I just emailed Rogers Centre about how their bottle lid confiscation policy hurt my Bruce Springsteen experience. I told them about how having an open bottle made it difficult to dance, wave, clap, and otherwise fully immerse myself in the concert experience. I told them about how my ticket was ruined and my ipod had to be replaced a cost of nearly $200.
But the part I couldn't explain to them in my email is that getting my ipod wrecked also messed up my emotional arc.
My major fandom experiences come with a clear emotional arc: a period of anticipation, the experience itself, and a sort of emotional come-down phase that happens in the hours and days afterwards. I never know going in what's going to happen in the come-down phase. After Eddie Izzard, I cried like a Beatles fangirl and wrote epic theoretical translation strategies. After each Harry Potter book, I drank a lot of tea and walked down the street utterly baffled that people were going about their lives normally after [universe-changing plot point] had just happened.
During the come-down phase, I have particularly interesting dreams and a period of high creativity. Sometimes other areas of life are affected, like my daily routines or my speech patterns, and occasionally these changes are permanent. I'm less emotionally involved with Bruce Springsteen than with my other fandoms but the concert experience is also more physical than my other fannish experiences, so I was very interested to see how this would affect the come-down stage. What would happen to me? What would I do? What would I make? What would I become?
But instead of getting to enjoy the ride, I instead had to solve the very practical problem of a wrecked ipod. I had troubleshoot and research and budget and comparison shop, all while dealing with the fact that life is overstimulating without my music in my ears. I was supposed to be in prime self-actualization territory, but I was stuck on a lower level of Maslow's pyramid by niggling practical problems that could have been easily avoided.
All of which is disappointing, but not quite something you can put in a complaint letter.
1 comment:
No, not something you can tell customer service, but very interesting to your blog readers. (Me, anyway.)
I love that the HP books had such an effect on you. I just love that books can do that to us. That art can do that, and that includes Eddie Izzard and Bruce, of course.
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