Nehaveigur

We go through life with a diminishing portfolio of enthusiasms.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

This quote must’ve been popular in 1970s Key West. Thomas McGuane uses it in an interview about the period and Jim Harrison discusses it in a movie about fly fishing in the Florida Keys.

Circa 1973, Key West was a place where drug smugglers, womanizers, fishermen, adventurers and writers thrived. Yesterday, All That is Sacred got released, a new short film about the time and place.

Apart from McGuane and Harrison, writer Richard Brautigan and singer Jimmy Buffet make an appearance. The tarpon fishing scenes are electrifying, especially the sounds the fighting fish make. Like the guys in the movie, they want to be free. Another powerful image shows the last words Jim Harrison wrote. He died writing, and there on a piece of paper is one line after the next, until the last line, which becomes indecipherable and then just ends.

I think it’s impossible not to go through life without some diminished enthusiasms, in the sense that they are diminished in their quality. Obviously, one discovers things you don’t want to do any more, so you stop doing them; presumably, the ones that remain, you do with greater skill, concentration, and ability.

Tom McGuane

We go through life with a diminishing portfolio of enthusiasms, so you try to seek out moments that give you this immense jolt of electricity. It’s a tranquilizer better than any chemical tranquilizer. So you try to have something that gives you this electricity and freshens up your feeling about being alive

Jim Harrison