November verse 10: Wiggle and Jiggle at the Library
For Scott Morrison
We're here to sing and dance and jiggle,
mums, a dad and sundry grands,
toddlers primed with twinkle-twinkle,
row-row, incy-wincy hands.
'Welcome all, here's bells and shakers.
Let's go where the songs will take us.
We'll have great fun this afternoon
though sadly I can't hold a tune.'
That was no lie. She sang with gusto,
high and low but always wrong,
We tried and failed to sing along
fell silent on that all-day bus. To
sing together lifts the heart
but badly led, song falls apart.
Recent Comments
WP Bookblog Listing
Reading & watching- Southerly 78.3: Violence (Editor Elizabeth McMahon 2019) 23 November 2020Southerly is one of many Australian cultural projects that is in trouble under the current government. This is a brilliant issue.
- When the Dust Settles / Når støvet har lagt sig (Dorte Warnøe Høgh, Ida Maria Rydén 2020) 23 November 2020Bill Bryson's view of the Danes always ready for a cheerfully intoxicated good time doesn't apply here. It traces the lives of a number of people in the days before a terrorist attack and, presumably, after.
- MumSeason 2 (Stefan Golaszewski 2018) 22 November 2020This film about two humans surrounded by grotesques is still funny and still almost unbearable.
- The Crown Season 4 (Peter Morgan 2020) 15 November 2020According to IMDB, this is the fourth of six projected seasons. This is the one where Diana Spencer makes her appearance. And Maggie Thatcher, who is presented in counterpoint to her. Is it wrong to want Jeffrey Epstein to have a cameo role?
- What They Had (Elizabeth Chomko 2018) 14 November 2020A woman has fairly early stage dementia. Her husband and two adult children are at odds about what is to be done. Terrific performances, and some recognisable moments.
- Southerly 78.3: Violence (Editor Elizabeth McMahon 2019) 23 November 2020
Aah! That thing about singing and not being truly able – rings bells for me. I remember this very season almost upon us back in my Japan teaching days – with middle schoolers and seniors and university students – singing (maybe holding the tune if not tunefully so – Xmas songs and Christmas carols (all let loose in shopping centres across Japan in any event) after explaining their general intent – snowy season: Frosty The Snowman, Rudolf, I’m dreaming… – and the decidedly unbiblical Santa story (but not in Australia – for which we’d sing the Aussie Christmas Carol “The north wind is tossing the leaves….the red dust is over the town…etc.) – or the Jesus nativity tales! (Adeste fidelis… We Three Kings, Away in a manger… and And even within that reference of mine – the red dust bit – acknowledged;edgement that for umpteen decades the invader kinds of land-use has been the antithesis to the careful millennia-long land management practices of the First Nations peoples! And just before departing Tbilisi in Georgia on Monday last – our Georgian guide telling us of forest wild-fires in the country’s mountainous north-west – country mostly above 2000 metres above sea level – peaks over 5,000 metres – and despite recent falls of snow among which we had tramped and slid and fallen – no bones broken thank goodness – and where such fires had never before occurred – amid retreating glaciers – climate change had well-and-truly arrived!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank for that truly Proustian comment, Jim – from a children’s event in suburban Sydney to the mountains of Georgia by way of Latin sacred song, Japanese supermarkets and the havoc wrought by colonialism in Australia, all miraculously cohering in virtually a single sentence.
LikeLike
You’ve enumerated perfectly all my faults of passion and connection and long-windedness! Merci beaucoup, mon ami!
LikeLike
But being Proustian is not a fault. Quite the opposite
LikeLike