Ghosts of fandoms past
In every compulsive pack rat's life, there comes a moment of truth: a moment when her habit of saving every single scrap of paper comes back to haunt her. Such a moment has come for me: I'm moving, and am faced with the grim task not only of packing but of clearing out a storeroom filled with . . . stuff.
Software manuals for Windows 3.0. Ticket stubs for concerts I haven't thought about in years. The warranty for a daisywheel printer. (A daisywheel! Yes!) And oh, yeah. Fandom stuff. Lots and lots and lots of fandom stuff -- old emails, old fics, old message board posts and debates and squeeing.
What is it about a physical object that brings back memories in the way that nothing else can? Maybe this is why I save stuff. My memory sucks, generally, but holding, say, a ticket stub in my hand brings back the concert as if it was yesterday: the hot outdoor theater at the summer festival, the applause for the first violinist, the guy behind me who could not stop coughing, the moment when everything stopped mattering because oh my God, the music.
The fandom stuff is the same. It's the nature of fannish passion to wax and wane, I guess, but that really becomes clear when you pick up a printout from a message board you haven't thought about in years, and GOD, it all comes back: that dizzying sense of love and squee and near-total absorption, and BAM, it's 2002, and I am waking up every morning thinking Frodo Frodo Frodo Frodo Frodo!!11!!!111!11!
My fannish history is a little weird in that my first fandom was associated with with books (Tolkien) that I'd already loved for decades -- but loved with a different kind of love than first-fandom love. First-fandom love is like first love generally: you're convinced that NEVER IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE HAS THERE EVER BEEN ANYTHING LIKE THIS, EVER. And maybe you're wrong about that (everyone falls in love, and you will fall in love again). But also maybe you're right: first love only happens once. Back in the day of my greatest first-fandom passion, fannish friends who had been around the block a few times said to me, with what felt at the time like infuriating condescension, "ah, there's nothing like a first fandom, is there?" The clear implication was that at least some of my lurve was both unreasonable and transient, and that irked the hell out of me.
Well, they were right: the love for Tolkien isn't transient, but that sense of overwhelming passion is. I still love Tolkien, obviously. But seeing the old printouts brought back to me how much that love has changed. It's like our white-hot weekend of passion in Vegas is over, and now we've settled back into a comfortable and affectionate marriage.
In a way that's a good thing. Total fannish passion is a fantastic high - but no one can live like that. At least I can't. There's room in my life for a hell of a lot of squee, and I'm always going to be the sort of person likely to grab other people by their shirts and say OH MY GOD YOU MUST WATCH THIS SHOW! And I'll be talking about Tolkien for the rest of my life. But the twenty-four hour a day immersion thing isn't ever going to happen to me again, I don't think.
So is that good or bad? I don't know. I sometimes wonder whether we see both things and people truly ONLY through the eyes of love -- whether the passionate engagement that in our more sensible moments we dismiss as unreasonable is the only thing that lets us escape the cage of selfhood and value other people as they should be valued. Love of stories, love of people -- maybe they give us a tiny glimpse of what the world would be like if we were strong enough, emotionally, to see things as they are; if we were strong enough to understand that the fact that anything exists -- yes, anything, even stories and people you dislike -- is pretty fucking miraculously cool.
I can't sustain that intensity of perception. But sitting here today, holding the papers in my hand, I can remember feeling like that, and you know what? It was pretty fucking miraculously cool, and I wouldn't exchange that year and half of total fannish love for anything.
Software manuals for Windows 3.0. Ticket stubs for concerts I haven't thought about in years. The warranty for a daisywheel printer. (A daisywheel! Yes!) And oh, yeah. Fandom stuff. Lots and lots and lots of fandom stuff -- old emails, old fics, old message board posts and debates and squeeing.
What is it about a physical object that brings back memories in the way that nothing else can? Maybe this is why I save stuff. My memory sucks, generally, but holding, say, a ticket stub in my hand brings back the concert as if it was yesterday: the hot outdoor theater at the summer festival, the applause for the first violinist, the guy behind me who could not stop coughing, the moment when everything stopped mattering because oh my God, the music.
The fandom stuff is the same. It's the nature of fannish passion to wax and wane, I guess, but that really becomes clear when you pick up a printout from a message board you haven't thought about in years, and GOD, it all comes back: that dizzying sense of love and squee and near-total absorption, and BAM, it's 2002, and I am waking up every morning thinking Frodo Frodo Frodo Frodo Frodo!!11!!!111!11!
My fannish history is a little weird in that my first fandom was associated with with books (Tolkien) that I'd already loved for decades -- but loved with a different kind of love than first-fandom love. First-fandom love is like first love generally: you're convinced that NEVER IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE HAS THERE EVER BEEN ANYTHING LIKE THIS, EVER. And maybe you're wrong about that (everyone falls in love, and you will fall in love again). But also maybe you're right: first love only happens once. Back in the day of my greatest first-fandom passion, fannish friends who had been around the block a few times said to me, with what felt at the time like infuriating condescension, "ah, there's nothing like a first fandom, is there?" The clear implication was that at least some of my lurve was both unreasonable and transient, and that irked the hell out of me.
Well, they were right: the love for Tolkien isn't transient, but that sense of overwhelming passion is. I still love Tolkien, obviously. But seeing the old printouts brought back to me how much that love has changed. It's like our white-hot weekend of passion in Vegas is over, and now we've settled back into a comfortable and affectionate marriage.
In a way that's a good thing. Total fannish passion is a fantastic high - but no one can live like that. At least I can't. There's room in my life for a hell of a lot of squee, and I'm always going to be the sort of person likely to grab other people by their shirts and say OH MY GOD YOU MUST WATCH THIS SHOW! And I'll be talking about Tolkien for the rest of my life. But the twenty-four hour a day immersion thing isn't ever going to happen to me again, I don't think.
So is that good or bad? I don't know. I sometimes wonder whether we see both things and people truly ONLY through the eyes of love -- whether the passionate engagement that in our more sensible moments we dismiss as unreasonable is the only thing that lets us escape the cage of selfhood and value other people as they should be valued. Love of stories, love of people -- maybe they give us a tiny glimpse of what the world would be like if we were strong enough, emotionally, to see things as they are; if we were strong enough to understand that the fact that anything exists -- yes, anything, even stories and people you dislike -- is pretty fucking miraculously cool.
I can't sustain that intensity of perception. But sitting here today, holding the papers in my hand, I can remember feeling like that, and you know what? It was pretty fucking miraculously cool, and I wouldn't exchange that year and half of total fannish love for anything.