The people I am most interested in are the ones on the edge of losing everything and falling into the last bit of despair. I'm trying to write about how people exist on that edge and how they can come back.
But sometimes, maybe most times, it isn't that clear. It is dark and you are near the edge of a cliff, but you're moving slowly, not sure which direction you're heading in. Your steps are tentative but they are still blind in the night. You don't realize how close you are to the edge, how the soft earth could give away, how you could just slip a bit and suddenly plunge into the dark.
Sometimes, when you live a life at such a wild edge, an extreme edge of experience, you can come back into the world - if you come back at all - with some essence from that experience that people find useful.
As a coach, you're just trying to figure out how to keep a team on edge. You've got to find that edge.
I suppose I am interested in the variety of human life - how people live. I am most interested in individuals and how they respond to challenges or to difficulties or just to each other. I am curious about people.
When you're trying to come up with a good approach to reporting on the bleeding edge of where the conversation's moving, you're just leaving a lot of people who aren't on the bleeding edge of that conversation out.
Come to the edge.' 'We can't. We're afraid.' 'Come to the edge.' 'We can't. We will fall!' 'Come to the edge.' And they came. And he pushed them. And they flew.
Come to the edge.
We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It's too high!
Come to the edge!
And they came,
and he pushed,
and they flew.
Every movie I make I find kind of excruciating. I get a lot back from it, but I feel like I'm kind of always working at the edge of my ability. I guess that's what I'm looking for when I go to work. I am trying to become the edge.
It's harder to play drums than guitar, physically. I'm always kind of on the edge. I guess that's how I play everything: on the edge of my ability.
And that, my friend, is how the world ends. On the edge of a precipice, with one foot over the edge, it stops, turns and goes back, leaving an empty earth of birds and insects, wind, rain and rusting weapons.
There was a brief moment of weightlesssness: a balancing point between air and earth, dirt and heaven. How strange, I thought, how like the moment between sleeping and falling when everything is beautifully surreal and nothing is corporeal. How like floating towards completion. But as often happens in that time between existing in the world and fading into dreams, this moment over the edge ended with the ruthless jerk back to awareness.
I'm very interested in theories in how we exist: how people exist and how souls exist separate from their bodies or their brains.
I wondered about the explorers who'd sailed their ships to the end of the world. How terrified they must have been when they risked falling over the edge; how amazed to discover, instead, places they had seen only in their dreams.
You see people swimming, and you think, oh, how wonderful to swim. But most people stand on the edge swaying back and forth, afraid to jump. They don't think they can swim.
I think a lot of people don't wear their hearts on their sleeves. I think people should, but a lot of people don't. People may be a bit taken back sometimes about how honest I am and how open I am. But I'm happier this way - it's a good thing for me.
I think people are drawn to characters that break the rules. I think there is something about a good person doing bad things for what they consider to be a good reason. Then the battle is on to almost prove to the audience that it's justified. How far can you go with that? How far can that character go before people won't accept it? Trying to walk to edge of that line is a challenge.