Alternate Reality
Yesterday I got on Megabus in Knoxville. I got off in Atlanta. I then bought a MARTA pass for a round-trip, took a train and a bus, and stepped into Wonderland. A place where everyone knows me, loves me, and wants me to sing, or wants me to hear their new songs, or just smiles at me and gives me a hug.
I get another night of this. Sunday I go back to Knoxville, retracing my steps, and even have to walk home with all my stuff when I get there (no Sunday bus service in my neighborhood, don’t know who I would call for a ride).
I am sharing a room with two friends. One of them is paying my share of the room and has done some other things for me too hard to explain in a short sentence. The other is paying my way to Pittsburgh for another convention in September.
I don’t want to go back. That is not an option, as this “home” I’m in now is temporary and will evaporate as soon as the weekend is over. But why would anyone want to go where they do not feel wanted?
If anyone wants to know what I’m talking about, check out http://gafilk.org
Sigh.
Hugs,
Me
Yes, a convention really is an alternate reality. A better one, usually, although I’ve been to a few badly-run ones.
I first realized this in the 1970s. We started going to Boskone in 1975 because some of our roleplaying friends had moved to the East Coast. Back then, it was always held in the Sheraton Boston, a big hotel with lots of function space — it also held the 1971 Worldcon (Noreascon I).
After a few years, we noticed something. As we walked in the front door of the hotel, it seemed as if we had switched realities. Not only realities, but time-streams. It felt as though we had walked out the door a few minutes earlier, and just turned around and walked right back in. Last year’s Boskone and this year’s felt contiguous in our minds (and in our memories).
We would have a day to rest, and then we would meet all our old friends there, and some new ones, and we would spend the weekend talking and singing and RPing and eating good (if expensive) food. Then we would walk out the door and the doorman would summon us a cab — and we would turn around and walk back in, a year (minus 5 days) later.
As time went on and filking developed its own cons, we started noticing the phenomenon with some of those. When ConChord was held in the same hotel year after year, we’d get the same effect. And the same for Consonance and the Milpitas Crown Plaza.
It’s lovely, and a shame some ways that we can’ t just spend all our time in that wonderful world of the convention.