The Hammock Papers: A few angular turns on a clear, open canvas

12 January 2009

A few angular turns on a clear, open canvas

Each generation has their singer. My parents grew up with and still love Sinatra (thanks to them, I do as well). Some may hear The Glenn Miller Orchestra, Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Merle Haggard, or even, God forbid, Madonna and her devil spawn, that Spears girl, and immediately feel as though they are spoken to. One such artisan for me is Robert Plant (Hey Mom! You can stop worrying -- I'm over KISS). Besides the poet laureate, Buffett, Plant was a musician that I gravitated to on my own because I felt spiritually moved by his voice -- still do.

I do remember the first time I ever heard his voice. I must have been a sophomore in high school when the senior class showed Led Zeppelin's The Song Remains The Same as a fund raiser in our school's auditorium. I have no idea what did it; I don't recall thinking deeply about much of anything in those days. I do remember that back then, as now, if I liked something, I really liked it. For me, Plant's voice was part of my young adulthood; a true master.

From the mysterious, thundering sounds of Led Zeppelin, to the lilting, romantic work he did with The Honeydrippers, and now with all of the diverse sounds that 25 years of a solo career has produced, I am still capitivated by, as he calls it, the angular musical turns that are made on his clear, open canvas.

1 comment:

Buff said...: To this day...everytime I hear Kiss, Boston, or Led, I think of you.....
"Turn the bass down!!!!!"; January 14, 2009 at 9:41 PM

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL