Thursday, September 20, 2007

The whitest, frothiest, blossomest blossom

And another interview, this one with Dennis Potter (following his diagnosis with terminal cancer). Go and read it, it's amazing!
We all, we're the one animal that knows that we're going to die, and yet we carry on paying our mortgages, doing our jobs, moving about, behaving as though there's eternity in a sense. And we forget or tend to forget that life can only be defined in the present tense; it is is, and it is now only. I mean, as much as we would like to call back yesterday and indeed yearn to, and ache to sometimes, we can't. It's in us, but we can't actually; it's not there in front of us. However predictable tomorrow is, and unfortunately for most people, most of the time, it's too predictable, they're locked into whatever situation they're locked into ... Even so, no matter how predictable it is, there's the element of the unpredictable, of the you don't know. The only thing you know for sure is the present tense, and that nowness becomes so vivid that, almost in a perverse sort of way, I'm almost serene. You know, I can celebrate life.

2 comments:

  1. What a fabulous thing, that interview.

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  2. A month or so back, Helen recommended that I watch the Singing Detective and it (the TV series with the brilliant Michael Gambon, NOT the American movie with, ack, Robert Downey Jr.) is one of my absolute favorite things in the world. I think it's amazing that he would have this sort of outlook--one that celebrates a life that many would find infernal and turns it into something as wonderful as the SD.

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