There's Something Afoot with this Whole Living

I've been reading about Roberto Clemente and Bruce Lee this morning. Two people whose bodies shaped their careers, their celebrity. But then they died. They vanished in their thirties. Bruce-32, Roberto-38. They died roughly a year apart. You could say that they were imported celebrities. They earned paychecks thanks to Americans. Roberto, an exceptional baseball player in most every dimension of the game. Bruce, the ultimate hybrid of martial arts master and film star. As I pull up their wikipedia and indulge in their chronicles, I look at the faces first. In their most famous photographs, both have an angled stare. Take a look:

Bruce's comes from a deadly stance, a pounce in waiting, that confident form revealed in his shirtless, muscle-bound body. He snickers, feints with his hands in eagerness, bounces on his feet. Roberto looks like a leader. His brow somewhat furrowed, reaching towards something unrealized, there's contemplation and doubt here, I feel like this kind of image is the template for the OBAMA HOPE posters that managed to subtly weave a narrative of racial accomplishment and progression in the striking firmness of a minority claiming their rightful place as leaders/shapers of a new reality. Roberto's proportions are beautiful, the flare of his nose, the curving of his lips, his balanced eyebrows and ears. Bruce's face doesn't want to be beautiful. The puffiness of his face suggests more muscles lurking underneath, as if his cheeks were as equally prepared to parry a blow as his forearms. His pursed lips are deadly, prepared; they've sized you up and a judgment has been cast, he knows how to mete it out and his closed lips to do not need to speak the finality of what he is about to do to you. I can't imagine having to bear to look at this face alone, to solely receive the fullness of it.

Roberto was dedicated to supporting the hardships of his people, Puerto Rican or otherwise. His people remain those who face hardships with action, with dedication. He died aboard a plane headed to bring supplies to people ravaged by an earthquake. He felt the need to go personally due to reports of misuse of goods that had previously been sent. He wanted to insure that those in need were able to get some support in their actual hands. Roberto's "charity" was no stunt, his involvement in the lives of others was an established choice throughout his professional career.

Bruce appears to have been more intensely involved in his own regiment, as well as his family. The intense regard he had for his body was proven in his mindset, he openly shared his philosophy of personal refinement, which required a life of dedication in diet, exercise, mentality, and action. He seems to have taken the mastery, the completeness of his existence as his most sacred rite. While it is certainly valid to call this into question considering his steady stream of television and film work, I believe the magnetism, the widespread identification with Lee came from something fundamental in the way he had shaped himself, the body and attitude he possessed. It inspired a certain kind of control/concentration, perhaps utterly masculine, but nonetheless, an energy was undeniably present in Lee. His bleak death, tied to the swelling of the brain, seems like an affront, or perhaps a vindication, to the physical specimen he truly was.

Athletic performance, especially the male-centric sports and combat side of it, seems to possess this insatiable taunting aspect, at least personally speaking. These people defy what you believe you are capable of with near disdain. While grief clearly surrounds the young young young deaths of both Roberto/Bruce, is there also a tinge of smugness? I would doubt with Roberto, considering the hero of good deeds he has been rightfully shaped as, but you know, the central element to both of these men was their bodily capabilities first and foremost. If they didn't have what it takes they would have been footnotes. Audiences have selective attention, you only get it if they understand you to deserve it. And that understanding is automatic, it's the sublime recognition of the gulf between you, the anonymous witness, and the celebrated performer. Everyone can experience degrees of success, but that fervent following, that establishment that some people can just become, through the forcefulness of their abilities, is something intoxicating. Humanity is most of all a social monstrosity: a constant barrage of communication, negotiation, sharing, performance, perspective after perspective. Those who receive near universal acclaim for some aspect of their being reveal a distillation of some feature of that very humanity, or so we think, and then, with its unruly jaws, that same quality of life, of breathing potential at all times, clamps down hard, obliterates what we once stood in awe of and it laughs, builds something new, and offers those alive something else to fawn over, get inspired by, and then maybe maybe grants you, the living, a chance to do you in front of someone else alive.