"Petrov, the Thinker," from
The Danny Kaye Show (1966):
I'm beginning to think that at
least half the credit for Danny Kaye's genius should go to Sylvia Fine, his wife, who
wrote most of the songs he performs so well.
...The thought of transcribing
all her words, together with the twitches and sweeps with which he punctuates them, threatens to make my head asplode. But here are two chunks that struck a personal chord, with me, and I felt I should at least get these two down:
Chunk #1 (2:41 - 3:10)
Spoken: "And that is how I'm discovering the secret of successful thinking --
The secret even the greatest philosophers cannot teach you --
Spinoza can't, Hagel can't, and Kant can't."
Sung:
"But first you must think about
Something to think about
Then, when you've thought it, you think it.
It may be a bell or a puss in the well,
Or a sting or a ring or a trinket.
Then, quick as a wink,
You must sit down and think,
Never mind if the thought is a bother.
But as soon as you've got
What you got from the thought
Then it's time that you thought of another!"
Aha! So
that's my trouble -- it's that "knowing when you've gotten all you need from the thought and
putting it behind you" that I'm getting stuck on. Instead, I obsess. And then, I depress. :-/
Chunk #2 (5:39 - 6:09):
Sung:
"So Petrov, the Thinker, is brilliant to the core!
You pr'olly wonder why you never heard of him before --
I will tell you, confidentially,
That Petrov is, essentially,
A thinker of Imaginary kind!
For Petrov, the Thinker
May think he's a thinker,
But Petrov is a-a-all
In my mi-i-i-ind!
Hah!"
And isn't that, essentially, the relationship of a writer to her (or his) characters?
---
There's a lot of meat to this, I will probably be coming back often, to learn it, and, as I do, I will fill out the transcription, bit by bit.
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