Internal echoes

I went through something of a transformation about a decade ago. I got divorced, moved out of the house I'd never wanted, and spent a large part of a year mostly isolated. I still went to my dojo fairly often, but unless someone contacted me or showed up at the door, there were times when I could go for days without seeing or hearing another human. It was me and the cats. As you might expect, that led to a fair amount of introspection in the depths of a very, very low period. What came out the other end was largely positive (I think.) It allowed me to grow up in some respects. (You'd like to think a 40-year-old wouldn't have that much growing up to do, but we all know that's rarely the case.) Watching The Sound of Metal this evening brought some vivid memories of that period back to me and now I wonder, a decade later, if I might have forgotten some of the lessons that slowly dawned on me in the darkness.

The film is about a nomadic heavy metal drummer in a two-person band with his girlfriend. They live in an RV and simply move from gig to gig. The music is, almost literally, their life as Ruben (Riz Ahmed) uses it to give his life purpose away from drugs and Lou (Olivia Cooke) seemingly does the same to escape her inner demons. But then Ruben begins to lose his hearing. What is it like when you have the whole focus of your life removed, whether by your own hand or something you can't control? I've been there. What is it like when you feel like you're failing simply by existing without that focus? I've been there. What is it like when you desperately want to fight back against something which can't be fought, because it's an essential part of you? I've been there, too. This is Ruben's entire existence being disrupted, not by a mistake that he's made, but a bodily function that can only possibly be repaired. In the making of himself into the whole person that keeps him from addiction, he suddenly finds himself feeling like less of a person in a way that's more mundane, but every bit as crucial.

Director and co-writer, Darius Marder, does a sterling job of keeping us immersed in Ruben's experience and allowing all of the emotions to progress naturally. It's almost documentary-like, but delivered with a deep grasp of the story being told, without deviation. Ahmed handles the textured and difficult role without becoming maudlin, which is a feat in itself. It would've been easy to overemote into the tragedy of the situation, but he keeps himself tied to what Ruben's reality should be even through the scenes where the character pulses with rancor. The actor has had a fairly regular career on large and small screen (plus an intriguing moment as The Corinthian in an audiobook presentation of Sandman), but mostly on the other side of the pond. But his performance here was so good that I'm kind of eager to seek out his larger roles and see what he could do with screenplays perhaps not quite as grounded. Paul Raci, as Joe, the director of the deaf addicts shelter that Ruben is convinced to stay with, is another standout. It's during their most emotional conversation in the film that Joe points out that the stillness of their condition is where he finds the most peace; not simply that he's been able to accept what has happened to him, but has embraced it as something that makes him a whole person and which he was using alcohol to avoid.

When I was staring into the darkness alone, my outlet at the dojo was something that allowed me to find that same kind of stillness. The motion, the interaction with others without speaking, the absorption of form and ritual, the actual stillness of zazen; all of these things contributed to that introspection that led to a similar kind of change that Ruben experiences. He had created a life that was driven forward to keep him from slipping backward into a lesser state. He had to constantly be doing something. When deafness initially robbed him of that, he felt lost. I'm still often in that frame of mind. If I'm not doing something, learning something, conveying something, I still feel as if I'm wasting time; as if I'm failing. In that respect, this film was a small reminder that learning to be comfortable with one's own existence, no matter the physical requirements or hurdles, can occasionally be all the accomplishment that any one person needs. I'm still not certain of that and, thankfully, the film avoids a pat ending, as well. We're simply left with an understanding that this, too, is part of the journey to whatever end.

Highly, highly recommended.

Just a little rain on the parade

Rain is on my mind. Not like Harvey rain. This ain't Michigan State's impending debacle. (Tangent: I've seen people on the Web blaming Houston's zoning regulations, or lack thereof, for the flooding. These people apparently haven't registered the concept of 50 inches of rain falling in a few days. 50 inches! 50! I don't care if your zoning regulations say: "Only one building, wetlands, and a dirt road per 10 acres." 50(!) inches of rain is going to flood ANYWHERE. /tangent) But some small rain on Michigan's latest gridiron campaign, beginning tomorrow, is clouding my thoughts.

I've been having a tough time getting excited for this season. My fandom has been slipping away for the last decade, mostly because I can't justify the existence of the NCAA any longer. Even if I was aware of the issue when the Fab 5 were complaining about it in 1992, the fact that an increasing number of billions of dollars is being made on major college sports and none of it is going to the athletes is something that just hangs over me when I watch the game. Nowhere else in society do you have adults be expected to put their skills to use and be explicitly forbidden from being compensated for them. At a minimum, you call that exploitation. At a maximum, there are much darker parallels to be drawn, especially given that the majority of those athletes are African-American. The fact that the only professional outlets for those skills in the US collude with the NCAA to deny those athletes access to those paying jobs for three years (in the case of football, 1 in basketball) past the age when most of them have legal standing as adults just makes the crime, and the associated hypocrisy, even worse.

You can add to that the issue of concussions. American football is a violent game, full stop. It's why so much protective gear is worn. Even sports that are considered contenders for the title holder of violence, like rugby, don't require so much gear because the game isn't predicated on extremely powerful collisions. Those collisions lead to concussions and I find that when I'm watching a game these days, I spend a fair amount of time thinking about what those kids are doing to themselves in the name of getting permission to be paid for what they're already really good at.

These feelings are in stark contrast to those of Michigan's current coach, who feels that football embodies everything that's good about life. In truth, no one else that I recall can so accurately be said to "live football." Every day, during almost every waking moment (he does have a family), one could make a fair argument that Jim Harbaugh is thinking about football and how to be better at it than he was the day before. My slow alienation from the game has reached its pinnacle right around the time that most around me, energized by the dynamo of his personality and the success that Harbaugh has maintained throughout his career, are more enthusiastic than ever about what Michigan could accomplish on the field. But I try to blot out the stain that is the NCAA and the scourge that is the threat of CTE and think in similarly positive terms and realize that I just don't share the faith anymore.

Brian did his usual excellent review (I can't call anything that exceeds 50K words a "summary") of the team and his expectations for the season and came down at the 9-3/10-2 mark. You know how many of those I've seen in my life? 12. Two more at 9-4, a 9-2-1, a 10-1-1, 5 10-3s (including the last two years), and 3 11-2s. There were a couple 10-1s, an 11-1, and a 10-0-1 in my lifetime but I was too young to know what was going on. I've seen a lot of apparently successful seasons for Michigan that, in many ways, don't really add up to a whole lot. I mean, yeah, a lot of Rutgers fans would kill to have the program that Michigan has, but their first problem is that they're Rutgers fans, so I don't really care about that. I just imagine sitting in front of a game, mildly irritated that these kids are sacrificing their health and bodies to make millions of dollars for someone else, and think about the impending 10-3 season and... I just get bored.

Do I really want to see Michigan slaughter Rutgers again? Do I really want to see the ritual sacrifice of Cincinnati or the slugfest with Wisconsin or the inevitable loss to Ohio State again? Do I really want to be implicitly supporting a system that denies these kids the opportunity to make a living off of their natural talent and developed skills, unlike 99% of the rest of humanity? Make no mistake. These guys are professional athletes. The only thing not professional about it is that they're not getting paid. Having recently been looking for jobs in a sphere where my only experience is of a volunteer or self-employed nature, I can tell you what most employers think about the "professional" standing of someone who's never received a paycheck. These kids are basically modern corporate America's favorite class: unpaid interns, who are supposed to be eternally grateful to the monolith that tells them that their time and effort aren't worth a dime without the guidance that the monolith provides. Insert Kubrick's giant black slab conveying the thought of tool use (violent tool use, incidentally) and it's kind of hard to deny the imagery.

I still enjoy the game, to a certain degree. I was watching Indiana and Ohio State play last night with an appreciation for what was happening on the field (and utter amazement at the modernity of about half of Mike Debord's offense; I'll never forgive 1999.) And despite a similar appreciation for Harbaugh's gung-ho personality and the dynamism that he brings to some parts of the offense, I find myself unable to join the Harbaughdyssey because I don't see the breakthrough that so many friends and others I respect insist is taking place. I don't see Michigan contending for national prominence on a regular basis because I don't see Michigan getting past OSU to win the division or go to the conference title game, which means 10-2/9-3 and some irrelevant bowl in Florida on an annual basis. Incidentally, the last irrelevant bowl game that Michigan participated in cost TE Jake Butt millions of dollars as his draft stock plummeted when he injured his knee during said game. "Come to Michigan! Do lasting damage to your body for free, because it's the only way to (hopefully) get paid for what you can do with that body!"

I look at that last paragraph and I feel mildly ashamed that I'm even contextualizing my apathy toward the record that Michigan might achieve, given the other concerns that I can't shake. I mean, certainly my interest in the game is grounded in what Michigan can achieve in it. I'm a fan. I have been since I was six years old. I could go on being just like all the other fans who love the game and all the kids who play it for that same, simple love. But I wonder. I wonder if that new coach who's supposedly the greatest thing to ever grace the sideline of Michigan Stadium (I've lived through six now; admittedly a ridiculously low number compared to many programs) is really enough to make me think that being a fan for one more 10-3 season is worth supporting the economic injustice or watching people risk the rest of their lives on a game that was probably a bad idea taken to extremes in the first place. I remain a fan, but I struggle with the idea of continuing to be a fan. Do I step out of the rain or keep walking to where I'm going?