New Years Resentments

22 October 2006

Reading 0-4 Arsenal

Henry 1'
Hleb 39'
van Persie 49'
Henry 70' (pk)

I don't know why, but I love seeing Hleb score goals. I love seeing van Persie do it too (and Rosicky, God bless him, whenever he finds the back of the net my week is golden). Maybe it's the thrill of watching people work within Thierry's majesty (quite literally in this case, as their goals were bookended by his dynamism). He creates an atmosphere, a frame of victory, that the others can suddenly blossom within. Only a handful of players, only a handful of people can truly foster such growth, and Thierry Henry is such a man. It's like putting a greased cog into an old rickety machine: suddenly, things work again, better than ever. Similarly, when making any peice of art, a frame is not necessary but it helps the system of the art function. Structure is both critical and not; the results from both are worthwhile. A player like Thierry on a football team fashions a machine for scoring goals and fluid football, but on the opposite side when you lack such an integral part and somehow it all still comes together, what you are left with is just as valuable if not more. Undoubtedly, having that centerpiece makes everything work effortlessly, and you end up with music like The Supremes. Gorgeous, sure, but gorgeous in an expected way. When you break the form and create something just as gorgeous, the effects are beyond the expected. They are stunning and shocking and they change things. Any right-minded artist is seeking this balance, the balance of form beyond form. Of course, as soon as that is achieved, a new form is established, society adapts to the stretched boundaries. This is the goal of most artists: using their voice and what they have to say, society reacts and accepts their views. They have shifted society. Every goal I have relates to this. I want to write books that similarily reference old forms of novels but advance them to a stage that was invisible when they were written. I want to write Tolstoy in the 21st Century, I want to extrapolate his creations to post-modern schizophrenia. My novel is aiming directly at this intention. I have an elaborate web of characters interacting with contemporary concerns, but there is a missing element, and I'm not sure what it is. I like what the novel is, in my head at least, and I like where it ends up, or where I think it ends up, but it does not yet break forms in a way I find inherent to what I was describing before. There's nothing Punk Rock about it. I am writing from the New Year, from 2007, and I am looking back to this football game in late October. This game was actually played the day before I got my current job, as an editorial assistant. The job weighs upon me everyday. They just kind of gave it to me; I was entering data for them, they saw my resume and gave me an office complete with a fancier job title. I figure they'll wake up someday and go, "wait, shit, why'd we give the job to this joker? Get him out of there!" And I'll be out on my ass. I save money like I'm about to buy a car because of this: I foresee the months I'll have no job and am scrounging around desperately for any kind of sustenance. As a result of a steady gig and my own apartment, I've settled into an alarming routine: alarming in the sense that I feel real life seeping into my world. The fears I was expressing back in October 2006 have slowly come to fruition. I get drunk on the weekends and whenever I feel like it's not a sign of alcoholism during the week, but my crazy antics of college have disappeared like an old man's sex drive. I guess it's impossible to avoid the fact that real life is here; I can't get black-out drunk and run around with a pipe breaking windows because there are, at least more expectedly, consequences here whereas in college they seemed very abstract and removed. I never even really figured I'd get caught. But now, Jesus, I'm terrified when I throw a cigarette out my car for fear of a littering ticket. Oh responsibility, social expectations, what have you done to the carefree personality I cultivated in college? He is gone, I expect, never to return. So I turn into my parents, who laugh and say, "yeah, we used to get drunk and have crazy times."