Shit Art or A Case for the Emotional Power of Flagrancy
I survey the court. The interlaced net splits the blue battleground from good and evil: my team – the opponents. My mother & I are losing against my brother & father in a game called pickleball, a cross between tennis & ping pong. My brother is making an exaggerated crying motion & my father is doing what can only be described as a jig. My emotions are unprovoked. Instead, I’m focused on a different kind of game altogether– how to best shit-talk the bastards.
There are games & games within games. Shit-talking is a prime example. You can still lose a pickleball match but win the verbal war. A case in point: nearing the final death toll of the game, I smash a shot that both adversaries miss. I taunt them with classic sarcasm, “Incredible job. You almost got a piece of it,” simultaneously winking with extreme exaggeration. Still, there’s little hope. We’re down by seven, and it is markedly clear we are going to lose this match.* And yet the anger in their eyes shows something different: the power of shit art.
To stir emotions in others is art. To do so through the use of targeted insults is shit. What I’m attempting is to elevate the plane of our game from modern day play with its bubble-wrapped jungle gyms and ball-less germ pits to the uncertainty of emotion-laden struggle. I leave nothing unchecked. Cheater is thrown around as much as a fully loaded gun in Russian Roulette. Fists in the air, the overcoming of gravity, is the overcoming against boredom and polite clapping at events, which should really only be only designated for the likes of a fourth grade Spelling Bee. (Any Bee for older participants should be fair game to at least boo).
Life’s juice is emotions & much of what we remember in life is powered by their strength. We watch stories about great villains – is that not the representation of shit art on a much larger scale? These wrongdoers keep us transfixed with their audacity & flagrancy. We can do the same without murder, harm, or even a thimble of blood. Superman is lame frankly because there’s not enough shit. We need it, you need it, the world needs it – in order to be alive.
When I yell “There’s no way in hell that ball was in,” (overemphasizing hell of course) I’m reaching into your internal machinery pushing as many buttons as I can and sitting back to watch the show. It’s the firework spectacular that needs no holiday to commemorate. And not only do my words have an effect on the intended targets, but they give me the ability to define what game is actually happening, which is then defining us – the most courageous decision one makes in life.
Shit art comes in many flavors, but I feel the best is when your entire body becomes involved. It starts with your chest as with each beat of your heart pushes what can only be described as power through each & every individual blood vessel. Your hips shake, your feet shift to & fro, & the ritual is at its peak when you raise your arms in the air bringing them down with the vigor of a thousand charging bulls. Several. Fucking. Times. Chest protruding, it’s only when the enemy notices the “whoop” that the feat is complete. This is the embodiment of shit art. On the next serve we lose the game. I look at my father’s and brother’s faces. Both of them are grinning ear to ear with satisfaction of well-deserved revenge. † Mission accomplished.
*But what’s really at stake here? Getting better or winning is the default option, it’s never even questioned. What matters is how the game unfolds. If the outcome is truly insignificant, that is it won’t affect your life a week, month, year from now, what’s to stop you from pursuing something different?
† One of my friends once told me that for how we long live, our memories are terrible at recording our history. So it’s our job to make sure that we build lasting moments that we remember for others and ourselves – in essence Kahneman’s remembering self.
