Anyway, I checked out the interview with Malcolm Gladwell linked to on the right-hand side, where Alex actually does a cool little 6-question e-mail interview with the "Blink" author, who is apparently most popular with curious, middle-aged women and is biracial, neither of which I knew. The interview's pretty cool, but the excerpt that Alex concludes with, from Bill Russell's autobiography, is kind of really profoundly moving, and really does seem like the kind of next-level brain waves you get when you're improvising music and things really start to click:
The game would move so quickly that every fake, cut and pass would be surprising, and yet nothing could surprise me. It was almost as if we were playing in slow motion. During those spells I could almost sense how the next play would develop and where the next shot would be taken. Even before the other team brought the ball in bounds, I could feel it so keenly that I'd want to shout to my teammates, "It's coming there!"--except that I knew everything would change if I did. My premonitions would be consistently correct, and I always felt then that I not only knew all the Celtics by heart but also all the opposing players, and that they all knew me. There have been many times in my career when I felt moved or joyful, but these were the moments when I had chills pulsing up and down my spine. But these spells were fragile. An injury would break them, and so would a couple of bad players or a bad call by a referee…I always suffered a letdown when one of those spells died, because I never knew how to bring them back; all I could do was to keep playing my best and hope. They were sweet when they came, and the hope that one would come was one of my strongest motivations for walking out there...Every so often a Celtic game would heat up so that it would became more than a physical or even mental game, and would be magical. That feeling is difficult to describe, and I certainly never talked about it when I was playing. When it happened I could feel my play rise to a new level. It came rarely, and would last anywhere from five minutes to a whole quarter. Three or four plays were not enough to get it going. It would surround not only me and the other Celtics but also the players on the others team, and even the referees. To me, the key was that both teams had to be playing at their peaks…It never started with a hot streak by a single player, or with a breakdown of one team's defense. It usually began when three or four of the ten guys on the floor would heat up; they would be the catalysts, and they were almost always the stars in the league…The feeling would spread to the other guys, and we'd all levitate. Then the game would just take off, and there'd be a natural ebb and flow that reminded you of how rhythmic and musical basketball is supposed to be. I'd find myself thinking, "This is it. I want this to keep going," and I'd actually be rooting for the other team. When their players made spectacular moves, I wanted their shots to go into the bucket; that's how pumped up I'd be. I'd be out there talking to the other Celtics, encouraging them and pushing myself harder, but at the same time part of me would be pulling for the other players too.
I mean, this is really really beautiful, right? It really is like that, sometimes, isn't it? The fog resolves into a dot, the world - or at least a small part of it - gets so in sync, so locked in to a rhythm of action and reaction that has such a powerful momentum and such a strong consistency that it becomes palpable, sensible, like a gas condensing into a liquid. Sports are like that, music is like that, landscape is like that, love and friendship can definitely be like that, if you're lucky. It's fragile, it always slips away, but the hope that one will come again keeps us out walking out there. Along with the fear that one won't. &c, &c, you know.