The Hammock Papers: Out-of-balance.

17 December 2010

Out-of-balance.

I happen to like tannins—big red wines, very dark chocolates, and strong black tea all have them, and I like all of those. If you like a rounder, more balanced, more classically correct Darjeeling I'd say you should skip this one and go straight to a slightly calmer, better behaved, second flush tea. I like those a lot too. The one we've got from the Castleton Garden is very good. But first flush is still my first love. I've described it before (and I'm about to again here) as being "intentionally out of balance." It takes all the greenness, sharp edges, edgy beats, free jazz, cutting edge, slightly-crazy-but-in-a-supremely-endearing-way stuff about Darjeeling and puts it out front where you can get it, one amber-colored cup at a time. It's like speed without all the substance. Bold color without great contrast. Poetry with rhythm but no rhyme, or a sentence full of swear words but not much else (you know what I mean). Good stuff that stands out and understandably alienates a lot of people but is compelling to those ... to those, like me, for whom it's compelling.

Read the rest here.

Ari's archive.

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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