The Hammock Papers: Renew.

28 January 2012

Renew.

Casey Walker interviews Jim Harrison ...

WALKER: In your own work, whether from day to day to in its general arc, what does it look like to you? Where is your curiosity?

HARRISON: Well, you can go through it to the point you see not just what is in front of you, but you can look at yourself walking away. I see more of the same work I’ve done before, I don’t change gears in quantum leaps. I do find myself reading more and more about botany and anthropology, which reminds me of Erik Erickson saying reality is mankind’s greatest illusion. We are overwhelmed by the perception of how short life is, as in the old Don Juan thing about the whining man who is always whining and whining about hoeing corn and then you hear a dog barking in the distance and the screen door slams and suddenly it’s evening. You have to be very aware of that sensation. Time is one of our great illusions too. In “The Beige Dolorosa,” there’s a man who wants to rename the birds of North America, and he’s created a calendar in which there are only three days a month, which gives him these great open spaces: three 200-hour days. Natives know this kind of thing—how to renew oneself. The interesting thing about being in a rut is that the only things you see are the sides of the rut. You don’t see out. The frogs who fell into the well now think that’s the universe. It’s the perfect metaphor for people rich or poor.

Read the rest at Wild Duck Review.

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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