The Hammock Papers: Golding

Showing posts with label Golding. Show all posts

19 September 2025

Everything.

Happy Birthday, William Golding

I find it very difficult to talk here now because I'm watching the sea all the time. The sea always makes me watch it all the time. I've spent hours and hours not just on the sea but just watching wave after wave come in. If it's an image of anything, I think it's an image of our own unconscious, the unconscious of our own minds... or you can put it the other way around, and that is that we have a sea in us. After all, we are sea creatures that learnt to walk on the land, are we not? And perhaps one way or another we go back to it. Every night when we dream we go back into that kind of depths, and that kind of beauty and monstrosity and mystery. So really the sea is not a single image, it can really image almost anything that the human mind can discover.

William Golding, born on this day in 1911

16 February 2025

Peer.

My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder.

William Golding

19 September 2024

Happy Birthday, Golding

The thing is—fear can’t hurt you any more than a dream.

William Golding, born on this day in 1911, from Lord of the Flies

05 May 2024

Unlearned.

My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder.

William Golding

A few months back, Kurt pointed to malignant narcissism and the manifestation of unlearned lessons.

19 September 2022

Happy Birthday, Golding

William Golding, born on this day in 1911

19 September 2021

Happy Birthday, Golding

William Golding was born on this day in 1911.

“I know there isn't no beast—not with claws and all that, I mean—but I know there isn't no fear, either." Piggy paused. "Unless—"

Ralph moved restlessly. "Unless what?"

"Unless we get frightened of people.”

William Golding, from Lord of the Flies

19 September 2020

Happy Birthday, Golding

William Golding was born on this day in 1911.

We did everything adults would do. What went wrong?

William Golding, from Lord of the Flies

03 December 2019

Vision.

Seurat, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte (detail), 1884

At the moment of vision, the eyes see nothing.

William Golding

04 September 2019

Healed.

The soul is healed by being with children.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

25 July 2019

Unless.

I know there isn't no beast—not with claws and all that, I mean—but I know there isn't no fear, either." Piggy paused. "Unless—"

Ralph moved restlessly. "Unless what?"

"Unless we get frightened of people."

William Golding, from Lord of the Flies

20 July 2019

Peer.

Curtis, The Scout, Apache, 1906

My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder.

William Golding

19 September 2018

Happy birthday, Golding.

William Golding was born on this day in 1911.

We did everything adults would do. What went wrong?

William Golding, from Lord of the Flies

07 June 2018

Classics.

22 September 2017

Flies.

The 1963 movie adaptation of Sir William Golding's novel, Lord of the Flies ...

Time Flies, a documentary of the 1996 reunion of the Lord of the Flies cast and crew ...

19 September 2017

Happy birthday, Golding.

Sir William Golding was born on this day in 1911.

Here at last was the imagined but never fully realized place leaping into real life.

Sir William Golding, from Lord of the Flies

10 July 2017

Everything.

We did everything adults would do. What went wrong?

Piggy, from Lord of the Flies

19 September 2016

Happy birthday, Golding.

William Golding was born on this day in 1911.

My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder.

William Golding

READ.

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."