What are we going to do....?
MORSE THROWS HIM OFF G R E E N What are we going to do? M O R S E What do I have a plan? Am I supposed to have a plan...? Morse moves to a piece of the encircling fire, which has burnt down. he starts to build it up. He takes the note “Gone Bear Hunting, Jack Hawk” from his pocket. GREEN (PEERING OUT PAST THE FLAMES) What are we going to do C h a r l e s . . . ? A N G L E MORSE PAUSES. HE TURNS OVER JACK HAWK’S NOTE, AND WE SEE THE 19TH CENTURY ADVERTISEMENT “STRIKE FAST” MATCHES, THE CAMPER’S FRIEND. AND THE DRAWING OF THE INDIAN SPEARING THE BEAR. A N G L E MORSE AND GREEN, MORSE LIGHTS THE FIRE G R E E N ... What are we going to do? M O R S E We’re going to kill the bear. GREEN What do we use for bait? MORSE (ABSENTLY) ...we ‘lure’ him - you know, Masai boys, in Africa. Eleven years old. They kill lion with s p e a r s . G R E E N Uh huh. (Pause)… how do we lure him? MORSE WITHDRAWS THE SPEARPOINT FROM THE FIRE, LOOKS AT IT, HE NODS AND REPLACES THE SPEARPOINT, REVOLVING IT IN THE FIRE. M O R S E ... and what One can do, another can do... (Green doubts their ability to kill the bear. In the script, Morse shows Green a picture in the book of how it will be done, but this is excised from the film.) G R E E N You can’t kill the bear, Charles. He’s...he’s... he’s (shakes his head) Been ahead of us, the whole, he’s been playing with us, he can read our minds, he... M O R S E What one can do, another can do. You weakling. Do you want to die out here...? (PAUSE) DO you? (PAUSE) You coward. (PAUSE) Do you hear me? (PAUSE) “I’m going to kill the bear.” Say it... G R E E N . . . I . . . M O R S E Say it... “I’m going to kill the bear.” Say it: G R E E N I’m going to kill’im. M O R S E And tomorrow I’m going to kill the motherfucker. "I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen."
— J.G. Ballard Richard Branson - Losing My Virginity - notes
What does Richard Branson think money is for? Money's sole purpose is to make things happen. "Later, it became apparent to me that businesses could be a creative enterprise in itself. If you publish a magazine, you're trying to create something that will last and serve some useful purpose. Above all, you want to create something you are proud of. That has always been my philosophy of business. I can honestly say that I have never gone into any business purely to make money. If that is the sole motive, then I believe you are better off not doing it. A business has to be involving, it has to be fun. and it has to exercise your creative instincts." After reading about Branson's battle with British Airways, I am believing that perhaps those that have large wealth are really just people who went into a competition that is incredibly difficult, one they shouldn't win, one that is almost impossible, and then just be tenacious enough, stubborn enough, to not stop when others have quit. People take music far more seriously than may other things in life. It is part of how they define themselves. How to find opportunities? Look for a way around the system - that is where the money is. If you believe in an idea, you do what it takes to make it happen. An idea with no action remains just that. To be profitable, to make money, the skill is not in the selling, it is in the buying. You buy the right thing at the right price, you win. For retail property always look for the cheaper end of a high end street, and watch the invisible lines. He keeps his notes in a simple school spiral notebook where he writes down his ideas, peoples comments, and his schedule. He believes in long term objectives - he always wants capital growth, not dividends. He believes that it is only the bold move that will get you anywhere. You need to be a risk taker, and the art of risk is to protect the downside. Learn all you can about risk, how it works, then you relate to it. Instead of a long list of fears, it all comes down to whether it will work or not. Then what? Branson makes decisions on people and businesses in thirty seconds, counting on intuition more than numbers. For success he usually tracks two simple numbers, for example the price of fuel and the number of passengers for Virgin Airlines. "Every successful business man has failed at some ventures, and most entrepreneurs who have run their own companies have been declared bankrupt at least once." Whenever one of his businesses have positive cash flow, he looks for something else to do or buy. Richard Branson takes the skills learned at one industry and applies them at another. He adds element after element, business add-on after business add-on. Virgin is a collection of small companies that are a collection of solutions to problems Branson had. He will take an idea and once it works take that idea to another industry. He has a weakness for vertical integration. Second choice mans nothing, you ant to be the first choice, always. Make your copyrights as long a possible. Once you have a great product, you have to protect its reputation with vigilance. One of my favorite lines, I want to be one of the great amateurs of all time. Richard Branson's Condensed Business Wisdom
He keeps his business units small. If they get too big, he breaks them up. That way they stay fast and responsive. Small also means if something goes wrong with a unit, it doesn't take down the whole business. When he picks a business he simply thinks, is it something he would want? Branson loves risk. My favorite story is one where a man comes to his house and knocks on Branson's front door. He is an inventor, and he has just created a flying machine that you strap on, and he has never flown it, but if Branson would invest, he could fine tune and make it work. Branson listened. He strapped it on, turned it on, accidently launched himself up into the air, now the machine had never flown. He had no idea how to steer or land, and finally landed the craft. He liked it, and the inventor the next day, took the unit up like Branson and dies trying to land. Would you risk your life on a strange machine you can't fly from a person you don't know? Branson would. D "The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight...
[Breadmaking is] one of those almost hypnotic businesses, like a dance from some ancient ceremony. It leaves you filled with one of the world's sweetest smells... there is no chiropractic treatment, no Yoga exercise, no hour of meditation in a music-throbbing chapel. that will leave you emptier of bad thoughts than this homely ceremony of making bread." "No yoga exercise, no meditation in a chapel filled with music will rid you of your blues better than the humble task of making your own bread." — M.F.K. Fisher (The Art of Eating) Any fool can fight a winning battle, but it needs character to fight a losing one, and that should inspire us; which reminds me that I dreamed the other night that I was being hanged, but was the life and soul of the party. — W.B. Yeats "Everything is biographical, Lucian Freud says. What we make, why it is made, how we draw a dog, who it is we are drawn to, why we cannot forget. Everything is collage, even genetics. There is the hidden presence of others in us, even those we have known briefly. We contain them for the rest of our lives, at every border we cross."
— Michael Ondaatje "We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves. I wish for all this to be marked on by body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography - to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience." — Michael Ondaatje (The English Patient) "The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore, professore dottore Eco, what a library you have ! How many of these books have you read?” and the others - a very small minority - who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you don’t know as your financial means, mortgage rates and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menancingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary."
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable) |
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