Tumble...Velocity...Sports..."All To All"

I woke up today wanting to write about sports, but instead, false-started, freaked-out and over-analyzed myself. Big Surprise.

"'...But the thing you'd like is that with the multiverse, you have basically every option you want--really, every option you'll ever see or imagine--and one of your selves somewhere has taken that option..."

(-Hand, p.119 You Shall Know Our Velocity - David Eggers)

I woke up wanting to fume a bit 'bout the televised professional sports competition last night, between the San Jose Sharks and Detroit Red Wings - wanting to rail something subjectively supportive of the boys wearing my hometown's colors, like:

"...it seems like anytime the Red Wings made the slightest contact with any San Jose player, that blue-jerseyed player would go limp and flail to the ice, flopping not unlike a fish out of water - thus that the jumpy referees, like band-aid grabbing zealous neighborhood mothers would come to their aid with phantomous love-taps being classified as "holding" or "tripping" penalites."

But strike number-one, in hockey, soccer, baseball, hell...any major sport...is that it's petty, whiny even, to attempt placing "blame" upon officiating... Because at the end of the day, your team's effort will bear the most weight upon the "outcome." So take a breath, cut to commercial, wake up the next day and go back to the real world. It's only a game.

But then...it got me freaking out - why can I be so easily belittling of "sports writing" or sports journalism when I do try my hand at it - Because I can also turn the lens back on myself and realize the comparable triviality of "music writing" or music journalim...my apparent realm of...proficiency...or at least the object of most of my energy.

Like, how, when the volcano erupted in Iceland - music blogs covered it from the angle of "...how this will effect the tour schedules of your favorite Radioheads and LCD Soundsystems and whoever else..." or maybe tie in a Bjork or Sigur Ros angle...

That's all good for a small chuckle.

But why can't I write sports? Becuase I'm still at the junior-grade level of bitching about referees and I need to mature a bit......mature beyond the couch-jettisoned, beer-swilled, television-set yeller who casts aside reason in the fervor of competition...

Tim And Eric: Sports - Watch more Funny Videos

It all gets very Roman-feeling: distract-the-masses with brutish, sweating, grimacing battle...

And then...by the same token, music, mainstream music, the music "biz" and all the plastic faces on television singing and dancing for you - is all distraction as well... Blimey, we'll all need cheering up after we see humans dump five million gallons of oil into the Earth's water and sets to kill innocent sea turtles, dolphins, shrimp and, likely, our continent's only living coral barrier reef around the Keys.

See...I'm freaking out and over-analyzing...probably too much coffee. But, I started musing on Dave Egger's book, Velocity, and the two somewhat bumbling Gen-X-neurotic heroes of that tale, discussing quantum physics. Why should I only be set to music writing? I get that edgy feeling of wanting to split myself into eleven pieces anytime I try to set down to write some supposedly-free fiction writing and I want to follow so many different plot lines, so many different sensibilities, themes, reflections and characters...

How can we choose just one?

I am in the tumble cycle of a drier, bouncing and banging around the metal cylinder and tryiing to put on every article of clothing as I roll...fly zippers and tube socks are hard to fit at that ever spinning angle...

"...if you combine the quantum physics paradigm with the idea of the subjectivity of time, we're basically all alive in a thousand places at once, for a neverending present."

(Hand, p. 120, You Shall Know Our Velocity - Dave Eggers)

I will try my hand at sports, just as I will try my hand at geopolitical-weary harrangueing news items and pleas for social justice and nods to community culture... I will try to wear all these hats.

And the tumble cycle rolls on...

Go Wings!

P.S. - Broken Social Scene's new album Forgiveness Rock Record comes out today on Arts and Crafts - they have a new song on that record called "All To All" which seems to fit my spastic-every-direction-rant...

P.P.S. - The Emory in Ferndale, with the city's Public Library, is hosting another "Book Party" where we'll gather and discuss You Shall Know Our Velocity - here's a link to another blog's post about all that...