"Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature"

[The title of this blog is a quote by Cicero (106BC - 43BC)]

I talk a lot about art, and what is art. Notably in the staff lounge at work where abstract pictures cover the walls. About how it inspires or irritates/frustrates people. To some extent I've been meaning to blog about this for a while. And without being too discursive; in the end, art is subjective, what something is to me, it might not be to you. And vice versa.

I just read this, and it seemed to sum up my thoughts. It stirred my emotions a little in what it means to me and because of that I wanted to share it. (The picture was my idea :)

But what does it mean to you?

Enjoy

JF

Jacomus waits in the tranquillity of his ocean

His ghost came to visit this night

And it leaves him sleepless

pen in hand

but too far out for inspiration to reach

The sound of his breathing stirs the air

and some of his words pour gently onto the page

with a malleable viscosity

but without rhythm

and without life

The calming driftwood that follows it's own tides

witnesses each new days sun

and every lonely star

needing no ship, no crew, and no captain

When is 'equality' not 'equality'?

So a close friend of mine is applying to join the forces and we were chatting about him getting ready for the fitness tests. I trained a female before going to Sandhurst a few years back and at the time laughed at the fitness testing requirements. But the more I think on it the more it irritates me.

Allow me to elaborate. If a company advertises a job it cannot discriminate based on gender, but it requires "essentials" and "desirables" e.g. what you need to have and what would benefit you. Graduate job don't state Requirements: 2:1 for female, 2:2 for male, or vice versa.

However, the armed forces (amongst others) do.

The British army requirements state:

• for the 1.5 mile run the target is set at 10.5 minutes for male recruits and 13 minutes for female recruits.

• for the 2-minute push up test male recruits are expected to get 44, whilst female recruits are targeted with only 21.

Forgive me the last I checked this was discrimination. Consider; they are asked to perform the same job for the same pay. But they do not have to be equally physically qualified. If I go to work and the person I share an office with is not qualified (irrespective of gender) then I don't have a lot to worry about. If someone goes to war and the person next to them isn't qualified (again; irrespective of gender) then there are surely far greater concerns. If a male cannot run the distance in the required time, or complete the desired push-ups they FAIL. Women have it easier, FACT.

And don't even think to come back with some argument about males and females and testosterone and strength, or physical capabilities. If there is a difference then that's it. There's a difference. We're not equal. Some women are blessed with fantastic physical strength and/or endurance and some males are not. Surely the armed forces is the one place we should still expect to see a survival of the fittest approach. Unless of course you're female.

Perhaps we should consider; men don't have the same spacial awareness, or cannot multi-task as well, or other suitable stereotypes which are sometimes (but not always) true. Perhaps jobs should amend their requirements based on gender. Commercial pilots have to have 20:20 vision, is that discriminatory against people with poor vision, maybe we should say, "well in the interests of equality, here's your pilots licence". I'm no chauvinist I assure you, and I'm all for equality. But the example given is not a representative of equality, it's a representative of stupidity.

I think I've labored the point enough here. But I've no doubt you see what I mean.

Rant over.

JF

The Greatest Of All Time, Part 2 - Boxing: Muhammad Ali

Here it is, the second in my "Greatest of All Time" blog posts.

To me this is the indisputable one. The one you just can't argue. But I know people will, they'll say Mike Tyson, or they'll say that you can't dispute who's the greatest between weight classes. For the latter, let's agree that we are talking about heavy weight boxers.

I don't remember when I first saw him, or heard of him. But I know why my ears pricked up at his name. My mother who doesn't know sports unless there's a horse involved would talk of him. How charismatic he was, how much of an entertainer he was. Then my Dad (who doesn't know sports unless there's a car involved), would tell me how he'd stayed up one night to watch a fight and at some point he got up to make a cup of tea thinking the fight was going to drag out, and when he returned to the TV the fight was over; Ali victorious. Neither of my parents knew boxing, they're the kind of people who would argue that it's barbaric or the like, and would have no interest, and yet Ali had them converted to watching his fights and attracting their attention when on TV or mentioned in any context. He dragged people who didn't like boxing into his sport, and he captivated people with his rhymes, or arrogance; whether they hated or loved him. I mean the guy was nicknamed "The Louisville Lip" (amongst other things).

I have a plethora of biography's on Ali, I even have poetry books he wrote. He's a genuinely inspiring person. I can't even begin to tell you the stories whether it's refusing to fight in the Vietnam war, or the way he approached his fights giving carrots and nicknaming them The Hare (or the The Rabbit depending on source -  Floyd Patterson), or The Mummy (George Foreman). In answering a question about what training he'd done to prepare for George Foreman in 1974, Ali replied:

I wrestled an alligator

I done tussled with a whale

I done handcuffed lightning

Thrown thunder in jail

Only last week I murdered a rock

Injured a stone

Hospitalized a brick

I'm so mean I make medicine sick

But what I love most about Ali, and what has defined him as the Greatest of All Time to me, is his evolution. He changed the way he fought, he changed the way people thought about fighting. He initiated tactics like the Rope-a-dope (against Foreman in Zaire), and he had more courage than I've ever seen in a fighter.

But he evolved as a human being, transcending from a young brash individual to an oppressed, aggressive Black Muslim (which fundamentally had very racist philosophies), maturing to some profound and humanitarian quotations.

But his boxing is why he's here and no other reason. He was the ultimate athlete; beating Sonny Liston, Joe Frazier, Ken Norton and George Foreman; some of the greats. In his fight against Foreman in 1974, he was 32 years old. He opened the fight with right hand lead punches (coming across the body and making them the easiest punch for a fighter to see coming). This was taunting Foreman and whilst doing little damage they irritated and frustrated him. Foreman, the heaviest hitter ever seen at the time was expected to punish Ali. But in revolutionary style he sat back against the ropes and let Foreman punch himself out, by the 6th and 7th rounds Ali would ask "is that all you got?"...and an exhausted Foreman had little response for a fresh Ali coming off the ropes to knock him down. In round 7 there's a moment where Ali finishes him and Foreman's arms flail perfectly. Ali looks over him, choosing not to throw the final unnecessary punch, and watching Foreman fall.

But lest we forget this was possibly not his greatest fight. He was fast, and I mean fast. If you haven't seen his Ali shuffle then don't worry you weren't the first to miss it, just be grateful you weren't in the ring at the time. Or worse you might see the shuffle but miss the knockout blow proceeding it. He could move like a lightweight, and punch like a heavy weight, a lethal combination. And he won every psychological battle. Like every great athlete he had a mean streak - he could be the villain, punishing Floyd Patterson, and ridiculing Ernie Terrell (Terrell refused to call him Muhammad Ali, choosing stupidly to call him Cassius Clay (what Ali called his 'slave name')....Ali refused to finish Terrell forcing him to take a beating, and repeating "what's my name?" as he humiliated Terrell). Watch the video below (for note check out 2m50s where Terrell shows life, and Ali bobs his head side to side avoiding Terrell's punches perfectly).

Then there was his earlier fight against Cleveland Williams. He respected the man, and ended the fight quickly so as not to hurt or embarrass Williams. It is renowned as something of a clinic. It is a perfect example of a 220lb man moving VERY quickly:

Perhaps the reality of Muhammad Ali's boxing career is he gave up what might have been the best boxing years of his life due to a ban for refusing to be inducted into the forces for the Vietnam war. He defended his title against Zora Folley in March, 1967, a month later was stripped of the title (aged 25). He didn't fight again until August, 1970. It was Ali's next title shot against Joe Frazier, in Madison Square Garden, New York in March, 1971 (aged 29) that dealt Ali his first professional loss in a 15 round thriller. Of course he later had his jaw broken in a loss to Ken Norton, which he later avenged, as well as a re-match against Frazier to set up him for a title shot against George Foreman.

There's far more to him and his life than that which I've given you here, and there's more personal things (a relative of an ex-girlfriend was Muhammad Ali's first professional fight!!) But I hope I've justified the argument, and I hope you've enjoyed the blog.

There it is. Ladies and gentlemen; Muhammad Ali.

Thank you.

JF

The relationship between a man and guitar....

So I was at an open mic night last night; I've been saying/threatening to play for a while now, but am still lacking...well....the courage - let's be honest!! Anyway, a few of the acts were excellent and a few gave me confidence that perhaps I wouldn't be the worst person there. (It's all a kind of "I'm 32 and I wanna do this one last time before I'm too old" mid-life crisis-esque situation).

Anyway, I've been huffing and puffing over whether I'd play my 6- or 12-string guitar. And it made me think about the relationship a person has between them and their guitar. The way we embrace them comfortably and feel a connection, or discard them with disdain. The way a guitarist chooses his or her guitar not just based on the sound, but on the feel. The way a guitarist chooses their body type, like they're choosing a partner.

And in reality that's what it is. It's a partnership between guitar and guitarist what cannot perform without the other. Anyway it left me thinking about the following scene from a great movie. So I wanted to share this with you.



Play on.....

JF

To walk a thousand footsteps......

This morning I was woken at 7:45am by a friend of mine getting off a cruise liner she's spent the last 35 days working on. She's been on and off cruise ships for a while, and has seen sights from Hawaii and Key West to New Orleans, Nordic Fjords, Australia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Canary Islands, and far more than I can recall. Now and then she rolls into my life for a matter of hours, or days, and almost as quick as her entrance she's gone again. I'm awed. Always.

When I was 23 years old I set off to America, working in Oscoda, Michigan for a few months, Prescott, Arizona, and then a considerable distance up and down the Eastern seaboard. I went back and spent more time out there, living in Indiana, Ohio, and for the most part Estero, Florida over the next few years. I loved it, I loved the travel, and the people I met. I loved the jobs I did, and the series of moments that no-one can ever take away; working in construction, swim teaching, or sat halfway up a tree on a high ropes course, paving driveways in the heat with a team of Spanish illegal immigrants, or getting a a limousine from outside of JFK cause their passenger didn't show to a plush hotel on the outskirts of NYC, helping unload hay bails at 7am and then going straight to the lake for a swim. And so many more. So many special people along the way. I've been fortunate enough to see Italy as well. And Spain. Germany. Canada. Netherlands. United Kingdom (including Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland). Ireland.

Tomorrow an ex-student of mine gets off the cruise ship he works on, and hopefully we'll catch up for lunch at some point before he heads off back to the caribbean, or somewhere distant. I'm proud. I'm proud of everyone who sets off to find something. Or to find nothing, but ends up finding so much more than they could ever have bargained for. No matter how far they have to go to find it.

I'm currently watching the TV series The Long Way Down, where Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman navigate their way south from John O'Groats to Cape Town. Partly because of my fascination with motorbikes and partly because of my desire, intrigue and respect for travel.

I guess I don't know where this blog is going, but maybe that's what travel is all about. Not knowing where you're going.

Without meaning to sound cliche, life itself is a journey, and our learning of places and people and ourselves is the both the purpose and product of that journey.

Wherever you go today or tomorrow, or whenever.....

....Enjoy the trip.

The Greatest Of All Time, Part 1 - Basketball: Bill Russell

The ‘greatest of all time’: an all too flippant comment thrown around often unjustifiably and often opinionated with far too little knowledge or consideration.

I’m already regretting writing that definition for two reasons:

1.       This is going to be my opinion, and I will not have as great a knowledge as someone out there, somewhere.

2.       How can we really compare an athlete from generation to another?

Bummer; I’m gonna write it anyway, and take the flack for it.

Bill Russell, Boston Celtics

Bill Russell didn’t make my previous blog “Top 10 Greatest Moments in Basketball”. And as I look back I am disappointed with myself, but I understand why. Let me fill you in on the man; his greatness started before the NBA, he won two NCAA college Championships with University of San Francisco (1955, 1956) and a Gold Medal as Captain of the 1956 USA Basketball Team. He went pro that year signing with the Boston Celtics. There he remained for 13 seasons with the following accolades: 11 Time NBA Champion, 5 Most Valuable Player Awards and 12 Time NBA All-Star.

He played 13 seasons and won 11 NBA Championships.

Just to put this in perspective, He won in 1957, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1968, and 1969. (In 1957 Bill was sidelined during the NBA finals with injury).

He has won more than anyone else ever in the history of professional basketball. In fact if we were to scroll down the list, the players that have 10 championships and 8 championships were on Bill’s team through that era. Only when we get to 7-titles do we see Robert Horry, and at 6 we have Michael Jordan, Kareem Abdul-Jabaar, Scottie Pippen and Bob Cousy (all respective legends).

Wilt Chamberlain (Philadelphia) & Bill Russell (Boston)

So why wasn’t he on my previous list? Bill played in the same era as Wilt Chamberlain (whose 100 point in a single game performance was No. 9 on my list), and I think I could say that Wilt was a more exciting player to watch. Wilt Chamberlain averaged 50.4 points per game and 25.7 rebounds per game in the 1961-1962 season, the same year of his 100 point performance. In fact that same year he scored 42 points in the all-star game (still a record) and he pulled down 24 rebounds. But re-read above; Wilt did all that, and Bill took home the Championship that year. You see Wilt could wow the crowds and in essence perhaps my Top 10 was biased towards what excited me. But Bill was something special. He knew of only one statistic – the win/loss column. He was there for one reason; to win games.

And yet, Bill still didn’t make the list where Michael Jordan did (at number 1). Well Michael played through my era. Bill was done in 1969. I can’t really say more than that. Michael was also perhaps one of the most exciting players to watch but he just didn’t win like Bill did (MJ; 6 titles out of 15 seasons). Maybe the game had changed by then. Michael Jordan denied some of the greats a Championship (Patrick Ewing, Charles Barkley, and Reggie Miller amongst others). Maybe Bill only had to fight off Wilt!? I don’t know.

But more importantly we should ask what Bill and Michael have in common. They gave themselves for the greater good. They played a role, any role to win games, and to win championships. They scored when they were needed to, they rebounded, blocked shots, passed the ball, and both were arguably two of the greatest one-on-one defenders the game has ever seen. They made the players around them better. How many of the so-called greats can we truly say that about.


The truth is that there's far more to it than I have time or space to consider in this blog, but perhaps over the course of this series of "Greatest of all time's" we can consider how we make that decision.


Sorry for missing you off the list Bill, here's to you.


JF

Life is an endurance event....

Ok, so I’ll admit this isn’t going to be as philosophical as the title might suggest. This is actually an ‘ode to’ blog. It is something of a tribute to a great friend of mine who for some godforsaken reason decided to run the Dubai Marathon. (There’s more to it than that but we’ll get there, don’t worry!)

Marathon, ~490BC

For those of you unfamiliar with a marathon (where have you been?); it is 42.2km/26.1 miles, and originates back to ~490BC when Pheidippides ran from Marathon to Athens to announce that the Persians had been defeated*. What a history. Oh wait, there’s more; after stomping in the room and shouting “we won”, he dropped down dead!! Amazing the guy ran 26 miles and then died, and modern men say, “Hey, let me have a go!” (Or something like that). It’s not that I don’t think it’s an amazing accomplishment I just am having trouble getting past the ‘why?’ part.

*[What’s even greater about the legend of Pheidippides, is that prior to the battle he ran from Athens to Sparta to get help against the Persians. This is celebrated by a run every year called a Spartathlon, ~246km/152.9 miles.]

Dubai, 2011

So...moving forward a couple of thousand years; a close friend of mine currently residing in Dubai decided 1 week before the date of the marathon to register. He hasn’t really got a history of running distances (unless there’s a basketball involved), though he had previously gone running whilst living in the UK (~20miles per week I’m told, a couple of years back). In fact his current exercise regime(while intense to some; basketball training a couple of times per week, swimming 2/3 times per week, and strength training 3/4 times per week) doesn’t involve any endurance activities that would have him physically or mentally prepared for this kind of thing.

I have to confess; when I first heard of this idea I was excited to see how he would get on because I am a firm believer that it is intensity of exercise rather than volume or duration that causes muscular adaptation to both strength and endurance. But that’s all for another day. Now Vijay (apologies for the late introduction), is a Personal Trainer and Nutritionist, so there’s no doubt that he’s in great physical shape, with a healthy diet, but that’s true of a lot of people. So how could he even think he could do it? Well, self proclaimed ‘cockiness’ is somewhere in the answer. I think it’s a basketball thing, but without question he approached this with something more than confidence.

“My focus was always basketball and I never really had any particular desire to do a marathon or any type of endurance event, mainly because I knew it would shorten the amount of years that I could continue playing basketball. I’d almost say I was kind of cocky about it all as I saw particular endurance events not to be that physically or mentally challenging, in theory of course. I’m not exactly sure why I thought this, maybe it’s because I was so used to competing in a team aspect. I admit, I do have that classic ‘athlete’ arrogance but one thing that I am confident about is that I know exactly what I’m talking about when it comes to training and how to keep myself in peak physical condition as I’ve maintained this for 15 years.”

The more I think about endurance sports I think about how much psychology is involved (see The role of Sports Psychology for previous discussion). But all that said, the confidence Vijay approached this with could have been his downfall had he been overconfident! Anyway, enough wittering from me...here’s the thoughts of a first time marathon runner....

“The Dubai Marathon starts very early, 7:00am to be precise. Recently my routine hasn’t seen that disgraceful time many times at all, unless I’ve been up for an early swim! On the race day I was up at 5:00am, straight in the shower to wake my body up, ate a banana, drank a litre of water, and got straight in the car and drove to the marathon start in Media City which is near the Marina in Dubai. It took me around 30 minutes to drive there, so I also ate a cheese toasty during the journey. Like I said earlier, I didn’t want to change my routine at all so ate what I would normally eat in the morning. There must have been 3000 people at the start line, absolute chaos. It was also a very bizarre environment for me as my experience with sport has always been basketball, and generally before a basketball game there aren’t many nice formalities, just half hearted handshakes before tip-off. But marathon runners are so nice and friendly to one another, which is good, but I just didn’t feel the competitive motivation and psyched up feeling I normally get from the tip off of a basketball game. I hung back around the midway point at the start line as there were too many random people fighting to get to the front.

The race began, and I’m going to be totally honest now, I felt ‘very’ comfortable for the first 28km, setting a half marathon pace time of just under the 2 hour mark. After that 28km point, things did start to get harder, the niggling injuries started to haunt me; the bone spur in my heel, tight hamstrings, and tight right calf from overcompensation from my heel. But, without excuses like these I carried on, ran a km, and then walked a km the rest of the way to the finish. It was very painful, but there’s no way I would quit, I don’t know the meaning of it! And I genuinely believe that if I didn’t have the background and history in basketball then I might have given up.

Finishing the race was a huge relief, not sure my feet could take it any longer! My overall time wasn’t the best (5hr;11min) but I feel very satisfied that I finished what I set out to do, and that was to complete a full marathon without running a metre beforehand! Job done!"

So there we go; kudos to you, Vijay. I think its evident how mentally involved he was in finishing the race. He accredits a great deal of this mental attitude to basketball, to the toughness and competitiveness. That said, I’ve been around basketball for the better part of two decades and it doesn’t come with the game, it comes to the game with the person.

Here’s to achieving something incredible no matter your reasons, no matter what other people think, no matter how many miles, or how big or small.

And here's to living to say something more than “we won”.

Well done Vijay

JF

Also available in a National Newspaper...

So you can actually read my thoughts in today’s (1^st February 2011, page 14 - views) National Paper “i”. After a coffee-time discussion with a couple of colleagues yesterday and reading an article in the aforementioned paper about sexism, and how women are partially responsible for its existence and rise, I thought I’d send in an email with my thoughts. Apparently this blogging thing has made me very opinionated. God help everybody.

Anyway, I didn’t blog on the subject, but now that it’s in print I thought I’d re-post it here, and to some extent also brag about the fact that my thoughts are in a National Paper :).....

I couldn't help but laugh my way through the article by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown discussing the so-called chauvinistic behaviour of men, and women's part in its existence.

 Jennifer Aniston chooses to pose for magazines, and Yasmin comments: "a woman you might think would know her own worth". I'm sure she does know her worth, and more I think she knows the value of some photos and article in a magazine.

She sat still holding a teddy bear; hardly a heavy cost, and really not a chore. I can't even imagine the sum of money she received for it. So who's being exploited here?

Of course women are at least somewhat responsible for male opinions comments and views about them. And vice-versa. Shall we consider women's TV shows such as Loose Women, where every male stereotype is comically portrayed. They're right; we don't ask for directions, we are stubborn and we can't multi-task. And more; it's funny. As is the banter between men.