Five Things Worth Sharing (VIII)
...or maybe just four.
Something like twenty years ago, back when I was doing magazine things of value, I got a CD in the mail from an artist called Tina Dico. I thought it was great - what a voice. We did an interview, I raved about the disc, which looked like this and for what it’s worth, is still worth its weight:
Over the years I kind of forgot about her (I blame Tina for keeping such a low profile) but today, she came back onto my radar. Here’s a few minutes of her playing in some bar - the kind of bar that makes me wish all bars were like this, because it looks great:
Good space to play in, people being quiet when they’re supposed to be, appreciative people etc… sounds dreamy. I post this simply because it was good to see Tina still doing what she’s supposed to be doing and that she didn’t have to slope off to some office job in order to live.
Funny how things flit in and out of your life.
Sadly (because their constant begging for cash like tramps at Euston Station is dreadful), I’ve found that The Guardian have some good ideas for articles when they’re not going all out with opinion pieces nobody asked for by writers that nobody cares about. Today, they published a long read by Conor Niland about what it’s like being a tennis ‘pro’ on the global circuit. I would call myself a casual tennis fan. Wimbledon I follow most years, Roland Garros when I remember it’s on… but I didn’t know there was this whole other underbelly to the tennis world in which you can make as much as £250 by getting knocked out early.
It’s a fantastic read - here’s an extract:
I staved off the boredom of competing on the fringes of Europe and Asia by sleeping in as late as I could, to limit the number of dull, conscious hours. I often spent entire afternoons and evenings subjecting myself to endless loops of BBC news, punctuated only by the refrain for India’s tourism campaign – Incredible India! – and the BBC’s Lyse Doucet’s peculiar accent. I learned more about Middle Eastern conflicts from her than I wanted to. These were the sounds of my afternoons and evenings. I caught myself occasionally referring to the hotel as “home” when waiting for the tournament shuttle bus to take me back from the courts. And I would return to Ireland from three-week trips to these exotic places with no notable stories or experiences. “How was Morocco?” I would be asked. “Fine,” I would say, with nothing else to add.
and here’s another:
American John Valenti, who went by Johnny Blaze, spent more than a decade on tour without ever earning an ATP singles ranking point, consistently losing in the true obscurity of the first round of Futures qualifying rounds. He wore dreadlocks and a T-shirt bearing the message “GRINDER”, and lived in a converted school bus. His worldview was expressed in a video he uploaded to YouTube. “I am going to fight the talent you gave me, God,” he tells the camera. “I am going to fight my natural hand-to-eye coordination, no matter how bad it is, I am going to hit all of these motherfucking balls until I develop a shot. I am going to do this for months and months and months: I am not going to let these rich fucks beat me. I’m stronger than them, I am faster than them, I have more desire than them. I am going to fight the fuckin’ talent you gave me, God.”
Those “rich fucks” kept Johnny on the road, mind, as he offered a racket-stringing service to players. Johnny has claimed he’s the only player ever to make a consistent living on the Futures tour, and he kept overheads low, running the school bus on vegetable oil. More recently, he has been making YouTube videos about “extreme couponing”, where he lists the great savings he has made on his weekly grocery shop.
It reminds me a lot of the old wrestling stories about driving venue to venue in the hope of earning £200. It reminds me of old band stories which are much the same also (but are worse because your £200 is shared between four). It reminds me that the world is a rough place in which to follow your dreams. Gaping chasms exist between paying your dues and getting paid enough that you can do something as dignified as treat your partner to fish and chips without thinking about it.
The one thing ‘they’ never tell you about chasing down a dream, is that even though you paid your dues, doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll make it then either.
“It’s a free world but it’s a hard park bench”, as a wise man once told me.
Anyway - have a read. The extract is taken from Niland’s book, The Racket, which after very much enjoying his style here, is firmly at the top of the shopping list.
(I figure I had best read Andre Agassi’s autobiography too. Always meant to - never did. Shame on me.)
I know this will be above most of your heads (or maybe below your feet) but I recently discovered a show that’s 10 years old that totally jammed my radar. It’s called Lucha Underground - so if you have not the slightest interest in wrestling of any kind, you can stop reading immediately and skip to the next thing. Here’s what it looks like:
xxxxxxx
If you are into wrestling though, this is about as pure as it gets. Highly recommended and there’s lots of clips from the show on YouTube. It originally aired on Netflix though I’m not sure if that was worldwide, so you might have to kick a VPN in.
If anybody connected to the show happens to be reading this, I would pay good money for a photo book based on the above instead of looking at images on a screen. Some big hardback thing with say, 200+ pages. That would do the trick.
I have also binged ERIC. One of the best stand alone shows I’ve seen for a while. It has all my favourite ingredients: useless, corrupt cops, New York City in the 80s, an alcoholic lead character and an imaginary giant puppet calling the shots. Here’s the trailer… the networks really should write more offbeat material like this:
There was a fifth thing but I’m damned if I can remember what it was - obviously can’t have been that great or I wouldn't have forgotten huh.