Sunday 14 June 2009

Good Vibrations, Looking for Eric again.


There is a moment in Ken Koach’s film, Looking For Eric, when the main character, Eric asks the main star, Eric (Cantona) to describe his greatest goal in a football match. (Three Eric’s in that sentence, four in the opening paragraph).

Eric explains that it is not the memory of a goal that gives him the greatest pleasure but a pass.

I think it is a mark of a good film if you think about it some time after, it was over a week ago that I went to see Looking for Eric.

I wonder if the scene was Eric’s honest assessment of his career or just the script writer’s words, but I was imagining today that there might be a truth therein – that in every achievement there is a “pass” which transcends the moment more than the “goal”.

Philosophers have probably said the same in far more eloquent ways.

I don’t remember when I first heard the Beach Boys sing, the first album of theirs that I owned was Pet Sounds, and to my shame I think I stole it but the most recent time that I listened to them was 30 minutes ago when I dug out a “best of compilation” from the depths of the groaning CD shelf.

They had huge success with their songs, and as a spotty teenager in the London Suburbs I was excitedly undermined by their sounds of the West

It wasn’t a goal, just a pass.

But even today it sends a shiver of anticipation through me. Check it out.

Does everything in life have these moments, can we be so blinded by the goal that we miss the pass?

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