"The Importance of Being Earnest"
last night i came upon a recording of the william tell overture on my car radio. the passion and energy of the piece were stirring but, my knowledge of classical music being limited, i didn't know that the composer was giacchino rossini. i remembered back to a lecture i had heard a few years ago by professor robert greenberg, himself a composer.
in his survey course of western music greenberg hardly had an uncharitable word to say about any composer. i know because i listened carefully, trying to get that little bit of discerning knowledge that would allow me to sound educated if the topic ever came up: "oh yes, the canon is delightful listening but pachabel really wrote much better stuff." things like that. greenberg actually said that too but the only other time i can recall him saying anything critical was in his comments on rossini.
rossini was a composer of preternatural talent, obvious to even a novice like myself upon hearing something like the william tell. he composed some of the most memorable operas of his or any other time and achieved fame and fortune in italian society. and then he stopped. just stopped composing altogether and for the rest of his life enjoyed la dolce vita.
greenberg said that most composers feel the need to compose as an essential form of self-expression, the abandonment of which being inconceivable. he said something like, one has to wonder about so talented an artist in so intense and expressive a field who can just give it up for a life of leisure.
this is the dialectic between talent and effort. we all know its manifestations. the person who loses interest in something as soon as he or she achieves a certain level of competence thereby abjuring any possibility of excellence; the student who has the term paper written "in my head" but who avoids putting pen to paper.
this conflict is actually rare in the arts, as far as i know. renoir turned his back on efforts to pursue the intellectual breakthroughs of impressionism for better-paying, pleasing, pastel, ultimately banal portraiture, reproductions of which today grace the offices and apartments of vacous young women desiring the patina of refinement, but the popular image of artists anyway is that of the obsessed, almost mad creative genius working until he can work no more. one thinks of van gogh, hemingway, and the deathbed scenes of beethoven shaking his fist at the thunder outside his window and mozart dictating composition.
perhaps equally rare but more publicized are the instances where the conflict occurs in the sports world. every college football yearbook contains the same coaches praise for the scrubs: "i wish everyone on this team practised as hard as larry lardass." nothing gets more praise than hard work, especially when it doesn't count. that's playing the game "the right way." that's the spirit of devotion to team. that's also the fate of those doomed to play the position of "left out."
talent is the athletic coin-of-the-realm. you're only going to get significant p.t. if you can "shoot the rock" or hit the ball or run a 4.39 40. coaches like to say that that stuff can't be taught, which suggests that those who have it don't have to go to class.
occasionally that's what happens. occassionally there's the star player who just can't make it to practice or practices in a desultory fashion when he does show. this frequenly leads to extreme coaching angst.
what did larry brown do to deserve allen iverson? was it the powder-blue polyester jumpsuit he used to wear while coaching in the '70's? c'mon. enough already. iverson is a punk-bitch, a narcissistic mamma's boy whose career options aside from basketball were the department of solid waste and selling crack. but he's a punk-bitch with jets, and therein lies brown's existential crisis.
on his induction into the basketball hall of fame brown extolled the virtues of playing the game "the right way." for brown, skipping practice or going through the motions is a blasphemy against the almighty, dean smith. brown's soul is torn, his basketball spirit haunted by the sybarite wearing #3. It may yet cause his resignation from the '76er's or the trading of iverson.
which would be a shame because playing the game of basketball "the right way" ultimately means scoring more points than the other team, nothing else. that's why brown was hired. that's why iverson was drafted. it's the game of life that iverson fails at and that is what brown should rue. but he needs to keep them seperate.
most coaches recognize this distinction, consciously or not. they paper over the personal shortcomings of their players which is why few situations approach the epic tragedy
of the brown-iverson dance of death. at the other extreme is, or was, jimmy johnson. he had disdain for the adage that coaches must treat all players the same, never showing favoritism. emmitt smith could practice or not and never would be heard a discouraging word from the jimmer as long as emmitt performed on sundays. but let larry lardass take a lap in practice and j.j. would see to it that the barcelona dragons had a new addition to their roster.
johnson's soul was not torn by the sometime conflict between talent and effort. if he ever had a soul he probably sold it long ago for one of his three rings. and that is one way of doing one's work in life. win. make the most money. and retire to la dolce vita, or the upper keys.
but for those, like brown, who work and still have souls the conflict is there. one can sympathize with his struggle while still seeing it as unnecessary. the two, the worldly and the spiritual, are seperate. larry brown rightly renders unto ceasar what is ceasar's when he plays allen iverson. he should celebrate iverson's performances and the fame and fortune that they bring him. but he is right also to feel that an athletic ethos and the human spirit are violated by such a man. brown should not disrespect either as johnson did with his indulgence of the talented but insolent. he should show his disdain for iverson the person. the most embarrasing photo of brown is not the one of him in the powder-blue jumpsuit. it's the one of iverson sitting on his lap when he was named mvp. brown should say something like, "allen is the best player in the game and i will play him as long as he performs but we are not soulmates. i hope allen grows but i doubt he will and when he leaves this game he will have his trophies but nothing else." arright, that's not very memorable but something like that.
we are all self-contained spiritual entities. we are fulfilled and honor our place in the grand scheme by effort. there is no god to please or displease, no heaven to strive for nor hell to avoid. the human spirit is about striving. why climb everest? because it is there, george mallory said. in the protestant ethic, work is it's own reward. for the hindus the state of grace is reached by the striving not the attainment. it is this spirit that is violated by rossini and iverson and johnson and renoir.
the western canon would be impoverished without rossini's operas as would basketball without iverson's play, but the human spirit is diminished by them both.
-benjamin harris.
PUBLIC OCCURRENCES
last night i came upon a recording of the william tell overture on my car radio. the passion and energy of the piece were stirring but, my knowledge of classical music being limited, i didn't know that the composer was giacchino rossini. i remembered back to a lecture i had heard a few years ago by professor robert greenberg, himself a composer.
in his survey course of western music greenberg hardly had an uncharitable word to say about any composer. i know because i listened carefully, trying to get that little bit of discerning knowledge that would allow me to sound educated if the topic ever came up: "oh yes, the canon is delightful listening but pachabel really wrote much better stuff." things like that. greenberg actually said that too but the only other time i can recall him saying anything critical was in his comments on rossini.
rossini was a composer of preternatural talent, obvious to even a novice like myself upon hearing something like the william tell. he composed some of the most memorable operas of his or any other time and achieved fame and fortune in italian society. and then he stopped. just stopped composing altogether and for the rest of his life enjoyed la dolce vita.
greenberg said that most composers feel the need to compose as an essential form of self-expression, the abandonment of which being inconceivable. he said something like, one has to wonder about so talented an artist in so intense and expressive a field who can just give it up for a life of leisure.
this is the dialectic between talent and effort. we all know its manifestations. the person who loses interest in something as soon as he or she achieves a certain level of competence thereby abjuring any possibility of excellence; the student who has the term paper written "in my head" but who avoids putting pen to paper.
this conflict is actually rare in the arts, as far as i know. renoir turned his back on efforts to pursue the intellectual breakthroughs of impressionism for better-paying, pleasing, pastel, ultimately banal portraiture, reproductions of which today grace the offices and apartments of vacous young women desiring the patina of refinement, but the popular image of artists anyway is that of the obsessed, almost mad creative genius working until he can work no more. one thinks of van gogh, hemingway, and the deathbed scenes of beethoven shaking his fist at the thunder outside his window and mozart dictating composition.
perhaps equally rare but more publicized are the instances where the conflict occurs in the sports world. every college football yearbook contains the same coaches praise for the scrubs: "i wish everyone on this team practised as hard as larry lardass." nothing gets more praise than hard work, especially when it doesn't count. that's playing the game "the right way." that's the spirit of devotion to team. that's also the fate of those doomed to play the position of "left out."
talent is the athletic coin-of-the-realm. you're only going to get significant p.t. if you can "shoot the rock" or hit the ball or run a 4.39 40. coaches like to say that that stuff can't be taught, which suggests that those who have it don't have to go to class.
occasionally that's what happens. occassionally there's the star player who just can't make it to practice or practices in a desultory fashion when he does show. this frequenly leads to extreme coaching angst.
what did larry brown do to deserve allen iverson? was it the powder-blue polyester jumpsuit he used to wear while coaching in the '70's? c'mon. enough already. iverson is a punk-bitch, a narcissistic mamma's boy whose career options aside from basketball were the department of solid waste and selling crack. but he's a punk-bitch with jets, and therein lies brown's existential crisis.
on his induction into the basketball hall of fame brown extolled the virtues of playing the game "the right way." for brown, skipping practice or going through the motions is a blasphemy against the almighty, dean smith. brown's soul is torn, his basketball spirit haunted by the sybarite wearing #3. It may yet cause his resignation from the '76er's or the trading of iverson.
which would be a shame because playing the game of basketball "the right way" ultimately means scoring more points than the other team, nothing else. that's why brown was hired. that's why iverson was drafted. it's the game of life that iverson fails at and that is what brown should rue. but he needs to keep them seperate.
most coaches recognize this distinction, consciously or not. they paper over the personal shortcomings of their players which is why few situations approach the epic tragedy
of the brown-iverson dance of death. at the other extreme is, or was, jimmy johnson. he had disdain for the adage that coaches must treat all players the same, never showing favoritism. emmitt smith could practice or not and never would be heard a discouraging word from the jimmer as long as emmitt performed on sundays. but let larry lardass take a lap in practice and j.j. would see to it that the barcelona dragons had a new addition to their roster.
johnson's soul was not torn by the sometime conflict between talent and effort. if he ever had a soul he probably sold it long ago for one of his three rings. and that is one way of doing one's work in life. win. make the most money. and retire to la dolce vita, or the upper keys.
but for those, like brown, who work and still have souls the conflict is there. one can sympathize with his struggle while still seeing it as unnecessary. the two, the worldly and the spiritual, are seperate. larry brown rightly renders unto ceasar what is ceasar's when he plays allen iverson. he should celebrate iverson's performances and the fame and fortune that they bring him. but he is right also to feel that an athletic ethos and the human spirit are violated by such a man. brown should not disrespect either as johnson did with his indulgence of the talented but insolent. he should show his disdain for iverson the person. the most embarrasing photo of brown is not the one of him in the powder-blue jumpsuit. it's the one of iverson sitting on his lap when he was named mvp. brown should say something like, "allen is the best player in the game and i will play him as long as he performs but we are not soulmates. i hope allen grows but i doubt he will and when he leaves this game he will have his trophies but nothing else." arright, that's not very memorable but something like that.
we are all self-contained spiritual entities. we are fulfilled and honor our place in the grand scheme by effort. there is no god to please or displease, no heaven to strive for nor hell to avoid. the human spirit is about striving. why climb everest? because it is there, george mallory said. in the protestant ethic, work is it's own reward. for the hindus the state of grace is reached by the striving not the attainment. it is this spirit that is violated by rossini and iverson and johnson and renoir.
the western canon would be impoverished without rossini's operas as would basketball without iverson's play, but the human spirit is diminished by them both.
-benjamin harris.
PUBLIC OCCURRENCES
