And me? Well, I'm just the narrator

[sovay]

If you knew the algorithm and fed it back say ten thousand times, each time there'd be a dot somewhere on the screen. You'd never know where to expect the next dot. But gradually you'd start to see this shape, because every dot will be inside the shape of this leaf. It wouldn't be a leaf, it would be a mathematical object. But yes. The unpredictable and the predetermined unfold together to make everything the way it is. It's how nature creates itself, on every scale, the snowflake and the snowstorm. It makes me so happy. To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing. People were talking about the end of physics. Relativity and quantum looked as if they were going to clean out the whole problem between them. A theory of everything. But they only explained the very big and the very small. The universe, the elementary particles. The ordinary-sized stuff which is our lives, the things people write poetry about – clouds – daffodils – waterfalls – and what happens in a cup of coffee when the cream goes in – these things are full of mystery, as mysterious to us as the heavens were to the Greeks. We're better at predicting events at the edge of the galaxy or inside the nucleus of an atom than whether it'll rain on auntie's garden party three Sundays from now. Because the problem turns out to be different. We can't even predict the next drip from a dripping tap when it gets irregular. Each drip sets up the conditions for the next, the smallest variation blows prediction apart, and the weather is unpredictable the same way, will always be unpredictable. When you push the numbers through the computer you can see it on the screen. The future is disorder. A door like this has cracked open five or six times since we got up on our hind legs. It's the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.

—Tom Stoppard, Arcadia (1993)

Comments

[cmcmck]

He was like Samuel Beckett in some ways but was always funnier

[thisbluespirit]

<3<3<3

The NT has posted an In Memoriam now as well.

[sovay]

The NT has posted an In Memoriam now as well.

That's lovely. (My favorite photo from the original cast of Arcadia!)

*hugs*

[sovay]

He was like Samuel Beckett in some ways but was always funnier

Beckett is pretty funny!

There was a brief period of time when I knew perfectly well that Michael Frayn had written Copenhagen (1998), but I kept thinking it should be Stoppard.

[asakiyume]

The unpredictable and the predetermined unfold together to make everything the way it is. It's how nature creates itself, on every scale, the snowflake and the snowstorm. It makes me so happy. --Me too, Tom, me too. Glad to have shared a universe with you.

[sovay]

--Me too, Tom, me too. Glad to have shared a universe with you.

*hugs*

[pameladean]

I have to admit that my first thought when I heard the news was simply, "Fucked by a dahlia!" P.

[troisoiseaux]

You know someone has left a mark on the world when everybody's instinct on his passing is to quote his own words. <3

[sovay]

I have to admit that my first thought when I heard the news was simply, "Fucked by a dahlia!"

MINE TOO.

[sovay]

You know someone has left a mark on the world when everybody's instinct on his passing is to quote his own words.

They were a lot of good words.

[selkie]

The unpredictable and the predetermined unfold together to make everything the way it is.
*twitches lightly along with that Baruch dayan h’emes*

[elisem]

Is it that time already?

(He will be so, so missed. It's good he left us so much art to cope with.)

[elisem]

*snort*

A worthy monument!

[nineweaving]

"But if you stir backward, the jam will not come together again."

*hugs*

Nine

[sovay]

*twitches lightly along with that Baruch dayan h’emes*

*hugs*

[sovay]

A worthy monument!

The other strong contender after the dahlia:

Chamberlain: [. . .] I know your brother Laurence. We belong to a sort of secret society, the Order of Chaeronea, like the Sacred Band of Thebes. Actually it's more like a discussion group. We discuss what we should call ourselves. 'Homosexuals' has been suggested.

AEH: Homosexuals?

Chamberlain: We aren't anything till there's a word for it.

AEH: Homosexuals? Who is responsible for this barbarity?

Chamberlain: What's wrong with it?

AEH: It's half Greek and half Latin!

Chamberlain: That sounds about right.

—Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love (1997)

[sovay]

"But if you stir backward, the jam will not come together again."

*hugs*

[sovay]

(He will be so, so missed. It's good he left us so much art to cope with.)

*hugs*

[minoanmiss]

*raises a light to his memory*

[sovay]

*raises a light to his memory*

*hugs*

[starlady]

I think Arcadia might have been my first Stoppard and I'll always adore it. But even though I've seen every Stoppard I can since, including Every Good Boy Deserves Favor, my favorite memory might be crying with laughter at the $5 undergrad black box production of Travesties I wandered into on impulse my first semester of grad school. He was great.

[sovay]

my favorite memory might be crying with laughter at the $5 undergrad black box production of Travesties I wandered into on impulse my first semester of grad school.

That's wonderful. I famously meant to see Travesties in grad school and did not!

[vass]

*nods sadly*

[sovay]

*nods sadly*

*hugs*

[rosefox]

Did you see this? What a legend.

[sovay]

Did you see this? What a legend.

rushthatspeaks just told me tonight! Yes.