Why I Quit
Wrestling
Alligators
by Eastman Curlis
Haydn ‘^THE CREA TION’’
i
}
hr Randy Snyder
I was born into the attraction
business. My father bought a
small tourist attraction in Lake
Wales, Florida, near
Weohyakapka. Lake Wales is the
only town in Florida with a hill.
The attraction was named “The
Great Masterpiece” at my
grandmother’s last request —
bless her heart. But we soon had
to change the name to
“Masterpiece Gardens” because
people thought they were paying
a dollar-fifty to see some over
sized painting. Included in this
attraction business was a tribe of
Seminole Indians, which I’ll get
to in a minute. There was also
this hermit living down by the
lake who never told us his name ;
in fact, he didn’t believe in
names. He thought they summed
people up. I never knew what
happened to him, but with all the
tourists coming down and taking
pictures, he probably moved
further back into the woods. I just
know that “Hey You” was gone
one day.
It wasn’t long till my father
expanded his business by buying
a few parrots from Panama City,
and we were the first attraction
in the area to have parrots that
did tricks. Then other places like
Cypress Gardens went out and
bought a lot of birds that were
pre-trained. But before I got
involved with training our birds,
my father made me pull weeds.
This was the first job I ever had,
and I thought that if all work was
like that. I’d rather live with
“Hey You” the hermit.
I spent most of my time talking
to the tourists and soon
discovered they would believe
anything you told them. I
remember standing on the bridge
over Chip-Choo Creek, throwing
popcorn to the bluegills, when a
crowd of people came tramping
over the bridge and wanted to
know what I was doing.
“Feeding the piranhas,” I said.
The entire crowd, determined
to see the fish, pinned me against
the guard rail. My father finally
had to come down to rescue me.
He had a hard time convincing
them that I had innocently
misidentified the fish.
Needless to say, my father
wasn’t pleased with my weed
pulling progress and soon sent
me out in the swamp with a
machete and told me to cut some
nature trails. The mosquitoes
would suffocate you, and the
thousands I massacred with my
machete didn’t effectively alter
the total population, and I
decided to head for higher
ground, eventually taking retreat
in the Indian village on the edge
of the swamp. Every morning
thereafter my machete and I
would take the back way to their
village. I would spend much time
with the Indians — eating, oc
casionally camping, and learning
their tongue.
Above all else, I was interested
in their hobbies; my favorite was
alligator wrestling. I would
watch the alligators for hours and
hours, trying to understand the
mentality of these peculiar
creatures. Then one day my
Indian friend told me he would
teach me to wrestle them. When I
entered the pit for the first time
and chose my three-foot victim, I
heard the booming voice of my
father: ‘ ‘Get out of there! ’ ’
He told me to go straight to his
office, and I waited there for
twenty-one minutes. After giving
me the old “son, what am I going
to do with you” talk, he
threatened to send me off to
military school. I finally con
vinced him I was a natural bird
trainer and would be a big suc
cess at the bird show. He decided
to give it a try.
At the end of the week I per
formed my first bird show. Then I
advanced to training ducks. Since
the people over at Cypress
Gardens had gotten parrots, my
father got back at them by buying
ducks. This was the strangest
point in my career. I trained
ducks to play guitar, drums,
organ and golf, and we even had a
duck that would flip rings over
her neck.
“See a duck ring its own neck! ’ ’
I would shout.
Now these Indians didn’t know
what had happened to me after I
was so rudely interrupted by my
father two months before. In fact.
I had been so busy cleaning up
bird extracts, training ducks and
giving bird shows that I had
forgotten about my desire to
wrestle alligators. They finally
sent out Beaufort, a three-
hundred pound squaw, to find me.
Just the sight of her reminded me
of the alligators, and with an hour
until my next bird show, I
decided to go back over to the
village with her and take up
where I had left off — with that
three-foot gator.
But when I got back I learned
that my three-foot friend had
been eateri by Harve. (Indians
name the alligators only when
they’re over eight-feet-long.) The
next size was a four-and-a-half-
footer. I got a quick edge and
flipped him over on his back.
Only then did I realize I was
sitting on an alhgator’s belly,
holding his mouth shut with my
hands. I counted to three and took
off running as fast as I could.
When I got out of the pit the In
dians were gathered around
laughing, and I didn’t know why;
not until I noticed the gator still
was on his back, motionless. It
was one of my first real
awakenings about alligators —
that if you flip them over it
momentarily paralyzes them.
The Indians poked him with a
stick and he turned back over. I
looked at my watch and saw I had
missed the bird show, and my
father was fast approaching the
village along the edge of the
swamp.
That’s about it, I guess,
because after that, my father
sent me away to military school.
But that’s a story all in itself.
Eastman Curlis, a freshman at
Brevard College and a music
major, is from Lake Wal^s,
Florida. He has had varied ex
perience with wild animals and
works part-time at a local pet
shop. His principal musical
interest is in percussion, and he
plays drums for the Brevard
College Stage Band.
The partial musical scoren ac-
voniffaning ihis pssav repn’seui only
those notes relevant to the diseussiitn.
imagery) and his placement of
vowel and consonant sounds in
the higher and lower voice
registers.
Franz Haydn was a composer
constantly experimenting with
new forms and textures of ex
pression. After completing the
London symphonies, Haydn felt
he had experimented with or
chestral compositions long
enough and that it left him no
challenge. This led him to work
on an oratorio, a piece with
libretto (usually religious) that is
performed without scenery,
costumes, or action by solo
voices, chorus, or orchestra. This
was an area of composition in
which he had not yet proven
himself.
There are two stories about
Haydn’s reason for choosing the
creation as a subject for an
oratorio. One story is that a
friend, Baron Gottfried van
Sweiten, gave him a libretto
written by Tidley, who had
compiled it for Handel from
Milton’s Paradise Lost. The other
story maintains that one of
Haydn’s friends suggested
starting with the creation in the
Bible. One may believe both
stories in that the creation in the
Bible was suggested to Haydn
and he then mentioned it to van
Sweiten, who in turn procured the
libretto.
Although the libretto form was
important to Haydn, it was not
that so much ;3S the lure of
creating a musical background
that would support the libretto
while creating the musical
imagery to describe creation,
that was his ultimate challenge.
Nonetheless the libretto, or text
is important, for it paints a
picture which the music must
support. The imagery is the text
of “The Creation” challenged
Haydn to use all his creative
powers, translating, in effect, the
words into a musical form.
Haydn’s basic scheme for this
oratorio was to have it narrated
by solos of the Archangels
Gabriel, Uriel and Raphael, and
a duet by Adam and Eve.
The relationship between the
text and melody nears perfection.
Throughout the oratorio, it is
evident that Haydn had a good
matching of words and pitches,
appropriate rhythm (as it is used
I to add effect and to create
One cannot really appreciate
this relationship without knowing
something about style analysis
wherein the overall musical
structure is taken into account
also. One can read the text and it
will move the imagination, more
directly if less powerfully than
will the music. By analyzing
music, one is reducing subjective
feeling into something ap
proaching objective quantities.
Even at the cost of some of the
magic, it lets one know more of
the composer’s imagination and
skill in organizing and presen
tation.
In musical analysis, certain
terms are essential: timbre,
dynamics and texture. Timbre
refers to acoustical tone, the
quality or character of the sound
wave. For example, the dif
ference between a trombone and
trumpet is not so much that one is
a bass clef instrument and the
other a treble clef instrument.
The difference lies in the quahty
or character of sound. The
trombone’s sound is richer,
darker and mellower than the
clear sound of the trumpet. Next
is dynamics, which includes all
aspects of intensity of sound -
that is, intensity as indicated by
markings and implied by or
chestration. Texture is' the
arrangement of timbre. Other |
terms will be introduced
throughout the discussion of “The
Creation.”
It can be said that the music of
Haydn is picturesque and that
this is especially true in “The
Creation.” This music, as in any
oratorio, is for the most part an
accomplishment. But in some
parts of the piece Haydn’s music
speaks directly to the listener's
imagination. This is the case at'
the beginning of “The Creation.’
The introduction is entitled
“Representation of Chaos.” This '
introduction is fifty-nine '
measures long and in the opening
Haydn states the tonic chord of C
minor with a dynamic marking of
forte and then a decresendo. In
the next measure he states a
sixth chord in first inversion with
a dynamic marking of piano, and
for the next few measures the
dynamics are fluctuating.
Having mentioned the chords,
it is necessary to mention har
mony, or the progression of
chords, which to adds color and
creates tension with the
dynamics. As the harmony
creates color and tension, the
dynamics act as aids in stressing
these places of effect created by
the harmony.