CREATIVITY WORK

 Creativity at Work

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BY LORENZA CERBINI

Language level: B2 UPPER INTERMEDIATE

It is said that New York has been the center of the art world since the end of the Second World War, when it effectively replaced Paris. Over the last seven decades it has continuously given us exciting new forms of art and that is still the case today.

Let’s take the examples of these contemporary artists, all of whom moved to “the Big Apple, all of whom moved so “the Big Apple” in order to further their careers. The first thing that strikes an observer is their unusual choice of materials, which include leather, one dollar bills and the components of old typewriters.

CONCEPTUAL ART

Mark Evans ( www.markevansart.com ), a young Welsh artist, and Mark Wagner ( www.pavelzoubok.com ), who is from Wisconsin, are two artists whose work requires the patience, attention to detail and skill of a craftsman. Evans engraves in leather and has a collection of knives that would be the envy of any butcher. Yet he makes sure that his incisions are only a tenth of a millimeter deep. Wagner, on the other hand, uses razors, scissors and penknives to transform dollar bills into highly complicated collages. If Evans and Wagner are both conceptual artists, then Californian Sono Osato ( www.sonoosato.com ) belongs to a different category. She has been creating art for some 20 years and her work has been exhibited in such institutions as il DeYounf Fine Art Museum DeYoung in San Francisco (http://www.famsf.org/deyoung/), the Laguna Art Museum

 ( http://www.lagunaartmuseum.org/ ), The Oakland Museum ( http://www.museumca.org/ ) and Di Rosa Preserve ( http://www.dirosaart.org/oldindex.html ).

Osato’s enormous sculpture paintings, which can weigh as much as 220 pounds (100 kilos), are made up of colors snake bones, teeth and typewriter parts. In her collages, Osato takes a look at human history and her work could be described as a tribute to anthropology and the development of language.

MARK EVANS

Mark Evans is 34 years old. He grew up on  farm in the Welsh mountains, prior to heading to London, where he studied Fine Art ant Middlesex University. He doesn’t draw or paint; instead he creates portraits by scratching and engraving large pieces of leather. He has been interested in creating art with knives ever since the age of seven, when his grandfather gave him a small pocket knife. This he would use for carving images on trees around the farm.

And another present, which he received in his early 20s, would also change his life. One Christmas he was given a new leather jacket, but disaster struck! As he helped prepare Christmas dinner in the kitchen a spot of blood accidentally ended up on the jacket. He tried to scratch it off with a knife, but he scratched too hard. Instead of get angry, he decided to use the surface of the jacket to draw a to-tone rendering of Jimi-Hendrix.

MY EUREKA MOMENT

“It was,” He says, “my own private Archimedes ‘Eureka’ moment. It was as if an explosion went off in my mind. I then spent the next few years focused on developing this technique at my studio. I was living as part artist and part mad scientist, trying to perfect the process which I’d accidentally discovered.”

Today Mark works with animal hides from around the world. His subjects often include cultural icons, like reggae star Bob Marley and boxing legend Muhammad Ali, Evans also likes bulls: one piece featuring these animals recently sold for £70.000. His work is collected connoisseurs, it can be found in British stately homes, Los Angeles penthouses and Saud Royal Palaces. 

William Simon Jacques

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Language level: Pre-intermediate

Speaker: Jason Bermigham (American accent)

Justin Ratcliff (British)

William Simon Jacques

The Gentleman Thief is a famous figure in both fiction and reality, but Britain’s most prestigious libraries don’t like William Simon Jacques. This notorious criminal has stolen rare books from London’s British Library worth more than £1.000.000: one example is Galileo Galilei’s Sidereus Nuncius.

A GENIUS

Jacques studied at Cambridge University and he is a chartered account. He has the IQ of a genius and is a master of disguise. The English newspapers love him: They gave him the nickname “Tome Raider.” But he isn’t so intelligent after all. He was caught in 2002 and spent four years in prison. Jacques was arrested again in 2007 for stealing books from the Royal Horticulture Society valued at £40.000 was released on bail and ran. He was found and arrested at his mom’s home in 2009, and in June 2010 was convicted and sentenced to 3,5 years.

EMBARRASSING

How could Jacques steal such rare books for so many years? He uses his education to obtain librarians’ confidence, and uses false names and disguises, so that nobody can identify him. For example, at the Lindley Library he used the name Mr. Santoro instead of his real name.  Another important reason is that library curators don’t often inform the police when books are stolen. Antiquarian bookseller Jolyon Hudson explains: “Libraries are the curators of the nation’s knowledge. They’re too embarrassed to admit losing such important books.” Jacques sells the books with the help of auction houses like Christies of London and specialist book dealers. The police caught him in 1999 because a London book dealer saw that he was trying to cover library markings.

JAILED

“A leopard doesn’t change its spots.” The tabloid newspapers describe Jacques as a gentleman thief, but not everyone agrees. Jacques allegedly showed no remorse during this 2010 sentencing and his reputation has been damaged by his first conviction. The opposite of a gentleman is a scoundrel, and there are many people who say Jacques is exactly that: a scoundrel. His Cambridge University tutor Ian DuQuesnay angrily says: “What William Simon Jacques does is equivalent to splashing paint on the Parthenon.”

WHO EXATLY IS WILLIAM SIMON JACQUES?

He was born in 1969 in North Yorkshire. He studied economics at Cambridge University: his tutor Ian DuQuesnay remembers that he was “a competent, but not exceptional student.” He became an accountant and lived an apparently quiet life in London’s Maida Vale. Then in 1994 he obtained membership of Britain’s most prestigious libraries. In the following five years, he became the most prolific book thief in British history. The books he has stolen include Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica (1687), Descartes’ Discourse de la Méthode por Bien Cunduire sa Reason (1637) and Kepler’s Astronomia Nova (1609).

The Oscars and The Golden Globes

AND THE WINNE IS...THE SAME PERSON!

Source: Speak Up

Making predictions is rarely a good idea as there is a strong possibility that you will be wrong. It’s difficult in sports matches, where there are two teams to choose from, but it’s even harder with film awards like the Golden Globes and the Oscars, where there are five nominees per category. Politicking by studios and actors that want to win and less forecasting by Hollywood journalists and deep secrecy by voters cloud the results for all unitl awards night.

THE GOLDEN GLOBES

The 83^rd edition of the Academy Awards (which are organised by AMPAS, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) took place at the Kodak Theatre on February 27 . Often – but not always – the Golden Globe Awards, which are held six weeks earlier, are a good indication. The members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (FPA: these are not the same people as the 6.000 members of the Academy of Motion Pictures.

COLIN FIRTH

British actor Colin Firth dominated Hollywood’s major awards this year, winning “Best Actor! For The King’s Speech at both the Globes and Oscars. The film is directed by Tom Hooper, who directed another “true life story.” The damned United. It the Damned United was about English soccer, then The King’s Speech is about the Royal Family. Firth plays George VI, the man who reluctantly became King of England (in 1936), when his brother, Edward VII, abdicated to marry an American divorcee, Wallis Simpson. George VI (who was the father of the present Queen) had a problem, he stuttered and this became particularly traumatic when he had to address the nation on radio during the Second World War. The film tells the story of his relationship with Lionel Logue, an Australian speech therapist. Logue is played by Geoffrey Rush, who was nominated for (but didn’t win) a Golden Globe or an Oscar for “Best Supporting Actor.” The film itself lost the “Best Picture” race at the Globes to The Social Network (aka “the Facebook movie), but won top prize at the Oscars.

JAMES FRANCO

James Franco was in a unique position on Oscar night serving a co-host of the show while also being a “Best Actor” nominee for his part in Danny Boyle’s disturbing movie. 127 Hours (that prize went to Firth). Boyle is famous for films like Slumdog Millionaire and Trainspotting, but this is far darker. Like The King’s Speech, 127 Hours tells a true story, that of Aron Ralston, a mountaineer in Utah who was obliged to take “drastic measures –i.e. amputating part of his arm with a penknife! – when he was trapped by a boulder. The films based on Ralston’s book. Between a Rock and a Hard Place. Language fans may like to know that this is a colloquial expression for a difficult situation, but in Ralston’s case it was literal.

PAUL GIAMATTI

The Golden Globes divide films into two categories: “Drama” and “Musical” or Comedy.” The prize for “Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy” went to Paul Giarmatti for Barney’s Version (he  wasn’t among the five nominated for the Oscars). The film, which won the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Festival, is based on the novel by the Canadian Mordecal Richier, sadly Richler died in 2010, but his story now lives on in cinema, thanks in part to the talent of Giamatti.

NATALIE PORTMAN

We apologise for dealing with the ladies last (and not first), but this is a Hollywood convention and not ours. Nowadays the word “actress” is considered politically incorrect: female stars are also “actors” The Oscars began in 1929 (and the Golden Globes in 1944) and so the female category in the award ceremonies is still called “Best Actress.” Natalie Portman won the Golden Globe for “Best Actress” in the “Drama” section, for her portrayal of an obsessive ballet dancer in Black Swan, and Annete Bening won the “Musical and Comedy” Golden Globe as a lesbian mother in The Kids Are All Right…On Oscar night there was just one “Best Actress” award to give out, and Portman beat Bening  and three others for the prize.

Among 11 award categories where the Globes and Oscars overlapped, eight winners were the same, reinforcing the popular theory that the Golden Globes are a good predictor of who’ll win the Academy Awards.

THE LITTLE THINGS IN LIFE

YOUNG ACTIVISTS

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Language level: Advanced

Speaker: Justin Ratcliffe

Standard: British accent

Even with a million copies of the book in circulation, WAWWD believe that the Best way to teach people how to change the world is to start when they’re Young. A couple of years ago, with funding from the Aldridge Foundation, WAWWD began to recruit young people from Schools and colleges in England to be part of their Young Speakers programme. After a training course, they are sent out to do presentations in their schools and communities. Last year the Young Speakers spread the “We Are What We Do” message to over 50.000 children

THE LITTLE THINGS IN LIFE

We Are What We Do, or WAWWD, is both a charity and a movement. It is a primarily environmental, but it is also designed to improve human relations. Its bible, for want of a better world, is a book called Change the World for a Fiver, which offers a list of simple suggestions.

Today the WAWWD movement is popular in schools. The “Darwen Aldridge Community Academy” in Lancashire, in the northwest of England, for example, is particularly active in this respect. Two senior students, Becki Airsworth and Sarah Varey, often visit primary schools in order to promote “WAWWD” ideas among small children. Becki Ainsworth explains:

BECKI AINSWORTH

(Standard British/ Lancashire accent):

It’s just a movement going around primary schools that basically tries to inspire younger people to take an active part in the world that they live and pushes them to try and change things that we think are unchangeable, like global warming, things like that, like with the CO2 emissions, you can change that just by walking to school, instead of getting the car or the bus. Things like that. Simple things.

Sarah Varey has some more examples:

An action is a small activity that anybody can do. It can be anything from turning the tap off when you brush your teeth, or not using plastic bags, and it’s a way that you can contribute to a social change.

And the basic idea behind “WAWWD” is that if everyone takes a small step, then it really can make a difference:

SARAH Varey:

I think when you see advertisements about people starving or not having water, I think it sometimes can overfaze a child and scare them, in a way, so they don’t do anything to help, but we’re presenting it to them in small ways that they can actually do something so it feels manageable for them and it’s fun as well.

ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS (NO AUDIO)

(Ideas to make the world a better place, taken form Change The World For a fiver and Teach Your Granny To Text and Other Ways To Change The World)

Don’t sing in the shower. The average shower takes seven minutes and uses 35 litres of water, when all you really need is two minutes. So just get clean, get out, and save your singing for the rain.

Give lots of compliments. They are free, get easier as you do them regularly, make you feel good and everyone loves to get them.

Write a letter. You can’t re-read a phone message or put a text message on the wall – and who ever heard of a love email! But also, “teach your granny how to text”: she’ll love to be in touch with you.

Make a will and make sure your bits and pieces go to the popel you really want them to go to. There have been some wonderful ways people got back at other from beyond the grave.

Take time out to listen to someone. Don’t make any comments or try to solve their problems, just listen.

Some think that old people ‘just don’t understand’, and that young people have ‘nothing interesting to say’, but WAWWD disagrees. They would suggest you spend time with someone from a different generation; talk to old people because ‘they know cool stuff you don’t, and talk to young people because, funnily enough…’they also know cool stuff you don’t.

WE ARE WHAT WE DO

What do you do to improve your life and the environment? 

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THE ENVIRONMENT

50 (small) Ways to Change the World

By Derek Workman

Make a cup of coffee for someone who’s busy, shout with happiness, don’t swear for 30 minutes, pick one piece of litter up every day, make sure you use both sides of the writing paper, or shake someone’s hand. These may not seem like things that will change the world, but hopefully they will help to make it a better place. At least that’s what the people from: “We Are What We Do’ (WAWWD) think.

RECONNECTING

David Robinson had been a community worker of 25 years when in 2004, he decided to write a document called Reconnecting. It eas about the need for change in society and the power of people coming together to make it happen. He gathered people from a wide range of backgrounds to see how it could be done. They asked the question. “What would you ask one million people to do to change the world?” Thousands of people from all over the world replied, and the result was the best-selling book. Change the World for a Fiver - 50 actions to change the world and make you feel good. It was later published in six countries and sold over a million copies worldwide.

THE NEXT GENERATION

The first book was based on the ideas of people of all ages, but for the next book they decided to make one especially for children – and asked them to create it too. The thousands of interesting, intriguing and wonderful ideas for actions sent in by almost four–and-a-half thousand children were narrowed down to thirty and became Teaching Your Granny To Text. And Other Ways To Save The World. (The little is based on a suggestion by a young lady named Erica). Every school in England now has a copy of the book. 

A Royal Record

Source: www.speakup.com.br

Language level: Advanced

Standard accent :British

Speaker: Justin Redcliff

First part, no audio

Normally, you would see them outside Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle. Now the soldiers who wear the distinctive red uniforms and bearskin hats have swapped royal palaces for the recording studios. The result is their new album Heroes. 

Heroes came about after a £1m deal was signed with Decca records in 2009. Decca looks after some of the biggest names in pop music, including Eminen and Amy Winehouse. 

The label is also responsible for launching the careers of the Rolling Stones and Tom Jones. Hopes are high that Heroes will enjoy chart success too.

A MILITARY TRADITION

The Coldstream Guards Band is over 200 years old and therefore one of the oldest military bands in the world. They have recorded music in the past but nothing on this scale. Their regular duties involve guarding the Queen and taking part in the event on every tourist’s agenda – the changing of the Guard. You can also see them at the Trooping the Colour and The Edinburgh International Military Tattoo.

The track list on Heroes includes music from the Ride of the Valkyries, Nimrod and the film Gladiator. The musicians say that the album appeals to all ages and tastes. The adjectives – “emotional” and “epic” have been used to describe its sound.

But if playing a trumpet is difficult enough, doesn’t it makes it even harder when you are wearing heavy, furry hat? Lt. Col Graham Jones, the regiment’s Director of Music, said that the hat’s chin strap is slightly lower in order to make it easier to play certain instruments.

For more information about the Band, visit their website www.armymod.uk/music or buy their album from www.amazon.co.uk .

We’re in Business

In 1962 dick Rowe, an executive at Decca Records, famously turned down a new group called The Beatles. It was once of the music industry’s biggest mistakes, although Rowe later redeemed himself by signing The Rolling Stones. The Animals and Tom Jones. Given the label’s rock history, its latest signing is rather surprising the Band of the Coldstream Guards, who are the British army’s oldest marching band. They signed at £1 million contract with Decca and released Heroes an album of war tunes, and the band’s director of music Lt Col Graham Jones , explained how this came about.

Lt. Col. Graham Jones

(Standard English accent)

I looked at great friends of ours, of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, and they’d released two albums with Decca and I thought, “Well, if the Royal Scots Dragoon bands, in the army, pipe bands, if they can do it, why can’t we?” so I then saw the Salvation Army Band issue a recording under the same label and then I definitely thought, “We should be involved in this.” So I then went about by finding out who to speak to, and I spoke to tom Lewis, who’s the A&R guy at Decca, and I went in with a proposal, and he said, “Well, this call you back,” and he called me back and said, “We’d like to offer you a contract” and so we were offered a contract to record an album for Decca.

AIR STUDIOS

He then talked about the recording process;

Lt. Col. Graham Jones:

We spent, in the end, three-and-a-half days in the studio, and it was interesting for the boys because we did quite a lot of work on click tracks, which is like a metronome playing in your ear, as opposed to watching me, the conductor, so that we could re-record it and get the tempos exactly right and then we could layer, by overdubbing, sounds onto it, which gives it this big epic film score feel to it, and then we could add different sounds and effects, once we’d finished in the studio, so it was a really great experience and the band really enjoyed being at Air studios, it really is a superb place to record and it was the ideal place to put a military band to recording.  

THE ART OF LANGUAGE

Source: www.speakup.com.br
Language level: Advanced

Standard: American accent

Speaker: Chuck Rolando

THE ART OF LANGUAGE

IF Mark Wagner specialises in breaking down dollar bills, then Sono Osato does the same thing with old typewriters and adding machines.

Sono Osato

(Standard American English)

There’s and underlying inspiration – I wouldn’t say so much a theme, but definitely an underlying inspiration – which has to do with the origins of writing. And I have been interested in that for a very long time, about how objects, especially old objects that have been beaten up and thrown away, and you pull them back out again, how their shape implies some kind of a sound, and it goes back to the early instincts, the human instinct of writing and language, that a picture, in some cases of a real thing, eventually became a letter, which became a sound which became an idea. So it’s that relationship between objects and thought and writing. So that is part of the inspiration. And I start out almost kind of thinking of text, so it’s a combination of that and then topography, human history, how it moves across land and water, so I’m combining both things: one is the tableau of a written text and the other is the tableau…of a natural surface, such as the surface of the ocean or a river, or mountains or that, and I put the two of them together. 

Doors Open

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Standard accent: British

Speaker: Mark Worden

Language level: Advanced

READING

DOORS OPEN

And as an accompaniment to that, Ian Rankin reads an excerpt from his latest novel, Doors Open. The setting is Edinburgh and the subject is crime. Without wishing to give the game away, it tells the story of a group of respectable citizens who try and steal valuable works of art from the Scottish National Gallery warehouse. They also encounter a professional criminal. Chib Calloway. Who is described here:

Ian Rankin

(Scottish accent)

So far, it had been another bad day for Chib Calloway. The problem with surveillance was, even if you knew you were being watched, you couldn’t always know who the watchers were. Chib owed a bit of money…all right, a lot of money. He owed other things, too, and had been keeping his head down, answering only one or two of his dozen mobile phones, the ones whose numbers only kith, kin and close associates knew. He’d had two meetings scheduled for lunchtime, but had cancelled both. He’d apologized by phone without bothering to explain why. If it got out that he was being tailed, his reputation would dip further. Instead he’d drunk a couple of cups of coffee at Cento Tre on George Street. it was a pretty upmarket spot – a bank at one time. A lot of Edinburgh’s banks had been turned into bars and restaurants. With cash machines everywhere, banks weren’t needed. The machines had brought with them a variety of scams, of course; card numbers skimmed, the cards themselves cloned, devices attached to the machine which could transfer the necessary information to a microchip….

There were some petrol stations you didn’t dare use. They sold your details on to other people. chib was careful that way. The gangs with the cash machine know-how all seemed to originate overseas – Albania. Croatia, Hungary. When Chib had looked into it as a possible business proposition, he’d been informed that it as something of a closed shop – which rankled especially when the gangs then targeted Edinburgh. 

IAN RANKIN'S EDINBURGH

 

Source: www.speakup.com.br

Language level: Advanced

Speaker: Mark Worden

Standard: British accent

Ian Rankin published his first novel in 1986, but success arrived when He published his second novel the following year. It was called Knots and Crosses and it introduced a new character in fiction: Inspector Rebus, a hardened detective who attempts to solve crimes in the Scottish capital of Edinburgh. Rankin went on to publish a further 16 Rebus novels, but decided to stop in 2007, when the detective reached the age of 60 and retired.

The Rebus books have been adapted for television and they have been translated into at least 25 languages. They are said to account for 10 per cent of crime fiction sales in Britain.

Not surprisingly, Rankin and Rebus have created something of a tourism industry in Edinburgh. There are Rebus walking tours and you can even download a free iPhone app called “Ian Rankin’s Edinburgh.”

THE DARK SIDE

Yet Rankin, who moved to Edinburgh when he went to university, isn’t the city’s only famous writer, Robert Louis Stervenson, the creator of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, was from here, as was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the inventor of Sherlock Homes. More recent examples include Muriel spark and Irvine Welsh, author of the cult novel Trainspotting. Their books have a dark side and we asked Ian Rankin whether the same could be said of Edinburgh:

Ian Rankin

(Scottish accent)

There are two towns, there’s the Old Town, which runs from the Castle to the Palace of Holyrood, where the Queen stays when she’s in Edinburgh, and that was the original city, but then, in the 18^th century, when it became vermin ridden and insanitary, those who could afford to move started building a “New Town” and there was a physical barrier between the two, there was a lake, a loch, which is now Princess Street Gardens. So there was a physical barrier between two towns, the New Town and the Old Town, and the New Town was a place where rationalism grew up, it’s a place where your scientists and your economists would sit and debate how the world was going to be. And that’s where Robert Louis Stevenson lived when he was a child, his father, his whole family were engineers, they were rationalists, but he was attracted to the chaos that existed in the Old Town.

LOW LIFE

So, as a young man, he would tiptoe out of the house at dead of night and walk up the hill, and go to the taverns where poets and vagabonds and drug addicts and alcoholics and prostitutes would hang out, and so he was seeing those two sides, the rational and the chaotic, the Jekyll and the Hyde. So the city actually, structurally has that, it has that divide.

And when you arrive in Edinburgh, you arrive in hat seems a very civilised city, you arrive at Waverley Station, by rail, which is named after a novel. As you step out, the first thing you see is the huge statue to Sir Walter Scott, the novelist, the biggest statue to a writer in the world, we believe, certainly in Europe. So very imposing and very cultured, but if you go outside the periphery, when you get to the territory that Irvine Welsh writes about in Trainsportting you see there’s another side to Edinburgh, that’s just below the surface.

INSPIRATION

We then asked him why Edinburgh was such a productive place for writers.

Ian Rankin

I don’t know. I mean, it wasn’t always like that. I mean, there’s big gaps in its history. I mean, you had Sir Doyle, arguably, although he left and never wrote about the place. You had Stevenson, who you know, didn’t set his most famous book there, Jekyll and Hyde is set, in London, it’s not set in Edinburg, but not many. Then you get to the modern age, there seems to be a gap until you get to Muriel spark, with Miss Brodie, although the vast majority of her books were set abroad, many in Italy because she lived in Italy for many years. And then you come to Irvine Welsh and you get this explosion of people writing about Edinburgh, in the vernacular, and also writing about contemporary Edinburgh, and not the city of the past.

NEIGBOURS

But now Edinburgh contains multitudes of writers, it has changed since…when I arrived as a student in 1978 I couldn’t find anybody who was writing novels about contemporary Edinburgh, there just didn’t seem to be any. There were a few historical novelists, Dorothy Dunnett being the leading example, but nobody writing about contemporary Edinburgh and now, since Trainspotting, there are dozens of authors.

I mean, in my street, I’m not the only novelist in my street: you know, there’s Alexander McCall Smith lives two houses up the road from me, J.K Rowling lives just round the corner, Kate Atkinson is a little bit further on, there’s Lin Anderson, the crime writer, nearby, there’s lots and lots of crime writers in Edinburgh, as well as literary novelists.

MANY FACES

And he had more to say on the subject.

Ian Rankin

And what marks us out in the range of styles, there’s no Edinburgh school, there’s no one type of writing about Edinburgh. So Alexander McCall Smith’s Edinburgh is very different from Rebus’ Edinburgh, which is different from Kate Atkinson’s Edinburgh, which is different from Irvine Welsh’s Edinburgh. And it’s as though this small city, this tiny city, half a million people if that, maybe 400.000 people, which can’t grow, it really can’t grow, it’s got the sea to the north, sea to the east, hills to the south, it’s very tightly packed in, it just seems to be fascinating and complex to us.

And I began writing about Edinburgh when I arrived there as a student, to try and make sense of the place, to try and take apart the mechanism, almost as though you’re taking apart an engine, or a watch, or something, and to see what makes it work, what makes it the particular city that it is and that process is ongoing. If I had come to any reasonable conclusions about Edinburgh, I could have stopped writing the books, but I continue to write about Edinburgh because it continues to fascinate me and I still don’t know what makes it tick. 

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