Swimming Studies Quotes

“The pictures achieve something rarely articulated about the metaphysical state of swimming: The body, immersed, feels amplified, heavier and lighter at the same time. Weightless yet stronger.”
― Leanne Shapton, Swimming Studies

“When I swim now, I step into the water as though absentmindedly touching a scar.”
― Leanne Shapton, Swimming Studies

“Being pool-trained, I'm used to seeing four sides and a bottom. When that clarity is removed I get nervous. I imagine things. Sharks, the slippery sides of large fish, shaggy pieces of sunken frigates, dark corroded iron, currents. I can swim along the shore, my usual stroke rolled and tipped by the waves, the ribbed sandy bottom wiggling beneath me, but eventually I get spooked by the open-ended horizon, the cloudy blue thought of that sheer drop-the continental shelf.”
― Leanne Shapton, Swimming Studies

“All that work and then, finally, something levitates. When the minute stresses of practice fade, the specialness emerges. There is a quotation from "On Directing Film" by David Mamet that I underlined in 1993 and have never forgotten: "Stanislavsky wrote that the difficult will become easy and the easy habitual, so that the habitual may become beautiful.”
― Leanne Shapton, Swimming Studies

“I think of the limitations that "specialness" requires: doing a series of very unspecial things, very well, over and over (...) (P223)”
― Leanne Shapton, Swimming Studies

“I've defined myself, privately and publicly, by my brief, intense years as an athlete, a swimmer. I practices five or six hours a day, six days a week, eating and sleeping as much as possible. Weekends were either spent training or competing. I wasn't the best; I was relatively fast...”
― Leanne Shapton, Swimming Studies

“Stanislavsky wrote that the difficult will become easy and the easy habitual, so that the habitual my become beautiful. (P224)”
― Leanne Shapton, Swimming Studies