“You are joining a special profession. Doctors and scientists, we are all in the survival business, but we are also in the mortality business. Our successes will always be restricted by the limits of knowledge and human capability, by the inevitability of suffering and death. Meaning comes from each of us finding ways to help people and communities make the most of what is known and cope with what is not. This will take science. It will take art. It will take innovation. It will take ambition. And it will take humility. But the fantastic thing is: This is what you get to do.”
— Atul Gawande, speaking to the graduating class at Stanford’s School of Medicine (via haunted).
11:44 pm |
June 24 2010
| 4 notes
“You play with some ideas as a composer, you want them to show you something. It’s a technical experimentation with different forms, but then something happens, and the music starts to play with me. And then I play with it again. It’s like a love relationship, or a form of sex – in the best sense.”
—
German composer Wolfgang Rihm, speaking about his work in an interview with The Guardian.
I imagine that that music composition, more so than writing or visual art, lends itself to conversational creativity as described by Rihm - by its very nature it’s a labile media and responds to the emotions of the player/composer as they interpret/reinterpret the score.
9:49 am |
June 24 2010
| 1 note
“
The Isner-Mahut battle is a bizarre mix of the gripping and the deadly dull. It’s tennis’s equivalent of Waiting For Godot, in which two lowly journeymen comedians are forced to remain on an outside court until hell freezes over and the sun falls from the sky. Isner and Mahut are dying a thousand deaths out there on Court 18 and yet nobody cares, because they’re watching the football. So the players stand out on their baseline and belt aces past each-other in a fifth set that has already crawled past two hours. They are now tied at 18-games apiece.
On and on they go. Soon they will sprout beards and their hair will grow down their backs, and their tennis whites will yellow and then rot off their bodies. And still they will stand out there on Court 18, belting aces and listening as the umpire calls the score. Finally, I suppose, one of them will die.
”
—
The Guardian’s Wimbledon 2010 live blog at 4.05pm, in what turned out to be only the early stages of this record breaking stalemate - Play suspended after 10 hours played and 59 games each in the fifth set.
I loved Henman’s suggestion that the umpire should have called “deuce” at 40 games all, and can’t wait for the restart tomorrow. Will they move it from Court 18 to Centre Court for the Queen to watch?
Update: the further I read through the live blog the less and less coherent the marathon blogger gets. Allow me to share a few highlights, but please go and read it yourself - it’s a masterpiece.
5.55pm. 33-33:
” So yes, it was a dream, it was a lie. The Amazing Zombie Tennis Pros are not through with us yet. Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha!”
6.25pm. 36-36:
I’m wondering if maybe an angel will come and set them free. Is this too much to ask? Just one slender angel, with white wings and a wise smile, to tell them that’s it’s all right, they have suffered enough and that they are now being recalled. The angel could hug them and kiss their brows and invite them to lay their rackets gently on the grass. And then they could all ascend to heaven together. John Isner, Nicolas Mahut and the kind angel that saved them.
7.00pm. 42-42:
“What’s going on here? Once, long ago, I think that this was a tennis match. I believe it was part of a wider tennis tournament, somewhere in south-west London, and the winner of this match would then go on to face the winner of another match and, if he won that, the winner of another match. And so on until he reached the final and, fingers crossed, he won the title.
“That, at least, is what this spectacle on Court 18 used to be; what it started out as. It’s not that anymore and hasn’t been for a few hours now. I’m not quite sure what it is, but it is long and it’s horrifying and it’s very long to boot. Is it death? I think it might be death.”
7.45pm. 45-45:
“What happens if we steal their rackets? If we steal their rackets, the zombies can no longer hit their aces and thump their backhands and keep us all prisoner on Court 18. I’m shocked that this is only occurring to me now. Will nobody run onto the court and steal their rackets? Are they all too scared of the zombies’ clutching claws and gore-stained teeth? Steal their rackets and we can all go home. Who’s with me? Steal their rackets and then run for the tube.”
8.40pm. 56-56:
“They will play on, play on, right through until dawn. Perhaps they will even leave the court during the change-overs to munch on other people. Has Roger Federer left the grounds? Perhaps they will munch on him, hounding him down as he runs for his car, disembowelling him in the parking lot and leaving Wimbledon without its reigning champion. Maybe they will even eat the trophy too.”
9.25pm. Play suspended at 59-59:
“That was beyond tennis. I think it was even beyond survival, because there is a strong suggestion (soon to be confirmed by doctors) that John Isner actually expired at about the 20-20 mark, and Mahut went soon afterwards, and the remainder of the match was contested by Undead Zombies who ate the spectators during the change of ends (again, this is pending a police investigation).
“Still, if you’re going to watch a pair of zombies go at each other for eleventy-billion hours, far into the night, it might as well be these zombies. They were incredible, astonishing, indefatigable. They fell over frequently but they never stayed down. My hat goes off to these zombies. Possibly my head goes off to them too.”
10:32 pm |
June 23 2010
| 3 notes
“At any rate I have known since about 1931 […] that the future must be catastrophic. I could not say exactly what wars and revolutions would happen, but they never surprised me when they came. Since 1934 I have known war between England and Germany was coming, and since 1936 I have known it with complete certainty. I could feel it in my belly […].”
— George Orwell, 8 June 1940.
12:52 pm |
June 8 2010
“In the middle of a fearful battle in which, I suppose, thousands of men are being killed every day, one has the impression that there is no news. The evening papers are the same as the morning ones, the morning ones are the same as those of the night before, and the radio repeats what is in the papers.”
— George Orwell, 8 June 1940.
12:50 pm |
June 8 2010
“Pursue thy conquest, Love; her eyes confess the flame her tongue denies.”
— Belinda, Dido & Aeneas.
7:50 pm |
May 27 2010
