Paying The Price

[poliphilo]

Federer v Safin on the centre court at Wimbledon. Safin is a big hitter with two Grand Slam titles under his belt, who, briefly, held the world # 1 position. Federer almost nonchalantly sweeps him aside- winning in three.

And the commentators are talking about how come Federer is winning so easily and McEnroe says (I don't have the exact words) "Well, Safin likes to enjoy his success, but Federer came straight here from Paris and has been practising, practising, practising."

You want to be the best at anything and there's a price. Like in The Prestige where the feuding magicians are competing to see who can die the most deaths to get to the top.  You want something really badly, you have to put other things aside.  So Federer gets to be the greatest tennis player of his generation but Safin gets to party.

And the question is- which would you rather be? 

And what about the person who puts everything but everything into his obsession but still finishes second (because he just doesn't have the talent). Sheesh, I'm not sure I want to even think about him.

Comments

[bodhibird.livejournal.com]

You make me think of a time when vicarchori and I were playing Celtoid music with a couple of other folks, and we were trying to hook up with a fiddler so we'd have another melody instrument. One evening we jammed with a girl who was sixteen; I'd say she and her parents were auditioning us more than we were auditioning her. She was certainly brilliant, at least technically, and her parents were absolutely supportive of her passion, to the point of taking her to Cape Breton in Canada for the big folk music festivals. But I got the impression that there just wasn't anything else in her life--no books, no movies, no hanging out with friends, certainly no *dating*. I had ten or fifteen years on this girl--more like fifteen, I guess--and I wondered how you could live a life that was so one-pointed. I wonder what she's doing now.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure it's good for an artist to be that single-minded.

Technique is important but it can only take you so far.

Great artists often have shambolic private lives, but they rarely shut themselves off from experience.