MoL, a keen watcher of football post-match interviews, notes the following set rules: contempt for the press; stupidity of the questions; tight-lipped unwillingness to say anything of interest; lack of graciousness; the rule that no player can big himself up at the expense of the team. Post-match interviewees are as forthcoming as war criminals on trial. However, they are allowed, even obliged, to moan on about the unfairness of everything: red card, no red card; offside, no offside; ball crossed the line, ball didn’t – but all within a field of controlled anger management (in contrast to unlicensed crowd swearing). Selective vision is common (Arsene “I didn’t see the incident” Wenger). Individual players questioned about personal achievement are allowed only to refer to the team. You can’t say: “I was dead pleased to stick those three in after the other ten wankers had done fuck-all the whole afternoon.” You can only say . . . Actually the post-match interview is the art of saying nothing or, to adopt an English vernacular, of speaking only balls. By contrast, how gracious and polite tennis players seem, dragged exhausted off the court to face press questions idiotic enough to turn anyone homicidal. MoL hates Djokovic on court but likes him afterwards. MoL notes Federer’s grace on court is marred by vanity off: the Wimbledon white coat; too smug when he has played well (most of the time); the fact he has his own band (it finished McEnroe’s credibility). Jimmy Connors, with an interviewer trying to corner him into admitting how badly beaten he’d been, shrugged it off as just a bad day at the office, which was when MoL decided to like him after all.
Last year, as a result of its work with students at the Nuremberg Academy of Arts, the Museum of Loneliness made three short films using Google maps, posted on YouTube. A great soundtrack included an audio battle between two cross-cut versions of The End (Nico versus The Doors) and the same for All Along the Watchtower (Dylan versus Hendrix); all very exciting and interesting. Now a message reads: “This video previously contained a copyrighted audio track. Due to a claim by a copyright holder, the audio track has been muted.” The deleted soundtrack has been replaced with an advertisement for the Nico album from which we took the track! Our enterprise becomes their advertising. www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hyTdgIsFdg