Rowan Williams: "King Lear"

It does not keep you safe; it does not

give you the words you need, it does not

tell you how much to pay, how much

they owe you. It will not work, like egg-yolks,

to cool the numb heat of lost eyes and treacheries.

It does not surrender to the reasonable

case for not risking everything to keep

secrets and rivals, the white line in the tickling

membrane of freedom. It will not keep you dry: rain,

like crying, sinks down to the bone.

It will not stop: not when you sleep, not

when you wake, not when you want it to,

not when you want to settle with the mirror

of your shame. Never. It will not. Never.

Rowan Williams 
The Guardian, Saturday August 2 2008 

Wimbledon Final

The Wimbledon final that took place this past Sunday between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal was an amazing event, and thrilling to watch. Indeed, the New York Times devoted an entire editorial to the match, saying:

This week, tennis players around the world are standing on the singles court — 78 feet long and 27 feet wide — and thinking one thought: Can this possibly be the same size as the court in Sunday’s Wimbledon match between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal?

It’s a reasonable question. That men’s singles final, which Nadal won deep in the dusk in five tortuous sets, seemed to give tennis a new topography. The level of the court never changed in those nearly five hours of playing time, nor did its dimensions, yet the brilliance of the tennis being played seemed to warp it, point by point.

Partly it was the gusts of wind, which deformed a few points, as did the chewed-up turf at the baselines. And partly it was the exaggerated vertical dimension of the game — Nadal’s swooping, spinning shots — and the unnerving crosscourt vectors that both men found again and again. But this was also a match that could have been written by John Bunyan, a moral battle in which the sides — good versus evil — changed with every change of serve. Was that sheepishness on Nadal’s face when he double-faulted? How many times did Federer rescue himself from despondency? One minute Nadal was lost in the weeds. The next minute it was Federer’s turn. This wasn’t a tennis court. It was an ecosystem.

The mystery of a match like this is hard to fathom. Shot by shot it progresses, game by game. The level of play is high at first, but not higher than expected. Federer goes down two sets, and then, suddenly, we find ourselves entering new terrain.

You get to a point — the end of the fourth set, when Federer finds the will to carry us all into a final set with him — and you can’t quite make out how you got here. The light slips away, and though everyone feels the cumulative weight of what has come before, the players are still having to play in the present, still having to set aside the past in order to return another serve, while everyone in the crowd wonders how they do it — not just the imagination of the ball-striking, but the ability not to imagine, not to leap forward in their minds to winning or losing. Their desire is concealed in the play itself. But ours has gotten loose and is making it hard to breathe — hard even to watch.

Rushdie on the Writing Self

Salman Rushdie, in the New York Times:

Regardless of whether he is writing about politics, Mr. Rushdie said he finds writing both scary (“Are you going to be able to sustain it all the way to the end?”) and exhilarating.

“There’s a writing self which is not quite your ordinary social self and which you don’t really have access to except at the moment when you’re writing, and certainly in my view, I think of that as my best self,” he said. “To be able to be that person feels good; it feels better than anything else.”

Writers' Rooms

Check out this sweet site from The Guardian:

Writers' Rooms

Perfect for those of us who want to be writers, and who believe the best way to do it is not by spending time churning out the words, but searching for an obscure writing tool or odd habit to grant us mystic writing power. ¡Viva la fetishismo!

Benjamin, The Writer's Technique in Thirteen Theses

The Writer's Technique in Thirteen Theses
From One-Way Street

I. Anyone intending to embark on a major work should be lenient with himself and, having completed a stint, deny himself nothing that will not prejudice the next.

II. Talk about what you have written, by all means, but do not read from it while the work is in progress. Every gratification procured in this way will slacken your tempo. If this regime is followed, the growing desire to communicate will become in the end a motor for completion.

III. In your working conditions avoid everyday mediocrity. Semi-relaxation, to a background of insipid sounds, is degrading. On the other hand, accompaniment by an etude or a cacophony of voices can become as significant for work as the perceptible silence of the night. If the latter sharpens the inner ear, the former acts as a touchstone for a diction ample enough to bury even the most wayward sounds.

IV. Avoid haphazard writing materials. A pedantic adherence to certain papers, pens, inks is beneficial. No luxury, but an abundance of these utensils is indispensable.

V. Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens.

VI. Keep your pen aloof from inspiration, which it will then attract with magnetic power. The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself. Speech conquers thought, but writing commands it.

VII. Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. Literary honour requires that one break off only at an appointed moment (a mealtime, a meeting) or at the end of the work.

VIII. Fill the lacunae of inspiration by tidily copying out what is already written. Intuition will awaken in the process.

IX. Nulla dies sine linea [No day without a line] -- but there may well be weeks.

X. Consider no work perfect over which you have not once sat from evening to broad daylight.

XI. Do not write the conclusion of a work in your familiar study. You would not find the necessary courage there.

XII. Stages of composition: idea -- style -- writing. The value of the fair copy is that in producing it you confine attention to calligraphy. The idea kills inspiration, style fetters the idea, writing pays off style.

XIII. The work is the death mask of its conception.