1. SAT ON A WALL. . .
HUMPTY DUMPTY IS A MYTH IN THE GUISE OF A NURSERY RHYME.
The humptian hero rises, — generationally, glittering, — from the mass of the masculine lodazal; takes his seat on the WALL; we kowtow in admiration, horror, envy as our dumptian king flits in swift abligurition upon the summit. . .
The reason Humpty is Him : NOBODY else could get up on the damn WALL!
LAST WEEK, I WALKED AROUND FRIGID NYC.
Scarfed, hatted, but ungloved, — the wind scraping my face like razor wire, stomping thru completely begrimed gargantuan snow-mounds, walking 20k steps a day : — I couldn’t stop audiobooking Ali: A Life (2017) by Jonathan Eig.
I jolted to attention when I heard, in the midst of Ali’s brutal, unnecessary fight with Larry Holmes : when he was brain-battered, defalcated, finished,
— Howard Cosell said during the broadcast,
“You can’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again.”
I love Muhammad Ali; he was my first sports hero.
In 2nd Grade, for Black History Month, everyone was assigned a historical figure to report on : I got “Cassius Clay”. (The coyness of my Catholic school, deadnaming one of the most famous people of all time to keep us from. . . getting infected by Islam?)
I never felt admirative ardor for living people; — life : movement : fallibility. . . I need a hero fixed in frieze, faults & all, like Hercules.
Ali was big, handsome, smiling, rebellious, and FAMOUS! I wanted to be all those things. He did it thru BOXING : suddenly, boxing had a fantastic allure. . .
NOBODY TALKED LIKE ALI IN THE EARLY 60s.
He said he was gonna be the Heavyweight Champion of the World since he was 13; used to go knocking door to door in Louisville evangelizing his amateur fights; talked his way to an Olympic gold medal in 1960; & eventually, a showdown with indomitable Sonny Liston.
Liston’s jab was getting hit with a lead pipe; he used to leave bloodied opponents picking teeth out their mouth-guards; a cop pulled him over once in St. Louis, started using racial slurs, Sonny beat the s**t outta him and took his gun.
He was the kind of Black Heavyweight Champ Whitey could understand in the 60s : a grizzly mean killing machine.
Cassius Clay didn’t give a damn.
There’s a great interview from before the fight, 1964 : Ali is rambling some long parable, — the act isn’t honed yet, — the reporter looks almost bored;
then Ali starts saying if he sees Liston out on the street he’ll kick his ass before the fight! The reporter tries to warn him,
“‘I saw Sonny Liston a few days ago, Cassius—’
‘Ain’t he ugly!?’
‘HA. . . he —’
‘He’s too ugly to be the World’s Champ! The World’s Champ should be pretty like me!’”
. . . Ali’s fangled jive rattled Sonny, — he’s ‘posed to be scared of me!, — Tune in to the fight : see the cocky youngster get his mouth shut. . . ; Sonny couldn’t touch him :
Jab too quick! Feet too fast! Left fearsome Sonny Liston sitting on his ass!
Ali made him quit ‘fore Round 6.
In the rematch 3 months later in the most random venue in boxing history : Lewiston, ME, in Round 1, Ali pulled back, clipped Liston with a knockdown short right hand; he looked up at the ceiling, knew he didn’t have a shot, no más, he stayed down. . .
Cassius Clay was the world’s champ : NOBODY could take it away from him.
2. HAD A GREAT FALL. . .
THE WALL IS INHERENTLY UNSTABLE.
The humptian King, — cambalhotic, stubborn, — gets carried away thinking his steps R sure 4ever ; the shouts of the jealous ferveling rabble grow louder, he leans his dumptian head over to hear ; a brick slips, he trips, — reign, rain : SPLAT. . .
The reason Humpty is doomed : WE need him to FALL!
ALI’S FIRST FALL WAS HEROIC.
They stripped him of his championship. A first in the job-germane ruffianist tradition of the Heavyweight Title : murderers were OK, but a race-militant trash-talker with a Muslim name, calling Whitey devil, refusing to enlist in the United States Army was UNACCEPTABLE.
It’s hard to imagine how unpalatable Ali was to mainstream America when he uttered his famous phrase : “I ain’t got no quarrel with the Vietcong.”
Ali sacrificed 3 years & 218 days of his athletic peak for a moral stand! In our age of politicking athletes, NOBODY would trade bread for ethics; — especially not the #1 draw in the whole world.
Boxing was his life ; now he was lost ; it’s easy, in hindsight, to discount contingency, but there’s a world where Ali could’ve been remembered as a pariah who beat Liston and then went to prison for hating America. . .
But Ali was avant-garde in everything ; America reconfigured to his gravity ; in 1970, when he finally got back in the ring, the once-jeering crowds were chanting his name.
WHAT DO WE WANT FROM A HERO?
Not perfection : — transcendence. . . Ali’s life : anastomosis of GLORY & DOOM. Everything that made him GREAT flowed upstream fatally.
In the ring, his two GOAT qualities (besides the hebetitious jab) : his irrepressible meteor of optimism, and the best chin in the history of boxing. His downfall was written in the book of those virtues.
The hero : a public banquet of magnificence. There are limits to what WE can do. We need someone to exceed those limits and bring back a divine morsel; — allowing all of US to taste transcendence. . .
Ali didn’t return from his moral hiatus unscathed : he didn’t dance like he used to, he looked older, slower ; he went 15 with Frazier at MSG but got dropped by a left hook : — the first time he ever fell, — and suffered his first defeat.
. . . George Foreman was looming : he was the Nemean lion. He made Frazier look like a bum off the street; dropping him six times in as many minutes.
Foreman & Ali were set to fight in Zaire : the RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE. Nobody thought Ali stood a chance. . .
Ali stepped off the plane, someone yelled “Ali, bomaye!” (“Ali, kill him!”); Ali picked up the phrase, started saying it everywhere. The taciturn Foreman refused to talk to the people. Hercules could never keep to himself. . .
. . . Foreman didn’t stand a chance. Like Liston, he’d never fought anybody that wasn’t scared of him. And he never fought anybody who could take his punch.
Ali didn’t stop talking the whole fight ; by the 8th round, George was spent, throwing pillowhand punches; Ali against the ropes; last 30 seconds, a burst, bing, bing, BOOM, a right hand sends the lion tumbling; the crowd : “ALI BOMAYE!”
I get chills everytime. . . Ali’s greatest victory was the harbinger of his ultimate doom.
3. ALL THE KING’S HORSES, ALL THE KING’S MEN. . .
AT SOME POINT DAMAGE BECOMES IRREPARABLE.
The humptian wretch, — cracked, annihilated, — sees his giddybrained glaverers try to patch back together the shards of his life ; it is too late ; the dumptian yolk runs out, the last vestige of life-force : the people soak their bread and eat. . .
The reason Humpty must be consumed : He is part of US.
ALI TOOK MORE THAN 200,000 PUNCHES IN HIS CAREER.
In fights against some of the hardest punchers of all time. . . ; in sparring, after his exile, he’d tell his partners to bash his head to toughen up his chin; Larry Holmes thought it was madness,
“you can’t toughen up the chin! He was taking so much damage for no reason!”
U act invincible b/c U feel INVINCIBLE. Ali could take a punch better than anyone in the history of boxing : a deleterious self-realization. . .
Sometimes when I was teaching my group boxing classes, we’d do some body sparring ; I’d hop in, let the class-takers whale on my stomach & ribs : I’d put my hands behind my head, laughing scornfully at their best efforts; . . .
The next day, after taking hundreds of unprotected body shots for no reason, my stomach would be hurting like HELL, my bowels would be in a tizzy : it took me much longer than it should’ve to realize the two events were correlated. . . I stopped.
. . . brain damage is so frightening because it sneaks up on U : U sail out, suddenly plus ultra without even realizing ; Ali said he’d never be punch drunk like them old fighters, never! he was too pretty! he was too tough! he could dance too good!
But each blow was carving tracks in his brain : by the time he realized something was wrong he was already ruined. . .
ALI EXEMPLIFIES THE EXTREME AVANT-GARDE.
At his peak, he was a coruscating PROBLEM, — an edge so sharp U couldn’t get near him without getting cut ; a planet, bending the gravity of American culture :
The country changed to accommodate Ali’s vision. He was DANGEROUS.
Eventually, always, danger sits down at the dentist’s chair to get its teeth extracted. . . The point of the vanguardist is to be mutilated.
Ali is as American as the Flag : once the most revolutionary symbol on the block, representing a NEW way to be human; . . . now denuded, co-opted by commercial interests.
He is a stylized poster on a coffee shop wall : an innocuous vibe.
. . . he shouldn’t have fought Larry Holmes; he was 38, slow, slurring his words, hardly training,
. . . after Holmes beat the s**t outta his former hero, he went over to Ali’s corner, said, “I love you. I really really admire you. I hope we’ll always be friends.”
I was listening, walking up 3rd Avenue, headed to Gaby’s : I teared up.
The tragedy of Humpty Dumpty : he warps the world in His image. . . at the cost of his LIFE. . .
But Ali, never finished, had one more moment of public greatness : 1996, with terrible tremors, hardly able to speak, he was chosen to light the Olympic flame. . . the crowd chanting the once reviled name : “ALI!” as the ultimate symbol of the United States. . .
I teared up again. . . I’m ambivalent about what happens to the avant-garde, — but truly, U don’t get a lifetime of extreme forward thinking ; . . .
if his Greatness hadn’t been appropriated by the machine, he probably would’ve never been a hero to a white Latino kid in Catholic school in Ohio. . .
COMMENT UR LEAST FAVORITE (DEAD) U.S. PRESIDENT.
