One sure sign you’ve just heard something really millions is that just off the shore of such a statement a pause opens out into to an ocean so sudden and deep – like the 100-foot drop off Long Point Beach in Provincetown – that into such a pause, in April, the whales come swimming and roll their massive excellences along the shore of what the person before you has just said. After such a pause, wide enough to admit whales in spring, you notice that for a moment, you’ve stopped breathing, and as you again take your first deep draft of breath that is not water, you’re deciding life is sharply more open and confusingly generous, need I say, more millions, than it was just seconds before the person delivered those unprecedented sentences unto your ears, which vibrate still along the fine hairs designed to take in such statements.
You can hear such a pause here in this excerpt from Richard McCann and Neil Theise’s extravagantly millions talk, Across Bodies, from the Expert’s Mind series. I don’t need to give you a timecode, you can actually feel the drop. Seriously, Richard and Neil cannot but open their mouths without speaking the millions. The whole talk will be available online at some point soon, but for now, here is this one excerpt, in celebration of the 16th anniversary of Richard’s liver transplant.
I want to say Happy Re-birthday, Richard, but as he’s said so clearly, there is no re-, and why would we want that anyway? Happy Ongoing Birthday is what I’ve tried in the past. Maybe it’s just plain Happy Birthday. Maybe it’s just Richard, I’m so glad you’re here.