The Hammock Papers: Hay

Showing posts with label Hay. Show all posts

29 June 2026

Happy Birthday, Colin Hay

Colin Hay was born on this day in 1953.

One of the greatest songs ever written, "Down By the Sea"...

29 June 2025

Happy Birthday, Colin Hay

Colin Hay was born on this day in 1953.

"Sea of Always"...

29 June 2024

Happy Birthday, Hay

Colin Hay was born on this day in 1953.

"Where the Sky is Blue" ...

21 June 2024

Carried.

Dawson, The Clipper Ship Midnight, 1924

SEA DOGS

Over seas and far away

Heave away boys

Sea dogs sail their lives away

Heave away boys

Ghosts of sea dogs at break of day

Crusty beards and coats of grey

Weigh the anchor let’s be away

From this day on we’re carried by the wind

Over seas and far away

Heave away boys

Sea dogs sail their lives away

Heave away boys

Creaky decks and ruthless men

Ruled by the lash where some met their end

The old world was new in all directions then

Conquered by a few at the loss of so many

Over seas and far away

Heave away boys

Sea dogs sail their lives away

Heave away boys

Crusty beards and bloodshot eyes

Squint up at the sun

Horizons hold fast and seduce the sea dogs over

Some live to tell tall tales

And some never returned

Leaving only their dreams

Carried by the sea

Colin Hay

05 July 2023

29 June 2023

Happy Birthday, Hay

Colin Hay was born on this day in 1953.

"Catch a Star" ...

28 June 2023

15 April 2023

Colin Hay, "Are You Looking at Me"

11 April 2023

Colin Hay, "The Sea Of Always"

26 March 2023

Colin Hay, "A Man Without a Name"

18 March 2023

25 January 2023

Robert Burns, "A Man's a Man For A' That"

Read by Colin Hay ...

Then let us pray that come it may,
As come it will for a’ that,
That Sense and Worth, o’er a’ the earth
Shall bear the gree an’ a’ that.

29 June 2022

Happy Birthday, Hay

Colin Hay was born on this day in 1953.

"Wichita Lineman" ...

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

11 June 2022

Colin Hay, "Down by the Sea"

Listen to your heart

Screamin' at the sky

Can't you feel it tremble?

Don't you wonder why?

09 June 2022

Colin Hay, "Waterloo Sunset"

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

16 July 2021

29 June 2021

Colin Hay, "If I Had Been a Better Man"

Glorious.

What a glorious world! Things can't be all bad if there's a Colin Hay documentary out there ...

Waiting for My Real Life ...

Happy Birthday, Hay

Colin Hay was born on this day in 1953.

"Are You Looking at Me?" ...

Making a Vegemite sandwich ...

09 June 2021

Colin Hay, "Waiting in the Rain"

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."