"It's A Whole New World"
October 25, 2020
Ron
"It's A Whole New World"
This one disappears off YouTube all the time for some reason, and the versions that do survive are really badly recorded. So to see a copy of this in HD is a treat. The only problem I have with it is that it omits one of the prettiest middle verses which used to always be included.
It's an amazingly affecting little melody with the most beautifully-expressed lyrics. The context of the episode is that Sister Bertrille's sweet song to the children is reinterpreted by a visiting rock band, friends of hers, and is distorted until what she meant was no longer there, and this rendering of the song is her expression of how -- and to whom -- it was meant to be shared, and in what spirit. And I just think it is one of the prettiest songs I have ever heard.
Listen to the lyrics. They're extraordinary (I've reprinted them below, too, so you can read along).
I'm including this version too. It's awful quality, but it's the only recorded medium on the whole internet with evidence of the verse missing from the one above — and it's a gorgeous missing verse.
[UPDATE 5/26/23: I found the full episode online. Skip to the end and you can hear the uncut song. Just beautiful.]
"It's A Whole New World"
by Jack Keller and Bob Russell
The golden glint of sunlight bathes the particles of sand,
and a myriad of patterns are designed.
In reverie I watch the changing colors of the waves,
break upon the idle seashore of my mind.
And it's a whole new world I see.
Oh yes, a whole new world for me.
And as I take a trip along the corridors of time,
where the winding halls are carpeted with grass.
My eye is on tomorrow and my hand on yesterday,
the whole panorama is my looking glass.
I'm everyone and everywhere.
And it's a whole new world out there.
On my odyssey the fabric of the infinite unfolds,
free of mushroom clouds that sear the sky above.
I harken to the thunder of a trailing of a leaf,
as it heralds the awakening of love.
And oh what miracles abound.
I'm in the whole new world I found.
The lyrics are so beautiful and pure that they make me cry, laid upon this sweet little melody. And I know everyone understands why I provide it; it relates to everything we're working on right now. A whole new world. The lyrics say everything.
[Parenthetically: You can't even find the lyrics on the internet. You used to be able to, but even then I remember I had to be very clever to hunt them down; maybe I'm less clever now because I couldn't find them anywhere, so I reproduced them from the two audio clips I provided.]
[Trivia: Sally Field, in a terrific interview now gone from YouTube, talked about the "Flying Nun" — which she rarely will because she felt so traumatized by it. And this was an inordinately candid and very funny interview where she talks about the revolution going on in the 60s when such excellent music was made, and she said that after being suspended by wires all week on the show, she'd spend her Saturdays recording music for the episodes over at the old Columbia Records studios. And she said she was sitting waiting for her hour and the doors flung open and a cloud of marijuana billowed forth and out came Grace Slick where they'd just been recording. And she thought "Okie dokie. Now itsh time for me to go shing shome of my shpecial shongs now." Very funny. She has not very happy recollections about the experience of filming the series because she felt it was such insipid material. She was looking for Ibsen in a show that was really for children. But that desire to be an excellent actor IS what made her so believable as this character who could fly. She fails to realize that the reason we ever liked Sally Field the Oscar-winning actress is because we loved Sister Bertrille praising God and telling us we could fly, too. To her it was a job, but to us kids it was amazing possibilities and flight out of an ordinary world.]
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