Lucky You: The National Meet Ross Gay
by Aaron Burch
Editor’s Note: When I started this project, I knew there were a few writers I wanted to reach out to, and Aaron was one of them. I’ve always loved not just how he writes, but what he writes about. When he emailed back that he had something about The National and Ross Gay— that, exactly that, was what I wanted to do with this space. (And while I didn’t know I’d be totally overwhelmed with basketball news when I published this, I’m not sorry the essay has so much about basketball’s beauty, which does calm some of my Luka rage.) No one does joy with the momentum and piercing humanity like Aaron does, and, were I Stefan from SNL, I would not be incorrect in telling you this essay has EVERYTHING: especially joy.
The cover of Be Holding, by Ross Gay: Purchase Here
On stage, with a smile that, were it not such a cliché, I would describe as lighting up the room, a smile that exemplifies and beams out the very joy and delight his collected poems and essays these last few years have made as their kind of thesis statement, and with an acknowledgement that he knows plenty of people—in general, but even plenty here today in this audience!—don’t really care about basketball, Ross Gay introduces and describes Be Holding, his book-length, single-sentence poem that takes as its jumping off point (pun half-intended) Dr. J’s “baseline scoop” in Game 4 of the 1980 NBA Finals against the Los Angeles Lakers, perhaps the greatest individual basketball play of all time, that also becomes an opportunity for Gay to think and write about pick-up basketball and friendship and love and violence and family and beauty and life and being a human… and plenty else—maybe, at times, in its own unique way, everything else?—and then he says he is going to read from it for fifteen minutes and then he is going to read another poem that will take another fifteen minutes and then he will do a short Q&A, and I’m a little buzzed, because I just came from meeting a couple friends for a couple beers, because our schedules aligned and allowed, because my final classes of the semester are now a couple days behind me, and because I moved in with my girlfriend over the summer and thus out of the city where I teach and where we met for beers and where I am now watching Ross Gay read and where I’ve lived for the last eighteen years—wait. can that be right? eighteen?? my life in Ann Arbor, away from the Washington where I grew up and where I, at times, do, and at other times am not sure if I do or do not, call ‘home,’ is old enough to vote, to join the military, to be considered a legal adult? that doesn’t seem like it could possibly true, though I just did the math again, one of my favorite genres of math, the kinds of numbers I think about and rearrange and compute, solving for ‘x’ and then starting back at the beginning and swapping variables, computing anew, this math of life, of getting older, of what it means and what it takes and what it takes out of you and what it gives back, all to be a person in this world, and this specific equation keeps outputting that same impossible number (18!), and the years really do just keep whizzing past us, they keep piling up, keep becoming larger and larger numbers of those left now behind us, don’t they?—and so coming to town for the reading meant a commute and if you commute to where you work on a day when you don’t have to work you may as well grab some beers with friends while you’re there, and we chatted and we hung out and we enjoyed our beers and we enjoyed the company, if I may speak for all of us—which I am going to, which I just did—and we weren’t celebrating, per se, but also, yes, we were, we were celebrating, if I may choose to think of hanging out with friends as a kind of celebration—which I am going to, which I just did—a choosing that makes these unstoppable piling up of years themselves celebratory, which they are, in defiance of the aches and pains and regrets and sorrows and woes and an infinite other kinds of sadnesses and hardships that are built-in and a part of life as well, which is all to say, life is hard, we all know that—‘we’ being everyone, all of us, but also specifically in the three of us having beers—but in that moment we were in good spirits, we were hanging out, we were celebrating, which of course meant we agreed to the proposed “one more?” which meant we stayed a little too long, which meant we were running late, but it was ok, readings never start on time, so we asked for the bill and we paid for the bill and we set off, leaving the bar and heading the couple of blocks to the museum for the reading, and we’d all slipped into that specific kind of hustle-walk that isn’t a run and isn’t even that much faster than just walking but it signified—to each other, to everyone we passed, to ourselves—that we were hustling, , we were moving somewhere with speed and with dedication and with purpose, and maybe the walk itself was a kind of celebration, too, sure, why not, but when we got here, the room was packed—packed!—and I’ve been to countless readings in this museum basement auditorium before, and I’ve seen it full, before never like this, it was standing room only, sitting in the aisles room only, and so I forged ahead, leaving my friends behind, looking for any small, human-sized hole I could squeeze myself into, and I found a small square of floor next to the last seat at the end of the last row in the theater, a space I am incredibly lucky to find and which I will later think of as my seat for a kind of church, a kind of worship, and then later still will realize to be accessible seating, the space open for wheelchair seating, though here, now, in this moment, I recognize it only as available space for me for this event, and I unshouldered my shoulder bag and took off my coat and placed both on the floor in front of me and crouched down, and a little buzzed on beer and on friendship and on celebrating life, Ross Gay’s voice puts me in what I can only think to cheesily describe as my happy place, it taps this pleasure point in my brain, like the aural version of a runner’s high, there is something about the tenor, and his cadence, and the way the very delivery of it all sounds and feels like an offering to us of that very thesis’ed joy and delight, but also, and probably, truly most of all, it is familiar.
“Catalog of Unabashed Gratitute,” Ross Gay with Bon Iver
In April 2021, Jagjaguwar released Dilate Your Heart, a spoken word album of Ross Gay reading five poems, each with musical accompaniment. It is an album I probably always would have enjoyed, but the timing of it certainly heightened that enjoyment. One year into the pandemic, the world was no longer on lockdown but was far from feeling anywhere back to normal. Whatever normal means. Part of my new normal meant listening to records with a fervor and focus that I never really had before.
A few months before, in the thick of the first winter of COVID, my girlfriend and I started painting together. A fun couples activity to do inside, replacing neighborhood walks and hanging out on her deck and any number of other outdoor activities. I hadn’t drawn or painted anything in… twenty-five years? Could that be right? And there it is again, that math of getting older. Over half my life since I’d last drawn anything. Since I’d been a teenager. It set its hooks in me—back in me—immediately. Like riding a bike; like hanging out with childhood friends who you’ve moved away from and only get to see on occasion; like saying the Lord’s Prayer again upon prompting, after years of not; like whatever your metaphor of choice of something long dormant feeling, upon return, as familiar as if time and distance didn’t exist.
More than the last twenty years of writing, and editing and publishing literary journals, drawing and painting for maybe the first time made me feel like an artist. It made me rethink and recontextualize my life and how I’d spent it and what I cared about and what brought me joy. I don’t think it made me newly or differently appreciate art, but more that it gave me a new vocabulary or a new understanding or at least clarified something I’d probably always believed but only ever subconsciously. A kind of translation or crystalizing that is one of the beautiful, magical powers of art.
Home alone in my apartment, I spent many nights listening to records and getting a little high and zoning out, or listening to records sober and zoning out, or sometimes listening to records and getting a little high or staying sober and not zooming out but painting at my desk. And some of those nights I would unsleeve my Dilate Your Heart album and listen to Ross Gay, accompanied by Bon Iver, read his “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude” and I’d make art. And it was infectious, this unabashed gratitude spinning off my record player and urging me to feel unabashed in my gratitude as well, making me feel thankful for my family and my friends and my girlfriend and my life and records and for painting again after so many years away and just for art, the making of it, the receiving of it, its very presence in my life and in the world.
The scoop shot that inspired a book: it is art itself
“You might have noticed there’s nowhere to go,” Gay starts to read, the opening of Be Holding, and he keeps going, and it feels like listening to records alone in my apartment, in that, despite the energy of the incredibly full room, it feels like I am beautifully, blissfully alone in this moment, and also in that my brain swims back and forth through tuning into the poem’s frequency and then letting go, zoning out, drifting off into memories and nostalgia dreams and whatever else from my life a word or phrase or line from the poem evokes for me. I’m reminded, not only of basketball, but very much of basketball—of playing basketball in college, and shooting hoops by myself in my parents’ driveway before that, and watching basketball at the bar in grad school one night that led to meeting a girl, and going to basketball games with my step-daughter and ex-wife, and watching basketball alone in my apartment during the odd and amazing 2020 NBA Bubble season—and I’m remembering how much I spent the semester that ended two days ago preaching to my students that you can write about anything—no matter how small, how personal, how much you might think it is boring or cliché or that others wouldn’t care. You just have to make it not-boring, not-cliché. You have to make your reader care.
“Nique and Jordan,” Gay reads, starting to list great players who came in Dr. J’s wake. “Hakeem the Dream and Clyde the Glide, Barkley, The Glove, and yo, remember Shawn Kemp?—” And I do, I do remember Shawn Kemp. I’m a sports-loving, nostalgia-prone man in his 40s who grew up outside of Seattle in the 90s; remembering Shawn Kemp is a very part of who I am. One of the pieces of art I bought during the pandemic when I promised myself to spend more of what, in “normal times,” would have been going out money on art was a beautiful large print of an illustration of Kemp. I not only remember Shawn Kemp but the simple act of hearing his name invoked in public brings an immediate and large smile to my face. It must have to someone else as well, because Gay’s question brings a “Reign Man!” answer from the crowd, from someone who also very much does remember Shawn Kemp, like this is the call and response portion of the sermon. Ross Gay stops. He smiles. There it is again. That projection of joy and delight, of memory and surprise, of gratitude. Everyone in the room who remembers Shawn Kemp is smiling too. Hell, right now, in this moment, no matter age or fandom, everyone remembers Shawn Kemp! I imagine this to be true. Why couldn’t it be? I don’t look around to confirm. It doesn’t matter. It feels true.
Ross Gay
Gay laughs and answers back, “Yes, yes, Reign Man!” and then keeps reading and I’m listening and enjoying but I’m also still remembering Shawn Kemp, which has me remembering the Seattle Supersonics, which has me remembering my roommates in college working concessions at Sonics games, which has me remembering (again) playing basketball with my college roommates at the court down the road from our house, which has me remembering a flood of memories about hanging out with friends in college, which has me remembering going to hardcore shows with my college roommates, which has me thinking (again, again!) about all these different forms of congregation and collective joy—playing sports, and watching sports, and seeing live music, and being at a reading…—which has me remembering going to Mariners games with my dad all growing up, which has me remembering Griffey—who I also bought a print of an illustration of, by the same artist as my Kemp print, the two hanging as a pair above my record player, a small area in my apartment as a kind of altar to the sport and music and childhood and art that make up such a large part of who I am, who I want to be, how I think of myself, what I think is important and meaningful and joyful—which has me remembering Ken Griffey Jr. scoring from first on Edgar Martinez's double to left in the bottom of the 11th inning of the deciding Game 5 of the ALDS against the Yankees, sending the Mariners to the ALCS for the first time in franchise history, probably my favorite sports play of all time, probably my version of Dr. J’s baseline scoop for Ross Gay, the highlight that, whenever I rewatch, or sometimes even just when I think about, will make me emotional, will give me the chills, the excitement and the nostalgia and the memory and the joy of it all.
Ken Griffey Jr. Sends the Mariners to the ALCS; these plays we remember, they become DNA
Gay finishes reading as much of Be Holding as he’d given himself time to read and chats with us a little and then introduces his second poem. “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude.” And everything feels like it’s come full circle, like the whole room, the whole night, my whole life is Rubik’s Cubing itself into place.
“Friends,” he reads, the first word of the poem, and what a beautiful, welcoming, warm way to open a poem. It gives me those chills, those goosebumps, those same electrical sparks jolting all through my body as watching or even just thinking about Dave Niehaus yelling, “I don’t believe it!” as the Mariners dugout empties, dogpiling on top of Griffey at homeplate in one of the purest displays of group excitement and joy I’ve ever seen.
At some point in the middle of Gay’s reading, I get emotional. I don’t start to cry, but I feel like I could. The poem, and this live reading of it, has me on the brink of this emotional response made physical action. Because there are moments of sadness and heartache, and because the poem evokes the kind of nostalgia in me that often drives emotion, but because it is so joyful and wonderful and beautiful, too.
“Bloodbuzz, Ohio,” by The National
Which reminds me of four months ago and seeing The National. I was able to go because a friend had an extra ticket; the very friend, in fact, who I just an hour ago was having beers with! I went by myself, thinking I might meet him and his friends there, but the timing hadn’t lined up and so I watched the concert alone which, while I love doing things with friends, sometimes there is a beauty and joy in enjoying a communal activity by yourself, too. I stood there in the crowd, shoulder-to-shoulder with the rest of the audience, and watched one of my favorite bands do the very thing that they are so good at, that hundreds and thousands of us had come together in congregation to watch and listen and singalong to and admire and be a part of, and at multiple different moments throughout the show, I almost cried because it was so good, because the very act of experiencing art can be so joyful and wonderful and beautiful.
Watching and listening to Ross Gay, I make this connection, one more thing art can do that I so love—send you careening off, making connections between things you never had before, memories opening up into new memories, a giant sprawling root system of all of life’s connectivity.
“Mr. November,” Live at the Brooklyn Academy, 2010
Later, when I get home, I’ll listen to some of my The National records and zone out for an hour or so. I’ll remember how the first time I saw The National was in grad school. I went with my girlfriend at the time. The girl I met while watching basketball at the bar. She was a paralympic athlete who won five National Wheelchair Basketball Association Championships, was a three-time Paralympian including as captain of a team that won gold. When we saw The National, we did so from special accessible seating, the memory of which will make me realize what this floor area I’m sitting on right now is. And then I’ll log onto Zoom to meet with my writing group buddies, another of my favorite activities, this opportunity to share and talk about art with friends.
But that’s all later. Right now Ross Gay is reading and we’re all listening and it feels like a kind of worship. And I feel thankful and lucky to be here for it. And that—reminding and making me feel thankful and lucky to be alive—is maybe my favorite magic tricks of art of all.
“Vanderlyle Crybaby Geek,” shot by Aaron Burch: “All the very best of us string ourselves up for love.”
Aaron Burch is the author of the essay collection, A Kind of In-Between, and the novel, Year of the Buffalo, among others. He edited the craft anthology How to Write a Novel: An Anthology of 20 Craft Essays About Writing, None of Which Ever Mention Writing, and is currently the editor of the journals Short Story, Long and HAD. His next book, TACOMA, will be out from Autofocus Books in 2026.