(gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) - So welcome, Julie.

Thank you for sitting down to talk to me.

I was hoping today to talk about, well your involvement with the St. John's Ice Hockey team.

We have our offices in the same building, and I don't know if the picture is still up there, but there's a picture of the team on your office door, and I have long wanted to ask you about that and the role that ice hockey plays in your life.

But I thought we would start by sort of framing it with a bigger question.

Reading this fall "War and Peace" with my senior seminar, there're clearly many graphic war scenes in that book, but the scene that I was actually thinking about was a scene of the hunt.

So when Nikolai, the older brother, I suppose in the Rasta family, sort of is taking time away from being a soldier.

And he and his father and a bunch of family go on this early morning hunt.

And there's this description of the hunt that is very much like the description we get earlier in the book, some of the generals who are sort of organizing the plans for battle scene.

And so it got me thinking about, and I think we often, if we sort of probe into sports, particularly team sports, the comparison between war and team sports comes up.

So, really though to make this a little more complicated right from the beginning, that comparison is sort of there for us, I think.

And more than "War and peace," certainly in the "Iliad" and in other things we read, we're drawn to think about the relationship between war and sports.

But having watched my puppy recently sort of romping around and playing, it got me thinking about what looks, you know, she'll track down sort of lizards or whatever, crickets around here in the desert.

And she in some ways is being predatory, right?

She's gonna go and if she catches them, she'll probably eat them.

But she's so joyful and playful and the real thing that's going on there looks like play to me.

And so it got me wondering whether the comparison between war and sports gets us where we need to go.

I wanted to think about with you from the beginning sort of play and whether there's something about play maybe even more, or in relation to that idea of the predatory or the warlike.

Can we dig into that a little bit?

- In terms of whether when I'm out on the ice it's a war or it's play?

- Yeah, sure, let's, yeah... - I think it's interesting to think about what ice hockey is because it's, yeah, there's two teams and they're going against one another.

But it's also an occasion for me, I know it's gonna sound strange for joy, I think because we're really out there and being in ourselves, being focused, being centered in ourselves, and the sort of competition that we're having is one where we are both competing with ourselves because you're trying to be the best you can be, but also you're competing with someone, one-on-one, and you're getting, you're learning about that person.

And so you're sort of allowed to be who you are and you're allowing them to be who they are out there on the ice.

And sometimes it turns into a character of perhaps, you know, we are combatants and and battling, but more so it's just that we're so focused on each other's movement and that sort of thing that it, I think it is more the idea of play and the focus that play brings rather than battle and war.

- Yeah and it's interesting, I think because one of the things that happens in "War and Peace" is that the expectation of war, particularly among the young soldiers, they're sort of ready for action and excited to get in there, and they come out deeply sort of disillusioned that what had felt like they were gonna show their stuff, you know, which is similar to I think, the idea of competing with yourself and wanting to be the best you can be.

But they're gonna show their stuff and then, you know, sort of their horse gets shot and they get trapped underneath the horse and haven't even seen any action.

And suddenly are suffering.

And it makes me really wonder about, so the frame around this team sports around the ice hockey that you show up and it's a joyful moment both for probably the teams and also for spectators.

- Right?

- Like, there's something really exciting.

Is the frame of the sports important for that to happen?

I mean, I guess I think we could think of the sports as sort of the artificial version of what actually happens on the battlefield, but there's ways in which the disillusioned soldier thought that the war was gonna be something, something more like play.

- Yeah.

- And it turned out to be something really inarticulable.

- Yeah, and I think the difference for me is when I read "War and Peace" and I see how someone on the battlefield is reacting to what's happening, suddenly they become very self-conscious.

"This is happening to me, oh no, I wasn't expecting to be lying on my back on the ground looking at the sky."

And that sort of thing.

Whereas when you're playing hockey, I really do think that you are in the moment, you're feeling the sort of the wholeness of the whole group on the ice.

And you're part of a whole, you're not one sort of individual, but you're actually moving as a whole with all the other team members and things like that.

And so, you're getting, I think, a better sense of, now the only word I can think of is fulfillment, you're fulfilled in the group itself.

There's nothing that's shocking like that, you're totally in the moment.

In fact, one way I think about it is that you're not playing the game, the game's playing you and you are just, you know, part of a whole that's moving in space.

And that feeling makes you greater than yourself, I think is for me the difference between hockey or a battle or something like that.

- And do you think that we would...

When we think about play, so I think back to my puppy and this sort of, there is a striving there, you know?

It's also with little kids who like soccer or whatever, you can watch them just sort of like, the ball is out there and they wanna go for it.

There's something compelling about wanting to capture and...

But you've used the word focus a lot that there's this focus and this idea of the whole I like that a lot.

- Yeah.

- But can we connect that to play and I'm what, how... Yeah, I'm wondering about play.

I'm wondering about, you know, I think I started from, this image of the dog and this idea of something that is dancing before the dog and her desire to capture it and pin it down and my experience playing, I played a lot of team sports through college too.

And there is something about that I just love it like, I wanna get the ball.

I don't know why but wondering a little bit about the focus part, I think is also right.

That makes a lot of sense to me.

Can we think about the relationship between that feeling and just what are we doing when we're playing?

- Hmm.

- Sorry, that's a hard... (both laughing) - That's a difficult.

I mean, so I was always the goalie, right?

And on the hockey team for the St. John's team.

And so I have, as the goalie, I have to be engaged, it's not just me and the puck, it's me and everybody else out on the ice.

And so I have to kind of keep track of where everyone is on the ice.

And so, I don't know if that's so much like your dog being focused on bugs or something like that, but I really truly have to engage a part of myself that it sort of feels like it's, you know, sensing where I am in space, you know, who's around me, you know, where's my team made, where's the other team?

And that sort of stuff.

So, it's not sort of an engagement of the thing like the ball or in your case or the puck in my case.

But it's not, it's an engagement of the other people that are there.

And I'm really trying to make sure I know where they all are at the same time.

- Does it have a abstract?

I mean, so on the one hand it feels like thinking through or engaging with your space in that kind of very focused way.

Abstract might be the wrong word, but that's the way I'm thinking about it right now, sort of being able to see the rink before you and what's going on.

But on the other hand, there's something so bodily about, well, just playing the sport.

And even when you talk about the focus, it feels almost like a physical space that you enter... - Right?

- When you're...

So, is it?

What is the relationship between the abstract and the body and that?

- Well for me, and this, you know, goes back also, I think, you know, I was a gymnast in college as well.

So, it goes back to sort of being, like I said, being physics, you become physics out there.

So you just really become something that's being moved in space and time.

And you do get the sensual, sensual, well, it is sensual awareness, not only of what's all around you, but I also know what's behind me without even, I can just sort of feel what's there behind me at the same time.

So it is a sort of a, you're in a moment in, not only in space, but also in time.

It's a wonderful feeling just to feel like you're a part of the world in that way, yeah.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- I mean, one of the things I wanted to ask you about is whether that the sensation of the groupness, but also this focus, given what we do at St. John's in the classroom, in some ways it's a big stretch because we're reading and thinking and talking and one might argue that's all about sort of thought and not body but does it overlap at all the description that you... - Definitely does because if I am sitting in a seminar in a classroom and I suddenly become incredibly self-conscious, I lose track of the conversation.

Everything that we've set up to that point.

After that, I really feel that I have to stay focused in that moment with the discussion, listening carefully.

It is very much, it's... That's why I don't wanna think about what I do in the classroom as me directing the conversation.

I know we use those words sometimes, but it's more that I'm just in tune with the conversation.

I'm listening to the students, I'm moving with the thought as it moves around.

And I'm keeping a sense of it as a whole.

I think that's, again, wholeness is very important to me.

So I have a feeling that there's a whole conversation that we're having and there's not somebody who's not a part of it at the table.

I'm kind of always a, I don't know if this happens for you, but I'm always kind of aware of maybe someone who's not in tune with the conversation and I sort of wanna speak to that person at that moment and say, "Oh, well what do you think?"

And that sort of thing.

So, yeah.

The focus is, I think that's similar to what we do in St. John's conversation.

- Yeah and when you describe it that way about the student who might not be talking, that does have a bodily feel to me, when I think about being at the seminar table, there is something.

- Yeah.

- Especially about that, that is, yeah, like, you might be feeling your way.

- Yeah.

- Your position on a field, it is about bodies as much as it is about the thoughts that are being expressed.

- Yeah, I think so.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

And you wanna try to tie that person in somehow to the conversation 'cause otherwise, I mean, I'm trying to think of a good analogy from hockey.

I mean, what it would be like if you just had some person who was, you know, skating around at one end of the rink doing nothing or something like that.

Yeah, so you want everyone to be involved.

- So, we've kind of been focusing on, and it seems important to me, and I think not always intuitive, that the kind of joyfulness and the unity in playing team sports and for you in ice hockey.

I think we may have talked about this, so like the social contract that goes on that we come together.

- Right.

- Sort of loving each other, even the opposing team in order to do this thing, which may then include, usually does competition ambition these sort of more war-like things.

But it does seem like there's an interesting tension there in the way we're thinking through.

We have on the one hand this wholeness and groupness.

And on the other hand, the individual, the ambition, the... And it may be the case that they're mutually constituted, that that's what happens in sports so compelling.

But how do we think about that, that tension?

- Between the wholeness of all of us together on the ice and then the combativeness of... You reminded me of once when I was playing with the St. John's team, there are on many hockey teams, men in this...

These were co-ed teams.

But, men who pretty much think that with a female goalie, all they need to do is just take you out with one shot.

And that's what they're trying to do.

And it reminded me of one of the students who was on our hockey team, St. John's team, who saw this going on, and he, like, he was like, you know, Achilles or someone, he came in and just was defending me standing in front of the net and he was like, "Come, bring it."

You know, that sort of thing.

So there is that aspect of it too where you really find that there's, I don't know, there's a certain honor that is happening, you know, amongst the groups.

And you're not going to just sit back and, you know, just anybody, you know, walk all over your team or particularly your goalie, but you're going to actually do battle.

And I'm thinking about how those two ideas are related.

Is that the... - Yeah.

- The question that you have this sort of coming together as, you know, combatants and really standing up for one another on a field of honor, and then also the sort of, yeah.

Also, learning to work as a team and doing that.

Yeah, it's a very interesting tension that's happening 'cause it can go, you can go overboard with that.

I mean, you could definitely become incredibly angry and fights do break out and, you know, hockey games, I know it comes as a shock to you, but fights do happen and hockey games.

Yeah, so the two are sort of intention, but what intrigues me just thinking about it is it never...

It always backs down, it never turns into this thing where the whole game just stops and you don't go on.

There are these ways in which these things really sort of, you know, it just settles and you just go on with what's happening in the moment.

So I'm not quite sure how to bring those two ideas together.

What do you think?

- Well, I don't know.

What's striking me right now is the idea that how frequently I think we think of the sports as a kind of analog for war, but I think we put sports in quotations.

It's the derivative of war that is sort of what we take this instinct and we pull it into society in a way that we can manage it.

- Right.

- But I actually, I'm... Increasingly I wanna flip that and say, actually maybe there's something about the tension about the simultaneous social contract and sort of love for each other and wholeness and the competition and the playing out that is more primary.

There's something about that that captures what we really want.

Where what happens going back to "War and Peace" is the disillusionment of, "I thought I wanted this thing.

That some instinct in me thought I wanted to display my honor."

And I think it happens in "Homer 2" the kind of radical grotesqueness of the battle scenes where on the one hand you're getting the vaunting, you know, soldier who has vanquished his opponent.

And the excitement of that I think is there, but the really graphic descriptions of what's happening to their bodies is right alongside that.

So we're never really allowed, permitted by "Homer" to simply get the high of the, you know, the vanquished and that idea seems to be called into question a little bit.

And I guess that's what I'm wondering now about calling it into question whether there's something about play and the framedness of it and this doubleness, which might get more at what this human instinct is, what it is that we're doing.

Maybe it requires both and it's not just that we're kind of... - Cooperating, but there's also has to be a way in which I am showing my very best what I can do.

I think that's really, really true on the ice, when you're playing the game, you really are trying to play, especially, you know, you want to win, you want, you know, that team, the picture on my door, that team won the championship that year, we're sitting there with the trophy and we are really happy about that.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, so you do want, I mean, it's not, we're not there just to be out on the ice and we wanna conquer, we wanna win that game.

- So let's think then about 'cause some of the language of on the ice you're focused and you're functioning as a unit and there's this beautiful imagery of sort of coming together as a whole, even transcendent, it has this really powerful feeling.

Is it connected to competition and to the... Is there something, I mean, I think that that's not intuitive.

You wouldn't put the kind of violence or however we wanna describe that desire to really win, whatever with the kind of wholeness and unity.

But do they inform each other at some level?

- Whew, yeah.

It's interesting when you say that being a person I am, I don't separate them when I'm thinking about it.

I mean, I do want to win even though I'm working against all of these other people and you know, and with them at the same time to have this thing that we're calling the game.

I want to win, I don't want to just be out there for, you know, exercise or something like that.

I have that fighting spirit inside me, I hate to lose, I tell you that, I very much hate to lose.

And I need that, I can't just go out there and say, "Oh, may the best team win."

Maybe some people can do that, but I can't.

I have to have that fighting spirits, yeah.

So it seems like, I mean, does it seem like two different things to you or does it seem like one idea when you're out there playing a sport 'cause there's gotta be a kind of a you that overcomes and also a spirit of working together as a team and playing a game and having, and as I said, you know, before the game really playing you and you're allowed to be part of that, but... - Yeah.

I don't know it necessarily off the top of my head.

I mean, it does make me think that the context in which my own sort of performance or if I'm doing well and I am playing the best that I can play, it requires the game for that to show up.

- Yeah, that's true, yeah.

- So, the thing I've been playing tennis mostly lately and the idea of it's very individual, so that's different, but how satisfying it is to perform really well, sort of to hit a really good shot.

But that there is, it's a conversation that's happening.

- Yes.

- And there is... You value that other so much.

As the one who will respond or not respond.

- Right.

- And I think, you know, in long sort of delightful points where people are responding, there's delight in that hole that is the context in which my sort of competitive spirit can show itself.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- So, it feels like it's one idea for, I mean that's how I think about it.

And I was just thinking when you were talking, the other part of it, particularly with a team sport like that is that, and you mentioned this earlier, there's the crowd and if the crowd is cheering and that, that's another thing that sort of lifts you above yourself and you're just like, you know, I made this great save.

And everybody was like, "Yay" and "Whoa" and you're just like, that, the level of adrenaline just jumps for you at that point.

Yeah, so... That's an individual thing.

I think that comes through as you're feeling the sort of competition.

You're also feeling that incredible sense of being on top of your game and doing the best you can possibly do.

And seeing people appreciate it, I think is really important.

My experience being on the ice with, you know, St. John's students was that they were very much, you know, I don't know, they just, they for me as a team seemed just more in tune with the idea of working together as a group than the other teams did.

The other teams were very much, you know, individually for themselves.

And we were the team that, as I said, we were in tune with one another, we heard, you know, we listened, we knew where everybody was on the ice.

And so, I don't know that any particular book was, you know, something that I would think about and say, "It was just like in..." (both laughing) - Yeah.

- Yeah, so I'd have to, I'd really, yeah, just think about, which book would... - Share that, yeah.

- Yeah.

- Well, let's go...

So...

So, so much of what we've been talking about, the sort of relationship between working as a group and sort of performing your best individually towards a common goal really does speak to what we do in the seminar room.

It gets complicated for me because I think about the "Menino," which we read freshman year, and the students are faced with Socrates talking about the difference between an heuristic argument and a dialectical argument.

And the idea of an argument that is made in a war-like way to sort of vanquish one's conversational opponent versus a dialectical approach.

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