The Hammock Papers: Jimmy Buffett, "One Particular Harbor"

05 June 2011

Jimmy Buffett, "One Particular Harbor"

IA ORA TE NATURA
E MEA AROFA TEIE AO NEI
IA ORA TE NATURA
E MEA AROFA TEIE AO NEI

Nature lives (life to nature)
Have pity for the Earth
(Love the Earth)

I know I don't get there often enough
But God knows I surely try
It's a magic kind of medicine
That no doctor could prescribe

I used to rule my world from a pay phone
And ships out on the sea
But now times are rough
And I got too much stuff
Can't explain the likes of me

Chorus:
But there's this one particular harbour
So far but yet so near
Where I see the days as they fade away
And finally disappear

But now I think about the good times
Down in the Caribbean sunshine
In my younger days I was so bad
Laughin' about all the fun we had

I've seen enough to feel the world spin
Mixin' different oceans meetin' cousins
Listen to the drummers and the night sounds
Listen to the singers make the world go 'round

IA ORA TE NATURA
E MEA AROFA TEIE AO NEI
IA ORA TE NATURA
E MEA AROFA TEIE AO NEI

Lakes below the mountains
Flow into the sea
Like oils applied to canvas
They permeate through me

And there's that one particular harbour
Sheltered from the wind
Where the children play on the shore each day
And all are safe within

Most mysterious calling harbour
So far but yet so near
I can see the day when my hair's full gray
And I finally disappear

IA ORA TE NATURA
E MEA AROFA TEIE AO NEI
IA ORA TE NATURA
E MEA AROFA TEIE AO NEI

UA PAU TE MAITAI NO TE FENUA
RE ZAI NOA RA TE ORA O TE MITIE

Bounty of the land is exhausted
But there's still abundance on the sea

The story behind the story (1983) ...

Concert by the Bay, Miami (1985)

Anguilla (2007)

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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