It almost goes without saying that this touched off a nerve in the Calgary Expo community, with numerous commenters turning out to shake their heads in admonishment at the perceived small-mindedness of Brooker and the banality of the article's tone and intent. Lindsay Thomas AKA Emily Expo, an Assistant Director of the Expo, wrote a fantastic defence of the Expo's merits, and I feel no strong need to add to the voices chiming in that it is a wonderful show that features world-class individuals and exhibits.
 |
| Kay Pike Fashion via Compfight cc |
Pointing to his own disappointing or mediocre experiences with Gordie Howe and the Three Stooges, Brooker can't help coming off as a bitter curmudgeon, lamenting "what a strange business is the show business." He speaks of these encounters in a sort of wistful, broken kind of way, admitting that he did not think this way at the time, though he does now. The implication, of course, is that with age comes wisdom, though in Brooker's case it seems more like that with age came complacency.
I say this because in my experience, a desire to meet the people who inspire us is anything but nonsensical. Asked point-blank what makes it so special, I doubt that most fans could articulate what it is that makes them so...fanatical. Pressed into a corner, most will answer with a vague sort of supposition that meeting their idols in person as opposed to seeing them on a TV screen makes it, in a word, "real." It's that monosyllabic answer that I think drives people like Brooker mad with envy and confusion. Yet it connotes all the information that you need to know.
This past Monday, I had the good fortune of attending a reading by Neil Gaiman. It was a massive event, attended by 1100 people, with tickets being snatched up within 60 seconds of becoming available. Gaiman read from five different pieces, spoke briefly on his personal experiences in writing, and did a short Q&A from a sheaf of prepared questions. There was no signing, no one-on-one interaction, not even a period where the audience directly asked questions of this great author. In a man like Brooker's view, we could very likely have achieved the same experience by staying home and reading Gaiman's works with the afterwords included.
In my view, I will never forget this experience.
How can I have such a romanticized view of what appears to be a distant, unemotionally involved event? It goes back to that one word answer: "real."
We want to meet our heroes because we want to see them made solid. What Brooker fails to get, and what anyone who has ever been inspired by another human being can tell you, is that seeing our heroes in pure, unfiltered normalcy is what truly shows us what we are capable of. I have no illusions that I am not the same man as Neil Gaiman. I know that our experiences in life are completely different. Yet in the moments when he stood on stage, I saw him as a person.
Then, it all becomes real. The unachievable becomes achievable. The fantastical becomes tangible. The impossible becomes possible. The dream becomes reality. It is crystalized. We are people, and some people can achieve great things.
We want to stand close to these individuals because we hope beyond all hope that just a measure of their seemingly limitless wonder will rub off on us, and then we're astonished to find that it has, but not in the way we thought. Rather, they've drawn out something from within us we never knew we had, but it was always there.
Brooker would call it comic. I would call it real.
Share On
No comments:
Post a Comment