Speech by Jock Elliott Aug 1998
Elvis Presley is alive and well and working in a diner in Dayton Ohio. People say they’ve seen him there, so of course, it must be true.
And 3.7 million Americans have been abducted by aliens, or so it says in the National Enquirer, so that must be true too.
Or are these people crazy? No! They just dance to a different tune, perhaps a loony tune. But then we all have our own truths, our own perceptions of the world and we all dance to our own particular loony tunes, our own mad music.
Sometimes of course, we all line dance together, bootscooting to the brutal beat of peer pressure and the remorseless rhythms of the rat race. But other times, when we’re alone in our head, we dance by ourselves, and not only do we need our own music to dance to, but the world needs the music that only we can hear. Let me explain.
We know Santa Claus is true because we’ve seen him. Hundreds of him. And hundreds of Santas can’t be wrong. Nor can millions of children. So he’s true enough to satisfy a need.
Jimmy Stewart had a friendship with a 6 foot tall white rabbit called Harvey which only he could see. Yet Harvey must be true because he made Jimmy Stewart millions of dollars and millions of friends.
Is that a loony tune? I hope not because when I was a little boy, I had a friend only I could see called Mr Wolf. He was the friend of a lonely little boy and he was there for me when I needed him and he took the rap for my childish crimes. I think Mr Wolf is still out there dancing to the street music in some child’s head, because the need is still there.
Such a need isn’t bad, or sad, or mad. It’s just different. But as Forrest Gump says,
“different is as different does”
Forrest Gump
And where would we be without the people who dance to a different tune? Consider this: In 1942, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, what a silly thing to do. He didn’t know where he was going. He didn’t know where he was when he got there. And he didn’t know where he’d been when he got back. But aren’t you glad he was wrong?
And if Thomas Edison hadn’t invented the elctric light, we’d have to watch television in the dark. Mad music? I don’t think so!
But what about glad music and sad music? The quiet, simple, private tunes which let us dance a private little dance of our own.
My father danced to such a tune. He valued curiosity more than money, which was just as well, because he never had any money. He could have. He had the talent and the ideas. For example, when I was 3, he invented me a toy ride-on mechanical elephant. So that when I sat in the saddle and leant to the right, the left legs moved forward, and when I leant to the left, the right legs moved forward. It walked. It was brilliant. It was worth a fortune, but once he was happy it worked, he lost interest.
It would have been nice to inherit a fortune based on mechanical elephants, but it’s nicer still to inherit the enormous goodwill and friendship of the many people who knew and loved my father.
Two months ago, I delivered the eulogy at his funeral. It was probably the most important speech of my life and I thank my many years in Toastmasters for the difference it made in me so that I could share with those there the wonderfully different mad music of my father’s life, because as long as they can hear the tune he danced to, then in the words of Sonny Bono, “the beat goes on”
Some people hear the grandest music, some people hear the smallest tunes, but the tunes we each hear and the steps we each dance are uniquely our own.
Just as a man chooses his necktie each morning, or a woman her dress, so we all have many a closet full of differences, which only fit us, which only look good on us. There are so many things we do that only a few others do, but which the world thinks strange.
Well, that’s the world’s problem. If people cant’ hear you music, can’t dance your steps, don’t stop dancing. Turn up the volume. Kick up your heels. Let the mad, sad, glad music play on in your heads and dance, dance to a different tune.