Transcript:
Let’s talk about serendipitous coincidence.
L Frank Baum was a prolific children’s author best-known for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900). Although he didn’t live to see the iconic musical fantasy film, he apparently had a wonderfully serendipitous coincidental link to it, even beyond writing the book it was based on. Frank Morgan plays Wizard. He makes his first appearance in the opening sequences as Professor Marvel, a travelling fortune-teller. The story goes that, when it came to screen testing, the coat he was wearing was considered too perfect for a travelling magician. So the wardrobe department was sent on a thrift-shop mission to find something more battered, more weathered, and returned with a whole closetful of possibilities. A Prince Albert frock coat with a worn velvet collar was a perfect fit for the actor. After a while, it was noticed that, sewn into the jacket was a label bearing the inscription: “Made by Hermann Bros, expressly for L Frank Baum”. Baum had died 20 years before the film was released, but widow, Maud, authenticated the coat and the story and accepted it as a gift when the film was completed.
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When Anthony Hopkins heard he’d been cast to play a part in the film The Girl from Petrovka (1974), Hopkins went in search of a copy of the book on which it was based, a novel by George Feifer. He combed the bookshops of London in vain and, somewhat dejected, gave up and headed home. Then, to his amazement, he spotted a copy of The Girl from Petrovka lying on a bench at Leicester Square station. He recounted the story to Feifer when they met on location, and it transpired that the book Hopkins had stumbled upon was the very one that the author had mislaid in another part of London – an advance copy full of red-ink amendments and marginal notes he’d made in preparation for a US edition.
All of which is to say that a third successive 3-1 defeat in Tottenham is …. well… if not quite serendipitous coincidence, not wholly unexpected.
It came a day after both Everton and Luton won. To get to grips with how to deal with such events on an emotional level, perhaps we should turn to Jean Paul Sartre and his book Existentialism is a humanism, written in 1946.
In defending existentialism from the frequent criticism of it being a depressing philosophy, Sartre, in between long drags of Gualioisses and receiving letters from Simone de Beauvoir, suggested that acting without hope frees us from despair. He wrote:
As for “despair,” the meaning of this expression is extremely simple. It merely means that we limit ourselves to a reliance upon that which is within our wills, or within the sum of the probabilities which render our action feasible. Whenever one wills anything, there are always these elements of probability. If I am counting upon a visit from a friend, who may be coming by train or by tram, I presuppose that the train will arrive at the appointed time, or that the tram will not be derailed. I remain in the realm of possibilities; but one does not rely upon any possibilities beyond those that are strictly concerned in one’s action. Beyond the point at which the possibilities under consideration cease to affect my action, I ought to disinterest myself. For there is no God and no prevenient design, which can adapt the world and all its possibilities to my will. When Descartes said, “Conquer yourself rather than the world,” what he meant was, at bottom, the same – that we should act without hope.’
Wise words. Given how other results panned out before our game at Spurs, and how we each urge ill fortune on Luton and Everton, perhaps we should abandon such rituals and try to ignore it, assume they will both pick up points, and not give in to despair when they do. In other words, act without hope.
That’s not to say abandon hope we will survive; more to say, go and win some more games of football ourselves.
The game? Good first half, had them worried, could - should - have taken the lead. But then Spurs went up a gear and we stalled. It happens. Frustrating, but not uncommon.
Losing 3-1 in Tottenham? A serendipitous coincidence that means we should continue to act without hope.
Spurs 3-1 Forest 7 April 2024