Time out

I need more friends who are late. Normally I’m the late one, so I miss out on the sudden space that opens up when someone else’s schedule breaks across mine. Here I am, away from the routine, space to think, cranial wheels spinning, slightly cursing because I only have my last-ditch mini-notebook with me, so I’m having to write in spider style – not natural. But then, on the umbrella and sunglasses principle, if I’d come prepared, David would have been on time.

There is definitely something about found time. I guess because the time has no other purpose, it is particularly fertile.

Now don’t try to tell me that the best way to find more time is not to be congenitally late. I just am. Given the opportunity to be early, I’ll find another couple of things
to fill the available time, and then be surprised when they take twice
as long. It is part of my identity. I can’t change it – it might change me.

I must find more late friends…

Why put away childish things?

It is always and endlessly fascinating earwigging on other people’s conversations.  I’m passing an hour in a wine bar in central London, waiting for the half price ticket booth to get more tickets, and for my car to be washed by the obligatory Russians in the car park.

Two gentlemen are sitting in the corner of the bar in front of me, leapfrogging each other’s increasingly tall stories.  Apologies, gentlemen, if you read this.  I promise I didn’t hear anything specific or attributable.  Their stories all revolve around cars, alcohol, dissolute friends and good times.  Ford Capris, Vauxhall Vivas, even an E type Jag all come to sticky ends, helped by copious amounts of booze.  It’s fascinating to listen to the pattern of their voices, the energy levels ramping up as story tops story.  When I close my eyes I can see a couple of six year olds, swapping stories of increasingly legendary derring-do, mostly muddy but always adventurous.

Someone said that growing old is inevitable but growing up is optional.  I wonder.  If you poke most of us with the right stories at the right time, do we ever grow up?

Absolutely the most amazing thing you’ll hear today

The wonderful people at TED have just posted the highlight of TED2009. Jose Antonio Abreu is the founder of the youth orchestra system in Venezuela (El Sistema) that has transformed the lives of thousands of young people. His TED Prize Wish is to bring El Sistema to the world. Click here to hear more about it. To support that wish, we were treated to a live concert from the Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel (himself a graduate of El Sistema, and now music director of the LA Philharmonic Orchestra).

It was incredible. Thanks to the wonders of the TED talks, I can share it with you now. For maximum mind-blowingness, plug your PC into a good set of speakers and make yourself comfortable.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk just got put online

I blogged enthusiastically about Elizabeth Gilbert’s talk a few days ago.  It has just been put up on the TED site, and here it is:

Amazing things people have said

Just so I don’t lose track of them, here is a random selection of some of the amazing things people have said so far at this year’s TED conference.

Jill Tarter, TED Prize winner and searcher for extra-terrestrial intelligence said:

The ascent of man has to go – it’s a sense of privilege the natural universe doesn’t share

Yann Arthus-Bertrand, photographer of the world from the air, and cataloguer of our impact on the earth, said:

It’s too late to be pessimistic

Bonnie Bassler, molecular biologist and ace communicator of bacterial communication processes said:

We have 10 times more bacterial cells in us and on us than human cells – we are 10% human and 90% bacterial

Golan Levin, audio-visual artist and software engineer, and creator of the amazing double-taker, said:

The (computer) mouse is probably the narrowest straw you can try and suck human expression through

Elizabeth Gilbert, the writer, about whom I have already blogged, said:

We have somehow accepted the assumption that creativity and suffering are necessarily linked
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