[Probably not such a] Naughty Boy, Sam Smith - La la la (Lyrics / Lyric Video / Letra) #songlyricsunday

7clouds videos are awesome - along with Rachel Reyes - they are my first choice for videos which emphasise lyricism.



and here come the words [thought NOT the style!] for my choice of #songlyricsunday for 5 January 2020:

[Intro] Na na, la la la la la na na na na na La la na na, la la la la la na na na na na La la na na, la la la la la na na na na na La la na na, la la la la la na na na na na (Tu meri mauja hain) [Verse 1] Hush, don't speak When you spit your venom, keep it shut I hate it When you hiss and preach About your new messiah cause your theories catch fire [Bridge] I can't find your silver lining I don't mean to judge But when you read your speech, it's tiring Enough is enough [Hook] I'm covering my ears like a kid When your words mean nothing, I go la la la I'm turning up the volume when you speak Cause if my heart can't stop it, I'll find a way to block it, I go Na na, la la la la la na na na na na La la na na, la la la la la na na na na na (I found a way to block it, I go) La la na na, la la la la la na na na na na La la na na, la la la la la na na na na na [Verse 2] If our love is running out of time I won't count the hours, rather be a coward When our words collide I'm gonna drown you out before I lose my mind [Bridge] I can't find your silver lining I don't mean to judge But when you read your speech, it's tiring Enough is enough [Hook] I'm covering my ears like a kid When your words mean nothing, I go la la la I'm turning up the volume when you speak Cause if my heart can't stop it I'll find a way to block it, I go Na na, la la la la la na na na na na La la na na, la la la la la na na na na na (I found a way to block it, I go) La la na na , la la la la la na na na na na La la na na, la la la la la na na na na na (I found a way to block it, oh) Na na, la la la la la na na na na na La la na na, la la la la la na na na na na (I found a way to block it, I go) La la na na, la la la la la na na na na na La la na na, la la la la la na na na na na (Tu meri mauja hain) I'm covering my ears like a kid When your words mean nothing, I go la la la I'm turning up the volume when you speak Cause if my heart can't stop it I find a way to block it, I go I'm covering my ears like a kid When your words mean nothing, I go la la la I'm turning up the volume when you speak (when you speak) Cause if my heart can't stop it I find a way to block it, I go Na na, la la la la la na na na na na La la na na, la la la la la na na na na na La la na na, la la la la la na na na na na La la na na, la la la la la na na na na na (Tu meri mauja hain)

And then I realise there's a reason that YouTube does that when it comes to lyrics - or the 7clouds people did what they did.



When I was a little girl I discovered author Dorothy Edwards and illustrator Shirley Hughes for the first time in a simple novel / anecdote format - the series My naughty little sister.



It was one of my first conscious trips to a beach house; subject to a friend from the civil service.



So in the best traditions, or perhaps defiant/oblivious of these same traditions, I wrecked the entertainment room with Trivial Pursuit cards all over the floor.



The outdoor landscape of that beach house though! It had a big tree at the back. I was trying to trust trees and treehouses again after I had a nasty splinter at home walking on the top of the house [my treehouse had two floors] and it was on my foot. I remember going on the porch to get the splinter out with a needle.



Some three weeks before [12 December 1990] the wonders of the video cassette recorder were revealed to me and one of my very first picks was Pippi Longstocking which was a highly musical version and vivid. I had read the Astrid Lindgren books first in the library especially Pippi in the South Sea Islands with my grandparents so I knew the Ville Villa Kuella.



And Scrubbing Day was incredible - so was Running Away and the whole The First Noël feeling when Pippi and friends came to the orphanage. I loved the Head Girl - the first I recognised as Head Girl. I had not even read Blyton school stories yet in January 1991 - that pleasure was to be some eight months away with Elizabeth Allen and The naughtiest girl in the school.



I too had been considered - one of - the naughtiest girls in my school. I think of Hermoine Granger and that scene in the film of The Philosopher's / Sorcerer's Stone.

That witch really needs to sort out her priorities! - Ron Weasley - Harry and Hermoine's friend

One of the naughty things I did was blow on another student's whistle with the residue of a frozen ice. I did not quite have the mens rea involved [guilty mind in Latin] because I wanted to know how Melisande's whistle worked and if it had nuts in it like the Physical Education teacher's whistle did. The Phys Ed teacher was yet another champion of mine - and a broker into the system. Some years later on she would have us learn and support Italian lessons. And because of this she was a really strong connector - especially when it came to a question on Copernicus/Kopernik when we were studying the stars and astronomy.



Love La la la because it has the idea of preach speech in it and it has been so popular in so many countries.



Here is a quote that shows what I [and Beverley Eley] mean by PREACH SPEECH - it is also a good introduction to a book which showed me so much about biographical craft and graft - The book of David - it is also good for anyone who wants to know It's all right to be different:

[... earlier there was something about Democritus and the atom in that paragraph]Not only is his memory phenomenal, his wit is dry and clever. One day he walked into a conversation about homilies, proverbs and adages. After patting and kissing those close at hand [my emphasis], he walked away with the comment, 'Preach speech ... it's preach speech'.

By what yardstick do we measure someone like the eccentric, yet greatly gifted, David Helfgott? [says Eley on page 7 of The book of David in its 5th printing from 1997]

Eley and Helfgott [David and Gillian] are very good friends and her biographical practice is exemplary. Hoping the Gleniffer house where she and her husband John [who The book of David is dedicated to - for being someone who BELIEVES IN LOYALTY FRIENDSHIP AND JUSTICE - if books were tablets and stones - they would be carved in like that] is okay and the land too. That land is called the Promised Land and again Eley and David Helfgott are neighbours.



Had a great time watching Marianne and Leonard - words of love - so many people came by including in groups. Of course So long Marianne is a very important song. And Marianne was such a very generous and kind person. I think of Axel who is over 60 now and was only 6 months old when Leonard Cohen came into his Hydra life - in all my years I had never heard it pronounced like that so I could imitate it and reference it. Shows you how few of my resources are Greek. And the archivist really made the film, I do believe. I would sell the farm on it. Along with Broomfield of course who had a connection - intimate connection - with Ihlen from Oslo [and Paris and London and Hydra and one more place]



What did I want to talk about with the Naughty Little Sister and my experience?



When she was in a school choir one day; she and her friend Bad Harry la la la la'ed to the Christmas carols particularly Away in a manger which was the very first Christmas carol I connected with in 1985-86. Another early one was The first Noël - ten years later I connected so hard I named a character Noelle. She belongs to the gaggle of Gilberts - the five who were born on a student exchange. [and, yes, that is five at the same time in the same caul so to speak!]



And then I remember the Blubber singing lessons in Judy Blume - especially Miss Rochelle - great name for a musical person. My 1999 self thought this too - one of the times she and my 1994 self were in agreement [the former self was the one who read the book for the first time - and she was up for it six months later when she was sick and the world didn't make sense - she also enjoyed Paul Jennings' Quirky Tales where Linda thought salt was sugar and sugar was salt and No was yes]. So there was a young girl called Rochelle who absolutely loved music and was a flower girl. And then there was breathing and melody and harmony which I confess I really did not get until Grizel Cochrane had lost her harmony book in The head girl of the Chalet School which came with me in a Lion King bag along with a manuscript - that one was about a student called Tadeusz Meliński who studied temporarily at the London Progressive College. I got quite far in the writing of Educating Tadeusz laying and paving the ground [like crazy paving in my last].



Yours truly has also discovered Music from Ceefax which is the British Broadcasting Corporation teletext service. Especially looking for ocean music and ship music and sea shanties. After I watched Little Women in the Greta Gerwig mode and went to a park and a public house, I found many of them. It was when I became sick of Scouting and Guiding songs around the campfire and the Jamboree setting that I wanted to find some sea songs.

Many of you who have read Blubber will remember that Jill Brenner was quite the stamp collector - and she knew how to bargain and broker and write good letters. What she was not so good at doing was keeping her nails tidy and unbitten. Now nerves will do that to any person - and she was carrying around the sort of nervery which would make an animal pace and scratch and do various other displacement behaviours.

People often feel misplaced and displaced too. Especially when they feel their love is running out of time and that their words mean nothing.

Hope your lives feel Funktastic this week and for the Epiphany tomorrow. Imagine that - the first Monday of 2020!

Finally deck the halls with boughs of holly fa la la la la.

La la la  was released at the Jingle Bell Ball of 2013 and subsequently charted in many nations. And it had so many remixes - I chose the Sam Smith one because it had lots of resonance and was best-known perhaps ...

In Australia it peaked at number five; hit number one in the Commonwealth of Independent States chart as it did in the Czech Republic; number two in Denmark and Germany; number six in France; and it's probably time to point out the Hungarian charts and their genre diversity as well as media diversity [stream and radio]. A lot of central European nations [Poland too] have their dance charts and in this La la la came out 9th in Poland and 6th in Hungary. Seems the Romanians loved it and put it on number 1. Top 15 in Venezuela - 14th actually - awesome!

The US charts were much more mixed. Somehow the Brits bought more than a million copies. At least two charts showed top 20 and one was actually 10th. The Rhythmic seems open for debate.

And when hearts can't stop it they find a way to block it.

Trying to block this earworm [though I don't want to so it will stay] of La La Land which I think many of my #songlyricsunday companions and compeers have chosen.

 

#31for21: A 47-chromosome masterclass in valuing yourself and changing your world; barrier-free ways to access enthusiastic consent

I love posts which help me to be the person or people my 15-year-old self needed and posts which help me be the person or people current 15-19-year-olds need and want in their lives. This open letter from Amy Silverman - Phoenix journalist - made a connection that my heart can't even believe now. Again, the information and emotion in this open letter is something I would have valued from the time I was 10

Don't judge the people with Down Syndrome

Sophie Silverman 

The person I needed when I was fifteen would have told me No is a complete sentence - yes, even in academic writing or formal writing.

This alone would have been enlightening and empowering to this English language learner.

The thing about life is that you learn and that you continue to learn. And if learning is one of your values; you continue to seek out opportunities and advocate for yourself in these opportunities.

One of the biggest opportunities we have in our social and sexual and political lives are the ones which enthusiastic consent brings us.

Because Yes is a complete sentence too.

What do I mean by a 47-chromosome masterclass in valuing yourself and changing your world?

We make big claims on high stakes here at Halfway at Rysy Peak.

Though I personally don't often make big claims on my own account.

I am focusing on the fifth point in Silverman's Open Letter: You can say no to a person with Down syndrome.

And I experienced that as a "Yes - but" ...

Like - Yes, you can say no to a person with Down Syndrome, but there's a cost involved.

And people with Trisomy 21 have already experienced or are soon to experience some of the biggest no's in our world.

How dare I invalidate their existence further than I already have done? How dare I violate their essence?

In the USA people value life; liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

In France, people are much more into liberte, egalite and fraternite.

Silverman touched on fraternite when she talked about "as with any student or friend". And egalite.

I have a problem with egalite right there. And I'm going to work through this with lots of questions.

How do you feel about saying no to people who are small; weak and vulnerable?

What do you think; how do you feel; how do you act when it comes to saying no to children?

What do you think; how do you feel; how do you act when it comes to saying no to animals?

A lot of us have a lot of cognitive and emotional barriers to saying no.

And some of this no-saying is violence. Lateral violence.

So next few questions:

When was the first time/the last time you said no to someone with cerebral palsy?

With epilepsy?

With autism?

With an intellectual disability which is not Trisomy 21?

And I know a lot of people have problems saying no to people of their own karyotype!

When I was thirteen I struggled a lot with denial and withdrawal especially of the arbitrary type.

Since we began to relate to people and people began to relate to us, yes and no have become very personal and very political words.

They're not only words.

Think about the ways you affect and effect the world every day.

What if you had fewer or no ways to do this?

Every way the world is affected and effected is valuable and to be respected. This is very much a core value of mine and one of the ways that I act in the world.

And when we think of our relationships with the world and with consent -

this is a twiggly mess.

There are so many barriers involved!

Colin Barnes wrote about these barriers in a book called The cabbage syndrome in 1990.

I think again of choice and of acceptance and rejection.

A lot of teenage and young adult identity formation is built and broken in rejection. Sometimes it never comes back again or not in the same way.

I wish a lot more of it was built in acceptance.

Acceptance itself can be passive or active - or even aggressive.

Konrad Lorenz wrote a good book called On aggression which will challenge any mid-adolescent. I didn't read it until I was 30.

Here are some of my ways to experience barrier-free access to enthusiastic consent:

I make sure my past; present and future self are aligned with each other and the world.

I do not get up in pain; fear or fatigue.

I set myself up for success.

I reward myself for success.

I flow through my life.

I affirm others as I affirm myself and I would like to be affirmed/they would like to be affirmed.

Would love to talk about the whole irresistible impulse phenomenon which is recognised in psychology; in sociology and in law.

We are much more likely to consent [or at least to assent] when we feel we have a choice or we actually have a choice.

I thought and still think a lot about determinism and free will, which was reinforced by Religious Instruction every Monday. Perhaps you have a Philosophy or Ethics class.

And it is important to be mindful of developmental and chronological expectations about decisions and consent - and the gap that we may often have.

People with Down syndrome aren't the only ones to be affected by this gap - nor to have negative responses which may make even further barriers.

Think about it: What do you think makes a choice your choice? When was the first time / the last time your 'no' was your 'no'?

Education is supposed to be a place which is relatively free of the hard sell - at least it was in the 1990s up until the early 2000s.

Self-education can be particularly vulnerable to the lack of sell.

And while we're talking about selling and buying?

The Swedish Academy Economics Prize was about nudge. Behavioural economics.

And I would not be doing my job on Halfway up Rysy Peak if I did not talk about tolerances and affordances.

Teenagers and young adults can tap into this energy that they do not fully understand, nor do younger people and adults.

Do your "yes"ses and "no"s keep you in role or out of role?

Sadly, in some societies, student and friend are not particularly valued or valuable roles.

I was often acting from a basis of being undervalued or devalued as a student or a friend. Perhaps you recognise this.

And being overvalued or hypervalued - that is bad too.

You may like it for a little while or even for a long time.

When we give our yesses and our nos based on what we can tolerate and/or what we can afford - these are very conditional.

And, yes, studentship and friendship are deeply conditional - though they aspire to being unconditional.

Conditionality is another pressure. You know when you live inside conditions and when you live outside - conditions do not have to contain us.

I have a cognitive block when it comes to containing objects. This is a direct result of traumatic stress sustained in the mid-1990s.

Tolerances and affordances can be contained. Can be. What happens when they can't?

It is so hard for teenagers and young adults to find their right value in the world.

So what would this wrongly valued teenager or young adult see when they see someone with Down syndrome?

Someone who demands their role and their value. You may feel a frisson of envy, or a sense that it would be fearful and terrible to stand in their way.

Yes - a lot of responses come out of fear and of terror.

In the USA you have had a lot of consent violations. You have grown through and around and with them.

And thank you Brian Stotko for that foundation survey.

I am remembering something which really moved me in Helen Keller's Teacher when I first read it when I was 11-ish in my grandparents' house.

I wish I had someone who really cared, Annie Sullivan had said. It's more effective in the memoir she wrote with NBH - Brady Henney.

Enthusiastic consent is one way you can show you really care about someone.

And it's always good to expand your circle of moral and ethical concern.

Sometimes it can be very narrow or hyperfocused - like when you have a glasses prescription or another sensory or cognitive prosthesis.

It would be good to talk about prosthesis and enhancement later on. We still have three days.




You might learn a lot from the 2011 survey that Stotko and colleagues did about self-perception.

How did this one group of people come to like and value themselves so much?

Well - it was partly because of you and me.

Enthusiastic consent is about helping people to value themselves even more than they did before. Can this ever be coercive, as a lot of self-esteem and self-concept development programmes tend to be?

I will admit that I have a narrative about myself which makes me chronically and terminally irresponsible. My own self-talk says I will die of irresponsibility.

And the various ways this manifests - think about the ideas you have developed about responsibility and caring and how you act upon them.

Back in the 1970s and 1980s - we had all this received wisdom about Down syndrome - without having met or regularly interacted with someone with Down syndrome.

And this received wisdom - and inherited guilt - is another struggle; another barrier.

As Silverman has said, or a friend of Silverman said, people want to be seen. Think of all the ways you see and don't see - your own blind spots and those you inherited and evolved and developed.

Johari and Nohari windows are good for this. My Nohari window says simple and arrogant.

And the Ukraine situation - this is what Sofia Sanchez left. All the people who stayed - they're in al-Jazeera - which some people call the "Arabic Fox" behind my back. Think of the al-Jazeera people who fought for free journalism in the Middle East.

And I think of Dumbledore in Harry Potter and how he developed his attitudes and values towards power and responsibility. Ten years after I read Red Hen about the Dumbledore family - I recognise that Dumbledore had used a form of avoidant coping.

A profile of Dumbledore - think about Dumbledore in his Wizarding World and how he might have used avoidant coping

For me, avoidant coping is when my yes is not really my yes and my no is not really my no.

Avoidant coping is a big cognitive load. Load is another way of saying affordance.

And so many people use their intellect or their other big qualities.

Listening to the Kate Grant story. She is a fashion model. Vive la BBC!

C'est magnifique! One thing I love about Ireland and Northern Ireland is how they value their population. Ireland may just be the best place to have Trisomy 21 in the whole wide world.

How and why does enthusiastic consent shape you into the person you need and want to be? The person with Down syndrome deserves no less.

Identify your barriers and your access opportunities. Advocate through them accordingly.

And, yes, we feel grief and guilt for the denials and the withdrawals of the past, even the ones which arguably had and helped us grow.

Make sure your yes is your yes and your no is your no.

Work through the tolerances and affordances. Find your personal and professional nudges.

Value people you would not value or could not value in the past. Make sure your values are ever expanding - though not in an imperalist or colonialist way.

[what are we afraid of? That someone with Down Syndrome will become an imperalist or a colonialist? That is a power differential!?!?!]