On the Relief of Rihanna

What happens when you stop trying so hard?

Our Lord and Savior.

One thing they should really warn you about dating a person from Philadelphia is that, should you eventually marry this person, you are also committing yourself to a lifelong relationship with the Philadelphia Eagles.

I like it, actually. For someone who grew up in several places, New Jersey and then Whistler and then Vancouver, and who therefore lacks any deep athletic allegiances, I like having a team to root for. I especially love the Sixers (because who doesn’t enjoy the bathos of poor Ben Simmons?!), but Philadelphia is, as I have been repeatedly informed by the person I am married to, a football town.

Five years ago, when the Eagles were in the Super Bowl, Andrew and I went down to Philly to watch the game at Moriarty’s, a bar in Center City, with a group of friends. And then they won! And it was so much fun! We flooded out to Broad Street along with the pole-climbing crowds, and I was absolutely in love the Eagles, and especially with sweet Nick Foles, so much so that, in my newfound zealotry, I tried to acquire his memoir for Random House (true story). This time around, five years later, we obviously went back to Philly to watch the game. It was a different bar, with a different assemblage of people, and, as you already know, a different outcome. I don’t really understand football, so I can’t tell you whether or not to be mad about that call the referee made at the very end, but here’s what I do understand.

Rihanna is a goddamn genius. I didn’t just love her performance. I felt a gratitude for the performance that was, honestly, kind of profound. I hadn’t realized how much tension had been mounting in my body over the previous hours, but I actually felt physically relieved, like I felt a very tangible unclenching in my body, when she appeared onscreen.

Watching the Eagles play in the Super Bowl while surrounded by Eagles fans is definitely ... an experience. Not necessarily in a bad way! But in those moments, surrounded by people wearing Hurts jerseys and “It’s a Philly Thing” t-shirts, you are aware, you are palpably aware, of how much is riding on the outcome of this game. Not just a trophy and a parade, but a very deep sense of identity. If you win, you are a winner. If you lose, you are a loser. Therefore you have no choice but to care about the outcome. The contingency of this identity means that you have to care. There is a lot, A LOT, riding on this game.

The players are obviously aware of this, too. And what does that contingency produce? A whole lot of effort. They are going to try their absolute hardest to win. They are going to perform insane feats of athleticism. They are going to be graceful and gritty and nimble and stubborn, and they are going to, as the cliche goes, leave it all on the field. I find this deeply admirable. I watch this striving with astonishment, and sometimes even reverence. There’s a weird tenderness to it. Among other things, these players are making themselves incredibly vulnerable. They want to win. They want it SO BADLY. And when you tell the world you want something, you are leaving open the possibility that you might not get that thing, and then the world will see you fail. And this is absolutely terrifying. (Which is why, among other reasons, I have such a hard time sharing my fiction with other people when it’s in-progress. It scares me shitless!)

So there’s a lot of tension to trying. Not just for the players on the field, but also for the people watching. (As I’m typing this, I wonder if this is why the Super Bowl is such a massively food-centric occasion. The wings, the fries, the nachos, the dips, the pizzas, the subs, not to mention the beer. All that nervous energy! It’s stress-eating! People need something to do with their hands and mouths.) Look, I’m not a mindreader, so I can’t tell you exactly what the other Eagles fans in the bar on Sunday night were saying to themselves, but if I had to make an educated guess, those inner monologues would be something like: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. On a scale of one to Benjamin Franklin, I am about a … three? … when it comes to my degree of Eagles-investment. But, still. You can’t help absorbing a whole lot of that tension.

And then—and then! Halftime arrived. Descending from the heavens like a deity come to save us, there was Rihanna, dressed in red. The first burst of appreciation I felt was intellectual. She looks amazing, I thought. I forgot how much I like this song. And then: Is she pregnant? Is this how she’s announcing her pregnancy? This is so badass. But then, at a certain point, my thoughts began to recede. I was mostly aware of the change in my body. I felt a kind of … settling. A physical calming. Muscles I hadn’t realized were tense began to relax.

Maybe it was out of pregnancy-necessity that Rihanna kept her performance relatively straightforward. No costume changes, no guests, no elaborate choreography. Or maybe it was because Rihanna is just really fucking cool. But either way, it struck me as one of the most memorable Super Bowl performances I’d ever seen. The contrast was incredible. What she exhibited, in those fifteen moments, was the very opposite of what we’d just been witnessing on the field. I’m good, her body language said. My identity doesn’t hinge on this performance. I’m doing this my way. I’m doing this because I feel like doing it. The magic didn’t happen because she was trying to prove something. The magic happened because she had seen past the proving.

---

This is something I think about a lot, vis a vis writing. Why do we sit down and do this every day? What are we trying to prove? Who are we trying to impress? Is this a game, and we’re trying to win? How cognizant are we of the reader? Does the writer believe that her identity as a writer hinges on the outcome—on the reviews, on the sales? Is she trying to persuade or entertain the audience? Or does she write solely for herself? These are tricky questions to answer.

I was once in a yoga class where the teacher said: “Try it easy.” For a person who is often inclined to the proving—even if only proving something to myself—those words struck a chord in me. I was familiar with the feeling of trying. But the idea that trying could be easy? That I could continue to try new things—whether doing a headstand or writing a book—without attaching so much meaning to the outcome, without making it so hard on myself? The idea that effort could also be a form of play? This was foreign to me.

You can hear a lot of wise things in life. You can read the books and listen to the podcasts and do the meditations, but you can still wind up doing many un-wise things. I often forget that good advice. I often revert to trying it hard. I get stuck writing some uncooperative scene and I decide the best solution is to just keep banging my head against the wall. But here is the magic of (as Elizabeth Gilbert calls it) earth school. Every person has a message they really need to hear. If you stay open-minded and curious, life has a way of delivering that message through every available portal. Including—yes—Rihanna herself, soaring high above a football stadium in Phoenix, shimmering with a calm that is utterly and brilliantly at odds with the largeness of the moment.

---

Happy Friday, friends! Instead of a letter of recommendation, I am going to offer a little shameless self-promotion. The paperback of Our American Friend has been pushed out slightly, but it’s coming out SOON! February 28! You can order it here, or wherever you buy your books. And there’s a teaser chapter for my new novel, The Helsinki Affair, at the very end—if you wind up picking up a copy of the paperback, and wind up reading that teaser, please email me and tell me what you think! You can always reach me at hello [at] annapitoniak [dot] com. I love hearing from you!