Hey! How’s it going? Thank you for being here. If you’re reading this, it might mean that you saw my announcement, I told you about it in person, or this was shared with you by me or Coleen (the kindest friends are those willing to embarrass you in pursuit of sharing your endeavors, thank you, Coleen).
I unintentionally found myself moved by sports among other things since I last published this newsletter…so here it is: CoTW Sports edition! Consider the collages playful in that…they have nothing to do with sports. (while I did watch the super bowl, it did not fall under the umbrella of my interest this time…let the pun serve as a reference to Rihanna’s deep catalog of *hits*)
I am *extremely* late to watching “The Last Dance”, the docuseries on Netflix detailing the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls’ season wherein they went for their second three-peat, but wow did I love this ride. It is worth mentioning how little I know about basketball or its history: I know that I wanted Michael Jordan himself to sell the Bobcats and “bring back the buzz” aka the Hornets so that my brother and all fellow Charlotteans could have their beloved team, and so I could have the great merch…that’s about it, folks.
My way into this was Jordan, famous Tarheel, North Carolinian, and star of Space Jam. As a Tarheel by the sheer fact of being a North Carolinian (don’t mistake me though, I am a Mountaineer first and foremost!), I am biased toward this man.
What I didn’t expect was the way I became endeared to every player on this team. Scottie Pippen? A voice like molasses and a man robbed! Dennis Rodman? Extreme flair with the defensive talent to back it up. Phil Jackson? I mean! We (I) love a tall, wise, seemingly relaxed man. Steve Kerr? <3
Having grown up a sports-adjacent fan, I can engage in the thrill of a good game when prompted.
But I confess I haven’t given this world its due for what it provides an audience, both in the moment and in the history books. When exactly in this increasingly manufactured, hyper-edited, artificially intelligent world can we trust that what we are seeing is real? That question’s answer narrows by the minute. Even our own ways of sharing ourselves and *being real* have their caveats, all in service of allowing us to curate ourselves. A sporting event holds the thrill of authentic possibility, the guarantee that you will bear witness to something that hasn’t happened before just like this.
Live theater cannot give an audience this experience, although it comes close. While it does offer the embodied rush of witnessing actors remember lines, execute difficult dance steps, or reach those high notes, there is an expectation that you are seeing something meticulously planned. You go to have an experience that is, at least to some extent, the same as the one your friend or that critic raved about.
Even chess contains the thrill of the never before within each game.
I recently listened to a re-published episode of Radiolab titled “Games.” They discuss the idea of the book or the catalog of every chess game played since the 16th century (!!!). In all this time, mankind has yet to complete the catalog of possible chess games.
Host Jad Abumrad accompanies his guest, Fred Friedel to an online viewing of a game between two Grand Masters in Romania, wherein Friedel compares the game they will witness to the book in real-time. What follows is quite a profound sequence. (Abumrad makes a flu-ridden Michael Jordan scoring 40 points reference here, proving that there really is nothing new under the sun, and also that I had a great hunch connecting these two ideas :] ) With each piece moved, the number of duplicate games in Chess’s recorded history drops by vast figures. Here is an excerpt of the episode’s transcript:
JAD: White moves its D4 to D5.
FRED FRIEDEL: White pawn two squares forward. My database tells me that there are 1,775,000 games in which this occurred.
…
JAD: Move 2.
JAD: ... black counters with its pawn going from C4 to E6.
JAD: Now we've got two pawns facing each other, middle of the board. And according to Fred's database this exact configuration has occurred in ...
FRED FRIEDEL: 514,518 games.
JAD: So a million and a half, down to half a million.
…
FRED FRIEDEL: Yes.
JAD: Move three. White moves another pawn.
FRED FRIEDEL: 335,000.
By the 19th move, the number drops from a measly five games…to zero. Abumrad’s voice brightens as he realizes he is bearing witness to a never-before-recorded game of chess, that they are now “out of book”.
Thrilling!
Okay no more Sports now, here is what I read recently:
A piece in New York Times Magazine Titled “Three Years Into Covid, We Still Don’t Know How to Talk About It”
I highly encourage giving this your time, and I will paste the first paragraph here to speak for me regarding why it’s important:
NOTICE YOUR RESISTANCE to reading the next several thousand words. They’re about the necessity of looking back at the pandemic with intelligence and care, while acknowledging that the pandemic is still with us. They raise the possibility that when we say the pandemic is over, we are actually seeking permission to act like it never happened — to let ourselves off the hook from having to make sense of it or take seriously its continuing effects. As we enter a fourth pandemic year, each of us is consciously or subconsciously working through potentially irreconcilable stories about what we lived through — or else, strenuously avoiding that dissonance, insisting there’s no work to be done. And so, with many people claiming (publicly, at least) that they’re over the pandemic — that they have, so to speak, restraightened all their picture frames and dragged their psychic trash to the curb — this article is saying: Hey, hold up. What’s in that bag?
Read it paywall-free here via this link.
This newsletter is officially *long* so I’m signing off.
Between now and next time, I will be turning towards activities that delight me in lieu of listening to podcasts (my lenten fast…if you know me, you know this is quite the challenge) which looks like jamming out to music (at this very moment, David Byrne’s American Utopia Live album) watching movies (Specifically Birdman or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance—woof *positively*—and The Hustler, will probably want to talk about this next time, as it will absolutely still be on my mind. Until then, *I Love You Paul Newman*) and reading books (A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle right now).
Thank you for reading, until next time, take care of yourselves and others. :]