Master & A Hound
On beauty, the beautiful game and the need to create.
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Dear Bolu,
I had planned to write you about an entirely different subject, but the last few days' events have shoved those plans in the gutter. As you may have heard or perhaps seen, the 2022 FIFA World Cup has ended in a truly glorious manner. It was a great tournament—filled with moments, characters, feelings as strong as squalls, and a plethora of narratives. It has been pleasantly suffocating, and the only reason I’m glad it’s over is I can breathe again. Oh dear, I know you may have little patience for discussions around sports or, more specifically, football. So please forgive me if I, in this letter, test that patience a little. Please, allow me the selfishness of the terrible friend who wants to be the only voice in a conversation.
If it isn’t clear yet, I like football. I like it very much. When I ask myself why I like this particular sport, I fall short of a wholesome answer. If there are a thousand other sports besides football, why do you like it most? I think the complete answer partly consists of the fact that it’s the sport I mostly grew up watching, playing, and dreaming. It’s one of the few youthful passions that have sailed these seas of life with me to this day. It’s possible that if I had been born in your city, I would have liked hockey better or that if I had been brought up in your town, I would have fancied swimming much more. But football is what the heavens blessed me with, and it’s a blessing for which I’m wholeheartedly grateful.
In addition to my youthful affection for the sport, one more piece of the answer is that football is beautiful to me. It’s generally called the beautiful game, I know, but you know what they say about beauty and we, the beholders. It’s possible you haven’t the remotest interest in football, so you don’t think it’s beautiful. That’s fine. I also don’t think cricket is beautiful, but I’m pretty sure some people do. Why is football beautiful to me? I don’t know, really. At its core, it’s 22 players on the field kicking a round leather ball, but I see beauty in there, somewhere—beauty whose form I can’t entirely outline and whose meaning I struggle to explain. Football. I enjoy the many stories it tells me. I listen for the varied lessons it teaches me. I share in its most heartbreaking moments, which often double as its most glorious ones. Football. It reminds me that there is beauty in this world, and I think we all need reminders like that.
What reminds you that there is beauty in this world? What makes you stare and shake your head in disbelief? What makes you laugh and let out guttural sounds like a mad person? What marvel brings you to tears in the dead of night? What makes you move? What makes you say, “My God, how are you this good? How is any human this good?” What makes you hit pause or rewind and ask, “what have I just witnessed?” What gives you that tight tug and firmly-seated anxiety in your heart as you near the end? What is so unbearably magnificent it frustrates you enough to ask, “argh, what madness is this?” What transports you to a plane of wonder? What elicits genuine applause in the privacy of your room? What novelty immediately sends you to google? What, my dear friend, brings you to the realisation that there is beauty in this world? Whatever it is—whether it’s football, music, relay races, biographies, fiddlers, animals, k-pop, photographs, artificial intelligence, soul games, fashion, recipes, poetry, architecture, wine, book adaptations, chemistry, blues—please, I implore you to keep it close to you. Keep it close and keep your eyes open for more of such things. I could not live without them, and I don’t imagine anyone should. And please don’t stop there. Even as you spectate beauty, also try to create it.
With each passing day, I become more convinced that the deepest essence of art and, therefore, beauty is not simply to inspire but also to remind us, the mortal audience, that we have the gift of creation. We forget. We forget too easily and quickly this truth—this power we have to birth and manifest. But art saves us. Beauty saves us. It invites us subtly, as in Edward Hopper’s Automat; majestically, as on the walls and ceilings of the Sistine Chapel; painfully, as in Gregory Alan Isakov’s Master & A Hound; surreally, as in Donald Glover’s Atlanta; wonderfully as in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel; pleasantly, as in Georges Bizet’s Carmen; fantastically, as in Carl Orff’s O Fortuna; immersively as in Naughtydog’s The Last of Us; comically as in Bill Burr’s performances; magically, as in Lionel Messi’s boots; beauty invites us to exert ourselves. It says, “ah, would you look at that?” “Why don’t you also try?” “Why don’t you also do?” “Why?” Why dear friend? Why?
In the plastic bag scene in American Beauty (1999), Ricky shows Jane a video of the most beautiful thing he’d ever filmed. It’s a video of a plastic bag dancing happily in the wind, and he’d thought it beautiful enough to warrant 15 minutes of his time. His reason for capturing it on film was to be reminded of that beautiful moment. “Video is a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember...I need to remember...Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world...I feel like I can't take it...and my heart is just going to cave in." Like Ricky, we all constantly need to be reminded that beauty exists. We all need to stay close to those things that make us feel like our hearts will cave in.
What I like most about that plastic bag scene is that he shares that beautiful moment he’d captured with someone he cared about. Nothing beats that—nothing beats sharing the things that move you with the people that move you. Seeing beauty, creating it, and gifting it to those we love is good. So in your tiny corner of the planet, please open your eyes to whatever you think is beautiful. Create. Share. And if the world pretends not to see you, I wouldn’t. I’d take it all in and gift you a shiny snow globe, dear friend.
Fin.
P.S.
The title of this letter is a nod to Gregory Alan Isakov’s Master & A Hound.
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Write you soon, merci!
- Wolemercy