The Hammock Papers: Jimmy Buffett, "Distantly in Love"

17 April 2017

Jimmy Buffett, "Distantly in Love"

Pay phones all were ringing as the crowd went roarin' by
Lovely dancers swaying to an island lullaby
Beside the southern ocean taking stock of what's to be
Writing you this letter that you'll probably never see

But I can't help but be
Ruled by inconsistency
Not unique just distantly in love

Tried to phone from Paris thinking
Things could be arranged
Me and you could rendezvous
But I found your number changed

So I drove to San Remo where
The crazy painter dwells
And toasted our old photographs
Still up there on his shelf

But I can't help but be
Ruled by my antiquity
Not unique just distantly in love

I can't be the one to fill
Your times and all your places
I can't be the one to fill
Your blanks and empty spaces

I heard it from a friend of ours
I saw in Timber Bay
That you had a new lover who had
Stolen you away

That could be the reason that
I never got in touch
And may present slight problems
If he loves you half as much

As I who can't help but be
Ruled by my antiquity
Not unique just distantly in love

You know I can't help but be

Part of my own philosophy
Not unique just distantly in love

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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