A Quote by Ann-Marie MacDonald
You think you're safe. Until you see a picture like that. And then you know you'll always be a slave to the present because the present is more powerful than the past, no matter how long ago the present happened.
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We are always acting on what has just finished happening. It happened at least 1/30th of a second ago. We think we're in the present, but we aren't. The present we know is only a movie of the past.
I don't think too much about the past when I am actually playing, I prefer to concentrate on the present. The performance of a piece, no matter how long ago or where it was written, is always a new production, something that comes alive in the present. And it doesn't matter if the piece was written two or three hundred years ago if it is alive in us.
We think that the world is limited and explained by its past. We tend to think that what happened in the past determines what is going to happen next, and we do not see that it is exactly the other way around! What is always the source of the world is the present; the past doesn't explain a thing. The past trails behind the present like the wake of a ship and eventually disappears.
You can make the argument that there's no such thing as the past. Nobody lived in the past. They lived in the present. It is their present, not our present, and they don't know how it's going to come out. They weren't just like we are because they lived in that very different time. You can't understand them if you don't understand how they perceived reality.
We human beings have enormous difficulty in focusing on the present; we always thinking about what we did, about how we could have done it better.... or else we think about the future, about what we're going to do.... But at this precise moment, you also realize that you can change your future by bringing the past into the present. Past and future only exist in our mind. The present moment, though, is outside of time, it's Eternity.... It isn't what you did in the past the will affect the present. It's what you do in the present that will redeem the past and thereby change the future.
It's harder to build than destroy. To build is to engage and change. In jazz, we call progressing harmonies changes. Changes are like obstacles on a speed course. They demand your attention and require you to be present. They are coming...they are here..... and then they are gone. It's how life comes. Each moment is a procession from the future into the past and the sweet spot is always the present. Live in that sweet spot. Be present.
The Pain-Free Shopping Method: Buy a present for you, then a present for a friend. Then another present for you. Then a present for a friend. Then two presents for you. Then a present for a friend. Then go home, get into bed, and pull up the covers.
My concern today is with the painting of manners of the present. The past is interesting not only by reason of the beauty which could be distilled from it by those artists for whom it was the present, but also precisely because it is the past, for its historical value. It is the same with the present. The pleasure which we derive from the representation of the present is due not only to the beauty with which it can be invested, but also to its essential quality of being present
I see things about the present more clearly when I'm looking through the frame of the past: I think it's very hard to assess the present moment that we are in.
Nothing very new. By taking good care of yourselves you are of service to me and my family as well as yourselves, no matter what you do, even if you don't think so at present. But if you neglect yourselves and are unwilling to live, as though following tracks, in accordance with what we now say and have said in the past too, then no matter how much or how seriously you agree with me at present you will accomplish next to nothing.
I try, in the present, to not exalt the past because I think that's such a way of diminishing the present. And it's hard to live like that.
Originally the structure was . . . a modern narrator who would appear intermittently and talk about his memories of his grandmother, which would then be juxtaposed against scenes from the past. But the stories from the past were always more interesting that the things in the present. I find this almost endemic to modern plays that veer between past and present. . . . So as we've gone on developing GOLDEN CHILD, the scenes from the past have become more dominant, and all that remains of the present are these two little bookends that frame the action.
You have to keep being curious. The notion that the present is different than the past, and the future will be different than the present, and the present is past, as we say it. I think I, by nature, am an optimist. Maybe I was driven to escape from my childhood and to be something, create my own world or career the way I wanted it to be. And I keep doing that in very interesting ways.
I can't deceive myself out of the bare stark realization that no matter how enthusiastic you are, no matter how sure that character is fate, nothing is real, past or future, when you are alone in your room with the clock ticking loudly into the false cheerful brilliance of the electric light. And if you have no past or future which, after all, is all that the present is made of, why then you may as well dispose of the empty shell of present and commit suicide.
How often are you worrying about the present moment? The present moment is usually all right. If you're worrying, you're either agonizing over the past which you should have forgotten long ago, or else you're apprehensive over the future which hasn't even come yet. We tend to skip over the present moment which is the only moment God gives any of us to live.
Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light is throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so.
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