The Hammock Papers: Bowie

Showing posts with label Bowie. Show all posts

06 August 2026

17 January 2026

Next.

I've seen the city

I took the next flight

For Borneo ...

08 January 2026

Bowie, "The Last Thing You Should Do"

Close your eyes ...

Ghosts.

What I like my music to do to me is awaken the ghosts inside of me. Not the demons, you understand, but the ghosts.

David Bowie

Happy Birthday, Thin White Duke

If you feel safe in the area you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.

David Bowie, born on this day in 1947

"Betty Wrong", with Tin Machine ...

29 December 2025

Usable.

David Bowie's advice to young artists ...

We tend to think our opinions are a lot more important than other people's in some way. Often we feel as though we have the key to something. I don't think that we do at all, I just think we dwell on it more. We tend to look at the world as some usable substance more than a non-artist would. For many people just getting through life is enough, that's a big enough task, let alone having to look at the world and the universe and say, "Now, if I had my way ..."

08 January 2025

Happy Birthday, Bowie

The truth is, of course, that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time.

David Bowie, born on this day in 1947

"I Can't Read," with Tin Machine ...

28 September 2024

Bowie, "Heroes"

Peter Gabriel performs ...

I love it when a cover is better than the original.

02 September 2024

Becoming.

I kind of miss that "becoming" stage, as most times you really don't know what's around the corner. Now, of course, I've kind of knocked on the door and heard a muffled answer. Nevertheless, I still don't know what the voice is saying, or even what language it's in. I don't know where I'm going from here, but I promise it won't be boring.

David Bowie

"Buddha of Suburbia" ...

28 August 2024

Bowie, "Fashion/Let's Dance"

18 May 2024

Released.

David Bowie released Lodger on this day in 1979.

"Boys Keep Swinging" ...

11 July 2023

Ghosts.

I like music to awaken the ghosts inside of me. Not the demons, you understand, but the ghosts.

David Bowie

05 April 2023

Released.

David Bowie released Black Tie White Noise on this day in 1993.

"Jump They Say" ...

08 January 2023

Happy Birthday, Bowie

David Bowie, born on this day in 1947

"Betty Wrong", with Tin Machine ...

22 July 2022

David Bowie, "Hang On to Yourself"

The bitter comes out better on a stolen guitar ...

02 July 2022

Independence.

Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. The mind is an attribute of the individual.

The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence in function and in motive. To a creator, all relations with men are secondary.

No man can live for another. He cannot share his spirit just as he cannot share his body. But the second-hander has used altruism as a weapon of exploitation and reversed the base of mankind's moral principles. Men have been taught every precept that destroys the creator. Men have been taught dependence as a virtue.

Ayn Rand, from The Fountainhead

10 June 2022

Depeche Mode, "Heroes"

I love it when a cover nails it, but can never be better than the original.

22 January 2022

David Bowie, "The Pretty Things are Going to Hell"

David Bowie, "Oh, You Pretty Things"

Good morning!

08 January 2022

Borneo.

BARRY HINES

"That's why it makes me mad when I take her out and I'll hear somebody say, 'Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk. I could shout at 'em; it's not a pet, Sir, hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me, right. And that's why it's great.Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk.' I could shout at 'em. It's not a pet, Sir. Hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained, that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me right. And that's why it's great." (A Kestrel for a Knave)

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."

WALT WHITMAN

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

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."