The Hammock Papers: Gifted.

02 January 2026

Gifted.

Erik Satie predicted the future ...

Memoirs of An Amnesiac #6: Intelligence and Musicality Observed on Animals

The intelligence of animals is above all denial. But what does Man do to improve the mental state of those resigned fellow-citizens? He provides them with a mediocre education, quite disconnected, incomplete, one such as a child would not want for himself; and he would be right, dear little being. This learning consists mainly in developing the instinct of cruelty and vice that exists atavistically within individuals.

The content of such teaching never deals with art or literature, or natural sciences, moral science, or such other discipline. Homing pigeons are in no way prepared for their mission by any use of geography; fish are kept away from the study of oceanography; cattle, sheep, calves are unaware of the sensible layout of a modern slaughterhouse, and do not know their nutritional role in the society that was formed by Man.

Few animals benefit human instruction. Dogs, mules, horses, donkeys, parrots, blackbirds and a few others are the only animals that receive some kind of teaching.

And still, is it more an upbringing than anything else.

Compare, I beg of you, this teaching to that given by the universities to a young human freshman, and you see that it is void and cannot extend nor facilitate the knowledge that the animal will have acquired through its own work, and its dedication to it.

But musically?

Horses have learned how to dance; spiders hung under a piano for the duration of a long concert, concert organized for them by a respected master of the keyboard.

And after that?

Nothing.

Now and then, we are told of the musicality of the starling, of the melodic memory of the raven, of the harmonic ingenuity of the owl, that accompanies herself by tapping the abdomen. Quite an artificial medium and of mean polyphony.

As for the nightingale always mentioned, his musical knowledge brings a shrug to the most ignorant of his listeners.

Not only his voice is not placed, but he has no knowledge or key or tone, or modality, or beat.

Perhaps he is gifted?

It is possible;it's even certain.

But we can say that his artistic culture does not equal his natural gifts, and that his voice, which he shows himself so proud of, is but a very inferior instrument, and quite useless per se.

Perhaps he is gifted.

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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