The Hammock Papers: Glory.

05 November 2022

Glory.

With Autumn, Forest, and December, George Winston sets the musical scene for entering the Oyster Months. Autumn provides a peaceful and memorable companion to lengthening shadows, falling temperatures, and glowing landscapes. The crisp austerity of December lends itself to the shortened days, best played upon waking or after a late evening's saunter through the woods.

Like November, Winston's 1994 release, Forest, is the perfect musical transition between these two. Hinting at the motifs of Autumn and December, Forest also connects the listener to the seasonal landscape -- "Tamarack Pines," "Forbidden Forest," and "Cloudy This Morning" would not be out of place on Autumn. One of the collection's biggest treats is the suite of tunes from The Snowman, a silent, animated film from 1982. Winston's inclusion of these haunting pieces is masterful. Unlike the others, Forest does contain a few hiccups (you'll know them when you hear them), but overall this album is indispensable to the full enjoyment of the grand glory of the Oyster Months.

Kurt provided my introduction to Winston in the early 1980s, so his gift of Forest, on my birthday the year of its release, was a fitting continuation of my education and appreciation. I remember playing it in my chambers on Burg Street -- fireplace crackling, lights out, blinds open, misty purple descending on the woods outside -- 'twas, and always will be, Autumn.

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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