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I feel feelings
I feel them all the time
I feel them with my heart and I feel them
with my mind
Hey!
- A poem by Lizzyish
Sometimes blogging can be a bit of a walk
down Special Snowflake Lane. It’s like, ‘here are the ways in which I am special
and different to you, they are so special, I put them on the Internet’. I know
other people feel feelings; I’m not trying to imply I feel more or bigger
feelings than you. But I know, from observable evidence, that most people don’t get weepy while watching
the Olympic Opening Ceremony.
I am a sucker for spectacle. It’s probably
much cooler to watch big events like the Opening Ceremony or the Doctor Who
Symphonic Spectacular or… you know… my little sister’s choir performance at the
fete and not get all teary. But I’m not cool. I think we can all agree that my
coolness exists only in the minds of my own imaginary childhood friends.
We watched the Olympic Opening Ceremony
last night. We don’t get Channel 9 because our aerial is a pile of poo, so we
watched it on my laptop many hours after the event. I already knew that the
Queen was going to parachute in, that there were going to be smoke stacks that
looked like Mordor, that sadly the 10th Doctor did not get to light
the flame and that motherflippin VOLDERMORT was going to be there. Some of it was cheesy, lots of it was slow
and boring, and there was a real emphasis on bad things (a whole segment on
DEATH has got to be the foremost one here) but I still welled up. I welled up
right at the start, when that small child mimed Jerusalem, and it just got worse from there. Every time I tried to
regain my composure, something else dramatic would happen, and I’d be trying to
hide my face from Boyfriend again.
I think it’s the music that does it,
really. I don’t really give a shit about the importance of the industrial
revolution. Not more than anybody else who really loves electricity and their
laptop does. I’m not British. I’m descended from British people (I’ve got
everything except Scottish in me I think) and I’ve been to England once, but I
don’t have any particular fondness in my heart for the British Isles. And yet
still, the music swells and the drums go bang and I care. Oh yes I care. And my
heart seems to fill up with emotion and feels and pour out of my eyes.
I cry in movies too. Pretty much all the
movies. Anything with a remotely sad moment and I’m gone. For those people who
say, “I never cry in movies”, let me just tell you, it’s a really strange
sensation. Because the emotions aren’t yours. You aren’t weeping for the death
of a loved one, you’re weeping for the death of a fictional character you’ve
spent less than 2 hours getting to know. And yet, for that fleeting moment, you
are completely wrapped up in that emotion. And it feels great, but also awful.
I think my absolutely most ridiculous
weeping over spectacle moment has to be the aforementioned Doctor Who Symphonic
Spectacular in Melbourne. I’d gone with a largeish group of people. We walked
across half of Melbourne to get to the convention centre. And the whole walk,
my excitement was mounting, but also a growing doubt. I own the DVD with the
“Doctor Who at the Proms” special feature, and I’d watched it twice, and I
suspected this was going to be almost the exact same thing minus the most famous
actors. As we walked I kept thinking, “it’s going to be good, but not that
great, don’t get too excited all you’ll be disappointed.”
And then we got there. And the foyers were
completely full of Doctors and Roses and Marthas and Amys. There were TARDISes
and sonics, masks and camera flashes. The excitement was palpable, but the
foyers were giant, so by the time we got to our door there were only a couple
of minutes to spare before the start time. The lights went down just as we sat
in our seats. A Judoon told us over the PA to turn our mobiles off, and then
suddenly a woman started singing Amy’s theme and I burst into tears. Just like
that. Or it was less “bursting into tears” and more “letting out a constricted
sob”. I just wasn’t ready, not prepared for it, and it was so beautiful. I
think I proceeded to sob or get weepy 7 or 8 more times during the performance.
So anyway, it’s probably for the best that
I can’t get the Olympics on my TV, because otherwise I’d be sobbing every day
over every amazing Olympian who wins a race or gets a goal. Especially because
Channel 9 will undoubtedly replay the good bits to dramatic music every hour.
