This is the original of a song that's been through a few different versions. Danny Kaye sang it as Hans Christian Andersen. Charles Aznavour did a duet of it with Robin on The Muppet Show.
It's lovely, of course. But what is it? Projection? Metaphor? An actual inchworm won't actually go far with arithmetic. I only point this out so you won't misdirect your anger.
Lynn Garland, Loesser's then-wife, does a nice job on the backing vocals.
2 comments:
I had to think of this one for a bit. Since this lovely song was written for the musical 'Hans Christian Anderson', a master of fairytales, the obvious answer was likely to remind children that they should always remember to regard beauty as taking precedence over strict calculation. But a bit more thought in regard to experts in any field is that when one knows a subject deeply then of course the sheer beauty of the object viewed/discovered/understood (or heard in the case of musicians) might be even better appreciated.
At least so it seems to me.
Whether or not Loesser intended that interpretation, I like it. Knowledge doesn't have to be inimical to joy. For example, take an astronomer looking at the night sky. The astronomer will know that stars aren't just pretty twinkling lights, but rather immeasurably large nuclear reactors, a number of which have stopped working. But that doesn't mean the astronomer will be incapable of seeing the beauty of the stars. They may greatly appreciate that we're in just the right position to see them.
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