The Hammock Papers: Gordon Lightfoot, "Whispers of the North"

02 January 2018

Gordon Lightfoot, "Whispers of the North"

Whispers of the north

Soon I will go forth

To that wild and barren land

Where nature takes its course

Whispers of the wind

Soon I will be there again

Bound with a wild and restless drive

That pulls me from within

And we can ride away

We can glide all day

And we can fly away

Whispers of the north

Soon I will return again

To those endless afternoons

In sunshine and in rain

Whispers of my love

Days and weeks on end

I will share my thoughts of her

In prayers that I will send

And we can ride away

We can glide all day

And we can fly away

Whispers of the north

The river and the shore

In the land that tested eskimos

Ten thousand years before

Whispers of my heart

In the tracks of animals

I will leave my footprints there

To lie beneath the snow

And we can ride away

We can glide all day

And we can fly away

Whispers of the wind

I will feel it sting

I will see it rise and fall

I will hear it sing

The sound is like a song to me

It takes away the pain

The river is the melody

And sky is the refrain

And we can ride away

We can glide all day

And we can fly away

And we can ride away

We can glide all day

And we can fly away

Whispers of the north

Soon I will go forth

Whispers of the north

Soon I will go forth

Thanks, Mom and Dad.

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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