Fan-girling Over a Real Person

For reasons of protection of this person's identity I'll refer to him as Mr. Freedom, or maybe just "he". Not like I'm too preoccupied with thoughts of anyone else. I mean he just represents all things cool, about everything. Ever. Ooooooh and he's sooooo endlessly attractive. And so funny! And how can he just pull this douchey pose, which makes him look sooo hot by the way, but still come off as– Oh hi! Hey. How've you been. Totes haven't been stalking you on the media lately, as well as everywhere I might ever hope to find you, so how would I know. Yeah. So tell me, everything, about you.

Yeah, say goodbye to your nails. Or if you get to actually meet him, say bye to your eyelashes too, because you'll probably flutter them straight off out of adulation.

I mean we've all felt a little head-over-heels, and/or overly preoccupied with thoughts about, and/or stalky about someone at some point. Mostly though about an actor, or a member of some band, that without using Tumblr or the (in)famous YouTube comments' section you'd have no idea anyone else even listens to. So you feel like they're yours. Like if only you'd talk to them, you'd so click straight away into ceaseless inside jokes, find even more things in common, and generally BFF so much that you'd just couldn't stay away from one another, touching each other always and slightly too much just making people around grin with embarrassment for you both.
And then drop the entirety of your responsibilities forever to ride a Cadillac into the sunset with the latest single from the band's new album playing in the background as the soundtrack to the rest of your carefree and joy-ridden life.

But yeah, back in our common, actual version of reality, and paraphrasing Chuck Palahniuk [author of "Fight Club", "Invisible Monsters" etc.], "the person you happen to be desperately obsessed about, and anyone even mildly interested in you are never, ever the same person". It's odd enough to see peers of a particular branch of entertainment exchange these borderline amorous messages of appreciation. Even, say, between two black humour/insult comedians like Jimmy Carr and Anthony Jeselnik. It feels more like a business connection however, a networking and mutual endorsement deal, which is easier to accept.

And then there's the point I'm getting to here. What happens when you embark on admiring someone you've met? That's probably happened to anyone too - you have a teacher you can't imagine your 9th grade history classes without, maybe your cool uncle, who's always found a way to put things in an amusing yet educating perspective, or maybe it's just some street artist who bedazzled you with how confident, skilled, and in control of the situation they seemed. One common feature: power. There's always something for you to gain from them. To be taught, entertained, excited (in various ways) by them, comforted and reassured by their confidence, inspired by their determination in life. And the worst thing about that is you feel like they kind of owe it to you to provide you with all that, just because you love them (in oh so many various colourful ways).

So much excited tension between fans of various pop cultural phenomena, that looking through pictures about it they appear to be fans of being a fan in the first place. Creepy charisma-junkies.

It's scary. On the one hand, you genuinely want your idol and inspiration, your imagined ideal version of you, and the face centering that candle-circled shrine in your bedroom, surrounded by various species of new-born sacrifices on sharp poles... to be happy, and to reach new heights, and to keep surprising you with just how actually great they are. But on the other hand, or to use a phrase of Louis CK;s [just a great comedian, if you don't know him, what's wrong with you], "but maybe..." maybe, you think to yourself unwittingly, rocking back and forth and whispering their name as an enchantment, maybe they ought to bring you on board? Maybe they should pay you more attention. And who do they think they are, having you admire them so much whilst they're happy just doing whatever makes them happy? Without you of all people?

That's when the crazy happens. And some people look down on the Tumblr fan armies, pointing to how overly obsessed they appear letting each other know just how amused they find the animated eyebrows on Emilia Clarke [plays the dragon lady in Game of Thrones. You ignorant philistine]. Or because of all the "shipping", a.k.a. collectively shared fantasies about forced romances between known people or characters they play, who actually never had that kind of relationship. To digress just for a sentence on that topic, writers in the latter decade I feel have been forced to make any male duo into siblings to avoid the "shipping" of the two diminishing the stories themselves (take for example "Thor", or "Supernatural"). But anyway, these people are in that collective online therapy already, and they're letting it out in one of the safest ways possible. And unless a widely revered person is wildly curious, (or on The Graham Norton show*), they will never find out about any of that insanity!

Funnily enough though, if you actually took apart the screaming, panty-throwing/romantic fan-fiction writing fans apart and gave one of them a few hours to spend with the lad or the gal they so deeply admire, I think they'd just be okay. After all the sighs and the "oh my god"s, just out of sheer delight at how HD this view is!... They'd just have to have a normal conversation. Awkwardly centered completely over either the fan or the fanned-upon since you really don't have much in common at all, but in most cases it would probably be polite and quite subdued. I mean even people considered hated by the part of the population that can be bothered to think anything about people deemed popular, tend to be treated quite gently by the general public in such an encounter – I have in mind specifically the art installation/social experiment by Shia LaBeouf, for your own judgement here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6rDDZioHoM


So what is the polite and gracious way to approach and, who knows, maybe even dare strive for a friendship with someone you can't stop fan-girling or fan-boying about? Learning from they're own off-hand and cool approach to life I'd say you can only try and fill your own life with activities you enjoy as much as they are passionate about theirs, go ahead and improve yourself in ways you'd like to see yourself get better, and to generally not worry or overthink things too much. The latter I've already failed at I suppose, but two out of three is alright by me. Just like seeing the person you admire once or twice in real life, or only on screens, or maybe even only in text – having met them, in any way at all, is just fine in itself.


*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsSqfAKBOF8

[Gif from "Glee": http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130310132210/glee/images/2/2d/HeatherTellMeMore.gif
Screen capture exact location: http://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=fangirling&rs=ac&len=10]

Public Hypnosis for the Cognitively Volnurable: My Visit to a Local Church Service

Mature as smelly, moldy, and expensive French cheese, men and women, nervously shuffling through a psalm book, the detailed schedule for the day's service, and the general book of "how to do things" in the church, gather to repeat the rituals reminiscent of primary school classes at least weekly. Men and women way beyond being merely full grown adults, having to dart their eyes around and with trembling, arthritis-ridden hands desperately grasping about for those notes on the homework that they didn't bring.

I thought I'd reserved the best view by standing well at the back behind all this, yet was subjected to sensing my saggy-jeansed bottom being surveilled by the church DJ, whose presence there was supposed to be justified by a single board of switches and cables he awkwardly never even touched upon.

My  first thought at the beginning of this service of a church I live near to, is that people must start getting nostalgic about their years studying at school, or university. Everyone is given handouts with all the excerpts to be read, just like in every literature lecture that I could remember. At the general book, below a song with sheet music and the lyrics right below each note, it says "silence is kept". And it is! Everyone's up for becoming the teacher's pet, I see.

The priest, unnervingly resembling Gustavo Fring from "Breaking Bad" by the way, all of a sudden drones out a "let us praaaay" in a voice so deep and affectatiously sonorous, that I almost lose it right then. He continues in the same Kermit the frog way saying how Jesus and the Lord and the everything is superior than you, and oh how unworthy you are of His love, you filthy maggooooot.

Then comes story telling time, to really lull us into a deep but oddly terrifying trance. The story, as per usual to this type of gatherings, is something you and I wouldn't know where to start identifying with from. I've kept the handy handout but I can't be bothered looking up what it actually was now. Giving water to the camels, somehow linking to generosity and compassion, as much as I can recall. I perked up when the reader took onto politely explaining what the story means, that was totally new to me. However that bit as a whole felt more like the most boring episode of the X-Files that you could point out, rather than a heart-gripping tale about life and what's right. They should just screen a never ending loop of everything by James Cameron to even approximate the level of emotional intensity,  personal involvement, and the ability to engage one's internal understanding of moral values when introduced to a narrative.

Just like all "the moves" - you know the little aerobics exercise for the extremely mature -  sit down, stand up, kneel! Like this, yes, feel the burn of repence in your muscles...the heart to be precise! If it starts feeling like a 16 ton kettle on your chest, try to flail your arms for assistance before you collapse!

It's not that bad really. In fact everyone's so saccharine in a jar of honey mixed with a Shockers bar nice, the otherwise relatively brief visit begins to resemble an episode of the Twilight Zone where you're about to find out these people are keeping you prisoner for gradual skin tissue harvesting, and that they've already finished consuming the rest of your family. And they do harvest you though. Your personal information, and your time. A lady pointed her Dumbledore's wand-like finger at the line where she insisted I write down my last name as well. I did the 4th grader thing by writing all my details just slightly incorrectly so that when they try and look for me on the grid, disappointingly nothing comes up.

In the tea and cake room - again a complete novelty for someone from Eastern Europe - I got excited seeing two lads in their late teens, with colourful bracelets and awkward haircuts. Hey, someone I can joke about the whole service resembling a DJ tiesto gig at a nursery home! Nope. The two went silent, shunned me out, and even completely ignored the elders insisting that we all must know each other already. I like to imagine I was their Marla Singer from "Fight Club" - intruding my not entirely oblivious presence into their secret and oddly therapeutic society that they were hoping no one else finds out about. Because "they need this, and I'm just a tourist!"
Sliiiide!

One actual quote from another story time piece was this:
"If I do what I do not want, it is not I who will do it" - Word of the Lord.
And no, it wasn't followed by a cognitive correction where it'd say something like "lol no, don't think too much, Lord Jesus be with you showing you da way, don't overthink yo!" No, and not even in a more formal style. That's pretty much saying "do whaaaatever the hell you feel like!" - if I may be pardoned the phrasing.

The general effort to just make you stop thinking is astonishing! First you have the whole plan of activities written down and shoved into your grubby paws right at the entrance. You're guided and directed to walk to the altar and back, when to engage your vocal chords and when to forget you have them. You're asked for your own money in change of literally nothing, guilt-tripping most becase they've been tempted to try those muffins at the end in the other room. You're brought deep into a consistent trance via infantilazation and forced submission through guilt, and then literally commanded to "yield!" To whom at that point your mind hardly differentiates: Jesus, your own inner God who you pray to swearing you will never drink again if he just makes you alright just this once please, or the Gus Fring of this church, waving hands in threatening yet precise hand gestures, in his green-clothed, authoritative yet confusingly impractical looking uniform. 

And then they finish the hypnotic seance with a strong pace-and-lead verbal sequence where a nice lady describes all the main human senses in extensive detail, finishing them all with seeking and finding resolution in God, in pray, in the Church. Then in all true Derren Brown method but no style, you get pacified verbally - albeit quite primitively, by simply being commanded that you now are indeed relieved of your sins, although with the imposing stance in front of us and commanding hand gestures your mind likely feels intimidated into belief of this, and voila, you suddenly, almost magically and not with the help of any psychological science at all, feel all better about yourself and life now!

Having said all of that, maybe sometimes you do need a place that forces you to stop thinking, and a place full of people gathering there, and having the world's most innocuous conversations, and being so very tediously nice, just because they think it's right, and maybe you do need a place to feel welcome if you feel everywhere else has thrown you out and rejected you. It's quirky, it's outdated, it's definitely not for the sceptics and the rebels-- but if you have nowhere to go, that's probably a good place for a start.