The Hammock Papers: Billy Joe Shaver, Rest In Peace

28 October 2020

Billy Joe Shaver, Rest In Peace

I heard from my friend Kurt today. He told me the sad news that Billy Joe Shaver has passed.

"Honky Tonk Heroes" ...

CORSICANA DAILY SUN

It seems like a hundred years

Since I reached out to dry those tears

Streamin' down my grandma's face

When I told her goodbye

She helped me pack her old suit case

Then pushed my new straw hat in place

With that Corsicana daily sun shinin' bright for me

When that sweet smell of youth

Was mixed with Grandma's apple pie

Oh what I'd give for a slice of yesterday

When that warm light came

Splashin' cross those clovered fields of time

With that Corsicana daily sun shinin' bright for me

There ain't much that's left to tell,

'Cause boy I really went to hell

Seems like every things gone wrong

Since I left my home-town

Wish I was back there now,

Mendin' fence and milkin' cows

With that Corsicana daily sun shinin' bright for me

Someday I'll find that clover bed

I'll lay down my weary head

And watch them soft clouds drifting

As they tease that country sun

I'll eat a chunk of grandma's pie,

And take a walk back in time

When that Corsicana daily sun was shinin' bright for me

Billy Joe Shaver

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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