Remembering Through a Screen
Aryna Sabalenka is playing Qinwen Zheng in the French Open quarterfinals. When I was young, the Australian Open was a constant feature of summer evenings. Our small CRT’s pale light flickered over the furniture and walls, tinging everything slightly green, the colour of the Rebound Ace courts at Flinders Park. Edberg. Lendl. Graf. Sánchez Vicario. A litany of summers. Cicada drone outside. The hum of the evaporative cooler inside.
As a sports-obsessed kid, I catalogued the quirks and habits of athletes like they were clues. The copious amount of sweat Pete Sampras seemed to produce, which he’d ritualistically wipe from his forehead before serving. Agassi’s strut, of course. The way Boris Becker blew on his fingers before returning—a tick I gave extra significance to because his nickname was ‘Boom Boom’ Becker. Surely the two things were linked.
I remember asking my mum why players would spit on the court and why Lendl didn’t. She said it was because Lendl was a gentleman. Even now, whenever I hear the word ‘gentleman’, I picture Ivan Lendl. I twin these memories with others from the period: running through sprinklers on the lawn at night, swimming in our wading pool, which would gradually fill with leaf litter from the silky oak it was placed under, leaves sticking to your skin as you splashed around.
Outside, a cleaner scrubs the footpath with a chemical concoction of chlorine and bleach, creating an aroma reminiscent of a municipal pool. I need to start swimming again, I think. These thoughts slosh around like clothes in a washing machine. They don’t go anywhere in particular; they meander, circle back, and loop midair like a lob caught by the wind.
The same is true of the stills in the videos above. Photographic sketches stitched together as video; they don’t contain a narrative. They simply echo one another. Something seen, then seen again. Sabalenka, too, operates on a level of repetition. Hers is iterative. Her game a sequence of functions within an animation loop: hit, position, anticipate; each still in the cycle tweaked with algorithmic precision. Right on cue, she breaks Zheng’s serve, and even though the rallies remain competitive, I never doubt Sabalenka will relinquish this advantage. She doesn’t and wins in straight sets. A flattering scoreline that doesn’t do Zheng justice. After the match, the broadcast immediately segues into advertisements.
The problem with the flatscreen in the Taproom, I think, is that it makes everything look too crisp. Too clear. To the point that the reality it presents starts to feel artificial. The Luddite in me misses the CRT’s fuzziness and the way it would invite static if the antenna on the roof shifted in the wind.