I suspect that some works of art, some great books, are flukes, lucky projects where a writer happened upon material that accorded perfectly with his temperament: "The Great Gatsby," "Death in Venice," "The Princess of Cleves" (make that her temperament), "Seize the Day," "Daphnis and Chloe".
But in a way, I was lucky: if the project had been less commercially viable, it would have been killed before a word was written.
"You're lucky if your project is not at a complete standstill; if you have a bank that's still funding; and if you have equity partners that are still putting money into projects," he said.
The rest of us simply help them along the way, the faceless science post-docs trying to grind out a career and hit lucky on a project, idea or grant application before we become either too expensive or unemployed.
"If we're lucky enough to get this project done, projects of this scale and size won't happen again in Atlantic City," he said.
If we are lucky we understand the project when it is built, but sometimes we still cannot grasp its meaning.
Not every Kickstarter project is lucky enough to reach its initial goal — let alone exceed that by tens of thousands of dollars — so, to keep people engaged, the team has been updating its page with video and has been setting new milestones in addition to the ones put in place at the outset.
Maybe we'll get lucky and the European project will live to see another day.
