The Hammock Papers: Morrissey

Showing posts with label Morrissey. Show all posts

07 March 2026

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

I cast no shadow or reflection in the mirror now
I choose to shoot the breeze with trees and smile with skies
In search of wisdom so much wiser than my own ...

22 June 2025

Morrissey, from Autobiography, recalls an unchanged classroom ...
With no identifiable human being behind their agonized persona, teachers are restored only by the general truth that the trapped audience before them cannot squeal, for no one would listen. The classroom is their stage, and each day is their theatrical execution — to our joint disadvantage.

The physical threats of the past have been replaced by a tyrannical insistence on conformity to the prescribed intellectual pattern. As with much of our culture, the spotlight remains tightly focused on a narcissistic tug-of-war, combatants making peacock pronouncements rather engaging in a clash of ideas.

How is anything of importance achieved?

Ignorance of the arguments of intelligent dissenters will prevent them from understanding the truth as deeply as they should.

Robert George, from Truth Matters: A Dialogue on Fruitful Disagreement in an Age of Division

The Reverend Dr. West and Dr. George recently discussed their book ...

19 June 2025

Morrissey, "All You Need is Me"

29 December 2024

Morrissey, "You're the One for Me, Fatty"

It's sandwich time.

27 December 2024

Morrissey, "Morning Starship"

22 July 2024

Revenge.

Squibs interview Morrissey and Marr ...

...[T]hey really have to treat their pupils with maximum care because, who knows, in the future, all the pupils of the world could sign to record companies and get their revolting revenge.

06 January 2024

Pretenders, "Back on the Chain Gang"

Morrissey does the honors ...

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

06 July 2023

Refuse.

Men say, Ah! if a man could impart his talent, instead of his performance, what mountains of guineas would be paid! Yes, but in the measure of his absolute veracity he does impart it. When he does not play a part, does not wish to shine,—when he talks to men with the unrestrained frankness which children use with each other, he communicates himself, and not his vanity. All vigor is contagious, and when we see creation we also begin to create. Depth of character, height of genius, can only find nourishment in this soil. The miracles of genius always rest on profound convictions which refuse to be analyzed. Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to be measured by the horse-power of the understanding. Hope never spreads her golden wings but on unfathomable seas.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, from "Progress of Culture," delivered before the Cambridge University Society of Phi Beta Kappa, 29 August, 1822

28 February 2023

Insubordinates.

The Smiths is right there, insubordinates of an accidental moment in days when there is no sign anywhere of independent artists or a disconnected view.

Morrissey, from Autobiography

26 February 2023

Morrissey.

Nature always waits in the wings and the winds, ready to pounce with all of its power just at that sloppily contented hour when you foolishly assume it to be plainly tired out. Narcissistic humans do their quite pathetic best to kill nature off, oblivious to their self-reliance on its upkeep, yet nature will only take so much bureaucratic bullying before it snaps a deadly snap - for it does not need your approval, your organised banditry, your prepubescent social laws, your trades of cheapening commerce, your militant preachment, your apologies or blind belief of superiority, as if a presidential seat gives you an intolerable presumption of dominance over this earth's terrain! Watch, wait, and listen, and soon you'll be bitten.

Morrissey

20 February 2023

Majesty.

The CD image remains heart-sinkingly abysmal compared to the majesty of the LP sleeve. These things count.

Morrissey

18 November 2022

Morrissey, "All You Need is Me"

17 November 2022

Morrissey, "Panic"

1:11 ...

15 November 2022

Morrissey, "Scandinavia" and "Action is My Middle Name"

4:21 ...

14 November 2022

Morrissey, "Suedehead"

16 October 2022

Morrissey, "Sister I'm a Poet"

08 August 2022

Morrissey, "How Soon is Now"

Gin, rocks, anchovy olives.

"Shoplifters of the World Unite"

If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don't bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, of seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you will get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Smiths, 1986 ...

Morrissey, 2005 ...

03 August 2022

Morrissey, "Panic"

Burn down the disco

Hang the blessed DJ

Because the music that they constantly play

It says nothing to me about my life ...

02 August 2020

Morrissey, "You're the One for Me, Fatty"

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."