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:''I know that I must do what’s right'' <br>
{{quote|
:''As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti''<ref>Written, allegedly by [[David Paich]] (well: no one ''else'' in {{tag|Toto}} seems prepared to claim responsibility for it).</ref> <br>
''I know that I must do what’s right'' <br>
''As sure as [[Kilimanjaro]] rises like [[Olympus]] above the [[Serengeti]]''<ref>Written, allegedly by [[David Paich]] (well: no one ''else'' in [[Toto]] seems prepared to claim responsibility for it).</ref>}}
Where to start?


Where to start?  
For one thing, [[Kilimanjaro]] ''doesn’t'' rise above the [[Serengeti]]. (It rises above the [[Tsavo]] National Park. Why, you might wonder, ''didn’t'' he put “Tsavo”? It would have scanned better.) You can’t even ''see'' it from the [[Serengeti]], unless you get in a hot air balloon and take a telescope: they’re about 250 kilometres from each other. A correspondent writes with photographic evidence, in the panel: you can barely see Kilimanjaro from Mount Meru, 70 km away in the Arusha National Park, let alone from Serengeti, three times further away.


For one thing, Kilimanjaro ''doesn’t'' rise above the [[Serengeti]]. You can’t even ''see'' it from the [[Serengeti]], unless you get in a hot air balloon and take a telescope: they’re about 300 kilometres from each other. Kilimanjaro rises above the [[Tsavo]] (see picture).
And not just because it is a long way away. It is ''literally'' over the horizon. Let’s be fully scientific about this. From the ground, all but the top 900 metres of a 6,000 metre mountain would be over the horizon.<ref>Check it out for yourself at [https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/earth-curvature this earth curvature calculator].</ref> 900 metres at 250km would appear about 4mm high, if you could even see it through nearby trees (with or without napping [[leopress]]es), haze, atmospheric perspective etc. This is not really rising at ''all'', let alone majestically, like Olympus might (if it weren’t already rising above a national park in Greece, of course).  


And Mount Olympus ''definitely'' doesn’t rise above the [[Serengeti]]. It’s in Greece.  
And Mount Olympus ''definitely'' doesn’t rise above the [[Serengeti]]. It’s in Greece.  
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And we haven’t even got onto the fact that THE LINE DOESN’T SCAN FOR CRYING OUT LOUD.
And we haven’t even got onto the fact that THE LINE DOESN’T SCAN FOR CRYING OUT LOUD.
===An unhappy collision of contrary rhythms===
So let’s get on to that. Here we cite Adam Bradley’s ''The Poetry of Pop'', a wonderfully patient examination of modern doggerel,<ref>[https://www.amazon.co.uk/Poetry-Pop-Adam-Bradley/dp/0300165021/ The Poetry of Pop], p90.</ref> to validate our own count: the line scans with an already outrageous ''fourteen'' syllables — iambic pentameter it is not — but Paich then jams ''twenty-one'' syllables into that space. Bradley drily observes:
:“the rhythmic and melodic structure of the line forces the lead singer, Joseph Williams, into circumlocutions of stress that end up mangling the final word of that longest line; instead of “Seren''get''i”, the rhythm and melody of the song force him to pronounce it as “''Ser''engeti”... I understand this moment now as an unhappy, though fleeting, collision of contrary rhythms. The song still moves me, however, all the more now for this small window into the world of its rhythm.”
Mr. Bradley is clearly a glass-half-full sort of chap.
===“Olympus”?===
A correspondent writes:
{{quote|Sorry but you ALL HAVE IT WRONG!!! THE LYRIC IS “RISES LIKE A LEOPRESS”... THIS HAS BEEN BUGGING THE F OUT OF ME FOR YEARS. I think Weezer screwed up the whole world in this lyric... read his lips in the video}}
Now while I respect the the vigour with which this argument is put, I cannot agree with it. Firstly, the video cuts away to [[Steve Lukather]] who, rather like a tone-deaf footballer singing the national anthem, has forgotten to sing along at the key moment:
We must allow [[David Paich|Mr. Paich]] some facility with logic and common sense, even if not much, and while Olympus clearly does not rise above the Serengeti, or another part of the African continent, being a mountain, it ''does'' at least rise above things like plains.
As for “leopresses”, who can say? What even ''is'' a “leopress”? It has escaped the compliers of the OED and, for what it is worth, Websters.<ref>Probably quite a bit, for [[David Paich|Mr. Paich]], being from California.</ref> I take it to be some kind of creative contraction of “leopardess” on Mr. Paich’s part. This cannot be right, for two reasons:
Firstly, female leopards, however described, do not really rise above things like plains. They may be fast, but in two dimensions. Leopards are wholly earthbound. The sorts of things that ''do'' rise above plains are mountains, rainclouds (mainly in Spain), and hot air balloons (as per the above, I am told, it is only ''from'' a hot air balloon, that has already risen high above the Serengeti, that one can even ''see'' Kilimanjaro.)
Secondly, the “leop’r’ess” contraction strikes me as implausible, particularly as elsewhere [[David Paich|Mr. Paich]] gives the strong impression that he is not in the habit of making literary contractions for the sake of space. After all, he has already jammed twenty one syllables into a line apparently requiring only fourteen. Why start now?
{{sa}}
*[[Kilimanjaro]]
*[[Serengeti]]
*[[Tsavo]]
*[[Toto]]
*[[The worst rock lyric in history]]
{{ref}}

Latest revision as of 13:30, 14 August 2024

I know that I must do what’s right
As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti[1]

Where to start?

For one thing, Kilimanjaro doesn’t rise above the Serengeti. (It rises above the Tsavo National Park. Why, you might wonder, didn’t he put “Tsavo”? It would have scanned better.) You can’t even see it from the Serengeti, unless you get in a hot air balloon and take a telescope: they’re about 250 kilometres from each other. A correspondent writes with photographic evidence, in the panel: you can barely see Kilimanjaro from Mount Meru, 70 km away in the Arusha National Park, let alone from Serengeti, three times further away.

And not just because it is a long way away. It is literally over the horizon. Let’s be fully scientific about this. From the ground, all but the top 900 metres of a 6,000 metre mountain would be over the horizon.[2] 900 metres at 250km would appear about 4mm high, if you could even see it through nearby trees (with or without napping leopresses), haze, atmospheric perspective etc. This is not really rising at all, let alone majestically, like Olympus might (if it weren’t already rising above a national park in Greece, of course).

And Mount Olympus definitely doesn’t rise above the Serengeti. It’s in Greece.

To the extent you could say that something that has just sat there for millions of years does anything as energetic as “rising”, then Kilimanjaro doesn’t rise like Olympus, either. It rises like Kilimanjaro. They don’t look anything like each other. I mean, look.

And we haven’t even got onto the fact that THE LINE DOESN’T SCAN FOR CRYING OUT LOUD.

  1. ↑ Written, allegedly by David Paich (well: no one else in Toto seems prepared to claim responsibility for it).
  2. ↑ Check it out for yourself at this earth curvature calculator.
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