Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

When loneliness was king

12.18.2009 by David Murray // Leave a Comment

Management consultant Tom Peters interviewed Prairie Home Companion host and writer Garrison Keillor for his website. Among the many good things Keillor said:

I remember when I started out writing for the New Yorker I was living in a farmhouse in central Minnesota, because it was so cheap. It really removed a lot of the pressure of having to sell-sell-sell. I loved it there. I was desperately lonely, but that's not a bad thing.

I was sitting in a room upstairs at a desk that was a sheet of three-quarter-inch plywood across two used file cabinets, looking at an Underwood typewriter, and typing on yellow paper. It was a contemplative life that had great, deep pleasure. I wouldn't know how to recover it today.

This, for me, is how the world has changed, that a man sits at a desk in utter silence, and the phone line is simply the phone line. Somebody calls, and you don't have to answer it. You sit in silence, and hours pass and you tap-tap-tap-tap at a typewriter. I will never, ever recover that life. It's gone forever.

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // Garrison Keillor, Internet, nostalgia, silence, Tom Peters, writing

The beauty of 9/11

09.11.2009 by David Murray // 2 Comments

Working out just now in front of MSNBC's real-time replay of NBC's live coverage on Sept. 11, 2001, I kept fighting off this inappropriate feeling of longing.

As the white-gray smoke drifted across the blue sky off the south tip of Manhattan that morning, Americans may not have known what was going wrong exactly or what was needed—remember, people sent millions of dollars to the Red Cross, which didn't know what to do with it?—but we all agreed that there was a problem and that it was urgent.

People often allow nostalgia to creep into their voice when they remember the JFK funeral, and even Pearl Harbor.

It was terrible; but we were going through it together, and we remember that sense of comfort, too.

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // 9/11, MSNBC, NBC, nostalgia

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