week 11.

October 4

Golf and the Body: A discussion with Bill Murray and Joe Rogan

Bill: Lynn Marriott and Pia Nilsson wrote a great book called Every Shot Must Have a Purpose. It's about quieting your brain when you play. Which I always thought I'd get better at as my brain softened. It seemed to be happening. My brain was softening. It was maybe getting better. Not fast enough for me. And then I started following what these ladies had to write.

Joe: What does it change? 

Bill: It made me enjoy golf. I've always had a lot of fun. But that made me enjoy golf even more.

Joe: How so? Like what is it?

Bill: You know, it's just decluttering. You think about all the things that can catch you, you know, to distract you. And if you're trying to do something that's pretty straightforward, whether it's stirring grits or sewing a line of something or playing a game of golf, which ideally you only have to hit the ball like 75 times…

Everything that distracts you from that is a problem. So it's the ability to just pull the weeds out of your head, as I read a Japanese man say once, and attend to it when you attend to it. It's a few hours to play a round of golf. It takes a long time. But the actual playing of the game is only minutes. The actual hitting of the ball is only minutes.

You have to sort of return to yourself to hit the ball. You've got to come back, get it back together to hit the ball. And so you have the freedom in between the shots to move and to speak and tell jokes and smoke cigars and whatever the hell you want to do.

Joe: But when you want to hit the ball?

Bill: You're going to think and make a little plan, but then you separate that. You take the plan in and then you let it go and you step up and you hit the thing. And hitting the thing is only hitting the thing. And if you can do that, then you start having real success with the actual hitting.

And the sort of joy of the mind-body connection and all this sort of aesthetic, all the kind of almost spiritual things about a mind-body exercise, a game, come to you. Like when great athletes say they're in a zone, they're not in a zone. They're really conscious. They're really connected. They're really aware. It is more than a zone. It's like the ideal place to be.

Joe: Right, right. And what is it about their writing that helped you? Like, what is their philosophy that helped steer you more towards being able to do that?

Bill: It's something that can keep you in your body, because you have to stay in your body. I believe that anyway. I already believed that.

One thing that they say is just, in between shots, you can just take your golf ball, if you're on a putting green or if you have a spare in your pocket, and just toss it up and catch it. Toss it up and catch it. That keeps you physically aware. I've got to have my attention in my body. I've got to stay home, you know.

So if you can stay in your body, it all begins in the body. Everything we are, everything we hope to be, everything we dream about, it's all within the skin. So you've got to stay within the skin.

If you can make yourself come back, if you can get yourself back inside, you don't have so far to go to achieve your intended goal. You don't have to drag yourself back from outer space. You're not dreaming over there. I'm in my body already. So I'm close.

Well, that's what the great golfers are doing. They are pulling themselves back into this thing. That's why they hit so many good shots; because they're home. They're home.

———

The body.

I began this project, some 24 months ago, to consider a very simple, yet incredibly elusive -- even mysterious -- question:

What is the body?

Since then, I’ve poked and prodded my way around this soft and hard flesh without even coming close to any sort of resolution.

I remain, just as 2 years ago, lost in my mind. I’ve learned about the body as a home, as a tool, as a challenge, as an encounter… yet…

In this final entry, I’d like to consider the body as a process.

In recent years, I‘ve heard a lot about the so-called ‘war on the body’.

The body, we are told, is fending off attacks from Big Pharma, vaccines, biotechnologies, GMOs, implants, contraceptives, plastic surgeries, and our socio-techno-patriarchal operations.

An uncountable series of incursions, corruptions, rebellions, adaptations, and perversions of our own original, organic, natural, pure, god-given Body.

The Body.

You have one. I have one. But to what degree is our body truly just a body? And for how much longer?

For how much longer will we remain bodies among bodies?

We have already become a medicated-augmented-fictionalized-body among a growing crowd of machines. Now we find ourselves among countless Intelligences. Soon we will be: a network among networks?

Is this spongy body just a momentary appearance on this planet — emerging from the cold minerals and returning back into an undulating current of electronic energy?

—

Akavya ben Mahalalel would say:

Reflect upon three things and you will not come to sin. Know where you came from, where you are going, and before whom you are destined to appear. From where you came: from a drop of semen.Where you are going: to a place of dust and worms.Before whom you are destined to appear: before the supreme King of Kings, the Holy blessed One.

—

I look around. I see a world in grief.

In grief for our bodies which we have only just come to know and are already disappearing.

In his famous thought experiment, Descartes completely cleared his awareness of all thought and then asked himself what was left over. He saw just two things: bodies and minds.

Of all the possibilities (the Greeks provided us with many options, after all), why just these two?

Of all the things in existence, the body and the mind are now under the greatest threat. They are already well on their way toward extinction. And so they appear (and appeal) to us most urgently.

We asked: What is the body?

The pope says that god is the body. The bread and the wine.

Marx says something similar.

Then, for both communists and christians, salvation takes place only through the body. Redemption of the spirit is redemption of the body.

But can the body be redeemed? And if it can be, what in particular has been saved through the body? Is it the mind? The soul? Nature? The world? The gods?

We’ve considered those who answer negatively. Those disembodied ghosts of Mind and History and Science.

Finally, does anything exist outside the body?

The neuroscientists and yogis remind us that all the worlds and all the gods live only in the microscopic space between our nerve endings.

We are called upon to simultaneously approach the body of the mind <=> the mind of the body.

But enough stalling.

Let me come right out and say it.

Many worlds exist. Each complete and full (even total) in itself. But each world is finite. In itself it does not yet attain (contain) the infinite.

The body is a world. Over the past few years I’ve learned more about the body — my body - than I care to admit.

I learned that I much prefer tracing these colors on this paper by hand, rather than typing it out on my screen.

I learned that my body — just like my mind — has its own full life. Complete with hopes, surprises, joys, and miseries. Let’s add too: dreams, forgiveness, and prayers.

I’ve learned that my body is an agreeable young fellow, once you get to know him. In fact, it isn’t all that different than those skittish puppies my sister used to adopt.

I’ve learned that the body tells a story. Although I still may be rather illiterate on that front.

I’m slow to admit these things, especially to myself. I’m reluctant to recognize my progress.

These days, I’m in the gym 3x per week. I spend more time, effort, and attention on what I consume. I rarely smoke. Only drink on occasion (although I find many occasions). And I have my first stable romantic relationship.

Job-wise, I’m no longer a digital nomad; I work in-person (in-body), which I enjoy greatly. I visit the masseuse, I order dessert, and sleep 8 hours per night.

I travel often: my body is just as curious as my mind.

I’ve even started wrapping tfillin again and lighting two flickering shabbos candles.

I’ve changed. It’s true. And my body has changed too.

Is this what they call a happy ending?

At the same time, I still need to remind myself to breathe. To let the tight muscles in my chest and shoulders and forehead relax. To let my limbs stretch out.

I spend loads of time feeling awkwardly self-conscious, unsure of how to stand, what to wear, or where to sit.

 I remain, still today, out of place. And that’s okay.