The Hammock Papers: Happy Birthday, Copeland

16 July 2020

Happy Birthday, Copeland

Jazz is the last refuge of the talentless. I’ve tried to listen to those guys. I know what drugs those guys are on, and you can’t fool me. Jazz has the highest quotient of the king’s new clothes. The 10 percent at the top is amazing, of course. But I’ve been a musician for 60 years now and you can’t fool me – those guys are just wiggling their fingers.

One of my favorite ways to enliven an otherwise somber dinner party is to make a statement like, "The problem with jazz musicians is that they all suck." Okay, now we’ve got a party, now we’re talking.

That doesn’t mean that Stanley Clarke isn’t a genius, and that on some of those cuts Miles Davis wasn’t burning. That’s what music is all about. But it is a world where you can get up there and put a vaguely petulant expression on your face, wiggle your fingers, and get away with it.

Stewart Copeland

The Police, "Wrapped Around Your Finger"

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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