Passion: More than Just a Fruit
Yesterday, a friend of mine wrote about meeting an author she'd long admired and how the response to her passionate enthusiasm was, essentially, dickish.
I will never understand writers who disdain the passion of their fans. Not only is it so rude it sets my teeth on edge, but it's so stupidly arrogant... well, let's just say my teeth are taking a beating. Passion is the coin of the realm in the arts. Why do you think Rowling and King make millions? It's not because their words turn lead into gold, it's because people are passionate about what they write.
I love it when people are passionate about something.
This thought came to me when I was down in Oklahoma on the same weekend there was a home game at the University of Oklahoma. Now, I'm Canadian and we don't have the passionate attachment to university sports the way Americans do - I discovered my university had a hockey team after I left - and football is about the only sport I don't watch at least occasionally on television, but I loved the passion of the Sooner fans. Whole streets were given over to tailgate parties and an industrial parking lot was full of RV's. Yes, the traffic was a pain in the ass if you were trying to get around town, but I found the energy and the joy and the whole "we're a part of something bigger than ourselves" very cool.
I'd be a bit of a hypocrite if I didn't since I was in OK visiting a friend and enjoying a red dirt music bar crawl on that specific weekend because Christian Kane was doing a show at a local casino. I'm not enough of a Kaniac to follow the band to shows in places I wasn't going to go anyway, but I have abandoned a convention on a Friday night because Kane was playing in a cowboy bar in the same town. (not a convention I was a guest at)(not even for Chris and Steve and Jason)(or a bar full of cowboys)
There were a lot of people in that casino theatre passionate about Kane. (I explained the hard core Kaniacs to the somewhat confused woman beside me by saying, "Think of them like the Deadheads of country rock." ) I danced, I sang along (I apologised to the guy in front of me) I made friends with other passionate people. (the friend I was there with is a concert photographer; you don't actually see concerts with her, you share notes afterwards)(and yeah, she's passionate about what she does)
I was an SF fan for years before I was a pro. I went to my first convention in 1977. I have been a costumer and a filker (still a filker), I've entered art shows, and run con-suites (not well, honesty forces me to admit) and the thing I love best about fans is how willing they are to be passionate about things. Books, movies, TV shows, games, corsets, beer, plots, characters, covers, authors, actors, high tech, low tech, comics and graphic novels and the arguments over which is which. We may not be passionate tomorrow about the things that we're passionate about today but, by God, today we will talk to you for forty minutes about Sailor Moon's back story. (for a totally non-specific example)(he was passionate enough, I watched a few episodes of the show solely because of those forty minutes)
I was once extremely passionate about Lammas Night all over Katherine Kurtz and she, bless her, was polite and charming and left me feeling like my passion had worth. She was my football team and she kicked a winning field goal with seconds left on the clock. (See how I tie things together? Pretty clever, eh.) She taught me how to respond when people are passionate about my books, but I'm pretty sure I figured out how to enjoy it on my own.
Because the energy and the joy and the way you believe my books have tapped into something bigger than themselves, that's very cool. And a little humbling. But mostly very cool.
So it's strange to me when SF fans stare at football fans and wonder why they waste their time on such over commercialized, steroid powered shows of machismo and aggression. Or when football fans stare at SF fans and wonder why they're so damned weird. (Shared a convention hotel with the Beer Can Collectors of America once; we are not the weirdest fish in the pond.) In my world, passion should celebrate passion not be threatened by it. My passion doesn't take anything from yours, it just adds a little more joy to the world.
Yes, passion, any passion, can go dark. Anything taken over the top goes careening down the other side, out of control, landing on obsession or worse. And sure, passion can be a little scary. Every time you open yourself up to care that much, you run the risk of getting hurt. (the friend who met the dickish author got hurt but I guarantee that won't make her less passionate)(well, maybe about that particular author...) Fear of loss of control or of getting hurt is why I think too many people equate being "adult" with a lack of passion. Yes, even that passion known as passion. "Stop it, we're not teenagers anymore." is not a phraze I just made up off the top of my head, now is it?
When I was a child, I thought as a child. Now I am an adult, I can afford the cool stuff. And I'm pretty passionate about it.
I will never understand writers who disdain the passion of their fans. Not only is it so rude it sets my teeth on edge, but it's so stupidly arrogant... well, let's just say my teeth are taking a beating. Passion is the coin of the realm in the arts. Why do you think Rowling and King make millions? It's not because their words turn lead into gold, it's because people are passionate about what they write.
I love it when people are passionate about something.
This thought came to me when I was down in Oklahoma on the same weekend there was a home game at the University of Oklahoma. Now, I'm Canadian and we don't have the passionate attachment to university sports the way Americans do - I discovered my university had a hockey team after I left - and football is about the only sport I don't watch at least occasionally on television, but I loved the passion of the Sooner fans. Whole streets were given over to tailgate parties and an industrial parking lot was full of RV's. Yes, the traffic was a pain in the ass if you were trying to get around town, but I found the energy and the joy and the whole "we're a part of something bigger than ourselves" very cool.
I'd be a bit of a hypocrite if I didn't since I was in OK visiting a friend and enjoying a red dirt music bar crawl on that specific weekend because Christian Kane was doing a show at a local casino. I'm not enough of a Kaniac to follow the band to shows in places I wasn't going to go anyway, but I have abandoned a convention on a Friday night because Kane was playing in a cowboy bar in the same town. (not a convention I was a guest at)(not even for Chris and Steve and Jason)(or a bar full of cowboys)
There were a lot of people in that casino theatre passionate about Kane. (I explained the hard core Kaniacs to the somewhat confused woman beside me by saying, "Think of them like the Deadheads of country rock." ) I danced, I sang along (I apologised to the guy in front of me) I made friends with other passionate people. (the friend I was there with is a concert photographer; you don't actually see concerts with her, you share notes afterwards)(and yeah, she's passionate about what she does)
I was an SF fan for years before I was a pro. I went to my first convention in 1977. I have been a costumer and a filker (still a filker), I've entered art shows, and run con-suites (not well, honesty forces me to admit) and the thing I love best about fans is how willing they are to be passionate about things. Books, movies, TV shows, games, corsets, beer, plots, characters, covers, authors, actors, high tech, low tech, comics and graphic novels and the arguments over which is which. We may not be passionate tomorrow about the things that we're passionate about today but, by God, today we will talk to you for forty minutes about Sailor Moon's back story. (for a totally non-specific example)(he was passionate enough, I watched a few episodes of the show solely because of those forty minutes)
I was once extremely passionate about Lammas Night all over Katherine Kurtz and she, bless her, was polite and charming and left me feeling like my passion had worth. She was my football team and she kicked a winning field goal with seconds left on the clock. (See how I tie things together? Pretty clever, eh.) She taught me how to respond when people are passionate about my books, but I'm pretty sure I figured out how to enjoy it on my own.
Because the energy and the joy and the way you believe my books have tapped into something bigger than themselves, that's very cool. And a little humbling. But mostly very cool.
So it's strange to me when SF fans stare at football fans and wonder why they waste their time on such over commercialized, steroid powered shows of machismo and aggression. Or when football fans stare at SF fans and wonder why they're so damned weird. (Shared a convention hotel with the Beer Can Collectors of America once; we are not the weirdest fish in the pond.) In my world, passion should celebrate passion not be threatened by it. My passion doesn't take anything from yours, it just adds a little more joy to the world.
Yes, passion, any passion, can go dark. Anything taken over the top goes careening down the other side, out of control, landing on obsession or worse. And sure, passion can be a little scary. Every time you open yourself up to care that much, you run the risk of getting hurt. (the friend who met the dickish author got hurt but I guarantee that won't make her less passionate)(well, maybe about that particular author...) Fear of loss of control or of getting hurt is why I think too many people equate being "adult" with a lack of passion. Yes, even that passion known as passion. "Stop it, we're not teenagers anymore." is not a phraze I just made up off the top of my head, now is it?
When I was a child, I thought as a child. Now I am an adult, I can afford the cool stuff. And I'm pretty passionate about it.