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sleepy dragoncon musings
Sep. 7th, 2009 02:11 amDragon*Con is almost over. I'm in our room in the perilous dark, Patty asleep beside me, typing this as I listen to the movable party outside on the streets -- it's a group of about 40 people who run from corner to corner jumping up and down and cheering to the sounds of a boom box.
I've one panel left, a reading I should be working on tweaking a scene from a story for, but mostly I am fascinated with the stillness and the love and the grave melancholia this conference fills me with simply because I am no longer the kid who must stay up all night lest she miss something.
I think of myself, normally, as so greedy; I have always wanted to be chosen. And last year, Dragon*Con was for me the place where I did not get chosen, not at all. I was not beautiful or young or in the right place at the right time; I did not say it with tits, and I was not serendipitously charming. To the extent I have fantastic Dragon*Con stories, and I do, it was because I was a bystander and that after I had to fight for programming.
But this year I had eight program items, and people got and responded to my work and my questions, even if there were also moments I had to struggle through panel dynamics that I found surprising or difficult, even as I was working so much on programming I often didn't feel like I got to network outside of it.
Dragon*Con makes me a better person in a completely different way than anything else I do in the universe of fan-related endeavors. The degree to which I have to confront my feelings about fame and potential fame, star-fuckers, being a pro, pros behaving badly and all the rest of it is constant here. It's one giant backstage story, but all happening on stage, and there are layers of performance and the people that we all have to be, over and over again.
When I was a little girl, I used to like to walk behind people I saw on the street and match my gait to theirs and tried to think what they were thinking -- worried about job, about a wife, about the car, the kids, the subway, a whole life that I needed to know in steps.
At Dragon*Con when I come back to my room and slip off my suit, fussing with buttons and cufflinks, as I walk about our room stripping down to my underwear, I feel like the girl I was, like I am matching the gait of so many strangers -- some known, some not -- and it is such a grace to me to feel that solitude, that ordinariness, that place in the longing sea that is 40,000 people afraid to miss the party lest they not be chosen. It feels private and dark.
For most people who harbor the same sorts of ambitions that I do, or are at least interested in the narratives of people with those sorts of ambitions, I think a feeling of success comes from having a public life. But for me, who sort of comes with my manufactured tiny pond constantly public life, it is just the opposite. It is the private dark, the sound of Patty snuffling next to me, the way I peel off my socks, or stand at our hotel room balcony and look out at the Marriott's lights -- where the party is still going on, where all the boys and girls are right now working on being beautiful beautiful beautiful -- that confirms to me I am arriving.
We are all alone and full of lonely grace. It pleases me and leaves me content as I slide into sleep. In the dark, we are all alone, and I can't believe it took me this long to realize that this feeling too is a part of "if you want to be a star, you better behave like one." Sometimes I cannot imagine we are not all grieving, not for the lives we don't yet have, but for the ones we gave up.
I've one panel left, a reading I should be working on tweaking a scene from a story for, but mostly I am fascinated with the stillness and the love and the grave melancholia this conference fills me with simply because I am no longer the kid who must stay up all night lest she miss something.
I think of myself, normally, as so greedy; I have always wanted to be chosen. And last year, Dragon*Con was for me the place where I did not get chosen, not at all. I was not beautiful or young or in the right place at the right time; I did not say it with tits, and I was not serendipitously charming. To the extent I have fantastic Dragon*Con stories, and I do, it was because I was a bystander and that after I had to fight for programming.
But this year I had eight program items, and people got and responded to my work and my questions, even if there were also moments I had to struggle through panel dynamics that I found surprising or difficult, even as I was working so much on programming I often didn't feel like I got to network outside of it.
Dragon*Con makes me a better person in a completely different way than anything else I do in the universe of fan-related endeavors. The degree to which I have to confront my feelings about fame and potential fame, star-fuckers, being a pro, pros behaving badly and all the rest of it is constant here. It's one giant backstage story, but all happening on stage, and there are layers of performance and the people that we all have to be, over and over again.
When I was a little girl, I used to like to walk behind people I saw on the street and match my gait to theirs and tried to think what they were thinking -- worried about job, about a wife, about the car, the kids, the subway, a whole life that I needed to know in steps.
At Dragon*Con when I come back to my room and slip off my suit, fussing with buttons and cufflinks, as I walk about our room stripping down to my underwear, I feel like the girl I was, like I am matching the gait of so many strangers -- some known, some not -- and it is such a grace to me to feel that solitude, that ordinariness, that place in the longing sea that is 40,000 people afraid to miss the party lest they not be chosen. It feels private and dark.
For most people who harbor the same sorts of ambitions that I do, or are at least interested in the narratives of people with those sorts of ambitions, I think a feeling of success comes from having a public life. But for me, who sort of comes with my manufactured tiny pond constantly public life, it is just the opposite. It is the private dark, the sound of Patty snuffling next to me, the way I peel off my socks, or stand at our hotel room balcony and look out at the Marriott's lights -- where the party is still going on, where all the boys and girls are right now working on being beautiful beautiful beautiful -- that confirms to me I am arriving.
We are all alone and full of lonely grace. It pleases me and leaves me content as I slide into sleep. In the dark, we are all alone, and I can't believe it took me this long to realize that this feeling too is a part of "if you want to be a star, you better behave like one." Sometimes I cannot imagine we are not all grieving, not for the lives we don't yet have, but for the ones we gave up.
