Wednesday, December 30, 2015

On the Soul - Alchemical Magic

Wonderful piece by Devin Faraci over at Birth Movies Death about Star Wars and where we are with George Lucas and his role as the creator of the whole thing. In it, Faraci hit on something that struck a nerve with me. A stats nerve. It's that bit thing that I cannot quantify or measure.
"Whether or not Star Wars is perfect or has plot holes or wooden acting or bad dialogue doesn’t matter, because the movie is more than the sum of those particular parts. It’s alchemical magic that works only once in a generation or two, and it can be copied and approximated but never exactly replicated. And that’s okay. You can play every single note exactly as The Beatles did, and it can sound the same but it will never feel the same. This is where all the art analysis in the world breaks down, where all of our words fail us."
That's exactly the thing that most miss, yet it's something that happens in everyday life. With sports, we like to separate the person from the action. Like they are only a figurine that we wind up each day and turn loose to predictable patterns.

I've spent a number of years pouring over facts and figures in trying to better understand the sport I love. It works alright. I reckon that if I managed some rec league team I could get them to be somewhere slightly above average. That's what stats can do. A championship, though? It takes something else.

Michael Parkhurst was brought in by Gregg Berhalter to be his voice on the pitch. Parkhurst is a mighty fine player, but his importance with Columbus Crew SC takes on an entirely different meaning were he on another "club" in MLS.

Berhalter and Parkhurst are what make Columbus Crew SC tick. There's an alchemical magic to it. Something we can't quite explain. Where data breaks down and the magical combination takes over.

I kinda like it that way.

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