baseball, beckett, battlestar galactica
I wrote a banger of an intro to the (week)daily post over at combatdavey.net today and figured I'd repost it here because it is sports-related.
Like every Toronto Blue Jays fan, I am down in the dumps today because I watched my team snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory last night. I am, however, still tethered to reality. The Jays have to win one more game to eliminate the Yankees and advance; the Yankees have to win two.
We still have the advantage, we just don't have the momentum.
Momentum is important in, like, everything. When you have it, you only barely have to have control or a plan. When the wind is at your back you are suffused with the general idea that you're going to figure it out as you go —— and you often do. When your sails are empty, it often feels like the wind has forsaken you and you will never again experience its power —— but you will.
⚠️⚠️ TANGENT ALERT!!
⚠️⚠️ TANGENT ALERT!!
⚠️⚠️ TANGENT ALERT!!
Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot is inarguably one of the most important and enigmatic plays of the 20th century because no one except for Beckett knows what it's actually about. "Because the play is so stripped down, so elemental, it invites all kinds of social and political and religious interpretation," wrote Norman Berlin in the Massachusetts Review in 1999.
Over the years, I've read various postulations about what Waiting For Godot is about.
It's about God! It's about religion! No it's not, it's about war! Yes, the Cold War! No, the French Resistance during WW2! Uh, can't you see that it's about Ireland? Pozzo and Lucky are Britain! No, no, it's about the emptiness and desolation at the core of existence! Yes, kind of, but have you examined the play's inner workings through a Freudian lens! Actually I think Jung is more applicable here!
I did a literature degree at McGill. The people in those classes really can be the gasbags you hope they're not and boy howdy do they enjoy getting high on their own fumes.
I talk a lot (shout out to AW and the other talkers who keep you informed and your lives interesting without asking for anything more than your attention, sorry not sorry) but as an undergrad I largely avoided offering my viewpoints on things we were reading because I didn't want to be wrong (duh) or sound dumb (duh) but also because I didn't want to sacrifice clarity on the altar of immediacy. I liked to arrive at my perspectives after considering other perspectives and, in some cases, figuring out why they didn't hold water. I still do.
I'm not saying I was a good student. I wasn't. It took me three separate tries to get my B.A. In my defence, though, I didn't think the point of university was to be a good student. I thought the point of university was to learn things. And I did.
⚠️⚠️ TANGENT COMING IN FOR A LANDING!!
⚠️⚠️ TANGENT COMING IN FOR A LANDING!!
⚠️⚠️ TANGENT COMING IN FOR A LANDING!!
I mention all this in the same context I talk about the Blue Jays, baseball, and everything else, because this post isn't actually about about baseball or Beckett or Battlestar Galactica and you probably already figured that out.
Waiting For Godot is really just about inertia. This reading lends itself to all the other readings but I never yelled this at the folks I went to school with because I was unsure about almost every one of my opinions until about five minutes ago.
In the play, Vladimir (!) and Estragon can leave anytime. It's not that they can't, it's that they don't. Leaving before Godot arrives is tantamount to admitting that the wait was meaningless.
Fans can stop watching their teams anytime they want but they don't, because stopping means admitting that their devotion was meaningless.
We do not remain inert because we can't move. We stay inert because moving requires accepting that we've been tragically wrong. The momentum swings? The big ones that make us feel that our time, suffering, and sacrifice was worth it? That's what we're chasing. That's what fandom is about because that's what faith is about.
Per Newton:
Every object perseveres in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, except insofar as it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed thereon.
If inertia can be reduced to something as simple as nothing moves until something moves it, then we Blue Jays fans —— the day after choking away a 6-1 lead and losing 9-6 —— are no different from the Yankees fans who watched their team get drubbed in Toronto and indeed in the first three innings of last night's game. They weren't moved until they were moved. We weren't stopped until we were stopped.
We don't watch the games for the result. Yes, we want our team to win but we don't watch the games to witness the wins, nor do we watch the games to experience the wins.
We watch the games to be moved. We watch the games to prove that all the time we've spent watching the games was worth it, to prove that the time we spent watching the games wasn't wasted.
The momentum is what moves us.
This post is not about baseball. It's about how you fit into everything —— including baseball.
That said, still gonna win.
⚠️⚠️ TANGENT OVER!!
⚠️⚠️ TANGENT OVER!!
⚠️⚠️ TANGENT OVER!!
🌲 gonna
🌼 go
🌱 touch
🌳 grass
🌷 now
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