Genesis

Saturday 3:00 p.m. Times Square

In a place called Jimmy’s Corner, hidden in the jungle of light lit dankness, the professor and I were summoned to the corner by the winged capped mercurial emissary of the Gods and he said, “I’ve come with a message from a yet to form divinity.” There surrounded by wallpapered parapets blanketed in images of brawlers and counter punchers, old worn photographs of icons lurking above us like baptismal godfathers in the sky, steady witnesses to a subtle moment of creation watching the emissary drink with us until we were in a religious stupor. And then he uttered silently…

In the Beginning the Gods created tournament and archetype, but the dramaturgy and metaphor could not be contained by the games alone, stories spilled out into the fringes of the borders of the playing field, hard to die anecdotes staining memory long past the final whistle, unnamed silence, narratives exiled to a inaudible purgatory for no one to talk about or contextualize, no conversation, formless and blank, no place for regret or resentment, no boasting no pride. The Gods decided to intervene and resolved to create a counter for the feats on the field and so the Gods said “Let there be a spectating spectacle,” and thus the Grandstand was created.

The Gods saw that the spectating spectacle was good and so decided to separate the spectating from the spectacle. The Gods called the spectacle theatre and the spectating they called fandom now there was theatre and spectating and then the first conversation- Episode I was created.    

And the Gods said “Let there be discussion about more than statistics and matchups.” So the Gods made the vault that separated the jib jabbering stenographers from slow talk pontificators.  The Gods called the vault “Sport” and then there were games- shit talking was born.

Then the gods said “Let the theatre produce vegetation: seed-bearing acts and trees with branches on which to hang anecdotes and nostalgia."The Gods saw that this was good and infused the dialogue with drink-they let the fruits and grains ferment for the sake of counter balancing and misspoken blasphemy.

And the Gods said “Let there be seasons, let there be signs to mark the sacred times, the days and years, and let those seasons give light onto the earth.” And it was so. The Gods made 2 great lights one to govern the joy of winning and another to illuminate the darkened beauty of losing. And the Gods saw that it was good and made more games- and more tragedy to discuss.

And the Gods said, “Let the Cathedrals teem with living figures, and let the Maradonas fly above the earth across the vault. So the Gods created lesser but still great creatures of ball and individual sports according their kind and their place of origin. And the Gods saw that this was good and blessed them with immortality and said be fruitful and increase in number and fill the Cathedrals with your great beauty and let the passions of competition proliferate- yet let the grandstand contextualize and have the final word.

Then the Gods said, “Let us make fandom in our own image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the players in the Cathedral and over the doubters in the sky, over the agnostics and intellectuals and over all the creatures that have never been witness to the faithful howling joy of the sight of scoring.”

So the Gods created the grandstanders in their own image, in the image of the Gods they were created, Believer, Atheist and Agnostic.

The Gods blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number, but beware of the marks that fill the spectacle, never submit to the work and shoots of the spectating spectacle.  

Then the Gods said “We give you the seed bearing gift of impassioned devotion, in all Sport, in every Cathedral, fruits to feast on wherever there is game and competition they will be yours for sustenance and respite from the arduous pain of life without fandom- and it was so.

The Gods saw all that they had made, and it was very good. And there was one final drink at Jimmy’s Corner and a gentlemen pact of promised devotion to the love of the Sport, conversation and theatre.

Then the Gods rested in the grandstand and there was morning- the grandstanders recovered from their hangover, the conversation was no longer formless or a void it was just getting started.

Sunday 3:00 a.m. Lower East Side

Leaving the poets to their psalms for Piñero, the Professor and I grabbed a cab on a perpendicular route to Santo Domingo, there at the wheel the winged capped emissary this time saying, “Ya tu sabes…”