Help me out. Is there a space where sports and music meet that doesn’t wind up looking and sounding like a Looney Tune? As I moved from music to sports while prepping for the upcoming issue, I tried to find a convergence of the two topics that leaves both with some dignity, but it was just not happening. Maybe it’s because the seminal volume of sports-related music is called, Jock Jams. Maybe I needed to look a little deeper.
There are a lot of songs out there related to and / or inspired by sports, but they seem trite and trend towards novelty. I’m thinking of songs like “Basketball” by Kurtis Blow (who's a Hip-Hop legend), or “Centerfield” by John Fogerty (another legendary artist). On the other hand, songs unrelated to athletic competition often get co-opted by sports, and thereby have a second (or maybe even a first) life seemingly unrelated to their stated themes or lyrical intent. Take “Song 2” by Brit-Pop icons Blur. Released in 1997, and originally intended as a satire of American grunge music, it’s now become a stadium staple, it’s two-syllable hook used to pump up crowds the world over, joining songs like The White Stripe’s “Seven Nation Army” and Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle” as unlikely declarations of fandom.
Eventually, I stumbled upon songs that, for one reason or another, have become so associated with certain teams as to transcend their original context and purpose, like the Rodgers and Hammerstein's, “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” which found life beyond Carousel – the musical it was written for – as Jerry Lewis’s telethon showpiece and also as Liverpool F.C.’s anthem. Unlike “Song 2,” one can actually establish a connection between the song and the team that adopted it. In 1963 “You’ll Never Walk Alone” became a number one single for Gerry and the Pacemakers, who hailed from Liverpool. Legend has it that Gerry Marsden – the group’s leader and vocalist – gave a copy of the song to Liverpool manager Bill Shankly, who was so moved that he insisted the song be played before home games. In reality, the song’s presence at Anfield is the result of the club’s music director simply doing his job. It was practice at the time to countdown the hits of the day prior to the start of a game. When “YNWA” topped the charts, therefore becoming the last song the stadium DJ played just before game time, LFC fans simply sang along as a show of support to the Merseybeat group. The DJ played it, the fans liked it, and it stuck – so much so that members of the team joined Gerry and the Pacemakers on stage when they performed the song on The Ed Sullivan show. The song has since become part of the team’s iconography, adorning its official crest, and watching over those who pass through Anfield’s Shankly Gates.
“You’ll Never Walk Alone” illustrates how when a piece becomes so associated with a particular team, there’s a tendency to want to elevate that association to the point where the origin of said song’s connection to said team becomes mythic. This is true of other music – sports connections as well, like Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline,” which is played during the 8th inning intermission at every Boston Red Sox home game, and the song that is said to be the third most popular song in American history (after “The Star Spangled Banner” and “Happy Birthday to You”): “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” These songs have come to serve the same function as hymns, in a way, as they bring people worshipping at modern day “temples” together behind a common cause, and this is a powerful thing. Liverpool fans alive at the time will note how important “You’ll Never Walk Alone” became in the wake of the Hillsborough Disaster, which saw 96 LFC fans die in the crush of an overcrowded stadium in 1989. In the end, how the songs got here isn’t important. It’s the fact that they’re here that counts. At their best, music and sport serve similar functions. They celebrate excellence. They bring people together.
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"The Faith & Doubt Issue" is weeks old, and the Philadelphia Eagles have signed Tim Tebow. If faith is the expectation of unfulfilled promises, then Tebow, whose belief in himself is only outstripped by the doubts of his many detractors, could be due. Or it could be that Tebow has already had his due. Tebow had an exceptional college career with the Florida Gators, winning a Heisman Trophy and two national championships. Despite lingering doubts about his ability to make it as a quarterback in the NFL, Tebow was taken in the first round of the 2010 NFL draft by the Denver Broncos. In the 2012 playoffs, he led the Broncos to a legendary upset of the Pittsburgh Steelers in what has come to be called the “3:16 Game” because of the many parallels between some of the game’s statistics and Tebow’s faith. Aside from this one brief, electrifying moment, Tebow’s time under center has been well-below average, and therefore short. After three teams and three years, Tebow was out of the league. Nevertheless, his time among the best is enviable. Tebow did more, and went farther than most of the kids who put on pads. So why is Tebow back? Some suggest it’s ego. It’s not that Tebow lacks the ability to play in the NFL, it’s that he lacks the skills to play quarterback. Tebow is an exceptionally gifted athlete. If he’d only switch to tight end or fullback, say his detractors, then he’d probably be in the midst of a long and fruitful career, instead of becoming part of Chip Kelly’s “Philadelphia Experiment.” But he’s so stubborn. For Tebow, it’s quarterback or nothing. Which makes you wonder when faith becomes folly. Tebow’s signing by the Eagles comes packaged in the same news cycle as the tragic sinking of a boat full of migrants off the Libyan coast, giving us two starkly different examples of how faith inculcates boldness. Many of the 700-900 people who lost their lives crossing the Mediterranean in hopes of reaching Italy came from desperate situations in disparate places like Somalia, Eritrea, Mali, Gambia, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Reaching Libya, which has become the center of a booming human trafficking trade (as well as a stronghold for militants from the Islamic State) in the absence of a stable government since the fall of Ghadafi, was their “Hail-Mary.” They sought passage on an overcrowded boat of questionable seaworthiness in order to reach a land where their future was uncertain and their presence unwanted because for them, whatever was waiting on the other side of the Mediterranean’s brilliant blue had to be better than what they were leaving behind. And there are as many as 500,000 more just like them crowding the scarred Libyan shore, dodging militias, waiting for whatever rickety boat or rubber raft may come because they believe. “I have been hearing the stories that people are dying, but me, I will cross it and I will cross it successfully,” said one migrant in a recent New York Times article. “I know that my Lord is with me. He will cross with me. I have made up my mind.” Tebow believes, too. The faith he found on his mother’s couch as a 6-year old afraid of hell pushes him ever onward towards his brass ring of excelling at one of the most glamorous jobs in sports: “I believe in my God-given athletic ability and the coaches that have been blessed around me. I believe I can do the job as a quarterback in the NFL.” And maybe he can, but should he want to? And, in the grand scheme of it all, should we care? - Tom
Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith. - Paul Tillich So much time and attention, airspace and bandwidth has been dedicated to one seemingly insignificant question: "what color is this dress?" Initially, my answer was not to answer. I was one of the smarmy minority who, dammit, felt that everyone's time would be better spent on other more pressing issues, like figuring out ways to stop ISIS, or coming up with a better gluten-free pizza crust. In doing so, I took my place among the ranks of what Megan Garber called "the attention police" in a recent article about the dress phenomenon. Still, "viral" is used to describe such things for a reason, so it didn't take long for me to offer up my opinion on the matter, mostly just to get people to stop asking (I even threatened to put it on a t-shirt). This dress is white and gold. Only it isn't. This dress is blue and black. My eyes let me down. I suppose I should find some solace in the scientific explanation for why millions of people see this same dress in two very distinct ways: the brain - which is truly responsible for making meaning from what we "see" - relies on our senses as gatherers of evidence, not arbiters of truth. In other words, seeing is a guessing game. This was explored in "Colors," a recent episode of WNYC's Radiolab, which you can sample an excerpt of below: As "Colors" shows, there is evidence that the vast majority of ancient peoples wouldn't have identified the dress as blue either, even if that's what they saw. This is because how we identify color is a social construct born of necessity. In The Illiad, for example, Homer famously described the ocean as "wine-colored," not because "blue" water didn't exist then, but because the Greeks had no need to label anything that way. With the exception of the Egyptians, the Greeks and other ancient cultures couldn't make blue pigments given the technology they had. Since they couldn't manufacture a color - say as a dye - then there was no need to give it a name. Since the next issue of Prodigal's Chair will be about faith and doubt, it's worth looking at what - if anything - the color of this dress can teach us about having faith or feeling doubt. Seriously. I think that ultimately faith, like color, is constructed by the brain, based on information it picks and chooses from those unreliable narrators through which we experience the world: our senses. The Book of Hebrews says that "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." In this verse faith is about rooting our unreliable perceptions in a tangible reality. The ancient author implies that belief lives in the distance between what the eye shows us and the meaning the brain makes of it (even if he couldn't see blue). If that's the case, then doubt is the sum of those perceptions the brain tries to leave behind whenever you make a decision or adhere to a belief. Speaking of adherence, because I know my senses are wrong, it doesn't make sense for me too hold too tightly to what my eyes still see when I look at the picture: a white and gold dress. In this instance, I have the benefit of a definitive answer. All too often, this isn't the case with other divisive issues, like religion, politics, or which region of the country makes the best barbecue. If you're like me, you do the best you can, relying on what you see and feel to answer your questions and create a way through when the answers don't come. If you're not like me, then you're probably some sort of fundamentalist who can't see past this relativistic bull-pucky and you don't care what color the dress is because it's going STRAIGHT TO HELL!!! I'd rather take my faith with a grain of doubt. Because it won't be long before something else comes, breaks the internet, and challenges us to choose between this or that. If we're smart - better yet - if we're compassionate, we'll gracefully excuse those who don't see what we see. Unless, of course, it turns out the dress is really white and gold, and that the blue and black camp is simply fabricating stories like this to bolster their beliefs. Then it's time for pitch forks and torches. - Tom You never know who you're going to hit when you skip stones across the waters of the universe. Today I was fastidiously working on getting the next issue of PC ready for launch, when Deb Jarrett sent me this picture. As you can see, it shows His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama holding a calendar. But it's not just any random calendar. It is a Dharamsala Animal Rescue calendar. Deb is the founder of DAR - an animal (and, by extension, human) welfare organization based in northern India - whose work will be featured in PC's upcoming Animal Issue. For $20, you can get your own copy of the calendar the Dalai Lama is holding, and mark your days knowing that you helped contribute to a worthy cause (if you don't believe me, just click here, and see what happens). I've never met the Dalai Lama, or Deb, or Katie Lin - the multimedia journalist who contributed the piece on DAR for The Animal Issue, or Diantha Gowens - another Animal Issue contributor. My wife, Cecily put me in touch with Diantha, who put me in contact with Deb, who in turn put me in contact with Katie, and while we've never seen each other face to face, I feel strongly connected to each of them. We've all heard of the idea of "six degrees of separation," that the distance between any two people in the world can be traversed by a maximum of six relationships that somehow exist between them. We've used Kevin Bacon's career to put this theory to the test at a thousand parties. I don't think "separation" is the right word, though. Sure, it's alliterative, but, as I've stated, I don't feel separated from the Dalai Lama - especially after having received this picture at the moment I received it. If we think of traveling through life as the act of treading water - of trudging knee deep in sand and surf, "like we ruled the waves," to quote Roddy Frame - then every act; each step, produces a ripple. These ripples grow and bloom into a Venn diagram of overlapping movements; Deb Jarrett starts an NGO in Dharamsala. Katie Lin, who is visiting from Canada, is lured by the charm and good work DAR is doing. She takes out a camera and starts recording. Her videos find their way to me, arcing all the way from northern India to the North Shore of Massachusetts. And, just as I'm working these videos into the pages of an online magazine I edit, comes a picture of the Dalai Lama, holding a calendar in support of DAR. Hopefully, in about a month, The Animal Issue will come flying at you off the top rope, complete with a new entry from me called, "My Panda Problem." In the meantime, you can read a story from The Detroit News on why those pansies at the World Wrestling Federation changed their name to World Wrestling Entertainment by clicking HERE. Also, if you think the image above would look really cool on a t-shirt, you're in luck. The Ann Arbor Tee Shirt Company agrees. Get the shirt HERE, and follow Ann Arbor tees on Twitter @annarbortees, and on Facebook.
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March 2024
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