The Hammock Papers: Closer.

01 December 2024

Closer.

THE SECRET SONG of the CHRISTMAS TREE

Step closer, please, and hear my song.

It won’t take long, it won’t take long.

I hold my secret in the frost

I keep my secret in the cold

I hold it tight; it can’t get lost:

A secret as shiny as gold.

Fly me high through winter air

Take me over freezing seas

Place me in the bright lights’ glare

Stand me in the icy breeze.

Step closer now and hear my tune

Lit by the beaming Christmas moon.

I had to go, I could not stay

Beneath the distant stars so high,

My secret hidden, locked away

As fragile as a sigh.

I’m here to stand as people stare

As babies point and parents smile

And magic fills the gleaming air

Crowds slow down and stand awhile.

Step closer, please, and hear my song.

It won’t take long, it won’t take long.

In a country far away

The light shone on the saw,

I felt unsteady, felt me sway

Crashed down to the floor.

But something happened as I fell

I felt some magic start to shift

Inside me like a secret spell

Like falling snow begins to drift.

Step closer now and hear my tune

Lit by the beaming Christmas moon.

In the corner of your watching eye

Here’s my secret: hard to prove.

My well-lit branches wave goodbye:

When nobody’s looking, I move.

I stroll around Trafalgar Square

Then quickly I am back in place.

But surely I was over there?

I see it in your face!

I am the mobile Christmas tree

My secret’s safe with you.

Step over here and you will see

I’m walking. Yes, it’s true!

Step closer, please, and hear my song.

It won’t take long, it won’t take long.

Ian McMillan

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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