Jottings - Slice of life - 256 ( Bruce Lee - the art, the legend, the man and his myth)

Jottings - Slice of life - 256 ( Bruce Lee - the art, the legend, the man and his myth)

( This is a long essay, triggered after I watched "Enter the Dragon" ( for God knows how many'eth time). Over the years, I have been reading as much as possible on lives of athletes who have pushed barriers that seemed insurmountable. Starting with Roger Bannister, to Sergei Bubka, to Pele, to Edwin Moses, to Carl lewis, to Michael Phelps, to Roger Federer, and of course Bruce lee - my childhood hero. All of them possess a madness, a stern resolve and commitment, hardwork and tons of talent. Beyond all of the above, there is an elusive spiritual quality about these champions which shone through when they performed on their respective stages. Bruce lee certainly had the mystique, and he still does, forty five years after his death. This essay is my tribute to Lee - the most enigmatic legend of all time)

For many years, a framed poster of Bruce lee as seen in “Enter the dragon” hung in my room. In it, the martial art maestro is captured standing in his trademark stance of defensive readiness with body erect, legs smartly crossed, standing on his toes for agility and balance , wearing only a loose black boxing pant hugging his proportioned hips revealing just enough of his bulging abdominal musculature , holding his favorite weapon ninjaku exposing those sculpted and toned muscles glistening with a healthy sheen of manly sweat, and above all - those sharp eyes which gleamed alertly out of their corners in relaxed anticipation of an approaching enemy. The entire picture is set against a background of the steel bars of an underground prison cell from which he famously fights his way to confront Han - the king of an illegal empire and a renegade Shaolin monk - in the grand finale of the inimitable encounter within the glass house when the treacherous Han coming from behind, is impaled to a lance with a spontaneous kick that comes from nowhere. The picture was pure delight. For a Bruce Lee aficionado, all this story could be read from that singular pose he strikes in the picture. I had this poster with me for nearly a decade, before it vanished among many things we discarded as we moved from one place to another. It was gifted to me by an elderly student at the Karate class I was attending as a kid. The year was 1976, and it was three years since “enter the Dragon” was released. I am not sure, at this distance, why I studied Karate in the first place? Was it because I was enamored watching the karate-ka’s ( students learning martial arts were addressed in Japanese. Ka means student ) clad in white uniforms with colored belts doing their weekly five mile jogs as they passed by my home , or was it because the Karate school was conducted in a YMCA nearby and for a weak kid like me, it was considered good to join some sort of physical exercise?, or was it the lure and the lithe grace and power of Bruce lee in Enter the dragon that blew my mind, and spurred my interest to become a martial art champion like him. I dont know, and dont remember. But I ended studying a particular form of martial art called “Budokai” for three to four years under a talented and strict Master, and during that time, there was no doubt in my mind, that Bruce lee was my God, my guru, my idol and all that I ever wanted to be in my life.

My teacher was a short man, with a goatee and always a spring in his step. He had renamed himself as Bruce Roberts ( his original name was Roberts) as reverence to Bruce lee, and so had many others during that time who venerated or sought to imitate Bruce lee . Along with Mohammad Ali, Bruce lee was perhaps the most influential fighters of the Twentieth century. In the case of Lee, the myth, the aura became even more stronger and pervasive because of his sudden demise, and unfulfilled life. At the age of 32, at the peak of his career and fame, Lee succumbed to rare form of brain enlargement. Mystery still surrounds his death, but little did the audience , who watched “Enter the Dragon” in August of 1973, know that Lee had passed away three weeks earlier. In fact, Many believed that Enter the dragon was Lee’s first movie, when it was his last. I certainly did not know that Lee was dead when I saw the movie for the first time in 1976.

Who was this Man?

Bruce lee was born in San Francisco to reasonably wealthy parents as Li Jun Fan, but true to the American spirit, a Caucasian nurse, while discharging him, wrote the name in the register as Bruce lee - because it was easier to pronounce. It stuck. Soon after his birth, the family moved back to Hong Kong and Bruce spent his formative years there in school and learnt the rudiments of martial arts in the wing-chun style. Back in the US, he majored in philosophy, married a docile girl who was to become his greatest support in later years, became a father, and had sweeping ambitions of stardom, especially in movies. Philosophy and martial arts are strange bedmates. When they combine, they produce an eclectic outlook on life. Especially, the Chinese form of martial arts, which is heavily influenced by buddhistic doctrines of “No effort is real effort” and the notion that response of the body reflects the state of the mind. Bruce lee was a keen student, well read and gifted with natural bodily speed, grace and talent. During his formative years, he grew up watching the great Mohammad Ali, the man who transformed Boxing from mere brute fighting grounded in power, to an art that combined grace, speed and tact. Watching Ali move in the ring and attacking when least expected was a turning point in Bruce’s understanding of the art of fighting. If martial arts is a way of living, then Lee believed it had to evolve to accomodate all forms. The only goal is to attack or defend in the moment, as it arrives, without preconceived moves. Lee started experimenting, learning and pushing himself to limits of physical fitness. In those early days, when taut bodies, toned muscles, and low fat was not yet as fad, lee set the pace. Convinced that no style is really sacrosanct, he broke existing barriers of technique and formalism, and charted a path that would assimilate all fighting techniques into a method that in reality was no method at all. He called his approach Jeet Kune Do , or the “the way of the intercepting fist”. As he famously says in the “Enter the dragon” “ You can call it the art of fighting without fighting.” This style juggled between boxing, naughtiness, force, athleticism, efficiency, simplicity, directness and speed combined with a primal raw feeling that comes from a center much deeper than ones personality. Deeply influenced by the writings of Alan watts, the zen guru of the sixties, and the sagely J. Krishnamurti’s insights into choiceness awareness, Lee compiled his philosophy of Jeet Kune Do lying in a hospital bed after one of the earliest episodes of bodily illness that would eventually take his life. When he recovered he knew his path and set out to walk it. Between 1963 till his death, the martial schools he founded, the movies he acted, and the esoteric observations he made on his style, catapulted Jeet kune Do to its heights of glory. So much so , after Bruce lee, almost every martial art practitioner, both in movie and otherwise, had a touch a Lee’s art, style and unassumed arrogance. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that within a decade, Bruce lee changed the face of martial arts. Before “Enter the dragon” lee had acted in twenty odd movies, including “The green Hornet” - his first appearance. But only in “Enter the dragon”, the crescendo of his art, did all the elements fall into place. Warner brothers, the producers of the movie, spent less than a hundred thousand on making it; but by the time the movie released on 6th August 1973, Lee was dead, and the audience who watched the film knew an epochal moment had arrived in action cinema. It was the biggest grosser for Warner brothers. During the seventies, the movie achieved cult status. Elvis priestly was proud of possessing a 35 mm copy of the film in his private collection and claimed to have watched it hundreds of times; the movie continued to run its full length in a theater in Iran with audience refusing to leave the hall even as Ayatollah komeni was overthrowing the Pahlavi regime in 1979 and the city were burning all around; for twenty years after Lee’s death, the movie was regularly released in dozens of cinema halls in the US, and each time, passionate Lee fans came to watch it with the same ritualistic reverence. By 1990, the movie had earned around 400 million dollars. Warner brothers couldn’t have hoped for a better investment, and Lee himself wouldn’t have hoped for a better finale to his brief, intense and revolutionary life than the success of movie and its subsequent frenzy.

What then is the legacy of Bruce Lee? Its forty-five years since his untimely demise, and even today speculations about his death ranging from murder to suicide to depression abound. In a way his death compounded the brilliance of his life. I started questioning Lee’s legacy much later in my life. There are two sides to it. There is no doubt he was one of the finest exponents of martial art form. Once he realized that he had enough talent, he worked tirelessly to perfect his style and chisel his body. In the words of Phil Och, a famous folk singer, who wrote when he saw Bruce for the first time “ It is the science of the body taken to the highest form, and the violence, no matter how outrageous, is always strangely purifying” Even when Bruce stood still, we could feel a movement around him, a palpable electrifying presence that shadowed his nimble yet firm steps. Until Bruce lee’s time, action was dominated by the gun slinging western cowboys, and the gadget filled Bond films. Physical action was push, a slap or a jab at best. But Lee changed that perception. In the twenty movies he acted in, he created a new paradigm for on-screen fighting that was at once manly, exhilarating and graceful. He catered to a need ingrained deep within our nature - The sheer pleasure of dominating someone with our bare hands. It is a natural human instinct, and Bruce lifted that instinct to artistic heights. Chuck Norris, Jackie chan , Jimmy Kelly and whoever came after lee’s time, invariably had the stamp of his style etched in their movements. A thousand Lee’s sprouted across the globe imitating his art and style. Walking, speaking and dressing like him became a fashion in the seventies and eighties. People who knew him in his formative years gained popularity basking in his glory.

On the flip side, not many realize that Bruce lee was never a professional fighter. At best, he was involved in a few gang related skirmishes during his younger and wilder days, but never once during his life time, was he matched up for a real fight without the artificial glare of camera and footlights of a movie. To that extent, he was an untested opponent. Lee was not a tall man either, and neither did he have weight of a professional boxer. His art was confined to treating martial arts as a soulful exercise, and not to plow down opponents in real time. It is the unanimous opinion of seasoned martial art practitioners that Lee would have failed if he had fought a real bout in the ring. And the other thing that many do not know is this: Lee was arrogant of his talent ( excusable perhaps in a man of his talents), and paranoiacally obsessed with fame and glory. For an asian immigrant, during the period civil unrest was fermenting, to be recognized in Hollywood was a dream come true. Lee rode that wave tenaciously, and without much support from anyone. He was a self made man, and the pressure of keeping up to his promise was getting to him, and he began relying on drugs to soothe his fraying nerves. To keep himself in top physical condition, he dieted and exercised to the point of extremity that doctors were worried that there wasn’t even the minimum fat required in his body to function effectively. He didn't bother as along as his muscles rippled as he flexed them with dexterity. He increasingly neglected his family; and fame, as it so often does, bought with it the passions of infidelity. Lastly, Lee did not invent any new technique. His strength was the ability to convincingly articulate a particular strain of philosophy to rationalize his lack of a specific style or tradition. The few interviews that remain of Lee show him to a convincing speaker with very positive body language. He mastered the media, and borrowed and used catch phrases freely from spiritual masters he had read, clothed, of course, in his own fighting metaphors. His biggest strength was bringing all his technique, philosophy and charm together to perfection on screen, for his students, and to generations of youngsters after him.

In a way, this essay helps in completing a full circle for me. As a young boy, Lee was my hero, my fantasy. Nothing could destroy his superman image in my mind. I would wake up in the mornings summoning the power of Lee, before anything important for the day happens, and a reverential glance at the poster in my room was enough to pardon all my sins, and give me courage to face my enemies at school. If someone had told me then, that one day, I would write an objective essay about Lee, studying him , not with starry eyed excitement of a boy, I would have laughed and brushed it aside as next to impossible. How could I ever assess Bruce Lee, the God who could knock down the strongest man with a kick and a cut and a piercing shriek. Never!!. But such is life. Time and maturity puts a perspective on our childhood heroes, and strips them of the charm they possessed once. However, the legend of Bruce lee can never die. If his art was his alone, there was a chance of it fading away; but by a stroke of destiny Lee influenced the field of martial arts for posterity. His unique style has become part of our collective psyche, almost a Jungian archetype that is invoked unconsciously each time anybody, across the globe, raises their hands and legs by way of fighting on screen. A little bit of Bruce Lee shines through in each such frame, and in all of us.

On a final note, one wonders what more would have Lee done if he had lived longer? Would he have mellowed down to live a normal life, or would he have scaled more heights than before? A difficult question, with no satisfactory answers. Perhaps, the best way to sum up Bruce’s life would be in the words of Davis miller, whose brilliant biography of Lee “The Tao of Bruce lee” is a landmark book in sports writing. He writes in the epilogue: “Jesus, Alexander the great, Joan of arc, and, yes, Bruce lee died young enough to believe that there was something about themselves they had to develop, and about the world that had to changed. As we mature, some of us come to another understanding. We hope to recognize things as they are and to accept them”

Bruce lee chose to change martial arts. He did, but in doing so paid the price with his life cut short in its prime.

God bless…

yours in mortality,

Bala