the two sebastian ahos
I’m sensitive to names, to first names and last names and the spellings of each, to names of car models and brands and the visual clutter of words we endure every day. I started to watch hockey last year, my first true foray into sports as an adult. All of the players I knew as a youth had retired and been replaced with hundreds of new names, and even new teams—such is sports. At first I couldn’t imagine learning a sea of new names but, nearly a year into regularly following NHL, I now know more names than I would care to admit. Hockey always held curious names, as a youth I learned the over-represented French-Canadian names and their improbable pronunciations. They also felt like very private names; hardly anyone I know follows hockey, and even the generational talents who emerge never make it mainstream like NBA players or NFL players.
It’s within this context I found out about the two Sebastian Aho’s, who will be curiously going tête-à-tête in the 1st round playoffs for the Stanley Cup this weekend.
Reminded of a section from Harmony Korine’s A Crackup At The Race Riots called The Two James Madisons:
THE TWO JAMES MADISONS
There are several things that you should know, the hows and the whys that I ran for public office; what was my reasoning and where I wanted to go with It. As a child my older brother took me to see the film king Kong. In the audience, after the event, I spotted a tall slight man with a short horseshoe beard and a tan overcoat. I thought him to be very dapper in his dress. He seemed quite at peace with himself, in the middle and calm. I asked my brother the name of the man. My brother, a keen gimp, knew immediately. He told me that it was James Madison, no relation to the politician. he added. He was, in fact, a newspaper writer who was known to have had a profound impact on architectural criticism, a truly stellar figure in the world of urban design. It was the connection between the names that I was taken by. he and the famous politician were in fact physical opposites. It was these two men who I modeled myself after. I remember from my observations that one afternoon in the theater his slight, delicate movements, the falling wrist and the straight neck, the self-assured attitude, the almost imperceptible air of superiority that enveloped him so that he seemed impervious to the tawdry goings-on of everyday life. It was this one afternoon in the theater that so struck me that years later it was this James Madison of my memory who I imitated. Then I took on the personage of another, the politician, his stern face in the passages of books. A mediocre man with a jutting jaw and a little shapeless forehead. It was in this manner that I made my way in the world, that I was introduced and that
1 could clear my throat and have men listen and take heed of my opinions and observations. The women were no different really, except they would more or less swoon and bop, their eyes hoping that perhaps I might engage them in some idle chatter. It was in this order that I adopted the mannerisms and countenances of the two James Madisons. My brother's laughter fills the room when we have this discussion. He says, "You know it could have gone the other way, you could have taken on King Kong."
Names hold a lot of power, but also can seem arbitrary. I’m glad to see we are past the literary trend of naming your protagonist ‘protagonist’ or S. or something similarly esoteric. I don’t know the probability of two people having the same name or spelling, I am personally always surprised and excited when someone has the same spelling of ‘Damien’ as me but that might be easier attributed to my narcissism. I do love to think about the birthday paradox and all the probability pop psychology articles that seem to describe a situation that violates all your common sense. Maybe it’s perfectly probable that two guys named Sebastian Aho made it to the NHL and their teams will be playing each other in a playoff.
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