The Hammock Papers: Rodney Crowell, "Still Learning How To Fly"

25 January 2011

Rodney Crowell, "Still Learning How To Fly"

Luckily the iPod was cranked up and on shuffle this morning while I was in the shower ... this one came and I'm glad.

The hour is early
The whole world is quiet
A beautiful morning's about to ignite
I'm ready for danger
I'm ready for fire
I'm ready for something to lift me up higher

Life's been good, I guess
My ragged old heart's been blessed
With so much more than meets the eye
I've got a past I won't soon forget
You ain't seen nothing yet
I'm still learning how to fly

It's the dreams that die hard
With old habits to break
You can't let down your guard
When there's so much at stake
I'm halfway to heaven, halfway to hell
But I might roll a seven
You never can tell

Life's been good it's true
When I'm feeling just like new
The same old rules need not apply
I've got a past full of sticks and stones
And a good feeling in my bones
I'm still learning how to fly

I wanna go faster
I don't wanna slow down
I don't wanna get off of this merrygoround
I wanna be reckless
I wanna be vain
I wanna make love like a runaway train

Life's been good I said
I'm 10,000 miles ahead
The day I rest is the day I die
I've got a past like a broken wing
But you ain't seen anything
I'm still learning how to fly
I'm still learning how to fly

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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