- from the Associated Press
Like millions of other serious basketball fans around the world, I was rooting for a Kobe vs. LeBron Finals. So naturally it was disappointing to see the charmless Magic beat the Cavs in game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals.
However, news of LeBron's post-game media snub kinda made me feel good. No, comforting, is the more appropriate word.
One of the richest, most famous athletes in the world, the NBA's MVP, arguably the best basketball player today, was so inconsolably frustrated, he wanted to be left alone.
Predictably, the critics chided him for that. We live in a world where people want their athletes and celebrities to be role models while simultaenously expecting them to be completely unlike us.
I, for one, do not subscribe to that idiotic paradox. And what LeBron did two days ago was perhaps the single-most relatable thing that an athlete has done this decade. I will never pretend to get steroids, or DUIs, or posses. But to feel completely alone and to wallow in it - that's as universal as you can possibly get.
The mental image of LeBron James walking alone with his headphones on just makes me feel better about life.
However, news of LeBron's post-game media snub kinda made me feel good. No, comforting, is the more appropriate word.
One of the richest, most famous athletes in the world, the NBA's MVP, arguably the best basketball player today, was so inconsolably frustrated, he wanted to be left alone.
Predictably, the critics chided him for that. We live in a world where people want their athletes and celebrities to be role models while simultaenously expecting them to be completely unlike us.
I, for one, do not subscribe to that idiotic paradox. And what LeBron did two days ago was perhaps the single-most relatable thing that an athlete has done this decade. I will never pretend to get steroids, or DUIs, or posses. But to feel completely alone and to wallow in it - that's as universal as you can possibly get.
The mental image of LeBron James walking alone with his headphones on just makes me feel better about life.
* * *
LeBron's lonesome exit somehow inspired me to watch "Wendy and Lucy" for the umpteenth time. "Wendy and Lucy" is a movie about an impoverished woman who travels cross-country to find work in Alaska. The only thing she has left, aside from her old car, is her dog named Lucy. When she loses her in Oregon, everything falls apart.
The movie is gorgeous in its simplicity and extremely effective in its intent. It's a meditation on the human condition at its barest and most precarious, and we feel that all throughout. Every scene, every frame is at once a paean and an elegy to loneliness. Wendy spends most of the movie literally alone: alone, sleeping in her car; alone, walking in the woods; alone, sitting outside a Wallgreen's.
Watching "Wendy and Lucy" was almost trance-like. You expose yourself to images of loneliness for an hour and a half, then you suddenly find yourself captivated by it, you marvel at how seductively pure a state it really is, how masochistically liberating it must feel like to have absolutely nothing.
The most remarkable thing about Wendy was how impossibly filtered her goals have become. Here's a woman, who at some point, must have wanted lots of things - shoes, a nice apartment, friends, her family's support, a nice boyfriend, a relaxing vacation, meaning. When the movie begins, all she wants is a job. Around the twenty minute mark, her goal gets downgraded further: all she wants is to get her dog back.
I wanted to feel what Wendy was feeling. It's probably the sickest thing I've ever felt while watching a movie that wasn't hardcore porn. I wanted to know what it feels like for all your dreams to be finally diluted into one singular trivial thing. I wanted to know what it feels like to bask in the sheer meaninglessness of life.
At the back of my mind, though, I knew I was kinda just saying that. I'm aware of the fact that, from the outside looking in, loneliness looks poetic and beautiful. I can't say the same when it's the other way around. I do know how it feels to kill a few dreams.
* * *
When this NBA season started, LeBron was dreaming big. The entire city of Cleveland was dreaming big. That's not even hyperbole. When the Cavs were down by two points with one second left in game two, the cameras showed random faces in the crowd. A little boy, probably 7 years old, holding his head in disbelief. A woman, in her twenties, covering her mouth with both hands, in the brink of tears. A man, middle-aged, staring off into space. For them, it wasn't just a basketball game they were witnessing; they were seeing the possibility of their collective failure. So when LeBron hit the game-winning three-point shot, the entire arena erupted into a cathartic frenzy. Their dreams were still alive.
A week later, their hero, their savior, the only player to average 38-8-8 in a playoff series in half a century, the best player they ever had and probably will, walked away from the media, from his teammates, from them. Alone.
If that can happen to him, you tell yourself, then your life probably ain't that bad. Then you tell it again, and again, and again.
--
LeBron James photo courtesy of: http://nikelebron.net/2009/02/05/not_kobe_not_jordan_lebron_does_things_own_way_with_a_50_point_triple_double/
Michelle Williams photo courtesy of:
0 comments :
Post a Comment