A disparate group of soldiers, gambling addicts, show girls and

hotel workers have gathered in the gambling Mecca. Their stories,

performed in a variety of languages explores everything from sex and

As ever, with a Robert Lepage show, Spades fuses visually spectacular

stages, with thought-provoking themes. But in trying to tackle the

war on terror, has Lepage played an ace?

I couldn't work out whether Robert Lepage was more interested in the

story that the troop indeed workshoped and put together, or the

staging? Yeah, he's so keyed into the technical aspect of what he

does. You have worked with him a lot? I have worked with him three

times. It is funny watching him direct in the studio. He's not very

engaged with the text, or prescriptive with how to present it.

But when it comes to, the technical rehearsals on the stage. He's so

engaged, moving things around, bringing things in at very precise

speeds. I saw that in this show. Did you find that was taking your

attention too much? No, not at all. I was looking for it, I'm

fascinated by his precision. Like Cloud Atlas, he has all these

stories and people colliding, it is the same length of time, but it is

on stage as opposed to a vast movie set. Did you like the way that he

used Las Vegas as, that have the anchor for everything going on?

don't think I particularly liked or disliked it. I think the strange

thing about the whole experience was that I found it engaging, I

found it absorbing while I was sitting there, but talk about

deserts and oasis, for me it was a mirage. The further I have got from

it a week on, I can't remember what I was engaged with. He does like to

tick off the themes, so if somebody says earlier on I'm in palliative

care, someone else says string theory, we find out there is a

simulation for the Iraq War happening just outside Las Vegas.

He's a manage buy pie, but -- magpie, but you want him to dig

deeper. It was good given we were in Vegas and it was good on the

slow ache of addiction. The sense of being addicted to gambling that

earned its place. It was good on immigration and the Latino workers.

There again with the beating heart I thought were the back workers.

The reason I said about Las Vegas, it is the one place where nobody

comes from. Everybody comes into Las Vegas, which is of itself a

weird world. I wondered if he started with the idea of the town

in the desert where the elite forces actually trained. That was

actually quite a good idea for a play in itself. That is great image,

we sort of follow this young soldier through to a sticky end.

There is great leaps in his journey that aren't quite explored. He has

to make many explicit and on the nose statements about the Iraq War,

that don't feel earned, there is a much more gradual exploration of

things like addiction. We got a hint at the beginning of what was

in the centre of the story, without it being spelt out. It was done in

mime. There was a wonderful set piece for the gambling, which was

almost mesmeric, when all the different four sides, each with a

gambling table came up. It was choreographed like a dance. It was

equisite, and the centre piece of the whole evening for me. Along

with the watering hole scene, we saw that clip there of them coming

to the pool. A lot of the characters come to the pool like a

watering hole in Africa, that is different animal, and then leave it

and more come. You can't help being swept along by the technical skill

of T I assumed there was a false floor, all the cast, there was six

playing multiple character, were in this thing three metres tall, there

was a series of tunnels underneath. On a technical level, the magic box

rolls along fantastic. It was like you were having this swan on the

water and paddling furiously underneath. I want to see the

paddling, it was almost like a mirror image, and as part of the

audience you would have liked half of you sitting. I would have paid

to come back and watch the other side of it. It was a mixed trick,

the staging and technical side of it was as much as the performance

you were saying. You could enjoy it while you were there. Some bits

were so clunky and the characters so unlovable. It was hard to know

what you were responding to. There was one so laughable, the bit about

the woman with the early menopause, you would have thought she had

every terminal illness in the book. It is a wonder there are women her

age walking around in the street. It was very heavy-handed. He's not

very good at digging deep, either on a theme or character. I think it

is part of the appeal, in a way, to his international audiences, is

there are these very accessible spectacles. They are only one step

of sophistication away from that themselves. You were talking about

themes, this is to be an Eight Great Technologies-to-ten year

project using the deck of cards. Hearts are to be superstition and

magic, diamonds, business, trade and jewellery, clubs, working-class

uprisings. All to be in the 360 degree. That is bettering a feat

technically than this is going to be, he's going to have to hold

pretty big stories together. don't think I will be rushing back

to them. This was so much faster moving than the operas that one has

seen him do. And I think that's why I was happy with it. I didn't mind

the two-and-a-half hour length that a lot of people seemed to find very

difficult. Would you be back for the other three suits? I think I

would, I'm interested enough to see, but speculatively. I'm not drawn

back there. I don't feel like I have to go. Would you go back?

would go every time to enjoy the box of tricks. I'm unsatisfied, but

I guess after the other three I would be dig a bit deeper. Give

half the number of stories. Playing Cards 1: Spades runs at the

Roundhouse in London until March 2nd. This year is the centinary of

the birth of Benjamin Britten, it is being marked with performances

an the world and a new biography by Paul Kildea. Recent discussion

about the composer has tended to concentrate on his sexuality, and

Kildea seeks to score with the instantly disputed assertion that

syphilis played part in Brynhildr's death. More interesting is the awe

-- Britain as death. Brittan was born in 1913 by the sea.

The son of a dentist and amateur musician. He began writing music as

a child. And went on to become one of the greatest British composers

of the 20th century. The Suffolk coast would play a significant part

in his life and music. The sea and the environment pervading his

compositions. I was always felt I wanted to live by the sea. I have

tried living away from the sea, something has gone slightly wrong,

I always felt. Much has been written about Britten

in the past, but a new autobiography by Paul Kildea seeks

to set him out in his original context. The songs that he wrote

and his operas, the or kestral song cycles, displayed his real disquiet

with human behaviour and themes of violence and betrayal, which he saw

as peculiarly, not necessarily correctly, a 20th century

phenomenon. The book has initiated a flurry of debate about Britten's

death, Kildea saying it was due to a sexually transmitted disease, a

claim strongly refuted by Britten's own doctors. But this revelation is

part of a larger excavation of Britain's sexuality, and its effect

on his -- Britten's sexuality and its effect on his music. He felt

uncomfortable being a gay man in a straight society. He felt very

uncomfortable being a conscientious objector in a country at war. When

he found himself more drawn to a Suffolk country lifestyle than

anything London could offer. By that stage the behaviour was set

and remained with him for life. Britten is the third-most performed

opera composer of the 20th century. With the Turn of the Screw, and

others still much add tired mired. -- admired.

Should Britain or any composer be assessed in terms of their personal

life. Could this year-long glut of Britten leave us with indigestion.

It has been such a contrast, this book is incredibly scholarly, I

think ref latery just about Britten, then it -- revelations about just

Britten, and then it is like the tab Building Society revelations

and it is case of who cares -- tabloid revelations, and it is case

of who cares? There is a lot of people asking this question maybe a

decade ago, is it possible Britten had syphilis, adding on but who

cares. It is enough that he died, frankly, and left a huge amount of

work. The book is very solid, it is a synoptic view of the letters, the

diaries, the many publications that exist on Britten. It has everything

you need, and it has five pages, I actually counted them, of which

only half the pages are on the subject of syphilis. This is the

only thing everybody is talking about. What did you find the most

revalatory about Britten? It wasn't that, it was familiar to me but

well ordered, which I found useful. I found Paul Kildea's exploration

of the relationship between Britten and peers interesting, it was

something I hadn't particularly thought about, how that divided

into Britten being in Suffolk, writing, not wanting the flesh pots

of London, which apparent low Piers slightly tended toward. He was more

of a sypher in this. What is incredible is how little time they

spent together. He was touring so much, the number of nights they

spent together was pretty limited. That is a central problem for this

book for the biographer. There is another one that is very detailed

and that covered all the ground. This is a well-written book, it is

slightly more conversational than the Carpenter. That is very

readable but this moves along easily and pans out to the social

situation, and manages to be personal, without doing the

annoying thing of "that morning he must have felt", the guessing thing

that biographers do. We haven't discovered anything so big since

Carpenter to justify a new biography. The publisher and that

have had to focus on the syphilis issue to give it a novelty value. I

like the way the author can say such and such is a terrific piece.

I like his voice and he's a great writer. It is like Robert Hughes,

that very high-handed evaluation of a worker of art. It is certainly a

very confident work. It is a gritty read, I find. There is a whole

central section, which I found the most fascinating n a way it says

little, it is really about the whole passism, it is the whole con

shenous object -- conscientious objecter subject. I think he was

niave and thought it was enough to be a composer but I don't want to

go to war. But to accept a commission from jap nan in 1940?

doesn't come -- Japan in 1940? Doesn't come out well in that

respect. He himself said he was a child in an adult's body. His

ability to think things through. Whether that was an excuse Oregan

winly who he was. This does, it is not as developed as the political

philosophy, that comes out more in this book than the other one. He

did have this very imlimited, but very -- very limited but passionate

belief in passiveism, that it was an essential part of human life,

even when it was unIsrael isic. goes to Belsen in the months after

the war, he plays for the survivors at Belsen, meanwhile there is

bodies there, there is dreadful disease, soldiers all about. And it

comes back that maybe he absorbed the war. Kildea was saying it seems

like Britain was saying that's what happens when you get war? I think

it is what you say and do. He was unable to speak about that Belsen

experience until late in his life, and only it a few close friend. He

was the sort of person who couldn't speak about stuff but put it into

the work. I think the work that's there is a lot of it is "post-

Belsen" music. What do you think about that music? There is a

definite change, the Holy Sonnets, there is a new gravitas, and

poignancy, and a new seings relation to the depth of the texts

he was choosing -- a new relation sensation of the depth of the texts

he was choosing. What do you like? It was the poetry and the way it

feeds into his music and inform as great depth of music. Maybe on the

surface he seemed withdrawn from world affairs, and that the world

affairs don't really touch his music. Actually, I think, the

author of this book is very, very good at putting Britten into the

context of the world. Up like any other book. Which is what he set

out to do. To look at the 20th century? That is what I find quite

awkward. He's writing it quite a lot as an outsider. Decribing an

era that a lot of people still remember. He's Australian, and you

get slightly uncomfortable senses of him constructing what it must

have been like. For you, Britten what does he represent for you?

Britten? Yes. I have lived with him all my life, in a sense, I wouldn't

be doing what I do if it weren't for Britten, in fact. In what way?

I heard Serenade for Ten Horn and Strings, which Toby sings often

enough, when I was very young. I liked the relationship between the

music and the poetry and the wildness of it. I wrote something

about it t and here I am now. That is a short version. It doesn't mean

I'm a worshipper. I have areas I really don't get on with, and I

have areas that I think are absolutely marvellous, particularly

the chamber music. I came to it a lot later in life, to me that is a

profoundly queer artist. Pre-gay, definitely. I think the tension

between, some people say the music is a little bit polished and

perfect and organised. But I think that's to ignore the tension

between the real darkness and corruption of innocence, supression

of sexuality that is always underlying that slightly perfect

music in places. And his rage. is a queer sensibility. If Benjamin

Britten invented modern British music, he was riding on a wave

generated by European and American proposers, The Sound and the Fury:

A Century of Music began this week on BBC Four. Based on the book The

Rest is Noise, by Alex Ross, it charts the rise of modernism and

the way the 20th century changed the sound of music. What drove

composers to tear up the classical rulebook and embrace the avant-

garde. Modernism ruled over the first half of the 20th century, and

didn't stop at painting or literature. Composers of the period

were inspired by the ideology. was like music was in black and

white, music like culture and civilisation in the west cannot

stand still. The music was torn up, let's make a noise that nobody

likes. If if the awence applaud your work, you had failed as a

composer. The series takes as its starting point, Richard straws's

brave opera Salome. It is the start of a music revolution. Debussi it

the start of modern music S he's very ambitious, he said I must

invent music worthy of the motorcar and planes and the Eiffel Tower.

George Benjamin is one of many contemporary composers, including

Philip Glass and John Adams. The Wrecking Ball, the subtitle of

the first episode was shone shone. After his string -- Schoenberg.

After his performance in 1908, one critic shouted "stop it, enough".

have never found a way into loving it. I find it centrally very

punishing to my ear. But account narrative format of the series

shatter the mystique that surrounds 20th century music and the avant-

garde. Toby, is this the way to put modern

music in front of everybody, to a television audience? It is

certainly a way. It worked for me. The footage, the archive material

is just great. And the people that they have gone to, to interview, to

bring the music to life, it is just an A-list cast. It is fantastic.

loved hearing John Adams saying this did not work for me, it was

unemotional, you think of John Adams as being this supreme mix of

the modern and tonal as well? love the irreverence and the

honesty that comes out of people. What due make of it? I wish it had

been 12 programme, there was so many contributers that only managed

12 seconds and what a cast list, the archive material is excellent.

The narration simplified a very complicated history of music in the

20th century. Alex Ross was very much a central part of this as well.

There is quite a lot of Alex Ross in it? He's one of the experts, as

it were. I felt there was so many, how marvellous to have Schoenberg's

daughter sitting there and saying the problem with music is people

always want it to be old, they don't like the new in music,

against all other art forms people hate the new, or are resistant to

it. Did it do it for you? somebody gave me Alex Ross's book

as a birthday present I thought it was fantastic. I thought it was a

real bastardisation of the book. don't think it was the book. It

didn't seem like that at all. book can take anybody who is keen

reader through the 20th century and excite us about the music. This

didn't know where to start. First of all it told us Salome started

everything, and then it flicked back and it is then no, we have it

wrong, Schoenberg. Where are we starting, you are telling us there

is a massive rupture and everything changes and three different places

dotted about. Where it was best was at the micro. One phrase of

Schoenberg, a word setting, and the use of dissonance, and focusing

closely on things like that. I thought the more it tried to be big,

the more it was embarrassing. There was one moment we were told, the

20th century was so momentous, we had some communist, we had lit

letter hall lueting and -- saluting and the atom bomb. It had a central

problem that said everything changed one day, that is clearly

nonsense. It is like buses, you wait for one and two come along.

This is on BBC Four, on BBC Two on Saturday night is Howard Goodall's?

That is the one to watch. No. like The Good Father good because

it is authored, it is honest. It doesn't say it is "it" story, he

says it is "my" story, he starts and you it is like the embarrassing

teacher saying music is fun. And then with great intelligence and

parallels he takes us through the history of music. The story of

music, successive waves of discoveries, breakthroughs and

invention is an on going process. The next great leap forward may

take place in a back street in Beijing or in a pub in South

Shields. # Can't read my

# no he can't read my # Poker face

Why have you got a problem with that? I just don't like the

impolicity of it. It just feels wrong to me. I think that what --

simplicity of it, it just feels wrong to me. It is trying to boil

it down to component parts, and what he misses is the mystery, the

composures like Bach, Mozart and Britten, they wrote bad pieces and

didn't know why. How Goodall is saying this is the mechanics of

music, it is too simple. I don't think that is what he's doing at

all. For one thing, he's such a versatile musician that he can show

you really difficult concepts that I think aren't easy to talk about

on television, but things like the circle of fifths, which is really

hard Baroque music, while we recognise what is going on. He can

sit there and demonstrate, and also, really, if there is somebody on the

television playing something in four different keys, I'm

entertained. He has more time and more episodes. He is showing the

keyboards and explaining how things work in a musical way. He's able to

present a bit of history. He just engaging me as a person. I couldn't

quite, although the book is so clearly written by Alex Ross, I

couldn't work out who this TV series was authored by. There was

the interviews and that. I just felt a bit floaty as though I

didn't know who was telling me the story. You preferred Howard Goodall

taking you through it. No. He gets it. No. He does get it from me.

second episode of The Sound and the Fury: A Century of Music is on BBC

Four on Tuesday. The next installment of Howard Goodall's

Story of Music is on BBC Two tomorrow night. Britten is not the

only composer being celebrated, it is the bicentinary of Richard

Wagner and Giuseppe Verdi in the opera world. Despite being born

just a few months apart in 1813, Wagner and Verdi found themselves

polar opposites on their outlook of art and life, and left us two very

different catalogues of work. Verdi's been seen as an operatic

therapist, who wanted to provide comfort for the human spirit. A

tolerant man, he had a grudging admiration for his German

contemporary. Wagner, on the other hand, did not grant the Italian the

same level of respect. He presented his Titanic works to the world,

with a messianic zeal, and believed his music might even drive men mad.

But Wagner could do sublime love And Verdi, in turn, didn't shy away

from marshall bomb bast. Both men had an undeniably huge

impact on the history of music. Does either of them deserve the

title of the Greatest Opera Composer of All Time.

So, Fiona, maybe it is impossible for me to ask you this,ly ask any

way. If you had to plump -- I will ask it any way, if you had to plump,

Verdi or Wagner? Wagner, because he's a monster who wants to do

something big and a makes you struggle. Is it because it has an

emotional punch? Yes, but you don't get it immediately Verdi is a

genius, without question. We know the tunes? It appeals to you.

have to have a lot of hours for Wagner? I don't have a lot of hours,

but I have sat in a lot of Opera Houses and listened to a lot of

Wagner. I never want to be anywhere else, at the end of a Ring Cycle

I'm ready to start again. Mad, I know. Wagner or Verdi I'm waiting

for the Wagner conversion moment, I have worked on a couple of Verdi

operas, at first you hear the ice- cream advert, the more you dig into

it, the more I realised the depth of psychology and emotion and

complexity about this stuff. I think he's the greatest musical

dramatist, he's up there with Shakespeare as a creator of theatre,

so I find Wagner still boring. this is a difficult one for you?

Not so difficult. Luckily we don't really have to make the choice. We

do have both. So they are both magnificent, I'm so glad we have

both. Your favourite roles within them? I can't do Verdi and I can do

Wagner. It would have to be Wagner for me. Why would you feel you

couldn't do Verdi? Because I sound like a tourist when I'm singing in

Italian, I sound like "can I have a pizza please". Verdi would find

that OK, he was hum moreous? Other people don't -- Humourous? Other

people don't, it is not authentic. If I was to ask who is your

favourite, who would you choose in the world? I would choose

Montiverdi, or Albanberg, they wrote fewer operas than Wagner and

Verdi, but they are the ones. Chiekofs ski. I would I --

ycovski. Wagner. That is to my chests, Fiona Maddocks, Gianluca

Grava and Toby Spence, more details about tonight's items are on the

website. Next year I'm here with an Oscar special discussing

nominations of the glam mouse award ceremonies. Now we have Jamie

McDermott of the Irrepressible, accompanied by Connor Mitchell with

one of Benjamin Britten's cabaret songs.

A day late for Valentine's. # Some say love is a little boy

# Some say it is a bird # Some say it makes the world go

round # Some say that's absurd

# But when I ask the man next door # Who looked as if he knew

# His wife was very cross indeed # And said that wouldn't do

# Does it look like a pair of pyjamas

# Or the ham in the temperance hotel

# Tell me the truth about love # Does its oder remind one of Lamas

# Or has it a comforting smile # Tell me the truth about love

# Is it prickley to touch # As the hedges

# And soft as an eiderdown fluff # Is it soft and smooth at the

edges # Tell me the truth about love

# You are feel -- your feelings when you meet it

# I'm told you can forget # I sought it since I was a child

# But I haven't found it yet # I'm getting on for 35

# But still I do not know # What kind of creature it can be

# That bothers people so # When it comes

# Will it come without warning # Just as I'm picking my nose

# Oh tell me the truth about love # Will it knock

# On my door # In the morning

# Oh step on the bus on my toes # Or tell me the truth about love

# Will it come like a change in the weather

# Will its greeting be courteous # Or bluff