#songlyricssunday WORDS DON'T COME EASY F. R. David - "Melody so far my best friend"

3 November 2019: [a fortnight ago] there was an emergency in Dresden relating to the neo-Nazis and more specifically the political pressure group PEGIDA. Very discombulating to see them on the top of the Yahoo.co.uk news page and the situation in Dresden more generally.

10 November 2019: [last Sunday] I watched part of a film called BALLOON which is about two East German families trying to get around the Berlin Wall to the West. That week there had been lots of celebrations about the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall - I learnt a lot about journalists and Stasi informers. [That was a story which unfolded with my youth].

One of the scenes which moved me really hard was the youth confirmation of the 14-year-olds who were in the eighth grade or the third form [as lots of Europeans call that school stage/year - and still did in the 1970s and 1980s where Balloon is set - until about the National Curriculum in 1988 in the UK case and everyone had years except in grammar and more traditional schools]. The father - Strezlyk - sees a lot of nonsense and balderdash in it.

The last scene I saw was the first attempt at the balloon and then the blue screen kept breaking up from behind. It is a terrible thing for those with migraines and with photosensitivity; at least moderately disruptive and intolerable for every patron. You do get a complimentary drink and/or something to eat that you choose. You do get to know your patrons and the people.

It was a serious matter when it got into the advertisements which tell about future movies.

So that evening, after I went to a nearby park of native shrubs and trees with a lookout which is closed on Sundays, and to a ramen restaurant some way away in a food court, and the Housemuseum to see some challenging and provocative modern art - I drew a concertina door with two folds.

The outside is the setting up of the balloon process by the families.

There is a statistical opener which tells about the escapes from East to West Berlin and from East to West Germany from 1976 to 1988. So many attempts; so many failures.

The inside is a whole lot of nature in three colours [purple; red; yellow] and Zentangle-inspired artforms. It has been four years now since Zentangle was introduced to me.

Inside of the fold: various shrubs and trees and yellow cloud forms as well as scallop patterning

The outside of the fold shows the setting up of the balloon and the trial balloons

and then the family being triumphant - there were two families; eight members.

Some were young girls; some were small boys.

And this is roughly what happens when the world is upside down.

We do in fact see the world this way with primitive maps - however that was the scanner

Which leads me to the earlier Disney film - Balloon for 2018 was the very first German telling/narrative - which was made in 1982.

It provoked a lot of imagination and empathy for things which are often very hard to talk about and/or witness.

Like F. R. David and his piece of Italo-pop or Euro-pop which I am going to share with you today through Song Lyric Sunday. The prompt for 17 November 2019 is Do and Don't. Jim Adams has been using some very clever grammatical prompts.

What do we do when words don't come easily?

Words - don't come easy to me
How can I find a way to make you see - 
I love you
Words don't come easy

Words - don't come easy to me
This is the only way for me to say -
I love you
Words don't come easy

Well, I'm just a music man
Melody's so far my best friend
But my words are calling I'm wrong
and I, I reveal my heart to you
and hope that you believe it's true 'cause

Words - don't come easy to me
How can I find a way to make you see -
I love you
Words don't come easy

This is just a simple song
That I've made for you on my own
There's no hidden meaning, you know
and I - when I say I love you, honey
Please believe - I really do 'cause

Words - don't come easy to me
How can I find a way to make you see -
I love you
Words don't come easy

It isn't easy
Words don't come easy

Words - don't come easy to me
How can I find a way to make you see -
I love you
Words don't come easy
Don't come easy to me
This is the only way for me to say -
I love you 
Words don't come easy

Words don't come easy

thank you Golyr for the clean reproduction of the text - diest sehr gut!

When this song came to the consciousness it was only really in Monaco and France; a year later it became a hit for the whole of Europe.

If you liked easy listening and ballads and songs which didn't announce themselves though they had a beat and a self-definition Words don't come easy was a natural choice.

Love the modesty of the narrator and the way he talks about himself - I'm just a music man.

And the simple song verse. Some people may want to shake the narrator and/or kick him somewhere.

One hopes the hearer will respect the narrator enough to see - and not see past - words - don't come easy and their relationship is one which transcends and doesn't depend on words.

In late October 2019 I was fortunate enough to discover Deezer.fr which was an incredible streaming experience. For 30 days you can listen to all the music free and even make comments.

Soundcloud has been kind as well. I was tempted to listen to Ok boomer so I did. And then some rapping about a toy/console character with a co-producer Poloboy21 who is about 18.

So many hidden meanings; so many implicatures and inferences we make. And love drives us to understand them all - and hope for what we do not understand and cannot undertake - yet!

The narrator is very innovative and creative in finding ways for the person - and for the listener/reader/receiver - to understand.

Of course this makes me think of love languages.

I particularly appreciated the way Rachel Reyes made a lyric video.

The don't is especially powerful in this song because it would be a very different song without it. 

We would have our usual suave and articulate hero who would be very hard to relate to - someone who is in a romantic novel. 

Now those people can be complex and intriguing characters - even in a comedy of manners like Vanity Fair which I am very glad I did not binge upon when the opportunity was offered to me. 

I do still want to know what happens to Becky Sharp and Steyne and Rawdon the younger - I did feel the narrative change its tone when Becky and Amelia were mothers and Jos was in India being a nabob - specifically Bengal [now Bangladesh if in the East].

I am thinking that Melody so far my best friend is the most powerful of the lot - the one single lyric. Unfortunately it is not an earworm - though the concept and the idea certainly is

Repetition of Words don't come easy is a good one.

That is repeated four times at the end of each verse plus chorus. As if to say "Words don't come easy but if you keep at it they WILL come or they MAY come".

"Try not to worry because everyday concerns would bring them out".

Wikipedia reminds us just how big a hit this Italo-pop piece was on the British charts in particular. Number two! And that was in 1983. So you see it was a slow burn.

Its genres are soft rock; eurobeat; synthpop. Some incredible equipment was put onto it; a Simmons; a Lind; a Oberheim.

Someone who was instrumental [I think the pun is allowed] in putting it together was one Roberto Fozzini. He is the songwriter.

In the 21st century - which leads us to 2000 - there was a French-language version with Winda.

A whole generation of children and adolescents had grown up into their loving and dating years.

And by [7 December] 2006 when the video above was made an era had ended.

Seven years longer than I had any reason or right to expect.

YouTube had mainstreamed and mainlined into all our musical brains.

Chart positions for Words don't come easy as of 1982 and 1983:

Did you know, first, that it sold a million copies in France and indeed across lots of French overseas territories - like the ones in Africa; Asia; the Pacific?

Springbok Radio in South Africa absolutely loved it. There was a lot of big trouble with Apartheid which did affect a lot of people in the Commonwealth. I was still so little when the Rhys Muldoon issue came through - I am thinking Jim Bolger and Greg Chappell and Chappeli.

Perhaps Laurence was still alive.

Australia reported it by the end of 1983 as #49 - wow! the top 50! When I think of all the good Australian and international songs which you can experience on nzoz83 - and that I have shared with you in the past - I think Words don't come easy deserves to be up there.

Number one was an acclamation in Sweden; Switzerland; Spain; Ireland; Italy; the whole Eurochart [if you want to listen to decent European music - you could do worse than start there - or maybe with Caroline or Luxembourg like Robin Carmody of High-functioning human fame - or Humain a niveau-haut which is what I would have grown up with] Austria and Belgium [the Flanders version]. Switzerland and West Germany were into it.

Now if that isn't an advertisement for detente and/or European unity I don't know what is.

We do badly need it now - especially on 12 December 2019. Badly.

Lots of debates on the British Broadcasting Corporation and the Independent Television in the next few weeks.

On two separate Dutch charts Words don't come easy came #2 as it did indeed in France. And The Official Charts Company of the United Kingdom.

The Commonwealth of Nations was far more mixed - Canada thought this song should come ninth. I am sure the Quebecois market/vote drove it - though there is no reason English Canada shouldn't have liked such a smooth song. 

New Zealand made it seventh and Australia's Kent Charts put it as 12th.

Meanwhile on the hot 100 of Billboard Words don't come easy was 62nd place.

Turns out there were several remixes within the 1990s - 1997 and 1999 respectively in Finland and France - these were both in the top 30 - 12 and 27 for the Finnish and French ones.

Another Don't song I like very much and discovered in early 2001 is Heart don't change my mind in the Elaine Paige version - though it was sung by Streisand and Glen Medeiros who I think I will explore more during the week [especially a lyric video of Lonely won't leave me alone - when you think this situation is pervasive and permanent this is when you are in big big trouble and disturbance. Systemic work helps too - there is a Minister for Loneliness and another for Social Inclusion].

During the week. too, I am seeing Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and its Second Part.

#keepthesecrets is reminding me of Luria and Vygotsky and a cognitive test.

It is about buttons and instructions.

And commands in particular. "Don't press; don't press; press" and "Press; press; don't press" is said to 3 year olds; 4 year olds; and 5 year olds by an experimenter/examiner.

Vygotsky was the First Master of Inner and Private Speech.

So he wanted to see how far and how much the children internalised these instructions and related ones in real life and culture.

I learnt of this examination in James Britton's Language and Learning.

Probably somewhere after the children's dialogues and before Participant and Specator which I feel is the meat and potatoes of this book.

I think also of expressive; transactional and poetic and what a tightrope and precipice it can really be.

Children do play still in the 21st century - however the play behaviour of the children of the 1950s and 1960s was wow especially Alison and Claire Britton - Claire was a perceptive and caring young lady by the time she was written about as a late teenager.

[and she is part of the inspiration for all the responsible and competent eighteen-year-olds I write about who have an ethical system and a humanitarian streak.

The fault is to me, though, that it breaks down in the early twenties, more or less catastrophically].

Wednesday last [13 November 2019] I read a wonderful report by a Consultant Psychiatrist on Attachment and in particular the First Year Cycle - which had been spoilt for me by certain populist Americans from 2002 to 2008.

Something important I learnt: you need only be 30% sensitive or have sensitive interactions for that proportion.

Thirty percent of anything is bloody significant. Especially it could sway cognitive or linguistic delay or deviance.

As I said words don't come easy - but they don't have to to be socially significant or valid.

Hoagie's Gifted October 2019: If you[th] but knew/Michaelmas Term Reflections

In July 1995, on a doctor's visit, I read an alphabet which said I for if only in reference to learning differences like reading and writing disorder [known as dyslexia and dysgraphia] - 'If only' are the saddest words in the English language.

It was in a women's magazine/general interest magazine - probably something like Better Homes and Gardens.

Now we are in October 2019 and Hoagie's Gifted have done a blog hop known as If you only knew. I only got into Hoagie's Gifted again after a long break in May 2019 when I was really starting to explore Mix.

Thank you Pamela and Caroline for what you do.

It was super good to read Gail, Teresa and Linda in Living with Geniuses; Help My Children Thrive and Gifted Challenges.

Pamela and Caroline? Aren't those names familiar?

And alphabetisation and literacy? Aren't those going to be important in some way?

There is a wonderful book called If youth but knew which I picked up one day some time between 2009 and 2014 and finally had myself read in 2014. It seems to be a romance of multigenerations and I hope it introduced healthy communication among the generations and within generations.

I am thinking too of Yom Kippur, and the terrible thing which happened in Halle, Germany. Two people were killed because of anti-Semitism [and this article shows us how Germany is trying to deal with it]. The suspect did confess; according to Deutsche Welle.

And I know who won the Nobel Literature Prize in 2019! I read Olga Tokarczuk this year [had to check twice to get it right - I had only just read her Flights over Christmas and again a few months later] and I do not know if I have read Peter Handke. He seems like a film person.

Narrative power and linguistic integrity - these are big things, and things that I have "pleased to strive" over my whole literary life.

This Monday Michaelmas Term began - it is supposed to begin around the end of September of any year and it is after St Michael and all the Angels.

For me Yom Kippur is all about repentance and confession - something that I understand both in the religious and the mental health worlds.

I explored repentance a lot in Rivals of the Collegiate through the actions and words of a sensitive young woman who is Gifted and has many Gifted friends. She is moderately gifted [or only just over bright] - her friend is profoundly gifted.

They do this over the spring term [March-June].

The students - like Holly McCutcheon - explore repentance too.

During Michaelmas Term there are a lot of set pieces and people get to know one another, or know one another again. There is always - always - hope!

This is the first thing I want to concentrate on in this If youth but knew post.

A lot of people do not feel hope in the first place; or have it taken away or stolen from them for some reason.

Or they invest a lot of hope in things which may or may not happen.

It is all a matter of probabilities and of trust.

The thing I wanted to repent hardest during this Yom Kippur season was intellectual arrogance.

Over this season I had said some hard and harsh things to Astrid and some flippant things to Emma in the This is the very definition of rain.

Relaxing or slacking with our fellows means so much. Especially if we have to maintain high standards in public life and we hold ourselves to high expectations. We can forget that not everybody does this; nor desires to do this; nor has to do this.

We think misleadingly that society is so much more cruel than we could ever be individually and we forget to #choosekind.

Or we believe that humility is a form of oppression and we tend to believe our own publicity.

And we forget that we too are vulnerable. Or we are too/overly conscious of our vulnerability in the face of audiences real and imaginary.

At the Ray Chen performance I had the opportunity to meet a lot of gifted youth and youth with all sorts of gifts.

I remember too how I studied intellectual virtue.

In the Funk and Wagnalls 1997 year book [events of 1996] which did not come to me until the early 2010s as the result of the death of a grandparent there is a reference to Bennett's The book of virtues.

Midgley and Murdoch [Iris] did a lot to teach me about virtue too.

And there was Stephanie Tolan and a great website about intellectual virtues, which I was able to explore through a case study of Justin Chapman.

The story of Chapman is a very tragic one at least as I perceived it in early December 2001.

There were strong implications of fraud and imposture.

Eighteen years later I hope Justin is being good and doing good for his own values of good and finding harmony and decency and dignity.

The way gifted people live is not always very pretty - especially scrabbling along with the 99%.

One thing that really helps me is that three times as many people measure as intellectually disabled as do within the range of the gifted.

This keeps me more focused on grit than on glamour.

Grit is a very good thing and a very undervalued thing - especially if one is intolerant; impatient and used to quick results.

The consequences grind more slowly in relationship than in behaviourism or some other ideology.

My own intellectual virtues are curiosity and openness - those are the two I achieve consistently.

The others are spottier.

One of the others is intellectual courage. I consider it to be one which is not so spotty.

I thought courage to be a big virtue - and I was able to read a wonderful article on a trip about physical courage and moral courage. This was some time in October 1995.

In my own life I find they are intertwined. I can show moral courage by physical courage and vice versa.

That whole keeping on keeping on - intellectual persistence.

Here is some of the work of Leia Zhu who lives in the United Kingdom. She is a violinist and I discovered her through Ray Chen and his performances of Waltzing Matilda and Paganini. Zhu has some wonderful things to say about her craft which developed over her European trip with a friend.

I had first thought of contributing to Hoagie's Gifted seriously in September 2019 when the topic was Anxiety and Perfectionism and using Natalie Portman's BLACK SWAN - Darren Aronofsky is a legendary director who gets a lot into and out of his women. The things Ms Portman's character puts into Swan Lake being Giselle. I had also read Meredith Danman's biography of Margot Fonteyn.

Australian Ballet is really good too. McAllister is leaving.

Love Zhu's spiritual and wise words here. And the glowing purple.

There is Wiesnaski also.

Two years ago of course there was the mainstreaming of #metoo / #balancetonporc [Bring your pig/abuser to account]. In 1996 Tamika had a young lady at camp who testified against her abuser and Tamika felt she wasn't doing enough.

I think too we can often feel like we are not doing enough.

Or we have done too much too wrong at the wrong time.

I keep a Kim Wilde song for times like this. It is called You'll never be so wrong.

When YouTube and Quora and Twitter are not behaving themselves it can make my work and play very difficult!

Two lovers in a city cafe - what a great beginning.

In late 1999-early 2000 I wrote a scene which was set in Portsmouth, Hampshire. I reflected last Tuesday that these are some of the scenes I am proud of as a writer - yes, among the overall text. And to think that five years before at the earliest I had barely started my writing life.

School stories were only supposed to be a side hustle and amusement. I am sorry, but it is true. This was a fairly recent reflection.

Some final notes on courage from We bought a zoo:

B Mee says "You need twenty seconds of courage" to his son Dylan.

I believe - every twenty seconds there is a moment or ounce of courage. And if you find that at least once you are doing pretty well.

Chloe Gillmere and Elena are looking for new wheelchairs and new controls. I remembered a Bangalore gentleman who wrote to me this May.

"The joy of professional exchange is a curiously unsung hymn"...

"For great practitioners of the art, whose lives are at the mercy of a vocation" ...

"Such people are wedded to the endless rigor of the search and perhaps the most ultimate union an artist can ever forge will be with someone who shares not his bed, but his dreams". [Daneman 2004].

Margot Fonteyn would be 100 years old if she were still alive.

And the Rugby World Cup is going well. Still in the second half 10-3 Australia - Georgia.

Abiy Ahmad won the Nobel Peace Prize! Yes!

So I wanted to say something about my literary godfathers - Jeffrey Archer; Ian Serralier and Miroslav Sasek. And there was this Latvian guy who wrote Little Bibie the Turtle.