The Hammock Papers: Farrar

Showing posts with label Farrar. Show all posts

26 December 2024

Happy Birthday, Farrar

Jay Farrar was born on this day in 1966.

"Sinking Down" ...

26 December 2022

Happy Birthday, Farrar

Jay Farrar was born on this day in 1966.

"Sinking Down", with Son Volt ...

15 October 2021

Freedom.

BAKERSFIELD

What do you want? Where do you find it?

You can call it what you will

The sound of heartbreak from a jail cell

Finding work in bar all nights

Jukebox letters and numbers

The burning hearts and starving minds

Souls in pain as if I’m punishment

The ways and needs to survive

There’s a passion that’s put on the line

Money to burn and fortunes to find

Without a claim, without a stake

I’m living only for today

There will be starts, there will be stumbles

Our tongue out on the line to dry

And a piece from wagers of working

And hell breaks loose on Saturday night

Aren’t you happy? The least it’s living

Freedom to choose to stay down

Always a wild wind blowing

Just want a guitar and a radio

In the fields of the valley

The sweet and toil along with the land

No cup of gold, no candy mountain

What better place to make a stand?

Jay Farrar, from the Son Volt album, Honky Tonk

26 December 2020

Happy Birthay, Farrar

Jay Farrar was born on this day in 1966.

"Buzz & Grind," with Gob Iron ...

"True to Life," with Son Volt ...

"Vitamins" ...

"Sinking Down" with Son Volt ...

10 April 2017

22 March 2016

Settling down with warm-glow wood stove and kerosene
Peace you're looking for, peace you'll find
In the tangled mad cliff-sides and crashing dark of Big Sur
Rapturous ring of silence pacific fury flashing on the rocks, the sea shroud towers
The innocence of health and stillness in the wild of Big Sur

23 July 2015

Jay Farrar, "Hickory Wind"

Happy birthday, Jessica.

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."