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De-gendering lyrics
Oct. 28th, 2017 08:48 pmThere is a song I memorized in college because it resonated so much with me, and I've kind of adopted it as a private anthem sort of thing. 90% of it fits.
The 10% that doesn't is gendered: narrator is looking for a male companion. And I have been trying for a long time to figure out how to make it more pam-romantic. And I've figured some if it out but I'm stuck with one particular phrase: The song has a sort of nautical theme, and uses the phrase "little boy sailor", once in a more abstract sense and once as "and a man with the heart of a little boy sailor" And I mean, it's evocative if a certain ... adventurous personality, up for having Expeditions in a Winnie-the-pooh sense, and having fun in the moment. (The sorts of things that are classically encourages in boys and discouraged in girls.) Something "little kid sailor" scans but doesn't feel the same.
(For scanning purposes, "little" is fast, "boy" is longer -- for the musically inclined, it's sort of sixteenth-sixteenth-eighth, but faster; maybe triplet sixteenths with the last tied to the quarter? For the less musically inclined, kind of "coconut" but with nut drawn out, so coconuuuuuuut -- which means the substitution could be one syllable in place of little. I tried "playful", with play where little was and ful where boy was, pls-ay-ful sailor, but that felt weird too.)
Any suggestions?
The 10% that doesn't is gendered: narrator is looking for a male companion. And I have been trying for a long time to figure out how to make it more pam-romantic. And I've figured some if it out but I'm stuck with one particular phrase: The song has a sort of nautical theme, and uses the phrase "little boy sailor", once in a more abstract sense and once as "and a man with the heart of a little boy sailor" And I mean, it's evocative if a certain ... adventurous personality, up for having Expeditions in a Winnie-the-pooh sense, and having fun in the moment. (The sorts of things that are classically encourages in boys and discouraged in girls.) Something "little kid sailor" scans but doesn't feel the same.
(For scanning purposes, "little" is fast, "boy" is longer -- for the musically inclined, it's sort of sixteenth-sixteenth-eighth, but faster; maybe triplet sixteenths with the last tied to the quarter? For the less musically inclined, kind of "coconut" but with nut drawn out, so coconuuuuuuut -- which means the substitution could be one syllable in place of little. I tried "playful", with play where little was and ful where boy was, pls-ay-ful sailor, but that felt weird too.)
Any suggestions?