Batya Wittenberg IF

Batya "The Toon" Wittenberg has been an active filker since... well, looked at one way, since Lunacon of 1996, when she first sat down in a filk circle and successfully sang Frank Hayes's "Cosmos" without a printed copy of the lyrics. ("I didn't know it was impossible when I did it!") Looked at a different way, she's been a filker since she was a small child, raised by a father who to this day tends to write off-the-cuff song parodies as naturally as he breathes. Whether nature or nurture was responsible, it was probably inevitable that she eventually found her way into filk.

Batya tends to write funny and serious filksongs in roughly equal measure, mostly to pre-existing tunes, although in the past few years she has begun to write her own music as well. She enjoys improvising vocal harmonies in open filk circles, and indeed has a habit of doing so unconsciously at other times as well. She is a founding member of the intercontinental filk group Lady Mondegreen, and a card-carrying Ose Bunny.

She is also, in no particular order: a practicing Orthodox Jew, an invertebrate punster, a successful transplant to New York City, a happily married woman since 1999, an enthusiastic cook and foodie, a toon, a habitual online roleplayer, and in no particular order.

Representative Work for the 2019 Pegasus Awards

Gabriel Gray's Song (mp3)

Copyright © 2007 by Batya Wittenberg
All Rights Reserved - Used by Permission

Here in my workshop
I do as I always have done
The watchmaker's son

If a piece needs repair
I can listen and tell how it goes
Just a skill, I suppose

I just know how it works, its mechanical wisdom
How each motion triggers the next and the next
Each piece knows its place in the intricate system
They move as the watchmaker's pattern directs

Tighten the spring and release and then watch it unwind
Place the components, there's so many out there to find
And the gears interlace
And the hands sweep the face

You've shown me potential
The others out there with the chance
A genetic advance

I can study their workings
Their tight-wound desires and fears
Their wheels and gears

And I see how it works, how it all fits together
The friction, the tension, the motion, the drive
We're more than just human, we're different, we're better
The living compete and the strongest survive

And now that I know I can take them and make them all mine
Now the wheels turn slowly, it's only a matter of time
And the pendulum swings
And the power in me sings

I realize I've changed after all that I've gone through
Don't think I can stop and by now I don't want to
It's out of control, gaining speed and momentum
Till nothing is left of my former intention
My hope of your help and my confidence in you
You knew what I was and you let it continue
It's all down to you and the truth that you've taught me
And you could have stopped me, why didn't you stop me? --

It comes down to this:
I can only be more than a man
So I'll be what I am

And I know how it works now, it's all evolution
Imperative impulse, the strength and the skill
The sweep of the minute hand in revolution
The courage to grow and the power to kill

And this is my future and this is my destined design
And I'm closer each second, each tick of the clock in my mind
And the strongest survive
And the wheels turn slow
And the pendulum swings
And the gears interlace
And the power is
Mine