on the street & at the game: النصر

. . . it means, victory, a popular name for a sports club, an arena, and a team, particularly one Ronaldo plays for, which we will get to. . .

holding the traffic up, MrBeast was shooting a video on the motorway in a private jet, on the way back from the gold market, where the cat is; why a gold market? are we investing? . . . although there is no doubt investment in gold belongs with inherited and symbolic wealth, it was a false lead for heritage sods and odds, but like every outing of this sort, an opportunity to see and experience another facet of Riyadh, its facets having since, although I have made some progress, multiplied into numbers I cannot yet count in Arabic.

The traffic was backed up, and the jet was on a truck, and the police assisted the gig and what the gig was really about, apart from finding out a local personage called MrBeast has the sway locally, to engineer a shoot on the motorway with a private jet on a truck, we had no idea.

Forced to correct it on the strength of cursory research, I had written The Beast. Re MrBeast read here of his land—

Beast Land is a first-of-its-kind destination inspired by the famous challenges of MrBeast, where themed zones, high-energy competitions, and immersive challenges create a fully gamified visitor journey. Earn points through games, ...

. . . did I say we finally got around to watching Squid Game? (yes, on checking, it's game, singular)

which also gamefies its visitor's journey, on the pain of death, to wealth. The question it raises is, Is this the game of life? And when it came out all sorts of people, some of whom you'd expect should have known better, joined the interweb discussion in a competition to find out who could give the best reading of the show. For example, it's about a) capitalism; b) a critique of capitalism; c) life under capitalism; d) people's suffering under capitalism: with two adjunct propositions, i. their suffering is self-inflicted; ii. they are products of the system, with further corollary questions to follow concerning determination and free will.

The online discussion, although not on pain of death but reputation, mirrored the competition, in which contestants played children's games. It could be said that we are all capitalism's children and must either reconcile that with our own humanity or not recognise the question. Squid Game is very good at raising the question, Is reconciliation possible?

As I look at the culture that is my present circumstance, with the Western view citing its human rights abuses, and my own experience of being witness to happiness and hospitality of the people in general (a tote bag at SAMOCA last night bore the legend, Happy Healthy Wealthy), the question is present, of a relation to commercial culture, the market and (best defined I think by Deleuze and Guattari as axiomatic) capitalism. Then what if not competition is axiomatic about capitalism? Everything else seems to be an abstraction bootstrapping another abstraction. The theoretical edifice, as we watch it do now, reaches a critical point, say, for example as is being experimented with now in the Rise Tower, at two kilometres above the earth, where it topples. And this too, although it might never come to the question of how to reconcile humanity and its project, I am trying to say, is the result of competition.

Gamification occurs on the basis, not the other way around, of competition. The market does not exist; or only exists associatively, as for Hayek it so closely resembles, in the individual decisions according to the rules of competition, the brain (and even better resembles today AI), that it ought to usurp the role of human agency in it, and make those decisions for us. Hayek has the post-war hangover of totalitarianism and how best to cure it.

The market is not then an axiom or the axiom of capitalism. Is competition? and if this is its role, of which the commercial market and linguistic games, and discursive games, are equally functions, is it not playing out again, however wrongly or badly extrapolated, social Darwinism? Isn't competition reprising the role competition came to be seen as having in the biological sciences, of evolution, at the end of the 19th century, and therefore progress, in the social sciences at the beginning of the 20th century? And on into the 21st . . .

. . . beyond the traffic jam caused by MrBeast. . . also note Riyadh Season, which we are in now at the site, from it we get the games of sport which Riyadh and the KSA is excited about, as forms of entertainment and aspects of its extremely profitable industry. . . we went shopping—

and came to this spice market, Saeed Bawazir Co., where—

if you were able to zoom in you might see the dark roast top left, and below it a lighter roast—the greens beyond are Arabica, which, mixed with cardamon and other spices, is the coffee offered to you in shopping malls, in hotels, in people's houses, light-coloured when brewed, in tiny cups, with dates (personally I need the dates otherwise it sours my stomach)—I asked for 200gm of the dark, Türkçe, it turned out to be, and 100gm of the coffee below it, Ethiopean, ground finely, esbiriso, and naem, mixed together, which we have been drinking since. And today I drink the last of the Brazil blend, that it does not surpass but surprisingly equals in strength and depth of flavour. Although I admit it does lack the pinch of spice we get from the peaberry. . .

Later—the game, the beautiful one. . . Held over in Victory Arena on the King Saud University Campus, my phone led us to underground parking at an apartment building. Can't be right. Back on the main road.

Kilometre after kilometre following the direction to U-turn. Unbelievable to locals that in NZ U-turning is mainly illegal. Blocked at every juncture by the imposition of an impenetrable concrete barrier. . . 7 kilometres away from and kick-off about to . . . why has maps not updated with info about these barriers?

We were nearing Boulevard City & World when the opportunity came to swing around . . . and retrace our route, all the way back again, not however to the underground parking at an apartment building. . . to the hectares of acreages of parking around Al-Awwal, parked up, directed by an usher (see previous post), often just kids, usually North African, to the bus. . .

that's the bus driver on the phone outside. Noone seemed to mind it was pressing on for an half hour after kick-off, apart from us, but look! we still managed to look delighted. . . How happy we were then to arrive—and upon arrival to find our gate, half-way around the arena, and on entering, noting the drink options of water and sodafizzpop sugary stuff, to have an usher, see above, say, up! And to push up in amongst the crowded stand, noting the rough concrete of this jewel among stadia, Ronaldo's home team's, and to reach the very top where we didn't think we were, to have a Jack Black character say, 14? 15? he seemed to be sitting in one of those, just take empty! so we did. How happy to be at the back, standing on our seats, and to see the emerald green close enough and the stars and be in the uniform crowd uniformed as fans of the right side, thankfully, and experience their big-boy-like excitement (yes of course there were women there too, I see one grinning at my phone (a note on phones, allowed, cameras sometimes confiscated), more, in fact than at the falconry expo and they were excited too!)—

There follows largely experimental footage responding less to details of a scorcher of a game, unbelievable goal hooked around by Ronaldo from the right side of the box, and 3 to João Félix, in a 5 – 1 thumping of Al Fateh, than to the noise, atmos, vibes and vibration:

and we danced out of the arena with the fans happy believing every million for each second he plays worth every riyal . . . please see at this juncture two reference photos before bus interior above. . . because these were the only clues we had as to where we parked our car.

so we started out descending the hill to the left of the gate we entered by, following the route taken by the bus which got us to the stadium, and then left, along the line of the barrier illustrating some coming-soon development, and left again . . . in the warm night, enjoying, however disconcerted that we hadn't heard them or had heard them coming from another direction altogether, the building noises which are as ubiquitous a feature of the nighttime as they are of the daytime, enjoying the diamonds cast, the footpath having, as often happens, run out, by the oncoming traffic on the shining polished asphalt, but not blinded by them and seeing the kids standing up in vehicles with sunroofs and the young and excited men waving Nassr team flags out car windows, and left . . . to wind up back at the stadium gate again. This called for a rethink. Where had we gone wrong?

We started out with more caution and the night wore on. And came to nowhere we recognised. Looking here for the awning-covered carparks which were unlit when we passed them out the right window on the bus, and where, remember, there was that car ahead which turned right, going the wrong way into the carpark, closer to the stadium by miles than we could find a park, and remember how we doubted they would, either, find a park. . . We came to a well-lit parking area. Remember, our area was underlit. . . but then, look again at the photo, oh, yes, the photo, there are lollipop lights and the building opposite where we parked. That looks like it! It was part of the campus of King Saud University and a bus came along with Boys Campus as the destination. . . but that wasn't it. Then we got out from under our own rods mentally for a minute and resolved to ask, . . .where are the ushers when you need them?

Security guards were gathered around a vehicle and the first person we asked and showed our photos to as the only clues we had deferred to a guard who answered in Arabic to the effect of, I don't have time for this, I've a job to do. And our interlocutor pursued, then relented, pointing, saying, down there, and to the left. Another set of officials approached and it seemed that cars left behind were being clamped. This raised the stakes of the game.

A young man approached luminous in a thobe and asked to see the photos. Seeming to recognise the lollipop lights and the building shown, he confirmed the other's instructions, yes, down . . . to the right. So we went down. . .

A striped curb appeared out of the warm gloom, the night was like a dark convex mirror distorting all directions and dimensions, it was familiar, because stopped at a curb like that we had waited for the bus driver to finish his phonecall and get us to the game 30 minutes after kick-off, now how many hours ago? Looking up we saw the lollipops and in the murk beyond the light that, as if it were shrugged off, fell from them, all on its own a white car, perhaps. . .

. . . It was. Unclamped. Found. We drove away not quite believing it.

love from Riyadh,

حب من الرياض

Simon