Rowan Ricardo Phillips

Portland doesn't read like a basketball town, unless you remember what the NBA was like before it exploded into the mainstream in the Eighties: back when cities like Seattle, Baltimore, and Philadelphia moved the needle.

When someone says, 'I trusted you,' the phrase is loaded with all the actions that came from that trust: the person comes almost to embody trust, just as anyone who's always hustling can only be called a hustler.

When Nina Simone first sings the title of 'Feeling Good,' her voice has been alone for thirty-nine seconds. The solitary singer: there's always something fiat lux about it. Resolute, the individual moves through the void. You know the accompaniment is coming, but the voice, all by itself, makes you care about it: form turns into feeling.

I think that there's something extremely beautiful about the Olympic ideal and its motto - 'Swifter, higher, stronger' - it's such a beautiful motto, and it celebrates everything which is the antithesis of death and dissolution and entropy.