The Hammock Papers: The Smiths

Showing posts with label The Smiths. Show all posts

02 January 2026

The Smiths, "Shoplifters of the World Unite"

20 June 2025

The Smiths, "You've Got Everything Now"

21 February 2025

20 February 2025

Introduced.

The world was introduced to The Smiths on this day in 1984.

Side One, Track One: "Reel Around the Fountain" ...

04 January 2025

30 December 2024

The Smiths, "Panic"

Burn down the disco

Hang the blessed DJ

Because the music that they constantly play

It says nothing to me about my life ...

28 December 2024

The Smiths, "Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others"

07 December 2024

Nothing.

Burn down the disco

Hang the blessed DJ

Because the music that they constantly play

It says nothing to me about my life

16 June 2024

Released.

The Smiths released The Queen is Dead on this day in 1986.

"Some Girls are Bigger than Others" ...

31 March 2024

Released,

The Smiths released Louder Than Bombs on this day in 1987.

"Panic" ...

12 December 2023

Nothing.

Burn down the disco

Hang the blessed DJ

Because the music that they constantly play

It says nothing to me about my life

24 November 2023

16 October 2023

The Smiths, "Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before"

06 July 2023

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

16 June 2023

Released.

The Smiths released The Queen is Dead on this day in 1986.

"Bigmouth Strikes Again" ...

05 June 2023

Hang.

Burn down the disco

Hang the blessed DJ

Because the music that they constantly play

It says nothing to me about my life

19 May 2023

Andy Rourke, Rest in Peace

Andy Rourke has passed.

"Some Girls are Bigger than Others" ...

31 March 2023

Hang.

Released.

The Smiths released Louder than Bombs on this day in 1987.

"Panic" ...

20 February 2023

Introduced.

The world was introduced to The Smiths on this day in 1984.

And still we're asking, "What Difference Does It Make?" ...

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."

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."