Did you know that Chuck Klosterman writes for ESPN the magazine? He does. Klosterman writing about sports is for me, right now, like being told not only have you won the lottery, but you and everyone you love will live forever. That might be a slight exaggeration, but I've known about Klosterman's sports work for a while, and have been foaming at the mouth to get to his columns, all of which (save the current, I think) are behind a pay screen. Soon, I will be a person who has access to those, and you can bet there will be frantic Klosterman reading, but right now, I'm limited.
The current column is really, really interesting. I can't really say much more about it, because I'm conflicted. I'm not quite sure how I feel about the subject, save that I've almost always been very vocal against steroids. I mostly object to them because I think they're unhealthy and damaging, and I don't think Klosterman would say otherwise. And his arguments that we need to rethink the way we think about sports and drugs are interesting, except that I'm not sure I agree. I'm not sure that knowing the Beatles were high when they made their seminal albums sits quite right with me either. Plenty of other books and albums and paintings and so on were made without the influence of drugs, and plenty of them are great pieces of work. I don't know, I just know that I can think about this issue all the time, constantly, and I'll never come to any solution in my head. I think that steroids does tarnish sports, but I can't say that the drug use does in quite the same way in the fields of music. In fact, I view it as quite shameful in sports, and I can't pinpoint if that's the right way to think, or just the way I've always been taught to think.
Either way, it's not happy to think that somehow, me being a fan is going to contribute to a culture where men do really scary things to their bodies, for whatever reason they're doing them, and however they're doing them.
The difference, and something I was amazed to see Klosterman not really address, is that sports are competitive. Although the Beatles may have been "competing" with the Beach Boys or whatever, the creation of music isn't a competitive enterprise, it's an artistic one. I know the advantage of one football player taking steroids while another one doesn't. (Although, at this point, the number of NFL players not taking anything has got to be hovering between 0 and 25%.) I don't know how one musician's mind is affected or not affected by whatever they choose to indulge in.
Posted by: Tim | March 20, 2007 at 07:13 PM
And, Kerouac was pretty upfront about his drug binge and I don't think the Beatles or Pink Floyd (or the Beach Boys for that matter) were trying to hide their drug use. With the exception of Jose Canseco, almost every professional athlete has denied being on steroids. For Football, I agree with Tim, I think 95% of the people who deny they're taking something - or thought they were taking vitamins - are full of it.
There are so many other angles and issues and things to consider, though. I think you're right, you could think about this non-stop for days and not come to a conclusion. Such a complicated issue....
Posted by: Rita | March 21, 2007 at 12:07 PM