The path to enlightenment: sport v art

Ian Potter Museum of Art Debate

 

The path to enlightenment: sport or art?

When first presented with this topic, I was surprised to be asked to argue the case for sport. Because I am a writer. Shouldn’t I be arguing the case for art? But I am a writer who writes about sport. I can’t remember life without sport and I now realise I was attracted to it because because its spiritual dimension.

Sport affected my soul.

Sport continues to help me believe that I have a soul.

The first thing I thought about when tackling this important question was my arse. I have been to recitals by Albanian string players, I’ve been at poetry readings which have sent Peter Corris to sleep, and I’ve been to plays and films and exhibition openings which have made me uncomfortable in my seat. But never once at the footy have I thought, “Geez my arse hurts.”

Not once.

And that makes this question very clear to me.

As a writer I should be arguing the case for those artists. And the very fact that I cannot, as I will demonstrate to you this evening, is significant. If an artist, however limited, is going to argue against his own, then sport must really, really, really have something.

Which it does. People have been attracted to sport across all of human history.

Take the ancient Greeks. Their civilisation was sustained by an education system based on sport. Go to Olympia and walk among the ruins which lay buried under the silt of the Kladeos River for centuries until it was uncovered by European archaeologists desperate to learn more of this Greek philosophy in which children were not educated in a school but in a gymnasium. Where  sport and games and physical exertion were seen as the way for children to develop, because of their profound spiritual influence. That Kalokagithia, or excellence of character, could be attained through the mystery of the sporting contest and of sporting endeavour. That the gymnasium produced the purest individuals. Of course the Romans flogged the concept, pursued and developed the ethos and gave us the expression – Mens sana in corpore sano.

A sound mind in a sound body.

This philosophical tradition was central to the British public schools and made it all the way to the Carlton Football Club.

They take enlightenment very seriously at Princes Park. I’m not sure how much the Pratts paid for it but they’ve got heaps of it there.

Is there more enlightened human organisation than Carlton, a more enlightened leader than Mick Malthouse who having spent a lot of time with Travis Cloke is familiar with the concept of genius. But as Mick once said himself: “Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a bloke like Norman Einstein.”

At Carlton, can you think of a more enlightened leader than John Elliot.

Look at the players who have sought enlightenment at Carlton.

Look at Fev, the great Fevola. Enlightened. And once he had the gift of enlightenment, he knew to go away and sit on the banks of the river at Yarrawonga and think, and in his thinking, he now comes out to play for the Yarrawonga Pigeons just once a week. Once a week. That’s all it takes.

Fev got it – not through reading about it, or observing it, but by playing it. By being at the heart of it.

Really, I ask you, what has Michelangelo got that Fev hasn’t.

Michelangelo would have given anything to play on the wing for Yarrawonga, especially if he knew that he’d be streaming along the river side with Fev leading at him screaming, “Mickey, Mickey, Mickey, Mickey, Mickey.”

Consider Michelangelo for a moment. He was handy. But imagine if Australian football had been around in the time of the Renaissance. Imagine what he would have done. We’d hardly have any Pieta’s, very few St Sebastian’s, no one would be bothering with the ceilings of obscure chapels. Half the sculptures would be entitled The High Mark and the other half would be called Baulk.

Hart over Walker – The High Mark

Hawkins on the wing  – The Baulk

Ablett over the whole Melbourne backline – The High Mark

Reynolds – The Baulk

Because these movements mean somthing.

The high mark is enlightenment personified. Bruce Dawe wrote about it in his poem called ‘The High Mark’.

 

begins with the nod of a head
or flicker-signal of fingers
and a run that gathers in
the green day and the
grey crowd that rolls on its
great humble tides
and the run is a thinking
to the ball’s end-over-end parabola
that has sinews tough
– tensioning for the upward
leap,
hands now
eagle claws,
god’s hooks, hungering
for the leather dove, the run
among mere mortal men
in time, in place, become
the leap into heaven,
into fame, into legend
– then the fall back to earth
(guernseyed lcarus)
to the whistle’s shrill tweet.

 

It’s a great poem Bruce.

But it does not exist – unless the high mark exists. And who needs a poet to mediate the significance of the high mark when you can play footy or go to the footy. It is the high mark which matters.

As a card carrying member of the great beer-swilling unwashed of the outer, I know I am taken somewhere special by the high mark. I sense it. It is the reach for something else. It is the search. It’s the yearning.

Standing in the outer I’m not going to overhear the punters next to me talking about its spiritual significance. Or its meaning. We won’t be contemplating its significance.We’re  just going to experience it.

Why try and write about Roger Federer’s backhand? Why try to capture Cathy Freeman’s stride, in whatever form. Just go and have a look at it. Feel it.

This is the path to enlightenment. To see people at play, the aesthetic of their movement conjuring up notions of what can be. Their physical grace making you believe everything has meaning.

To see a team in form – that elusive indefinable thing which I’ve only experienced for a week or two in 1980 when I got the better of the Centaur pinball machine at the Uni Rec Club at St Lucia – to see a side in concert with the universe, is to see enlightenment.

It is about the subjugation of ego for the sake of the collective. It is about the purest fraternity.

And all in the interest of seeking something greater. Of striving towards a common goal which is outside the edification and elevation of self.

It’s about spiritual development.

No doubt you are familiar with the great writer Albert Camus who was an outstanding goalkeeper as a young man.

He once wrote:  ‘Everything I know about morality and the obligations of men, I owe it to football.’

 

However, I imagine not everyone here in this fine auditorium of this august university would be familiar with the work of the philosopher Carl Spackler. Spackler is the greenkeeper in Caddyshack. He tells the story of caddying for the Dalai Lama.

 “So we finish the eighteenth and he’s gonna stiff me. And I say, “Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know.” And he says, “Oh, uh, there won’t be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness.” So I got that goin’ for me, which is nice. 

So I leave you with this question: why is the Dalai Lama playing golf?

Sport, my friends, is the superior path to enlightenment.

 

Read Vin Maskell’s report of the evening