ChillSpot Online: Our Art is Life

It’s been just over 24 hours since he died, and I’m still kinda hoping it’s not true. I didn’t know the man personally, so I cannot vouch for his character, but I can say with sincerity that it was a pleasure to have shared the Earth with Michael Joseph Jackson. I don’t believe in idol worship, and I don’t espouse to zealousness either. I don’t plan on building a shrine, simply admiring a talent so unique that it may never been seen again in my lifetime. That’s Michael Jackson. He was timeless BEFORE he died. His music endured his tribulations. Even HE could not undo that.

There is a piece on the LA Times Web site, written by Robert Hilburn, a reporter who covered and knew Michael, that is very telling. A quote:

In the 1981 interview, he told me, “My real goal is to fulfill God’s purpose. I didn’t choose to sing or dance. But that’s my role, and I want to do it better than anybody else. I still remember the first time I sang in kindergarten class. I sang ‘Climb Every Mountain,’ and everyone got so excited.
“It’s beautiful at the shows when people join together. It’s our own little world. For that hour and a half, we try to show there is hope and goodness. It’s only when you step back outside the building that you see all the craziness.”

Michael likely fought with the success he reaped. In the LA Times piece, he says the album after Thriller would sell twice as many, even though Thriller was the top-selling album of all time. And what must life be like when it’s apparent that you’ve already done the greatest thing you’ll ever do?

He was a lonely, and stressed man. I believe in the end, all the effort to be the best, all the internalizing and pain, loneliness and pull from those around him who existed only to feed off him, all these things conspired to claim his life energy, then finally his life.

Rest easy, Michael, your fight is over.

I’ve walked through fire,
burned my flesh so bad till vermin came sniffing the aroma,
scarred my retinas looking at the sun through binoculars,
severed tendons, cracked vertebrae, punctured organs
and knocked myself unconscious,
and never did I have a moment of fear of things
I’d done or faced, until you.

You.

You showed me a darkness
deeper than the murkiest trenches in the Pacific Ocean,
colder than the most desolate corners of the universe,
colder than Absolute Zero,
colder than the breath of a dead man,
from which there is no return.
I strode valliantly, ignorantly, toward my own demise,
in hopes of conjuring a magic powerful enough to overcome you.

But I had it all wrong.

In order to defeat something as sinister as you
I would have had to submit to it,
to you,
to the very evil I have worked to extract
from my own soul. I thought I could walk the edge,
straddle the raging volcano,
inhale the noxious gases
but an angel came to me as I stood on the precipice,
ready to plunge in,
and suggested I look inward before going further.
The angel showed me the folly
of trying to control a shadowy force of nature.

After all, what have you gained
if you obtain the upperhand on the devil himself?
And furthermore, is it really even necessary
to understand Satan anymore than you might already?
Evil is evil, and to look much more into it than that
is to become in league with said evil.

After seeing the darkness in my soul,
which had been blackening as I read from your book,
I found it best to turn away from you,
toward the light, because there is no victory
to be had standing toe-to-toe with the demon queen herself.

I just read this little tidbit, and it rings so strongly that I wanted to share it. The Cavs, in passing on tying the Boston Celtics record 41-1 home standard, may have inadvertently contributed to their own demise in the playoffs. Read on:

2 things the Cavaliers have to be wondering
2. Should they have rested the starters in the final game of the regular season?

Had they won that home game — they lost in overtime to Philadelphia as LeBron James and other starters watched — the bottom half of the East draw would have been changed, matching the 76ers against Boston in the first round. The argument can be made that the Celtics might have had an easier time against the Sixers than they ultimately had against the Bulls, who took them to seven enervating games. That would have left the Celtics fresher going into the second round against Orlando. Would the Celtics have had the energy to close out their 3-2 lead against Orlando? Would Cleveland have used its home-court advantage to knock off Boston — the Cavaliers having matched up better against the Celtics than against the Magic — and would they be in the Finals as a result? This is all highly far-fetched, but these are the things that keep executives and coaches up late at night after the kind of bad loss that Cleveland suffered in the conference finals against Orlando.

1. What could they have done against Dwight Howard?

The young Magic center had 40 points in the decisive Game 6 against Cleveland, which has been out of character for his postseason as a whole. In the second round, the Celtics held him to 16.4 points on 11.7 field-goal attempts, and through four games of the Finals, the Lakers’ harassing team defense has limited him to 16.5 points on 8.5 attempts.

Against the Cavaliers’ relatively passive interior defense, however, Howard managed 25.8 points on 13.8 attempts. Was this an issue of personnel and mismatches, or was the problem in the schemes? The likely answer is that both sides must be addressed. But I don’t believe for a second that coach Mike Brown is in danger of losing his job. He was Coach of the Year for winning 66 games with a team that was viewed in the preseason as lacking firepower around James. If you fire him, who becomes his replacement? Good luck finding someone who can seamlessly improve on the foundation Brown has established. It isn’t going to happen.