Remember Rooney for his ‘Blonde on Blonde’

One of the great statements about the nature of existence was said by an unlikely philosopher, the singer and front man for Van Halen, Samuel Roy Hagar, on a stage in Fresno in 1992.

“Yesterday, sh*t that’s history. And there’s no point of worrying about tomorrow because tomorrow might not ever come. There’s no guarantee about tomorrow, f*ck tomorrow. All we have is right here, right now.”

For good or bad, I’ve pretty much lived my life by these principles.

Due to the laws of physics and the nature of the space-time continuum, we are all forced to live in The Now. But what is The Now? The future is more easily conceptualised, the past more self evident, but The Now is such a difficult concept to grasp and yet it is the endless rolling moment which we call being alive.

Quite obviously, there’s always a lot more past than there is present, and even though it’s gone and cannot be changed, it influences now so much. It is the library from which we draw in order to create The Now.

As you get older and there’s a lot more past than there is going to be future, you somewhat inevitably find the past more important and look to it to illuminate the present. When you’re young and have your whole life ahead of you, you can’t wait to get onto the next thing; your lust for the new is insatiable.

But as years go by and you begin to feel the cold breath of mortality on your neck, and the hooded figure of The Reaper stands on what was once a distant hill, but which now seems worryingly close, the past becomes both how you understand life and how you mark it.

This might all be a little overly philosophical for a Monday morning but I blame Wayne Rooney for scoring his 250th goal for Manchester United. It’s such an amazing milestone and to me, seems to have happened so quickly. If you’re 18-25, I know it’ll seem like he’s been on the football wallpaper of your life forever. But to me, his glory days seems to have passed us by in the wink of a young girl’s eye.

Back in September 2004 (you remember 2004, you had more hope, less cynicism and didn’t have that gnawing ball of existential angst in the pit of your guts that makes you fear the future), I wrote a piece for F365 about Rooney’s hat-trick for United against Fenerbahce, just a few weeks into his career at Old Trafford. It seems scarcely believable that it is well over 12 years ago. This is a part of it, describing his amazing second goal that night.

‘It all seemed so inevitable – it’s the way he lets the ball do the work, the way he dummies to shoot, only momentarily, before striking it. It all happened in slow motion and it all seemed utterly perfect and in harmony. It’s as though Rooney is a shaman.

‘He looks like a creature of Middle Earth with funny little ears and globular head. His skin seems strange as though he’s not fully human. Every time he receives it, it doesn’t feel like an ordinary player has got the ball, it feels different, it feels weird really. It really blows me away.

‘Strangely though, I think we’re seeing the best of Rooney now. I’m not sure he’ll ever be as good in the future as he is right now. It’s like all the footballing genius is flowing through him uninterrupted by self-doubt or analysis. His doors of footbal lperception are now wide open but, as we get older, we close those doors a little bit at a time and it gets harder to be as you really are. You start thinking too much about everything and ossify into one state of being rather than being a free spirit.’

Okay, at the time, I was a man who indulged in the lifestyle choices of the semi-professional hedonist, but I reckon I called that right in some regard. But I still recall the moment clearly. And it is against those early Wayne moments (Wayments?) that the rest of his career has been judged and often found quite nakedly wanting.

But then what do we want?

Wayne has been an absolute genius in short flashes, the like of which we should never take for granted. Then came the running around like a pink shed, then came the talent exaggeration, then came the press toadying, then came the ceaseless headline puns, the pressure, the anger, the frustration and the exploitation. But those few jewels of brilliance remain and any moments of genius should be celebrated. The subsequent less stellar or mundane moments should not obscure the light from those instances.

It’s like those people who are disappointed the new Dylan album isn’t as good as ‘Blonde on Blonde’ or ‘Blood on the Tracks’. Isn’t someone coming up with two works of genius enough for these people? Isn’t being a briefly, occasionally brilliant footballer enough? Dylan’s poor albums shouldn’t weaken or dilute the brilliance of earlier records, and today’s huffing and puffing Rooney shouldn’t diminish the light of those moments such as against Fenerbahce that night.

Not being as good as you were at your peak is no crime. Being paid as if you are is idiotic to the point of being immoral and obscene. But that is not the artist’s crime, it is the crime of the venal, amoral industry, utterly craven to a world view of the masses as a grunting, malleable amorphous lumpen idio-theocracy, there to be milked.

Rooney’s career is coming to an end, probably in the next couple of years. It’s been a brief episode in our timeline of life, and, as nostalgia and history tends to do, we should embrace the best bits and forget the worst bits. And in doing so, we will make all our lives better in The Now.

Still think he looks a bit like a Hobbit, though.

John Nicholson

Johnny’s 12th Nick Guymer novel ‘Blood on the Tees‘ is out now, as is his first comic short novel ‘Knickers Alway Go Down Well‘.  The boy is nothing if not prolific.