♫ Pick Yourself Up (from Swing Time, 1936)
A few weeks ago, I couldn't get a song out of my head for two or three whole days. It was terrific. That part of the week nearly sailed by. Inevitably, my internal DJ app force-quit and relaunched. I was far from grateful.
Why? Because the song was "Pick Yourself Up," from the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musical "Swing Time."
Yes, of course, fine: the dancing is marvelous. But it's not half as joyful as the sung version that precedes the dance number:
The song/scene is within the context of "the type of really awesome musicals that Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were making in the 30s." The key ingredients are:
- Fred, playing either a professional dancer or some sort of upper-crust swell who's the embarrassment of his family because prefers to spend his time dancing instead of grinding the neck of the proletariat beneath his family's iron boot (either way: his character is probably named "Lucky" or somesuch);
- Ginger, playing a cutie who's much sharper than people (including the audience) think, and thus is correctly suspicious of Fred from the outset;
- Fred's "Sancho Panza" (likely queer-coded), who sticks by Fred and alternates between instigating trouble for him and innocently suffering fallout from the association;
- A bona-fide broad or dame, sturdily-built and worldly-wise. She's generally there to offset Sancho Panza and serve as a gentle obstacle to flim-flammery. But she does it in such a way that one is left thinking "Yeah, she's absolutely right." She might look like a head librarian, but she spends her evenings reading Henry Miller and smoking jazz cigarettes.
Here, Fred has landed in New York City and has become smitten with Ginger, following a Meet Cute. He signs up for a free dance lesson at the studio where she works, not letting on that he's a professional hoofer. When his feigned incompetence frustrates Ginger to the point where she does something that gets herself fired, Fred drops the façade, saves Ginger's job, and sets up Act 3.
It's a kind of storytelling that doesn't get enough respect: a story that's wise enough to get out of the movie's way and stay there. The "Cinema Sins" YouTube channel would have a field day with "Swing Time," I'm sure. This is why I switched my allegiances to "Honest Trailers" a long time ago. Anybody whose first reaction to watching "Swing Time" is to head straight to a social media forum and explain (through a cloud of purple smirk) how completely stupid the setup to the dance lesson scene is doesn't deserve to have this uplifting song running through their head for the better part of a week:
Nothing's impossible, I have found.
For when my chin is on the ground,
I pick myself up, dust myself off,
Start all over again.
Don't lose your confidence if you slip.
Be grateful for a pleasant trip,
And pick yourself up; dust yourself off;
Start all over again.
Work like a soul inspired
'Til the battle of the day is won.
You may be sick and tired,
But you'll be a man, my son.
Will you remember the famous men
Who had to fall to rise again.
So take a deep breath;
Pick yourself up;
Dust yourself off;
Start all over again!
Mind you, I wasn't in the doldrums or anything when my brain decided to lay this on me. But wow, what a potent reminder of the power of consistently-applied positivity.
I was trying to fix a bike accessory and one of the screws bounced off the table and warped away into hyperspace somewhere. Under these circumstances, it is not unknown for me to mutter a Bible quote from the Book of Job (which I learned via a "Peanuts" Sunday strip):
This time, I visualized Fred Astaire flat on the ground, with Ginger Rogers singing to him:
Don't lose your confidence if you slip.
Be grateful for a pleasant trip,
And pick yourself up; dust yourself off;
Start all over again.
I'm positive that my brain had intended to compare my situation to the second most put-upon figure from the Bible…you know, like normal. This time, it didn't. I crawled around on my hands and knees and felt around until I found the screw. No, I can't say that I was especially joyful about it. But overall, the incident left my élan dry and undampened, with a healthy perspective on the incident (eg, "**** happens").
I'd had no idea about how much I'd been bumming myself out with these daily micro-downers until I felt the positive impact of Not Doing That for a few days. It felt similar to picking up my laptop bag after I've taken a few minutes to dump out an accumulation of stuff I don't need.
I'm now committed to reacting to life's daily stresses with alternative pop- and Bible-culture references…uplifting and positive ones. Also, I've watched "Swing Time" twice in the week since. These are both very, very good ways to strengthen your constitution against all of the 2025-ness that's been going on.
Listen to “Pick Yourself Up (from Swing Time)” on:
• Amazon Music (this isn't tech-related, so I'm using an affiliate link. If you click through to Amazon from this, and buy literally anything, I'll get a little kickback in the form of Amazon store credits, proportional to the price. Thank you kindly.)
• Spotify