Cod Almighty | Diary

You left a hole in our soul, we left a sole in your hole

9 July 2020

BOTB diary, in between bouts of depression and insomnia caused by the thought of the Vernamator playing for pretend nonsense football club Burton Albion, has been thinking about reductionism. Not in an intellectual way – I'm not capable of such things – but in the sense of people (we've all met them) who say that football is just 22 men kicking a bag of wind about. This is of course undoubtedly true, but only in the way that Wimbledon is two people hitting a furry ball over a net to each other, or Crufts is a load of bewildered animals shitting in a leisure centre.

Previously I'd had no truck with such thoughts – the human body may be comprised of tiny individual cells but together they form a complex organism. Add culture, history, socialisation and ritual into the mix and the whole becomes much greater than the sum of its parts. There is probably a word meaning the opposite of reductionism, but I've only got Google with me so I can't find it at the moment. Let's call it additionalism. I’ve always been into additionalism - or at least since I made the word up three seconds ago - as a tool for explaining the universe.

The Premier League being played without crowds gives us something to think about. To what extent is it devalued? The basics of the game are the same – 22 men kicking a bag of wind about – and the rewards are the same. Liverpool will be awarded a comically large trophy and their players will still be paid. The audience at home will probably be much larger, for most games, than it would be in the stadium itself. Yet it seems like a game played by ghosts in a stadium of despair. Or something. Take one component of the match day experience away and the whole thing, if it does not collapse, begins to rot from the heart out. Additionalism in action.

What I'm trying to say is: if someone takes a penalty in a forest and no-one is there to see it, is it still a goal? Or if Lennell John-Lewis has taken it, is it still not a goal? Football is important because we perceive it to be due to its complex social history and relation to tribalism, and perception is everything. Someone else's dog dying is natural and expected, because dogs don't live every long. If it's your own dog dying it feels like a tear in the world. Yet, in reductionist terms, it's still a dead dog.

I really wanted to end this diary with the words "dead dog" but some sort of afterword was needed.

Erm... dead dog.

Did it.

No, ruined it.

Bugger.