The Renaissance

30 September 2006
Charlton Athletic 1 - 2 Arsenal
Bent 21' (A)
van Persie 32' (F)
van Persie 49' (F)

The date attached to this entry is patently false: I am writing eight days after the game in a hotel room somewhere in New Jersey. The reason for this tardiness is a compound of events; I moved the day of the game (into my first real life apartment, no less), and thus had no ability or time to watch the game (clearly, I am not at the level of Nick Hornby - if I was, I would have indignantly refused to move until the following day). As a result of the move, I had no cable tv or internet and thus no way to watch the game after it had occurred. I shut myself off from Arsenal, I became determined to not see the score until I finally saw the game (so I'm the lazy version of Hornby). I am only now finally seeing the game, as I type up these notes I scribbled in the hotel room, a couple hours before my cousin got married. As a side note, the wedding was somewhat ominous for me. Barring any strange events (like my mother remarrying, for example), my marriage to some as-of-yet-unknown lady will be the next for my family. I made some jokes gesturing to this knowledge, but it created a whirlwind of anxiety within me. A subtle pressure to finally find a girl I want to date for a sustained time, to step up to the plate and ask someone out. I've managed to avoid it for most of my life but it looks like I won't be able to any longer. There are now bigger forces at work, and my grandmother turns her attentive maternal eye in my direction. So they day we moved, Kevin (my roommate) and I had a few friends over for a champagne party. I got right smashed and wrestled with my friends for talking some shit about the Gunners. I had my Robin van Persie jersey on and channeled straight up football hooliganism. Afterwards, I stood up to get my glasses and fell flat on my face. Eight days later and my nose is still tender. Jesus. Both my nostrils were bleeding at the time and I got a little rugburn on my face on top of that. So I ended the night pretty well, inaugurating the new apartment with antics that would have made my college dorm room proud. My dorm room, by the by, was witness to some wonderful drunken shenanigans, primary of which was a fine night when I returned so completely drunk that I made a go at destroying our bathroom. I shared the room with three other gentlemen, and two of them woke up to a totally trashed bathroom - complete with a broken overhead light. I had also tried to level our shower curtain but luckily for me it refused to fall. There are other stories from that same year, less specific to my dorm room, that I shall no doubt feel compelled to relate at some point in the football season. My first week here in the new apartment was a depressing comedown. With nothing to do, Kevin and I played a lot of head-to-head Mario Kart while eating ham sandwiches and ramen (a meal you can make for approximately two dollars a night - what a fucking bargain!). I was tired from the weekend hijinx (and, you know, moving) while getting more and more exhausted from my new 40-hour work week routine. I sit at my desk, cranking data into my computer and exploring the fascinating British indie rock scene. Part of it is their standard English charms, but more it's the jangly guitar rock - influenced equal parts by The Strokes and Franz Ferdinand - that, as I discussed previously, reminds one of the 1970s punk scene. What people forget is that 1970s punk was reasonably poppy - a lot of bands like the Ramones, Wire, the Clash, Television, The Jam (and on and on) had substantial pop sensibilities. They took catchy guitar rock, such as The Beatles and Led Zeppelin and removed all the thinking from it, they broke music down to sharp (and easy) hooks with silly-to-pointless lyrics (except of course The Clash, who Hornby professes a love for at varying points: they had something to say whereas the Ramones definitely did not). Well, the hooks and lyrics are back in a lot of the music coming out of England these days. The difference is, these new bands sound a lot more polished - its not their fault, not really, its a symptom of the times, of the digital age. As a couple of my best friends proved during college, all you need is a simple machine to record a four-track demo that doesn't sound half bad. So while there are stylistic similarities and tactile differences, the real question becomes is their worth, value, timeless attributes within this new wave of semi-punk? I'm not sure, to be honest. I may not know until thirty years from now. Punk may have seemed like cheap entertaining rock back in 1977, yet it is still beloved to this very day, and will undoubtedly be enjoyed another thirty years from now. Punk revolutionized rock and roll, burning it from the roots until it howled and screamed. The ripples of punk are found throughout the years since, in 80s American underground, in the 90s grunge movement, and in today’s pop rock. The new wave that I have identified no doubt will hold less sway than original punk for it is only riding the wave without starting it, yet that does not mean it is any less enjoyable, any less fun or brilliant. Let's get to soccer for a minute. I've seen about half an hour of this match so far, and it has been incredibly messy: at least three yellow cards have been handed out along with countless warnings. I didn't know our rivals were Charlton? When did this become such a hotly contested match? I thought we were supposed to be pissed at Chelsea and Tottenham, not some 19th place team (I say that casually, when Arsenal was in 17th about three weeks ago). Once again, Arsenal is back to its finesse football, although it seems slightly out of sync: there have been a number of cute backpasses that were off by half a second. I love Arsene Wenger as much as I love Joe Torre, but both of them seem to be doing something wrong. Torre has lost something with the Yankees, I'm not sure what, but whatever it is has left and ain't never coming back. But now I will completely shut up as my boy Persie just nailed a pass from Hleb into the Charlatan goal! Delightful. I'll save the Torre talk for another time, I already have too much on my plate. It's difficult to deal with your mother when she cries, especially when it is at least implicitly ones own fault. She cried multiple times when I moved out, days before and probably days afterward. The most poignant memory is the morning I moved: she had had a dream about me when I was five, and sat on my bed describing it through ready tears. I don't know what to do when my mom cries, and it's a problem that has appeared a couple times throughout the years. I want to hug her and tell her it will be okay but she often times shoos me away, probably out of embarrassment. When I'm sitting in my new apartment by myself, I sometimes think of her sitting by herself in her own condo, lonely and missing her grown-up son. Moments like these, sports cannot help. There are parallels but rarely can I look to Arsenal or the Yankees when I empathize with my mom's pain and draw on them for strength. Somehow it does not seem like a comparable equation, that I should steel my emotions with thoughts of Thierry Henry when my mom is suffering from something which can now never truly be fixed. I feel bad that I left but I would have had to sooner or later: a child's personal renaissance always comes with an invisible cost to the parent, a sorrow combined with pride for a feeling that is unique and unrelenting, always waiting there in the quiet and lonely hours of a Sunday night.