The License To Murdalize
by Von Bark
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Most sports are rather puerile, a fake childish artificial Darwinism of overgrown infants striving to prove whom among them is "better." Sporting events are anti-intellectual activities, discouraging of thought and reflection. The bar band Huey Lewis and The News titled their best selling album Sports: perfect in a sense, music for yobs who hate music, merely requiring background noise between innings.
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The License To Murdalize continued...
Professional Wrestling is a scenario which at least has the decency to acknowledge the absurdity of its place in the universe. Its sense of fakeness is conceptually perfect. As one commentator exclaimed: "How can you call wrestling fake? There are good guys; there are bad guys; you have the whole human existential struggle played out on stage." The political machinations behind the scenes of this spectacle merely add to its exquisitely impure functionality.
Okay, let us take a gander at Boxing: it stands apart from all other sorts of sports. A champ once said: "Baseball players 'play' ball; Boxers do not 'play' boxing; they box".
The scriptor of this document distains the viewing of televised sporting events, but if forced to choose might make an exception in the case of boxing, an endeavour which spatters an elemental bloody truth. Boxing is the most primal and least artificial of any sporting event. Of course, being the least overtly intellectual of all sport-genres, it is the sport of choice for intellectuals, perhaps because it approaches a brutal honesty lacking in other more explicitly mediated distractions simulating human competition. Aside from the notorious dadaist boxer-poet Arthur Cravan, a few artists influenced by this dark pursuit might include the visionary television scriptwriter Rod Serling, whose '"Requiem for a Heavyweight" concludes with a surreal irony worthy of his Twilight Zone work; the uber-prolific novelist Joyce Carole Oates, who published a book of essays on the art of boxing as well as several stories, of which "Golden Gloves" comes to mind; the unique short story writer Thom Jones, whose collection The Pugilist at Rest repeatedly references the boggling trinity of boxing, Vietnam & Schopenhauer; and conceptual Freudian philosopher Jeanne Randolph, whose essay collection Why Stoics Box confronts the swollen eyelids of "the license to murdalize."
Way back in the shitty old days, I was working in the office with my associate Uros (My associate Furneaux pointed out how much his name sounded like a Klingon warrior exclamation, especially when exclaimed in a gutteral: "UUHHR-OSS!"). He was a young man who had moved here to Canada from Serbia, and he recounted a few interesting tales from the old country. One of the most intriguing was his description of a past-time of a couple of his freinds who indulged in "Chess-Boxing" (also known as "Boxing-Chess," depending on the variant): alternating ropunds of lightning chess interspersed with bouts of punching each other in the face or guts. A fascinating metaphor for something.
The internet search reveals a thriving subculture of chess-boxing in Germany and Eastern Europe, apparently inspired by certain passages in the work of graphic novelist Bilal. Of course, it is a European thing: the sort of concept which could never fly in jaded North American mass-media culture, except until the starved for filthy content reality-consortiums get their hands on it, if they ever manage to overcome their deep-seated revulsion for such intellectually daunting pursuits such as chess.
I met a few Serbians at work. I liked Istvan, he had the same crispy silvery hair-do that I have, but he was much more suave and distinguished than I am. He went from being a broadcast studio manager in Belgrade to the crappy job I was working at here. In his spare time he played saxophone for Hungarian wedding bands in the suburbs. He didn't box. Neither do I, because I think it would make my teeth hurt. (Actually, I used to play saxophone too, but I gave that up when it began to make my teeth hurt). If you see him, say hi for me.
Sidebar: Arthur Cravan (born May 22, 1887, Lausanne, last seen off the coast of Mexico in November 1918), pugilist and poet, was a larger-than-life character, and an idol of the Dada and Surrealism movements.
He was born and educated in Lausanne, Switzerland, and travelled widely throughout Europe and America during World War I using a variety of passports and documents, often forged. He declared no single nationality, and claimed instead to be "a citizen of 20 countries".
His personal style involved a continual re-invention of his public persona and various outrageous statements and boasts. His pride to be the nephew of Oscar Wilde even produced hoaxes - documents and poems - Cravan wrote and then signed "Oscar Wilde." In 1913 he published an article in his self-edited paper Maintenant, claiming that his uncle was still alive and had visited him in Paris. This rumour was taken up even by the New York Times. In fact, the two of them never met.
Cravan's skill as a professional boxer in itself provided a sort of street-credibility to his Dadaist reputation, but his rough vibrant poetry, and provocative, anarchistic lectures and public appearances (which often degenerated into drunken brawls) also earned him the admiration of André Breton, and other artists and intellectuals.
Von Bark, "The License To Murdalize," first published in Grey Goo (Print Edition), Toronto, 2005
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The License To Murdalize
by Von Bark
- sally mckay 5-25-2006 7:18 pm
The License To Murdalize continued...
Professional Wrestling is a scenario which at least has the decency to acknowledge the absurdity of its place in the universe. Its sense of fakeness is conceptually perfect. As one commentator exclaimed: "How can you call wrestling fake? There are good guys; there are bad guys; you have the whole human existential struggle played out on stage." The political machinations behind the scenes of this spectacle merely add to its exquisitely impure functionality.
Okay, let us take a gander at Boxing: it stands apart from all other sorts of sports. A champ once said: "Baseball players 'play' ball; Boxers do not 'play' boxing; they box".
The scriptor of this document distains the viewing of televised sporting events, but if forced to choose might make an exception in the case of boxing, an endeavour which spatters an elemental bloody truth. Boxing is the most primal and least artificial of any sporting event. Of course, being the least overtly intellectual of all sport-genres, it is the sport of choice for intellectuals, perhaps because it approaches a brutal honesty lacking in other more explicitly mediated distractions simulating human competition. Aside from the notorious dadaist boxer-poet Arthur Cravan, a few artists influenced by this dark pursuit might include the visionary television scriptwriter Rod Serling, whose '"Requiem for a Heavyweight" concludes with a surreal irony worthy of his Twilight Zone work; the uber-prolific novelist Joyce Carole Oates, who published a book of essays on the art of boxing as well as several stories, of which "Golden Gloves" comes to mind; the unique short story writer Thom Jones, whose collection The Pugilist at Rest repeatedly references the boggling trinity of boxing, Vietnam & Schopenhauer; and conceptual Freudian philosopher Jeanne Randolph, whose essay collection Why Stoics Box confronts the swollen eyelids of "the license to murdalize."
Way back in the shitty old days, I was working in the office with my associate Uros (My associate Furneaux pointed out how much his name sounded like a Klingon warrior exclamation, especially when exclaimed in a gutteral: "UUHHR-OSS!"). He was a young man who had moved here to Canada from Serbia, and he recounted a few interesting tales from the old country. One of the most intriguing was his description of a past-time of a couple of his freinds who indulged in "Chess-Boxing" (also known as "Boxing-Chess," depending on the variant): alternating ropunds of lightning chess interspersed with bouts of punching each other in the face or guts. A fascinating metaphor for something.
The internet search reveals a thriving subculture of chess-boxing in Germany and Eastern Europe, apparently inspired by certain passages in the work of graphic novelist Bilal. Of course, it is a European thing: the sort of concept which could never fly in jaded North American mass-media culture, except until the starved for filthy content reality-consortiums get their hands on it, if they ever manage to overcome their deep-seated revulsion for such intellectually daunting pursuits such as chess.
I met a few Serbians at work. I liked Istvan, he had the same crispy silvery hair-do that I have, but he was much more suave and distinguished than I am. He went from being a broadcast studio manager in Belgrade to the crappy job I was working at here. In his spare time he played saxophone for Hungarian wedding bands in the suburbs. He didn't box. Neither do I, because I think it would make my teeth hurt. (Actually, I used to play saxophone too, but I gave that up when it began to make my teeth hurt). If you see him, say hi for me.
Sidebar: Arthur Cravan (born May 22, 1887, Lausanne, last seen off the coast of Mexico in November 1918), pugilist and poet, was a larger-than-life character, and an idol of the Dada and Surrealism movements.
He was born and educated in Lausanne, Switzerland, and travelled widely throughout Europe and America during World War I using a variety of passports and documents, often forged. He declared no single nationality, and claimed instead to be "a citizen of 20 countries".
His personal style involved a continual re-invention of his public persona and various outrageous statements and boasts. His pride to be the nephew of Oscar Wilde even produced hoaxes - documents and poems - Cravan wrote and then signed "Oscar Wilde." In 1913 he published an article in his self-edited paper Maintenant, claiming that his uncle was still alive and had visited him in Paris. This rumour was taken up even by the New York Times. In fact, the two of them never met.
Cravan's skill as a professional boxer in itself provided a sort of street-credibility to his Dadaist reputation, but his rough vibrant poetry, and provocative, anarchistic lectures and public appearances (which often degenerated into drunken brawls) also earned him the admiration of André Breton, and other artists and intellectuals.
Von Bark, "The License To Murdalize," first published in Grey Goo (Print Edition), Toronto, 2005
- sally mckay 5-25-2006 9:52 pm
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- AndrewGes (guest) 8-21-2015 5:28 am