[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.

 

Happy eightieth birthday Philip Adams! #latenightlive

Happy 80th birthday Phillip Adams!

Fiedler is interviewing him and having a conversation.

He is talking about the farm and the kangaroos and feral animals who live there.

He has an apartment in Kings Cross.

“Does living on a property change the way you see the world?”

When he was small he tilled the soil with donkeys and no motor vehicle or electronic appliances.

LNL is a wireless programme.

William Smith Adams - what you saw is what you got - no fragmentation of the personality.

These days people have multiple personality disorder - change and reconfigure and …. In contrast Grandpa was just grandpa.

He had a quiet wisdom and tranquility.

Bob Ellis called it the curse of interruption. - now is a great neon lit search lit sign which lasts a neurosecond -ahem, a nanosecond!

Reverend Charles Adams.

Sue Ellen Smith was Adams’ Mum. She came from Maryborough or did they live there?

Phil is two years old. His dad is writing a sermon. There is this vast thunderous noise and he looks up through the peppercorn trees and the sky is on fire.

He crashed through this door - thunder and lightning - he went to his father for comfort.

His first memory is apocalyptical.

“How so,” asks Fidler.

“A terrible sense of dread and mortality”.

A tiny farm on the outskirts of Melbourne - he was about four when it happened - and he was terrified of death and infinity and mortality.

It was dreadful and full of terror.

Christianity was the family business - he tried to believe in Charles’ god and failed miserably.

The Congregational Manse.

He joined the Communist party when he was 15 years old. 1954.

He felt the sting of poverty? Was everyone poor around?

The whole area was gentrified and something.

He went to school in badly hand-made clothing and a bike he was ashamed still to have pedalled.

Bullied for being an oddball and for being poor.

Kerry Packer was called a boofhead - so was Phillip Adams!

Reverend Charles called him Headling as a middle name. Kid with the big bum called Bottomley - it was like that.

A large papier-mâché head which he filled with brains - he didn’t quite decide to fill his head like that.

The only safe escape was books for Philip - the East Kew subbranch of the library.

Grandma and Grandad would send 2 romance books form the street - and also William books he would read for the 50th time and Biggles too.

The librarian went up the step and took Philip an adult book - The Grapes of Wrath.

All kids feel the battle and victimhood of injustice - something systemic and significant.

Your life is a walk in the park compared to others.

Mother partnered with a sleepy businessman who was abusive and violent.

His father didn’t protect him when his life was appalling - father was weak and appalling.

He broke off relations with his father and never spoke for 30-40 years until he died.

The poor businessman - PA made a bonfire of the PB/SB with his mother - at least his stuff.

Michael Burke is the guy’s name. Al Garnett character - ignorant and offensively unpleasant.

He must have been some kind of anti-father. And he tried to murder Philip - he was not a nice person.

Philip tried to protect his mother. He died too easily and painfully from a heart attack.

It was a ceremonial bonfire - suits; Lodge apron; [he was a Freemason]

Fidler’s dad could not bear to see a kid in a bad situation - and Philip supports children’ refuges like the Emblings.

The playground was not a playground - it was a little “hell on earth”.

The cruelty of children on each other - child-on-child abuse. It was just as bad as adult-on-kid abuse.

Blend and merge at the end of every school day.

With incredible shame - Mongoloid would be hanging out on the swings and PA and friends would pick on him.

The first refugee kids were arriving from Europe - PA was 6 to 14 when it was all happening. [1945-1953]

A shamed memory of what children do to children.

How did Philip choose to be an optimist? Not going to live that wounded self - a larger; more enthusiastic life.

On the cosmic level - you live in a meaningless universe without purpose - you give it a subjective meaning - meaning in another sense.

Philip’s meaning was trying to seek and find judgement. He was radicalised.

Comedy and humour was another radicalising and cathartic force for Philip - love is more congenial on balance.

Laughter contains great truths and he was a columnist for everyone - very inclusive

John Clarke had a genius for a compassionate satire.

He left because of the Soviet invasion of Hungary when he was 17 [1956].

Then you put a concentration camp on the utopia and it gets bigger and bigger and the utopia gets smaller and smaller.

A monumental claim collapses from its own contradictions.

-ology became suspect.

He was expelled? resigned? it was a time of chaos - it was the Prague Spring which was the final straw in 1968. That was when he was 29.

He stumbled into the Labor Party and was very embroiled in it.

More recently he resigned in a huff about the Kevin Rudd coup.

Rudd doesn’t have many friends - Philip is one of them.

Utopianism is mad and nuts and it leads to greed, grief and unintended consequences.

The most sterile and capitalistic endeavour you can be in - advertising.

The demands of the huge multinational clients - every boutique agency is run by an ex-Communism and Trotskyist.

The cunning plan to offer things people can’t afford. Manipulating the masses.

The late 1950s and 1960s - Australia had no film industry and there was ONE Australian play - that would be Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.

An odd Australian Council in advertising agencies - Schepsisi and Carey and Bruce Petty.

Amazing things done with the Australian film industry with Gorton and onwards.

The conquest of Australia House! Snags being cooked!

“How did you get away with stuff like that?”

“Nothing like a camera with you to engender resistance”.

Beresford/Humphries/Adams and Bazza McKenzie and the government executive. The GE was on the phone.

Please try to avoid too many Australian colloquialisms.

He was very proud that he kept his promise - Knock your dunny down into the grass.

“This is a family show”.

Converted them back into proper English - shove your head up in the dead bear’s bum. And the correct English translation is stuff your cranium…

Then we talk about the major columns in THE AUSTRALIAN and THE AGE.

Newspapers didn’t used to have columns -they were news wall-to-wall.

Graham Perkin was a legend - “Newspapers are in their dotage, don’t you realise,” said Philip Adams.

“Our newspapers will become a sagging lump.

“They’ve already seen the news and it’s on flipping television”.

Perkin took that on board and Adams was the first columnist for the Age.

He wrote about meaninglessness and could do this at intense and extensive length.

He had two pages in the Age and was encouraged to ramble.

John Singleton said he was a million words in desperate need of an editor.

And everyone else was doing it too - and he got lots and lots of letters.

There are 600 boxes of correspondence which are in the bowels of the National Library in Canberra.

They were in the farm in the shearing shed and rats were gobbling them up.

He would get some 20,000 letters. He would answer them all with his dictaphone.

Invariably now the letters are e-mailed.

He never wrote a poem - he dictated it.

We would go to the Bulletin or the Nation Review and he would do the same with correspondent.

How does he deal with abusive letters?

Bill Leak had a terrible letter from Timms - “Your offer that I should marry your daughter interested me greatly. Please send photo” he said as reply.

Which arsehole did it come off?

To this day it was delivered in perfect order from Australia Post - they can’t even deliver a Compact Disc without breaking it!

Did it have some structural integrity to it?!

Fidler was in a comedy group when he was younger.

and 2GB was when PA was working - “Total vision is a passing fad. Radio will outlive the passing parade like a cockroach”.

“radio was like two of you the guest and the listener sitting at a small table”.

That is why Gladys was invented - it wasn’t a joke about low ratings.

It’s a truth - it’s not a mass medium - it’s not like television - that broadcast energy.

You’re not shouting like - it amplifies the human ego - look at the shock jock phenomenon.

Don’t beat visitors or listeners with a point of view or your point of view.

Fidler can’t think of another guy like Adams [Adams is a bunch of guys, yes?].

2UE was considered a radio hellhole - RN was considered a Station of Lecturers.

Robyn Williams is an awesome science communicator since the 1970s and 1980s.

When he arrived at Radio National - it still talked to people like a university lecturer talked to a student. philip thought it was wrong.

Honorifics: forget them! Address the guest by their first name.

Then you’ve got to be two people talking - remind them how important they are at first.

You take people as you find them in an Australian egalitarian way.

Oh, yes, the book of australian jokes - the Hawke joke.

“There are 2 corpses on the Hawke library - one is a wallaby and one is a politician”

“There are skid marks on the wallaby”.

Isn’t that fantastic in that irreverence? So was Keating especially about Gough Whitlam.

PA collects ex-Prime-Ministers. And diplomats who have to behave themselves in office and then they tell the truth ex-officio.

They tend to be wounded  - and yes politics is a very cruel profession.

When Keating was reduced to human rubble.

Rudd did not leave the political process entirely unfazed or unscathed.

And, yes politicians do age at this accelerated rate.

You’d swear it was 20 after 5 or 10 years leaving office.

Advice from J Lang - watch how politicians treat drivers cleaners waiters nurse flight attendants.

And Keating DID marry a flight attendant - Annita Iersel.

80th birthday - people express great happiness when he bounces back from the grave.

A question to Ita - Ita is not in the first flush of youth herself.

Alan Jones admit to being just 70.

John Laws is 85.

Someone is 95 and still on the air [1923, right?].

Australians are not good at #talkingaboutdeath

We say that they’ve passed away or passed.

They will the sentence to be over as soon as it’s said.

Humanity is bad about talking about death.

Refusing to admit to its reality leads to pyramids and cathedrals.

As long as we deny death/prolong life as far as possible we will not be fully human.

Life is all too brief - to waste an hour of it is a blasphemy.

Stop deflecting and stop pretending and live in the moment and rejoice in it.

The chance of us being here is vanishing remote - it relied on the dinosaur asteroid.

The spilled seed in copulation. We can’t really be here - and yet we are. Enjoy it.

The fact that anything exists at all - carbon molecules organising themselves in to diamonds.

“Tahnk heavens’.

Living next door to Kerry Packer who was a fellow atheist.

He hated plutocrats on principle.

A $10,000 investment for The getting of wisdom - Packer can you pay for it? Invest it?

The excuse to visit in Melbourne Adams’ office - and there were several alpha males.

It’s 100000 or nothing. And then there was the cheque corrected.

For dinner in this working class restaurant in the Cross.

Kerry was a very serious dyslexic and he found reading impossible. So he became an interrogated who sucked information out of anybody.

About 3am in the morning he wanted to know What was a black hole and Adams quoted Stephen Hawking.

That’s what I’ve got inside me - a black hole.

The kids John and Heather Embling looked after - so was Kerry Packer damaged by a monster father.

Adams’ attitude really softened and then they became best friends.

Adams was Packer’s closet confidant - closest, I mean.

His choice was beyond bleak - don’t do it to James!

Don’t make it into an intergenerational issue - but James is seriously mentally ill - and he has the Packer curse in spades.

1648 - the slide into authoritarian leaders. Putin; Duterte; Trump - a lot of these people are ELECTED!

Could Australia elect authoritarian leader or leaders?

Kicking a the norms of democratic behaviour.

Someone who was born a week after he was - July 1939 - by this leader.

JOHN WINSTON HOWARD. The appalling treatment of refugees. Involvement in the horror of the War in Iraq.

In complete definiace of what the public wanted - the mass marches.

The perverted killing. He chose to accept the nonsense by Dubya and Bliar.

Trump hasn’t done anything really bad - yet.

Prorogue the parliament - advise the Tax Department - advise the police to attack the political enemies.

Violence against democracy - it is in peril.

He jokes when he talks about the United States as a failed state.

Comparatively healthy democracy like Australia.

“Do you still look at the Universe with Awe and Fear”?

“Wonderment and dread” - his wonderment has increased.

The test of a great idea is that its opposite - life is short and it is very long. You can do amazing things in your lifestyle.

The little boy who was terrified of fire and thunder still live-in 80-year-old Philip.

There are more stars than there are grains of sand in Earth. Billions of suns and moons out in the universe.

Many people still believe that God has a role in it or it is.

He can understand the need.

Fidler grew up with science fiction - travelling from planet to planet like country to country.

The distances between planets - a powerful idea! The vast unspeakable gulf between planets in the solar system.

We’re just beginning to understand the Great Paradoxes that advanced brains cannot even begin to comprehend.

It numbs the mind and it exhilarates. It is a dazzling fireworks display.

How is space able to bend? He puts his head up against this idea [Fidler] - it is a contra intuitiveness which doesn’t put against our cave brain.

They stair at their computer screens - they fill their time with their smartphones.

A lack of curiosity - an interest in the Kardashians - more than a cosmic adventure with a rocketship.

A wacky idea - in the future you could upload their consciousness - PA would be up for that - he doesn’t doubt - he’s more interested in artificial intelligence - hand on evolutionary process to others.

Humans will be pets and playthings for advanced robotic creators that look on us with sentiment.

He doesn’t want to have his future uploaded - a pseudoeternal life.

He doesn’t want to be stuck in heaven with people who he has successfully avoided.

Most people will be in Hell - Israel Folau said that - PA was on the list three times.

How are things better than they were when you were a young man?

Favourite aphorism and story - Pablo Casals was 80 and he survived the Spanish Civil War - press conference in Madrid - cogitating and complaining about the terrible mess of the world.

How the world was cuffed - he stopped when he heard his own voice hanging in the air.

Two sentences cannot fit together - they do it perfectly. “The situation is hopeless - we must take the next step”.

That is the whopper - we must take the next step.

We cannot surrender to it - it is the human nature to make things better.

Remaining curious is the best shield against depression and ennui [Fidler].

And knowing nothing is also interesting.

He wrote a list of things that he knew nothing about - astronomy to zoology.

He knows less and less as the common human knowledge increases.

A sense of defeatism and excitement and intensified curiosity.

“I will no longer be permitted to be curious and I will be curious that I’m no longer curious”.

PA’s favourite theme - Wombat Waltz by Elena Kats-Chernin.

[then the Wombat Waltz is played at the end].