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The Olympian Artist

Aug 8, 2024

4 min read

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The Olympics is on. I'm not watching it but I'm aware it's happening - bits and pieces of what's been occurring filter through to me via social media and conversations with friends. Even at a distance it inspires me and provokes thoughts about my own experience as an athlete and how that connects to also being an artist.


I've always found it interesting to note how many good artists - in particular writers - also played high level sports.


Ernest Hemingway was famously, a sporting fellow. One of my favourite writers, David Foster Wallace was a nationally ranked tennis player as a youth (he writes so startlingly well about that game that reading his essay on tennis made me feel as though it was my favourite sport, despite the fact that I've never really liked it). Henry Miller was a cyclist - I've always loved his use of the synecdoche 'Wheel', to mean 'a bike', e.g. 'I bought myself a fine new wheel'. The list of artist-athletes goes on.


There's something in it.


(Here's a picture of me playing football at university, in America. I really went there for basketball but when the football coach heard I was English, he basically made me play that too.)


I think it's to do with the discipline required to become really good at anything. Playing sports, especially from a young age, helps to instil that in a person.


Further, sport develops competitiveness - one of the most misunderstood human drives - at least by high-minded, cultured types who would like to think that the spirit of competition has no place in the arts ... that it is somehow a baser drive ... but they're mistaken. Competitiveness is a good and noble instinct.


Competitiveness is important in art, as it is in all areas of life where one is pursuing growth. The trick is, understanding who, or what it is that you're really competing against. Clue: it's not other people.


It's realising that in its purest form and in the ultimate analysis, the spirit of competition is not about one person or team, dominating and crushing another; just as it's not about doing 'better' paintings than other artists - it's about the elevation of all the players in the game! It's about inspiration! A rising tide lifts all ships!


For example, when I see/read/hear a piece of art that is just quite obviously on another level to anything I've created, I get that spicy little twinge of competitiveness - that sly silver needle in the flank ... It's a great feeling to have because in the end it leads me realise, again and again ... 'ahh yes, I can go further ... I can go there .... we can all go beyond where we've been before ....'


And so from this perspective I declare (watch out cos I'm going to write this in all caps) ...


COMPETITION IS COLLABORATION!


Side-note, to maybe one day become a larger word-entity: It's this fundamental misunderstanding on behalf of the most bulging-eyed Capitalists of what competition is actually for, from an evolutionary perspective, that renders their whole project a massive 'L'. In short, if you think competition is about YOU winning - you have and you are lost.


As is always the case, I witter on while The Tao Te Ching sits patiently on the desk, having nailed this subject some 2.5 thousand years ago ... Ok fine, here it is:




Oh yes, of course - competing in the spirit of play - that's what we forgot!


Knocking it back over from the other side of the net, the creative thinking of the artist is a distinct advantage in sports - if not always in the narrower ways that we sometimes define creativity - more on that another day, perhaps.


Sadly, the tendency of our culture to define - to separate things out into supposedly discreet areas of life that don't overlap - can lead both artists and athletes away from the truth of that fact that, dang it, maybe we ain't so different after all.


As I alluded to earlier, I'm both artist and athlete. There's probably a whole book to be written by someone on this particular intersection, it won't be me - but I will say that something I've been realising more and more over the past couple of years in particular, is that being an artist is actually a lot like being an athlete ...


Does it seem as though I'm saying the same thing over and over again here? I am.


There's something in that ... Repetition, doing the same thing over and over again. Practicing ...


You've got to practice.


I used to think that being an artist was a lot about getting up when you feel like it and mucking around. And maybe it is that, for awhile. But, I think there comes a time in the life of any artist - or really any person - who has a grand vision - which I do ... yes, I do - why not? Everyone has, most of us just get embarrassed about it and fold it away in a drawer that eventually gets opened by our grandchildren once we're dead and they go 'What the hell? Grandad started a novel!? ... it's good! ... he should've finished it!'


He should have!


What i'm saying, is ... There comes a time when, as an artist - you need to start approaching your work like an olympian.


You need:


A grand plan, with goals.

A training regime.

Supreme attention paid to mental fitness, physical fitness, spiritual fitness.

A good diet.

Proper sleep, rest and recovery.

Coaches/Mentors.

Knowledge of your field.

Funding.


All of those and probably some things I'm forgetting - but you get the idea.


So, that's what I'm on right now - which is why I'm not watching the olympics - I'm just feeling it from here.


Thoughts?


A couple of post scripts.


Did you know that for the first four decades of the Olympics, medals were awarded for the arts? You could win a gold medal for painting, or sculpture. At some point someone must've won bronze, for a bronze.


Have you seen the Instagram account @artbutmakeitsports ? It's phenomenal ... I've seen an interview with the guy and apparently he doesn't use any A.I. or computer software to find these matches, he just knows that many artworks off the top of his head. Here's a few of his images:













Aug 8, 2024

4 min read