The Hammock Papers: Happy Birthday, Walker

16 March 2020

Happy Birthday, Walker

Jerry Jeff Walker was born on this date in 1942.

CONTRARY to ORDINARY

I never live my life through other people's eyes

I guess I've always been ridin' through storms

Twice my size

Always been a drifter

Looks like I always will

Be runnin' toward a sunset

Far side of some hill

Just a one-man band, a one man gypsy circus

Finding every piece

Of the puzzle has a purpose

Drifting and dreaming

Yeah, that must be my fate

Always grinning down the devil's throat

Raising with aces and eights

And I was contrary to ordinary

Even as a child

Fast freights made me wonder

The full moon still drives me wild

And stories do come true

You just got to live your life in episodes

With one eye on a lady

And one eye still on that open road

So when I die, I swear

Put no tombstone on my grave

Just have one of my friends

Sail my ashes out over the waves

Don't get no preacher down here

Just to talk about my past

Just tell 'em all I liked to live

And I loved to sing, dance, and to laugh

And I was contrary to ordinary

Even as a child

Fast freights made me wonder

Full moons still drive me wild

And stories do come true

If you live your life in episodes

With one eye on a lady

And one eye on that open road

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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