harvard, scrabble and golf; some unlikely thoughts on knowing, or writing, it all...

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and the blogs grow longer.

For Alice, for my brother, and for all those of you who have been impatiently waiting…

A friend of mine got into Harvard today, and although this has little or nothing to do with what I’m about to write, I thought I’d start here. Its not everyday that someone you know gets accepted to Harvard, its hardly everyday you meet someone who went there, so I figured it was worth a mention. (Besides, its not just any friend—after my mother, dear Alice was the first person to become a follower of this blog, so as far as the girl with the pearl necklace is concerned, this friend is very worthy of mention). Whenever I think of Harvard, besides reminiscing about the one beautiful autumn afternoon I spent walking around it, I am always reminded of the first time I met someone who had graduated from there. I can’t remember exactly what she said she had studied, I think it was “computer-related,” although I’m certain it had a much sexier title than that. So, partly because I had no idea what that was, and partly because of Harvard’s boundlessly glorious reputation, I said what anybody else would say, “Damn”—the two-syllable, not one-syllable, damn. And as we got to talking, I realized she had gotten that response many, many, times before. “That’s the problem with Harvard,” she said, “if people don’t immediately assume you studied law just because of its famous law school, they still, often times, assume you know everything.” True that. People who aren’t acquainted with the American collegiate system beyond the reputation Hollywood films create for it think of Harvard, (and its infamous ivy competitor Yale), as giant universities of omniscience. So basically, if you graduate with a PhD from either of them, your title is not merely “Doctor,” but God. (Good luck Alice, a tough destiny awaits, and a progeny of fools).

But besides Alice, there is another reason I bring this up. Even though I went to Bard—the opposite of Harvard if there ever was one, the school nobody has ever heard of unless they are of that rare species of Steely Dan fans, that’ll be the day I go back to Annandale, tralalalala—from the moment I began studying literature, people assumed I knew everything about it, that I had read every book, heard of every author, could list the Nobel Prize Laureates and Pulitzer Prize Winners in reverse alphabetical order. I imagine it’s the same with most fields—we like to assume that lawyers know every law, and mathematicians every formula, but the truth is, most of us, if we ever became good at something, did so through narrow specializations, and have long forgotten the first-year survey classes where everything was taught. My undergraduate education in literature was a maddening example of this, for it began and ended in Don Quixote. At my dissertation board, my advisors and professors said, “we don’t give out As easily, so go and get yourself a big bottle of champagne and celebrate. And please, for god’s sake, read another book.”

Of course, in my three years there I did read many other books, and many parts of many books, and much criticism—I could, and can still, talk about French, German, Russian and Hispanic literature at length. Thanks to film and theatre, I am also acquainted with hundreds of other books, even though I may not have necessarily read them—a luxury not allowed to the mathematician, who would be extremely lucky if formulae came in silver screen format. So I can often blunder or cheaply name-drop my way through a conversation on literature, but all of this still doesn’t make me an omniscient man of letters. I am helplessly reminded of one unforgettable and unforgiveable blunder I made, when in an interesting conversation on reading classics with someone I had just met, I knocked down one of the hurdles and found myself lying face down on the track, unable and unwilling to move or get up. I was referencing my sturdy Don Quixote as my classic that I read and go back to all too often because it is my bible, and he gave the example of so-and-so who allegedly read Vanity Fair every year for the same reason. Isn’t Vanity Fair a monthly publication was the first thought that came into my head, but instead I chose the second one and said, “hmmm, it must have been a very different magazine back then.” Crash! Boom! Pow! “No,” he gently replied, though I saw a monstrous wave of shock and disappointment wash over his face, “Vanity Fair…the novel…William Thackeray?” “Ah, Thackeray,” was all I could muster, but in my head I was going, Fuckeray Fuckeray Fuckeray! You bloody moron! You should know that. I have since thoroughly researched the book, and fully intend on reading it one day. Or once a year. As a punishing reminder for the whiplashing knock my vanity fairly took that day. Turns out you can learn from not reading a book too: when in doubt, nod and smile, don’t speak. Or go for the raised eyebrows and the all-responsive, “Ahhh.” Anything, anything at all, just leave the glossies out of it!

Anyway, conversations on literature are still an occupation of the idle, it is when it comes to writing that things turn laborious, and the assumed omniscience, truly murderous. Besides the fact that I receive phone calls at the most inopportune times from friends asking me how to spell a word, and of course the saddening truth that no one will ever agree to play Scrabble with me (!), I have, since the day I began writing, become a professional ghost-writer, editor, and translator for all who know me. I have written poems for baby showers, essays on experimental film (I know, huh!?), and worst of all, countless, countless! job applications, cover letters and CVs. Secret number one: I don’t think I have ever played Scrabble, and I really have no idea if I would be any good at it. Secret number two: Its not only that I absolutely hate it and have better things to do like pick my nose, I really don’t know a thing about writing CVs! Secret number three: Perhaps you should ask someone who has a fantastic job to do it. Duh. My job experience track record—like my Thackeray one—is hardly stellar. I am certain my breasts can take more credit for any of the jobs I’ve had than my pitiful excuse for a CV. Dear Friends, I am incredibly flattered by your numerous requests, but a flair for writing doth not a winning CV make. And though my breasts may be, my shoulders are not big enough to bear the burden of responsibility this entails! I wouldn’t be able to read you not getting the job as anything other than my fault. Can I write a poem about your work experience instead? I can do it in iambic pentameter…or in rhyme! To whom it may concern, I may not be clever, I may not be quick, but where experience fails me, my tongue does the trick! Kind regards. [P.S. Congratulations (and thank you!) Alice, for doing it all without me!]

All this said, or moaned, however, every once in a while, what you get asked to write is something you’re actually capable of, and more importantly, something that is fun. Perhaps it’s a book on flirting, perhaps a foreword on golf. Unlike the flirting, which so obviously and invitingly reeks of fun, I didn’t, at first, imagine the golf would be. Surrounded as I am, and have always been, by golfers, I am a little bit ashamed to say that I have never really gotten it. I like to release from a long day of writing by going for a walk. How on earth (and where on earth?) does one go to release from a long day of walking? So, just as my brother doesn’t get my sport of choice because he doesn’t believe in riding any “damn thing that doesn’t have a steering wheel or brakes!” so I never understood the chasing of a little white ball over fields of green. Though, as he is a good sport and often bestows with me with the rolling-on-the-floor entertainment that is seeing him on a horse, so I return the willingness to occasionally give his game a go. My talent for getting the ball into the hole or even off the ground is shaky, flukish at best, and by the time I have managed to actually control what is happening instead of leave it to chance, I am likely to be achy, tired and bored. I am obviously tempted by the threatening lack of control that getting on a horse proffers, while he is intoxicated by the rigorous prostitution of control that golf requires. So, in this regard, as in many others, we differ.

When it comes to writing and not riding however, I didn’t think we were that different. In fact, for a long time, while we were growing up, I steered clear of writing altogether because it was so clearly his talent, perhaps destiny, and I no less wanted to stand in his shadow than I did to step on his toes. He was the one who won a writing competition at university, not me. But perhaps that is indirectly related to his profession—I never had the balls to enter. So I was rather surprised when he solicited my help, and even more surprised to learn that he really needed it. Being one of the only, and so most famous Serbian golfers, he was invited to write a preface for the first Serbian book about golf. Having procrastinated for months, or been too busy hitting balls to give words a go, he hastily scribbled down something in five minutes and then emailed it over to me with a couple of lines to the effect of “please fix this.” Without diminishing his talent too much—that writing talent I’m sure still lies somewhere in his closet with his old golf clubs—because he hastily scribbled it down without a care in the world for how it would sound, the piece was rather bland, atrocious, unfixable. And this wasn’t only the opinion of a snobby writer and her vanity, fair; my parents, with their architectural eye and their love and appreciation of both their son and his game, wholeheartedly agreed. So I took to rewriting it. Here is an excerpt of what I wrote:

Many things have been written about golf. Mark Twain famously called it “a good walk spoiled.” Arthur Daley compared it to a love affair, saying “if you don’t take it seriously, it’s no fun; if you do, it breaks your heart.” Gardner Dickinson said, “They say golf is like life, but don’t believe them—it is more complicated than that.” Truth is, I have been playing golf for twelve years, professionally for three, and I am somewhat at a loss for words when asked to write about it. It has been, and is, all of those things to me—it is my life, my love affair, and often times, a good walk spoiled, but spoiled, complicated, or heartbreaking though it gets, I always go back for more. It is my calling, my passion, my religion.

The game of golf requires an incredible amount of athletic ability, a ruthlessly exacting precision, and perhaps most importantly, that dearest of friends, and foes, luck. With this tall order of demands, it becomes more than just a game played out on fields of green, more than just a sport—it becomes a play, a tragedy, comedy and romance all at once, set entirely upon the stage that is the mind. Each round is its own epic odyssey, each hole, the promise of a homecoming. I have chased a little white ball all over the world, wedged it out of sand, slid it over ice, propelled it through skies sunny and grey; I have laughed, cried and cursed, and collected trophies and medals of all sizes and shapes, all the while bearing the Serbian flag. No matter how much money I earn from a tournament, or sometimes lose, in the face of all the expenses this prestigious indulgence incurs, no matter where my name may appear on a leaderboard, I am always won over by a vigorous honor and pride when I see the little red, white and blue flag that appears next to it.

I may have spent a little over his five minutes on it, but it seemed to have been written in an instant—a graceful, effortless, hole in one. Though I was riding on the quotes of others and banking on my imagination to fill in the blanks, I became for a moment a true ghostwriter (or ghost golfer?), I climbed into his body, embodied his game, and then put it down on paper. I was almost getting all choked up reminiscing about my trophies, my medals, my flag. And then I stepped back into my trophy-less, medal-less, flag-less body and realized that for the first time in my life, and his golfing career, I felt like I got it. Writing that piece hadn’t felt like writing at all, it had felt like an intoxicating, epic, perfect round of golf. And then I realized that writing—my calling, passion and religion, although I would never use these words to describe it—isn’t that different from his. While he chases a little white ball over fields of green, what I do all day is chase a little black word over pages of white. My tee-off time is the moment my inspiration hits me, my driver that very inspiration. The way each of his fairways leads him to a green, each of my words seemed to lead me on—play led to epic to odyssey to homecoming, and before I knew it, I was home. In the little black hole, or dot, that is a fullstop. Of course, it isn’t always this easy. Writing can be as blood-boilingly frustrating as golf—words, too, find their way into the rough. (And broken keyboards are almost as costly to repair as broken clubs). It may not require an athletic ability (though research does sometimes get more active than googling), but it most certainly is played out in the mind, and if and when that mind gets too active, it can also turn a good walk, spoiled. And so, having finished with his career, and a long day of my work, during my walk today, I got to thinking about my own. Writing about golf was a breeze, but what would I write about writing? If “calling, passion, and religion,” weren’t the words I would use to describe it, what were?

I’ll begin as I did with the golf and consider the words “good walk spoiled.” Nietzsche once wrote “all truly great thoughts are conceived by walking,” and though I’m not certain I have yet stumbled on any truly great ones, my best ones have always been born in walking. Something about the pace of walking so perfectly befits the pace of a sentence. Gustave Flaubert, the famous French novelist, (a contemporary of Thackeray, perhaps? I don’t know! Shh!) used to pace up and down the tree-lined avenue in front of his house screaming sentences he had written out loud until he was convinced they sounded right. His entire life was arguably one maddening quest for le mot juste—the right word—and again, I’m not entirely sure (this would require some research), but I think he ultimately died of this. So, truly great thoughts or right words though they may be, the walks in which they are conceived are hardly of such blessed fortune—they are screamingly maddening, punctuatingly frustrating, and in the worst of extremes, murderous. “Spoiled” is but a euphemism.

Just as my brother often says to people, a career in golf is not that blissful Sunday afternoon walk that the hobby of golf is, I often say, though it seems to you that I’m ambling aimlessly around a city, or window-shopping, I am actually thinking, working, writing. I don’t really care to justify my window-shopping, and I most certainly couldn’t ever convince someone to pay me for this “work,”—that’s just the way it is. Something, somewhere, somehow has put a word, or a sentence in my head, and I will carry on walking for as long as it takes to make it as polished and neatly manicured as a golf course green. And then I will run—run to my laptop at home to begin hastily typing away, or in real emergencies to a bookshop for a pencil and paper, or to a waiter for a napkin and a pen. I know, I know, technically as a writer, I’m supposed to always carry one, or all, of these items around, but not all professions are lucky enough to be endowed with a caddy. And while a trained caddy may find my laptop, pen and notebook a feathery weight in comparison to a bag full of irons, I am not certain he could bear the weight of those thoughts.

Writers are not people who are gifted with words, they are people who are burdened by them, by what they mean, by the way they sound, and sometimes, as in the case of the post-modern language poets, even by the way they look. The imagination is not just a flowery and creative tool—it is a demon that attaches a word, or sentence, to any and every observation, plants the seed of its ceaseless rumination deep inside you, and then sits back and laughs wickedly while it watches this seed fester, grow and consume you. And so the only ritualistic cleansing of this demon available to the writer becomes to crucify him on paper and viciously suffocate him in black ink. It turns out writing CVs is hardly any different to writing anything else—it is something you have to do, except that the writer doesn’t do it with the hope of gaining something, but precisely with the hope of losing it, of ridding himself of those torturous words, of exorcising thought. So writing is far from my calling, passion or religion; it is my madness, my anguish, my pain—both my tormenting burden and its bright-shining exodus. It is not a gift I have been given, but a punishment, and I can either live with it…or choose to write (or drive), it out.

It is an unsolved mystery as to who exactly, but Miles Davis, or Elvis Costello, or maybe even Gertrude Stein, once wrote “writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” Although there is some complex 2D/3D/4D (anyone form Harvard around?) way to describe this, I think the basic message here is that architecture is too complex or at least too strangely other to dance, for the latter to be able to say anything of value about the former, and through the comparison, the same goes for music and writing—words just don’t seem to be good enough to express it. Funny that. I have carried this quote around in my pocket for years and it never before occurred to me that it slates two of my favorite things—dance, which I used to dream of a career in, (until an untimely though graceful knee dislocation in a ballet class closed the curtain on that), and writing, which I now dream of, or am beginning a career in. It is not exactly clear to me how one became the other, but at least this quote, in its reprimanding of both, seems to imply there is a connection. And as I have been making unlikely connections all through this piece, I will make one more in conclusion as I say I heartily disagree. I believe you can write about music, and dance about architecture, and even get into Harvard without a ghost-writer! Perhaps what we all need is not a ghost-writer but a ghost-golfer, not someone to give us the words, but the drive to reach these green feats…for all it really takes is…having the balls.