Baz Luhrmann Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)

Baz Luhrmann Lyrics - Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)

Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of ’99
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be
it.

The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience…I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh nevermind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded.

But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked….You’re not as fat as you imagine.

Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing everyday that scares you

Sing

Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts, don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss

Don’t waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind…the race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself.

Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults; if you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life…the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t.

Get plenty of calcium.

Be kind to your knees, you’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll have children,maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary…what ever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either – your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s.

Enjoy your body, use it every way you can…don’t be afraid of it, or what other people
think of it, it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own..

Dance…even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.

Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them. Do NOT read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents, you never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings; they are the best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go,but for the precious few you should hold on.

Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young. Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard; live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old, and when you do you’ll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders. Respect your elders. Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund, maybe you have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one might run out. Don’t mess too much with your hair, or by the time you're 40, it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen…

Changes

So this is the end of an era. We are merging with another company and this is probably the end of our situation as we know it.

Probably people will leave, maybe locations will change and so many other things but what worries me the most is that we will loose our everyday reality as we know it. We had a way of doing things, of communicating, of.....Oh I dunno its hard to explain but I know I'm going to miss it terribly.

Anyway that is all a process that will take some time.

On the other hand recent events have forced me to think on the nature of intimacy and closeness. Also on the maturity that is required to be able to coexist with a person, not just be obsessed or transfixed by passion for sometime and then be unable to move to the next level.

So is it in fact possible to fall in love and stay in love for ever?

Probably not in the strict sense of this sentence. You fall in and out of love many times cause that is the nature of the human brain, we need variety, we are ingenious beings and require change.

Why do we fall in love when it is so painful and we risk so much of our soul in the process? Because when it happens you hear Puccini (just put the name of your favorite artist there - for me it is Nessun Dorma from Turandot - Puccini's final and most exquisite masterpiece) in your brain all day. Because everything is suddenly lifted to the next level and you feel as if your strength is endless. Because it just feels f*cking great.

And also for those who mature with age this also gets worse as the years go by because as their humanity evolves so does the level of feeling and understanding. So falling in love gets more difficult and also a lot more severe.

Falling in love as you grow older , as you mature is something more earth shattering than the agony of your first love because you now carry all this burden.

As a friend put it, you have a buffer that is at first empty. As it fills up it gets a lot more difficult to flush anything out.

Can the agony of being in love, of passion , be followed by years of equal intensity? Probably not but there you have all the intimacy that has been formed in the process. I always thought that if 2 people that were determined to never stop evolving found each other than they would never stop being in love because there would always be something new to find out....together....

If the nature of a soulmate is something that is achievable then I guess that is what it should be like.

This was for me Carl Sagan And Annie Druyan.

When Carl Sagan died it was for me devastating. Reading the epilogue written by Annie the following passage brought me to tears :

"Contrary to the fantasies of the fundamentalists, there was no deathbed conversion, no last minute refuge taken in a comforting vision of a heaven or an afterlife. For Carl, what mattered most was what was true, not merely what would make us feel better. Even at this moment when anyone would be forgiven for turning away from the reality of our situation, Carl was unflinching. As we looked deeply into each other's eyes, it was with a shared conviction that our wondrous life together was ending forever."

In his chapter "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection" from The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle In The Dark (Sagan's last book while he was alive, and the one most critical of religion), Carl wrote:

"If some good evidence for life after death were announced, I'd be eager to examine it; but it would have to be real scientific data, not mere anecdote. As with the face on Mars and alien abductions, better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy. And in the final tolling it often turns out that the facts are more comforting than the fantasy."

Sentiments like these are infinitely more moving, more courageous, more meaningful than any hymn or sermon that I have ever heard.

In such a short life we have here it is important, vital, critical and so many more words that do not come to mind to grasp the chances, to achieve this kind of intimacy with a soulmate.

As you grow older it gets so much more difficult for those of us with intriguing minds and evolving humanity.

And sometimes it get devastating.

And I still miss Carl Sagan....damn it!