SEARCH ENGINE BLUES
“Jose Mourinho is very Faustian,”
a sports journalist said that to me last weekend while we were chatting at the wedding of a mutual friend… and no, I didn’t understand what he was talking about either. But I didn’t say that.
Instead, I nodded in an appreciative way and shifted the conversation to the Champions League final that was scheduled to start while we were eating dinner. But I didn’t leave it there.
When I got home the next day, I sat down at the computer and typed “Faustian” into the search engine, and I soon had the background on what he was trying to say. And, if I were a truly modern man, I could have blanked the other guests for a bit and done the same thing on my phone to get that information right there at the wedding.
But I’ve had a go at the modern generation many times in this column for using their phones too often when, in my opinion, they would be better off concentrating on other things, such as the people they are with; so, I didn’t do that. But I have to admit, phones and computers are incredible tools when used properly. And, like many other internet investigations I done in the past, this one led to more questions, more searches and more knowledge.
In today’s case, it also resulted in an opening sentence that features two legends and a defense-minded manager.
Faust is the central figure in a classic German legend based on someone who
lived 500 years ago.
The successful well-educated character is not satisfied with his life, so he makes a pact with the devil at a crossroads, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures.
So, “Faust” and the adjective “Faustian” suggest someone has sacrificed spiritual values for power, knowledge, or material gain.
I got that information from my first search, and while I’m not a big fan of the way Mourinho sets-up his teams, I have to say I think the journalist was being a bit harsh… even if the Portuguese manager doesn’t always play the beautiful game. Then, out of curiosity, I searched Robert Johnson, a modern legend who also supposedly met the devil at a crossroads.
Robert Johnson was a real person who lived in the Mississippi delta in the early 1900s, but no one liked his early music. No matter how much he practised, he didn’t seem to improve. Then Johnson disappeared.
The legend says while he was gone, he went a crossroads in Mississippi and waited till midnight for a large man dressed in black to appear, and the legend claims that was the devil.
The man in black promised to make Johnson the greatest blues musician in the world in return for his soul, and when Robert Johnson reappeared on the music scene, he was a changed man. He could sing, write music, and play the guitar like a demon. In fact, when Johnson played, people swore they heard two guitars. No one ever saw the second musician, leading many to believe the devil himself was playing alongside Johnson.
And I told you that because it’s a good example of what can happen when we look for information on the internet.