Missive 53: Out But Not Down
Like all who Buffalo claims — the DNA intertwined within him from birth in this forever dormant, creaking, yet indomitable city with its affinity for the eerie — the Spectacular Failure has a birthright to failure. To carry within him always. Like the tarnished pride of a meaningless keepsake others would toss, the winter ghosts of past, present, and future heartbreaks endure if only to remind the Spectacular Failure of his place.
Boxcar, when performing, would proudly open wounds that forged families from strangers:
“After that fourth straight Super Bowl loss, I fell into such a depression I actually considered suicide. But, being from Buffalo, slitting my wrists, I would probably miss wide right.”
The laughs were always big. But only in Buffalo were they real.
The team’s mantra of “Where would you rather be than right here, right now?” might have first been spoken by a shirtless Buddha — jumping through a picnic table and doing shots from a bowling ball — while tailgating with the Mafia hours before a wind-chilled game. As you know the Buddha would do.
No wonder the Spectacular Failure would inhabit a mantra as obvious and essential as “Where would you rather be than right here, right now.”
It is a message humanity forgets in its rush to history. It is the message — the simple truth — that life just is. Whether with friends, alone, or anywhere in between.
For Marv Levy, the oracle of spectacular failure, to have uttered that message to a group of overstimulated egos bursting with testosterone is as feminine an approach to coaching as you can get.
And so they lost four straight Super Bowls — right there, right then.
The Spectacular Failure, watching each one, to the bitter end — as all endings are.
Nobody ever asks if the “Where would you rather be?” message might have been the reason why they lost those four.
I am certain Lombardi would have never sent his team into battle with a message of such effete acceptance, of where you are, rather than the lie of where you can be!
Lombardi would have likely spun the line: “This is where you are right now, men. And if you think that is enough, that this is where you want to be, that this is good enough, then take off your fucking uniform and stay in the locker room watching Heidi!! I don’t want any of you pansies on my team! We have another place to go to! Now go out there and get it!”
Lombardi won championships up the ass and two Super Bowls.
Marv, not so much. But Marv lives to 100 years old, still smiling.
Lombardi died at 57 from ass cancer.
Levy’s players, the franchise he framed, and the City love and cherish him — knowing both the heights climbed and the heights never achieved. The City of Buffalo holds no grudges — at least not for long.
The City never looks back — except when the national broadcasts insist on showing that kick. And it never looks forward, which explains why it seems locked in place for 50 years. Like a snow globe bubble on the desk of time. Shaken up only to then return to what it always has been.
The City lives to live and knows that everyone is in the same boat. Pain and joy. Family and loneliness. All believe that while they didn’t — haven’t reached the pinnacle that others have, often being the joke around the country — they keep their peace. Buffalo has a secret: Buffalo is the secret.
They know, at times, they could have, maybe should have been — maybe were even arguably — the best. It just didn’t happen. It didn’t work out.
They know that the measure of success, ultimate success, does not come from someone or somewhere outside of you bestowing that banner on you. They know that will never happen. The City raises its own banner every day. And then they crash through it, screaming “GO BILLS!”
The heart within, the look in the eyes, no matter the race, class, or age — is their success. The realisation that they are both proud independent individuals while also, at the same time, part of something bigger. Something that may not win but that can never be defeated. Something both week by week as well as eternal. There is no one Big Game to win. The season never ends. That is what makes the fight both essential and futile. But the fight never leaves, and even the pain it brings is always worth it.
Within this community, there are plenty of opinions but no lasting judgments. All are equal. All are in synch. Each heart beats in unison, and each heart swells with the knowing that you can be both completely miserable and alone while at the same time comforted and lifted by the something that defines and binds them together. Fuck if they know what it is, though. The secret is not to ask the question. Once you do, all that anyone does when asking the “whys” and “what ifs” is always to wind up blaming the refs.
Buffalo will never blame life’s ref. Neither will the Spectacular Failure.
The Spectacular Failure — all spectacular failures— live with the simple notion: “We are just getting started.” Even if it is their dying words. Never any regrets or bitterness. Never a sense of being cheated or victimized. Shit happens to everyone. There is no point in personifying it or thinking there is an agenda at play. There are no masters of the universe that subdue them. And even if there are, even if there really are people manipulating the system, putting their fingers on the scale of existence, to deny them their due — Fuck ‘em. We have shit to do.
Because, of course, the game is certainly rigged. The Poets, Priests, and Politicians hate all spectacular failures everywhere — including Bills Mafia. The Bills’ drought could have lasted not 17 years, but a lifetime, yet still the tailgating would go on. Still, the Mafia shows up, in the cold, in the snow. Paying the outlandish ticket prices knowing that simply means they will be driving their 15-year-old car another 10 years. Deal! Life is a drought; it’s all you have, so embrace it.
“Right here, right now” is a bumper sticker. No different than “white teeth, fresh breath.” Like cotton candy, it is gone the moment the words pass your lips. Empty and hollow, it can add to the sadness, as all truths do. But on certain Sunday afternoons, it can raise you up. If only to let you down. Which it most certainly, eventually, will.
Maybe the new regime needs a rethinking of the mantra. If anything, at least stop making it a question and accept it as a fact. This is where you are. And always will be.
Marv Levy, though, had a deeper and even more essentially human message. Said to his team after the repeated painful days of glory never seen. The underbelly of “right here, right now,” that stings the heart while restoring it. Slowly. Painfully.
A message that the Spectacular Failure knows to be all that matters.
As the legend goes, a 16th-century Scottish ballad, often thought to be written before WWII, Levy’s own era of consciousness as he was conscripted just after Pearl Harbor. A ballad — a comic dirge — about a Scottish private called Sir Andrew Barton. After yet another of their many days when tears, heartbreak, and brotherhood were all that remained, Levy didn’t even bother to address the team as he knew the words they needed to hear he could not speak. They would need to come from within. Simply posting on the clubhouse corkboard:
“Fight on, my men,” Sir Andrew said. A little hurt, but not yet slain, I’ll just lie down and bleed awhile, And then I’ll rise and fight again.”
The Spectacular Failure — no Marv Levy — his message to the team would simply have been:
Everything ends badly.
That’s why it ends.
Next: Nobody : Missive 51
Previous: The Afterward : Missive 22