In an effort to calm my nerves before the game on Friday, I went to an art museum.<\/p>\n
I wasn\u2019t sure what I was looking for other than a distraction. Anything to stop myself from listening to one more increasingly obscure basketball podcast.<\/p>\n
The exhibit on display was titled \u201cInternational Surrealism: 50 Years of Dreams,\u201d something I was passingly familiar with in the sense that if someone asked me if I know what surrealism was I\u2019d say, \u201csure\u201d and then if they pressed me on it, I\u2019d probably go on to say, \u201cIt\u2019s like, when something is surreal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, as I learned during this rainy afternoon stroll through the Frist Museum in Nashville, the artistic movement grew out of Paris in the 1920s, and its practitioners were super into the teachings of Freud, obsessed with the unconscious mind. However, where Freud was interested in this concept for therapeutic purposes, the surrealists were more like, \u201csure man, whatever, but what if we actually just used it to unlock the mysteries of the universe? Or at the very least, maybe paint some cool stuff?\u201d<\/p>\n
I passed through the galleries, nodding along, armed with my newfound knowledge and ready to be enlightened or inspired. I saw shapes. I saw colors. I saw sculptures. I then turned a corner and was, all of a sudden, alone in a room with Salvador Dal\u00ed\u2019s Autumnal Cannibalism<\/a>.<\/p>\n Like most things with Dal\u00ed, it was weird.<\/p>\n This painting\u2026it\u2019s somehow bright and yet muted, vivid and yet enshrouded in this deep grey darkness that pulls everything in the landscape towards it. Two figures, front and center, are locked together in some kind of unholy embrace, consuming each other. It\u2019s somehow violent and peaceful at the same time. They\u2019re melting into each other. I still don\u2019t even know what I was really looking at, but it held me there for a long time, locked in that same embrace.<\/p>\n As the Spurs raced out to that 15-0 lead in the first quarter, I felt like I was having an out of body experience. It was exactly what I wanted. I\u2019d spent two days obsessing with how the Spurs were going to respond to that Game 2 loss and this was the stuff dreams were made of. Our guys were everywhere. The Thunder looked like they couldn\u2019t breathe. There wasn\u2019t a shot that wouldn\u2019t fall. A pass we couldn\u2019t steal. Every single person in the crowd seemed like they were about to exit the physical realm and spend the rest of the game having to astral project into the AT&T Center.<\/p>\n The furthest reaches of my DNA felt like they were on fire. Flames were shooting out of my ears. I could feel my body shaking. I think I\u2019ll remember that stretch of basketball for the rest of my life. I\u2019ve never seen anything like it. When Hartenstein finally hit a floater, I thought to myself, surely, the game has got to be wrapping up soon considering I\u2019ve lived a thousand different lifetimes since tipoff. I\u2019d been to the molten core of the earth. I\u2019d travelled to the outer reaches of the cosmos. I\u2019d traversed through the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Surely, Mike Tirico was moments away from telling us, \u201cSo long, from San Antonio.\u201d<\/p>\n I just wasn\u2019t sure what to do with that information. My brain couldn\u2019t process it. The Spurs had done it, you know? They\u2019d figured out how to beat the Thunder and they\u2019d gone out there and done it. Who cares if they\u2019d taken care of the job in only four minutes? Stop the count. This was over. It had to be.<\/p>\n I spent the rest of the game, as I\u2019m sure most of you did, melting into the floor, the euphoria slowly draining from my body as the cold realization came into focus that this thing was unraveling in front of us. It wasn\u2019t even some kind of spectacular blow up, just a mundane, systematic dismantling of everything we\u2019d built. The Thunder had grabbed ahold of the thread, and walked away.<\/p>\n