My Top Three List of History's Greatest Explosions of Genius in the Shortest Amount of Time:
1. Isaac Newton, who in 1666 (while hunkered down at home avoiding the Great Plague) invented calculus, optics, the laws of universal gravitation, and basically most of what's now called classical physics.
2. Albert Einstein, who in 1905 published papers on the photoelectric effect (which won him the Nobel Prize), Brownian motion, E = mc^2, and the special theory of relativity in a span of six months.
3. Dolly Parton, who in 1972 wrote the songs "Jolene" and "I Will Always Love You" on the same day.
Other candidates are welcome in the comments!
2 comments:
I'd submit Willie Nelson in what seems like 1960. This is a bit of an interview with Terri Gross. She so amazed by what he said that she had to ask him about it twice.
NELSON: I was living in Houston - in Pasadena, really, outside - working at another radio station there and playing clubs at night and writing songs. And I had written - one week I'd written "Crazy," "Funny How Time Slips Away," and "Night Life."
GROSS: I'm sorry. Did you say you wrote that in one week?
NELSON: Yeah. I was working...
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: Geez. I wish I had a week like that.
NELSON: That was a great - that's when I decided maybe I ought to go to Nashville. And so I took off to Nashville in my '46 Buick that just barely made it. I think it died when it hit the city limits. I went immediately to a place called Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, where I had heard was the spot to be in Nashville if you want to find some songwriters and hang out a little bit. So - and sure enough it was the spot to be.
GROSS: So just to make sure I'm hearing correctly, you wrote "Crazy," "Funny How Time Slips Away" and "Nightlife" in one week?
NELSON: Yeah.
A great example, thanks!
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