Elephant (Tame Impala song)

"Elephant" is a song by Australian psychedelic rock band Tame Impala. It was released as a single from their second album Lonerism on 26 July 2012. Said lead singer Kevin Parker of the song:

"Elephant" features a bluesier side of Tame Impala, heard more frequently on their EP, as the song was written around that stage. Because it was written around that time, "Elephant" is "an anomaly on Lonerism. There are no other songs that have that bluesy riffing".

The cover artwork was designed by Leif Podhajsky.

Awards

TV/Film appearances

"Elephant" has a number of appearances in television and film, including:

Elephant (1989 film)

Elephant is a 1989 British short film directed by Alan Clarke and produced by Danny Boyle. The film is set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and its title comes from Bernard MacLaverty's description of the conflict as "the elephant in our living room" — a reference to the collective denial of the underlying social problems of Northern Ireland. Produced by BBC Northern Ireland, it first screened on BBC2 in 1989. The film was first conceived by Boyle, who was working as a producer for BBC Northern Ireland at the time.

The film, which contains very little dialogue, depicts eighteen murders and is partly based on actual events drawn from police reports at the time. It is shot with 16mm film with much of it filmed using a steadicam and features a series of tracking shots, a technique the director used regularly. The grainy 16mm film, together with the lack of dialogue, plot, narrative and music give the film a cold, observational documentary feel. Nothing is learnt about any of the gunmen or victims. Each of the murders are carried out calmly and casually; in one scene the gunman is seen to drive away slowly, even stopping to give way for traffic. The victims are shown for several seconds in a static shot of the body.

Elephant (science book)

Elephant is a 1964 science book by L. Sprague de Camp, published by Pyramid Books as part of The Worlds of Science series.

The book treats its subject comprehensively, covering elephants in captivity and the wild, their use in ancient warfare, modern conflicts between elephants and farmers, and preservation efforts, among other topics. It is "[d]esigned for the general reader and student, about the various aspects of the world's largest land animal, from fossils to captive elephants."

While a decent study, the book is important more for its insight into the mind of the author than in its own right, elephants being a lifelong interest of de Camp's that figures in many of his other literary works. In his early time travel novel Lest Darkness Fall his protagonist Martin Padway pens a similar monograph, while in his historical novel An Elephant for Aristotle details the difficulties in transporting an elephant from India to Greece during ancient times. De Camp also wrote a number of articles about elephants, a few of which appeared, together with a chapter selected from the present work, in his later collection The Fringe of the Unknown (1983).

Paradise

Paradise (Persian: پردیس, Paradise garden) is the term for a place of timeless harmony. The Abrahamic faiths associate paradise with the Garden of Eden, that is, the perfect state of the world prior to the fall from grace, and the perfect state that will be restored in the World to Come.

Paradisaical notions are cross-cultural, often laden with pastoral imagery, and may be cosmogonical or eschatological or both, often compared to the miseries of human civilization: in paradise there is only peace, prosperity, and happiness. Paradise is a place of contentment, a land of luxury and idleness. Paradise is often described as a "higher place", the holiest place, in contrast to this world, or underworlds such as Hell. In eschatological contexts, paradise is imagined as an abode of the virtuous dead. In Christian and Islamic understanding, Heaven is a paradisaical relief. In old Egyptian beliefs, the otherworld is Aaru, the reed-fields of ideal hunting and fishing grounds where the dead lived after judgment. For the Celts, it was the Fortunate Isle of Mag Mell. For the classical Greeks, the Elysian fields was a paradisaical land of plenty where the heroic and righteous dead hoped to spend eternity. The Vedic Indians held that the physical body was destroyed by fire but recreated and reunited in the Third Heaven in a state of bliss. In the Zoroastrian Avesta, the "Best Existence" and the "House of Song" are places of the righteous dead. On the other hand, in cosmological contexts 'paradise' describes the world before it was tainted by evil.

Paradise (Cody Simpson album)

Paradise is the debut studio album by Australian recording artist Cody Simpson, released on 28 September 2012 by Atlantic Records.

Background

On 12 June 2012, Simpson released Preview to Paradise, a four song teaser EP. The EP featured the songs "Got Me Good", "So Listen", "Wish U Were Here", and "Gentleman". All of the songs, besides "So Listen" were released as a part of Paradise. Simpson stated the reason behind only having a few collaborations on the album is because "I wanted my debut full length album to be a representation of me." It is rumored that Simpson could perform a one off song with JLS star Aston Merrygold once Surfers Paradise has been released.

Singles

On 25 May 2012, the lead single, "Got Me Good" was released as a teaser on Simpson's official website and radio. The accompanying music video was released on 5 June.

"Wish U Were Here", which features American YouTube singer Becky G, was the second official single off the album, released on 12 June 2012. The music video debuted on 7 August 2012. Four days later, three remixes of the song were released.

Paradise (Abdulrazak Gurnah)

Paradise is a historical novel by Abdulrazak Gurnah. The novel was nominated for both the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Prize for Fiction.

Plot

The novel follows the story of Yusuf, a boy born in the fictional town of Kawa in Tanzania at the turn of the Twentieth century. Yusuf's father is a hotelier and is in debt to a rich and powerful Arab merchant named Aziz. Early in the story Yusuf is pawned in exchange for his father's owed debt to Aziz and must work as an unpaid servant for the merchant. Yusuf joins Aziz's caravan as they travel into parts of Central Africa and the Congo Basin that have hitherto not been traded with for many generations. Here, Aziz's caravan of traders meets hostility from local tribes, wild animals and difficult terrain. As the caravan returns to East Africa, World War I begins and Aziz encounters the German Army as they sweep Tanzania, forcibly conscripting African men as soldiers.

Major themes

African literary scholar J U Jacobs writes that Gurnah is writing back to Joseph Conrad's famous 1902 novel Heart Of Darkness. In Aziz's easterly journey to the Congo, Jacobs says that Gurnah is challenging the dominant Western images of the Congo at the turn of the twentieth century that continue to pervade the popular imagination.