I return to this from time to time. Dennis Potter was one of the great television writers. In 1994, he learned he had cancer. He resolved to finish his last works, and undertook a final interview with Melvyn Bragg for Channel 4 just before completing them, to close out his writing life. Afterwards, a transcript of the interview was released, which I still have somewhere. I remember being spellbound in front of a little tv set, watching it without getting up once.
There’s a piece early on when he talks about, in full knowledge of his impending death, looking at the plum tree in blossom outside his window, and seeing it anew as “the whitest, frothiest, blossomest blossom that there ever could be.” And that’s when I started spending five minutes every day for myself to just look around.
This remains, for me, both an elevating and a heartbreaking watch. Even now.