The Milli Vanilli Condition by Eduardo Espina

Author:Eduardo Espina
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arte Público Press
Published: 2015-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

EPICALLY OLYMPIC

WHEN THE OLYMPIC GAMES WERE BORN, the world was young. It is no longer so today, but the games continue to be for the young, nearly all of them Apollo-like, except for the African marathon runners, who are scrawny. Apollo, the first winner in the Olympics, played the lyre. Nowadays the lyre is of no interest to anyone. The name of this instrument in Italian is lira, the same name given to the former Italian currency. There is no interest in this or any other pre-euro monies, including the franc (though few people are frank about this). The same goes for the peso, a Spanish word indicating an object’s heft, though for the currencies of this name found in more than one Latin American country no one seems willing to lift a finger, let alone heavy weights like a bodybuilder. What matters is the almighty dollar. The only mark with value is the frame that marks the portrait capturing the victor’s smile. It is a photograph stolen from time, so that its vanity will not grow old.

Greek athletes came from the Peloponnesus; those of today run with closely cropped hair. For this reason, hair carries more weight than conscience. It is like the hair of gazelles with bald calvarias designed to conceal Calvary. But rather than hairstyling in Cinemascope, it is a giant circus. Curiosity takes them under the canopy of appearances: swimmers whose hands and feet grow due to stimulation from potions made in secret labs; runners with vigorous muscles developed through the use of some prohibited concoction (the law does not want us all to be able to look like Tarzan), javelin throwers who shave their mustaches in order to not look too much like Stalin; rowers with wings of wood who row like a row of supermen, and Cuban champions like the one who was fond of coke—not the sponsor (Coke), which is also addictive, but the other kind. Addiction to victory generates additions, and diction is expressed with figures.

Added to the athletes and their invisible syringes are scenes of a Caligulesque parade: Olympic executives receiving bribes so that they will choose one city over another, multinational companies paying million-dollar sums to secure exclusive sponsorship rights. These are doses of exclusivity. The athletes, besides wanting to beat their rivals to win the gold, sign contracts with anyone and anything. Well, not anything, but yes with anything that pays, from a refreshing beverage to a deodorant to a brand of underwear named Jockey (and, since this is not horse racing, they are their own jockeys). Neither steroids nor other anabolic drugs are amateurs anymore. Victory sells, and it serves as an antidote against forgetfulness. Memory (a swift Mnemosyne) builds its podium in tenths of seconds, pushing the fastest times forward (a timely onslaught), because the name of the game is beating records.

Even before the motorcycle, the automobile, and the airplane existed, man already wanted to be faster than himself. He wanted to run as fast as those imaginary beings who at full speed manage to pull away from their shadow.

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