Hammers

June 5, 2026

I have been thinking so much about hammers these last few weeks. Maybe months at this point. It all started with a lyric in Emma Ruth Rundle’s new single, Powerless. It is this:

Let me die here with a hammer in my hand, one for breaking, one for building something better.

It would be unbecoming of a Slowpoke to speak too much about something that lies in the future, but Emma’s new album is extremely beautiful and pertinent, so we’ll return to that at some point further down the line. For now, let’s stick with the hammers.

It’s a very evocative lyric, it creates a brilliant mental image. I heard this song in an earlier iteration and it was this line that captured my imagination and set me on this hammer-led way of thinking. I am now at the point where I would like to get hammers tattooed on my wrists, so they’re always within reaching distance.

The origins of this line actually lie in traditional folk and blues songs often those relating to John Henry, and it was also a notion that resonated with Emma and weaved its way into this song. John Henry is an African American folk hero who is said to have challenged new technologies (a steam-powered drill) and won. His celebration was short-lived, however, as he died from exhaustion - with a hammer in his hand. The legend of John Henry persists as a totem in the fight against replacing human effort with that of machines. Oh wow, that is indeed particularly relevant tale in this very day and age, who would have thought.

What can we learn from John Henry? Plenty, but I suppose it depends on your viewpoint in that battle between technology and humanity. And as for Emma’s interpretation of the noble act of dying with a hammer in ones hand? A key part for me is that in this iteration you get two hammers, and I think they’re both really important. I truly do believe that a certain amount of smashing and breaking is necessary to clear the way for the building and making that will follow. One hammer in one hand for breaking, one hammer in the other hand for building. What to break and what to build are the questions we must answer.

I was recently writing an academic essay and going absolutely loopy in the process. I was reading a lot of academic texts and quotes in relation to research. Even though I was applying it to creative practice, I was getting spun around in circles by my own thinking being diverted into academic theories that felt very far away from what was actually percolating in my brain. Then I stumbled upon a quote by a poet and playwright called Bertolt Brech and it is this:

Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.

And with that hammer reference at my disposal, I completed the assignment a whole 24 hours before the submission deadline. I mean, I have no idea whether it was any good yet, we’ll soon see. I did write about things other than the hammer, but I felt a lot more confident with it there by my side.

It would be a good thing if I had a wonderful conclusion to this week’s Slowpoke but I’ve definitely done one of those where I start of strong and end with a bit of a whimper. What will you do with your metaphorical hammer?

That’s all for this week, thank you for reading.

~Becky

Photo of Emma by Kristin Cofer