Words to Break the Spell
Thanks to Richard Summerbell for posting this video on YouTube.
Historic Coming Out program, first LGBT radio show in Vancouver, Canada, on Cooperative Radio CFRO-FM Song from 1979.
Photos: staff of the Coming Out Show circa 1979: 1st row: Bill Houghton, Greg Cutts; 2nd row: Linda Fraser, Jackie Goodwin, Richard Summerbell; 3rd row: Dael Kegler, Dovid, David Myers, and Wendy von Statt.
Second photo: Spencer McDonnell, David Myers, and Hoddy Allen
Third photo: Bill Richardson (later a CBC Radio host and Leacock Prize winner) and Nadine Davenport
WORDS TO BREAK THE SPELL (lyrics)
We saw them all inside their hearts, the dreamers and the dreams,
many a gay man, many a lesbian hiding down deep in the wells of love,
many a sunken stone at the bottom of a clear running stream.
We saw them wait in silence for words to break the spell,
watching the faces of family, friends, and speakers with their arms raised high in the air,
thinking what the truth is is so hard to tell
Well I told you, yes I told you, I told you that you could laugh out loud.
I told you, yes I told you now that you could laugh out loud, you could love and be proud, that you could laugh out loud, you could love and be proud.
We saw them in their sadness, their hearts stripped bare of pride;
years misspent, disillusionment, the emptiness of being torn from themselves, jumping through the dark space of soul suicide.
We saw them in their great surprise jumping from the dream,
we saw them at the seaside wading to the shore,
we saw them finding some of the others in the middle of a greening land,
springing forth like the orchids from the dark forest floor
You told me, yes you told me, well you told me that I could laugh out loud
and I told you, yes I told you now that we could laugh out loud, we could love and be proud, that we could laugh out loud, we could love and be proud.
Did the world change? Did we change the world?
Did the world learn something about what love is now?
(bridge lyrics not sung in this version)
We saw them all inside their hearts, the dreamers and the dreams,
watching their lives fall a different way through the kaleidoscope’s millions of beads,
the pattern of darkness crumbles and the star of life is seen.
I told you that we could laugh out loud, we could love and be proud (and ex tempore)
