Feb

13

dear vicnied,

I wrote down the following years ago summarizing my first meeting with Stan Mason. It was the first thing I saw while visiting his invention factory, but think it's an appropriate response to your own ruthlessly honest self-assessment in response to one of your website's readers (included below). Your response smacks with the brutal honesty required to lead the field in an endeavor, and is possibly the most inspirational note I've read of yours. Deepest thanks for reminding me, again, of the almost savage forces one must both confront and unleash in order to move ahead at the highest levels.

Best wishes.

Your friend,

Ripmac

p.s. I wrote Keeley once, a quote from "Beethoven Lives Upstairs": "to be great, you must have the spirit of a gypsy and the discipline of a soldier." Which is true. But I always thought that, additionally, you must have the overwhelming confidence of a megalomaniac and the all-consuming self-doubt of an acute neurotic.

p.p.s it reminds me of the early days of racquetball and the two camps that evolved. First, the leach crew took the prizes, they were the rebels, the pioneers, winning through creating new strokes, shots, strategies. Next, the ektelon gang, essentially the middle of the road statisticians who took the best of the leach crew, threw out the chancy stuff, and played the odds all the way to ho-hum victory. Politics, of course, played a great role in the game's decline. So too, however, did it's developing lack of color and character. (Of course, a ball speed change that reduced the average rally from 12.3 shots long to 2.9, and, of course, the parallel reduction in power versus control, didn't help either.)

p.p.p.s with innovation, as you know, it is almost always second in line who reaps the rewards. First in line is usually busy nursing the wounds of discovery, failure, recovery….

The First Sign You See When Visiting Stan Mason's Invention Factory:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

Theodore Roosevelt, the Sorbonne, 1910


Comments

WordPress database error: [Table './dailyspeculations_com_@002d_dailywordpress/wp_comments' is marked as crashed and last (automatic?) repair failed]
SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_ID = '10056' AND comment_approved = '1' ORDER BY comment_date

Name

Email

Website

Speak your mind

Archives

Resources & Links

Search