When the Escapism of Sports Disappears: On The Tragedy in Las Vegas
I’m supposed to write about sports, mostly. That’s what this blog is primarily for.
It’s what I like to do. What I’m best at; writing silly pieces about silly shit that allows us to wriggle out and away from our day to day lives like we’re Harry Houdini shrugging and writhing out of a straitjacket in the black and white 1900s.
But sometimes, that illusion comes collapsing in on itself. Sometimes that jacket is a little too tight and the chains a little heavier than we remember and that escapism turns suddenly to a blackhole, an inescapable dark mass yanking us into its gravitational pull.
Suddenly, we’re not The Great Houdini, we’re just Erik Weisz.
Just a regular guy, hanging upside down with his arms behind his back and a fading sense of optimism that we’re going to be able to con our way out of this with the sleight of hand that sports allows us to pretend is real.
The curtain gets pulled back and those things that matter on Saturdays and Sundays, on Mondays and Thursdays — the points and the yards and the colors on the uniforms and the stunning ability on display before us in a 4K-hypnosis — they suddenly seem petty and small.
That’s magic. Not reality.
The plot-twist revelation: that the real world flywire used to make that ornately costumed girl float up and away is actually sharp and cutting and dangerously tight? That’s been happening more and more lately.
So I will resume with the escape on Tuesday. Or Wednesday. Or whenever I am able to get breath back into my lungs and exhale without it sounding like a frustrated sob.
For now, for today, let’s forget about the magic of sports and look to a place where magic is performed with a capital “M” in places with neon names on glistening facades. A place where what you see is often times anything but real.
Last night, the smoke and mirrors of Las Vegas shattered.
The smoke cleared. The glass splintered into fractal pieces and crunched under the feet of very-real people running from very-real danger. There was nothing bright or blinking or gaudy.
It was the latest in just another inescapable, stomach-twist spiral for a country with a careening drunk-driving equilibrium when it comes to mass shootings. We’re dangerously off-kilter. Stumbling wildly with a knife in our narcoleptic hands and seemingly incapable of stopping the self-harm.
We’re not back at square one. We never left, this time.
More accurately, we’re in a circle. A poorly-kept, one-loop, carnival ride that jams our body into the hard plastic restraints and dumps us out at the end with our bodies still humming uncomfortably to the irregular rhythm and our stomachs queasy.
We need the ride to stop, but we keep getting back on this wretched track.
So, what then? What now? What. The. Hell. Are. We. Doing?
Whatever you believe, you must agree: we can do better.
This is not the way. Not the path for our nation. Give your thoughts, yes. And your prayers to whatever God you believe in.
Give your support, yes. And shed the salty tears of sympathy for the victims.
Then: let’s do something.
Whatever you think is right. Ask questions of others, sure, but don’t forget to ask them of yourself too. Don’t shout into the void, just to hear an echo. Shout so that someone across the divide might hear you and help you build a bridge. We have to get through this. Together.
No magic or escape or stage-name will get us through this anymore.
There is no Houdini. Only Erik Weisz.
We’re holding our breath and our only chance at escape is to recognize that this is our reality and we must come up for air together.
I’ll wipe my eyes, and if you need some tissue, let’s share with one another. But then I’m going to do what I can and I want you to do the same.
