Football & Poetry

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 09:05:30 -0500

Feb. ’00, National HS Jazz Band competition at Berkley College of Music in Boston MA. Our closer, La Fiesta, is a beast of a song. At the time of the competition, we still hadn’t successfully played straight through it even once in rehearsal. In preliminaries, we got through it (still flawed), but played the first two songs of our set well enough to advance to the finals. Now here we are in the finals, high school kids on stage in front of 3,000 people, knowing we’re about to attempt something that has proven impossible to date. First song done, second song done... time for La Fiesta. What happens next is something I’ll never forget; each of us nails our most difficult individual parts better than we ever had in any other performance or rehearsal (much less one right after the other, all in the same take), each passage building on the momentum of the last, climaxing to the end until... BAM, final chord, standing ovation. That was One.
Aug. ’05, National Poetry Slam, Albuquerque NM. I’m in the audience watching the national championship of slam poetry; a far higher level of artistry than anything I’d seen before. One renowned poet, Anis Mojgani, is on stage in the middle of performing his poem while I’m in the middle of being blown away. Then, lights out... literally. A fuse blows in the auditorium and all the lights cut off. But he doesn’t. In complete darkness, almost to the point of sensory deprivation, Anis keeps going. Without even so much as a stutter, his words continue to crash through that ‘heart-skips-a-beat-when-the-lights-go-out’ moment, leaving me transfixed in a pure “I can’t believe I’m privileged to be witnessing this” stupor of joy. That was Two.
Jan. 8th, 2011, Seahawks vs. Saints NFL playoff game. I’m watching the game in the living room by myself, fully expecting the defending Super Bowl champion Saints to mop the floor with the Seahawks. In fact, even when the Seahawks scored first, I thought, “Aww good for them. At least they won’t get shut out at home.” Fast forward to late in the game; Seahawks are somehow in the lead, with the ball, and all they have to do is get a first down to seal the deal, completing what would be the most unlikely upset in NFL playoff history. Hand off to Marshawn Lynch up the middle:
He bounces off, breaks a tackle, he’s actually gonna get the first down, what an upset, nobody saw this one coming...
Breaks another tackle, he’s somehow still going, thousands rise to their feet, what an amazing effort, now just go down inbounds and run the clock...
Stiff arm, fuse blows, normally staid sports announcer exclaims, “Get off me!” with the enthusiasm of a teenage boy, I can’t believe I’m witnessing this, crashing thru broken tackles, this is impossible, how the fuck is he doing this, climaxing to the end...
Lights out, touchdown, game over. That was Three.
Two.
One.

There’s a zen quote I read that goes, “At the highest level, all things become all things.” I don’t bring this up to present some paradox of circular logic, just a statement of fact. High talent mixed with maximum effort in the context of these three unduplicable circumstances in such a way that when it all ‘perfect stormed’ together, I was able to feel a glimpse. But a glimpse of what? All things becoming all things obviously doesn’t mean I momentarily hallucinated and saw Mr. Mojgani in a Seahawks uniform battering through a line of saxophones (though in a way, that’s not as far from the truth as you might think). These three moments did, however, transcend the physical difference between the acts of “playing music”, “listening to a poem”, and “watching football” to elicit in me an identical emotional response. There is an aspect to all actions, and indeed all things, that is shared; that one venn diagram sliver where every circle overlaps. At this point, if so inclined, you could say that all things indeed become all things.
We’re all familiar with the Pink Floyd, Dark Side Of The Moon album cover, right? A beam of white light passes through a triangular prism, gets separated into the colors of the spectrum, and a rainbow shoots out the other side (see above picture). Now just imagine this image on its side: a beam of light shooting down from above, passing through the prism, and a pyramid-shaped rainbow projects downward onto a large flat surface, forming several colored pools. Picture it:
Now let’s say you are a very tiny man living in Green. You know about Red, you’re somewhat familiar with Purple, but you are a man of Green. In fact, you are an exceptional man of Green, and because of this, you quickly rise up the ranks in Green Land. You not only know that the wavelength of green light is 5500 angstroms, but you know exactly what vegetables thrive under such light, and these are the plants upon which you base your diet. Your aptitude for Green is well documented & well above most others in Green Land. Your home is the epitome of renewable technology, you’ve memorized all the dialogue in Wizard of Oz, and you wear emerald-lens glasses because, even in a world of pure green, you strive for a more intimate knowledge of Green. One perfect day, thumb-wrestling Mother Nature while watching Jumanji and thatching a palm-frond blanket with your toes, astonished onlookers quip that, “he must know Green better than Green knows Green.”
You get the point- you feel in Green.
But look around. Here at the top, at the pinnacle of Green, there is no more green. It’s just you, along with others who feel in Red, Yellow, Orange, Blue, and Purple, each having risen up the ranks of their respectively colored worlds, all meeting at the same colorless point. Six vastly different people shaped by, and shapers of, their vastly different worlds. But at the top of it all, at the highest level of all things, they all share this same point. Red, Green, Blue, Football, Poetry, Cooking, Math, Bird-watching, Call of Duty: Black Ops... all connected, all overlapping at the same venn sliver hiding somewhere in the corner of every circle.
You get the point- though I doubt you feel in Green.
But if you’re a dancer, you do feel it in movement. If you’re a chef, you feel it in flavor. If you’re a video gamer, you feel it in pwning noobs. The point is, it’s all the same point. So to all 3rd year art school undergrads, please stop thumbing your nose at football fans with your snide condescension. You just don’t feel in football. To all Madden enthusiasts, know that poets feel the same about a multi-layered metaphor as you do about a perfectly-timed hit stick for a fumble. You just don’t feel in poetry. And to everyone out there who feels in something, just know that connecting us all, is all the same thing.