Accentuate the Positive

"That would cause pandemonium, what with the explosions, flooding, drowning etc that would occur"-- from the remarks of Dhiren Barot

"Pandemonium"? You can take a boy away from the Baghavad Gita and the Bible, but you can't always get their lexicons out of his system.

"Pandemonium."

In order to relieve, a bit, the effect of reading so many excerpts from The Daily Gloom, a musical interlude.

Music, maestro, please.

Thank you.

Your own head will do nicely for a concertgebouw, you must provide the tune yourself, which no doubt you have heard many times in your life.

Here are the lyrics:

Accentuate the Positive
(lyrics by Johnny Mercer, music by Harold Arlen)

Gather 'round me, everybody
Gather 'round me while I preach some,
Feel a sermon comin' on me.
The topic will be sin and that's what I'm ""agin.""
If you wanna hear my story
Then settle back and just sit tight
While I start reviewin' the attitude of doin' right.

You've got to Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive
E-lim-mynate the negative,
Latch on to the affirmative
Don't mess with Mister In-between.
You've got to spread joy up to the maximum,
Bring gloom down to a minimum,
Have faith or pandemonium's li'ble to walk upon the scene.

To illustrate my last remark,
Jonah in the whale.
Noah in the ark.
What did they do
Just when everything looked so dark?

""Man,"" they said,
""We better Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive
E-lim-mynate the negative,
Latch on to the affirmative
Don't mess with Mister In-between.""
No! Don't mess with Mister In-between.

If you have seen the hospital-room scene in "The Singing Detective" in which this song is sung, you don't need any any further guidance. If you haven't seen that scene, go out, rent the DVD, and see it. In the alternative, see if you can download the original version of the song. You won't regret it.