I’m sitting in the lobby of the Niagara Falls Sheraton (US side) waiting until it’s time to get a ride to the airport to go home. It’s the tail-end–or perhaps the last sight of the tail-end–of the World Fantasy Convention, which was swell. At least MY convention was swell. But as one of the attendees commented this morning, everyone has their own convention; I can’t speak to anyone else’s.
As with every human endeavor, how we experience an event is colored by what we want out of it, what our individual concerns are, and what happens to us individually. The people planning a convention can be as meticulous in planning as one could want, filling the schedule chock-full of entertaining and informative and cool stuff–but for the individual attendee all that can be eclipsed by any number of things: a friend who ghosted them; a bad knee; the bad dinner; missing someone who is normally there… you know. Human stuff. And it is a Truth, universally acknowledged, that even at a relatively small convention like WFC (which hovers around 1000 registrations) you can run into some people over and over, and miss other people that you know are there, but never find.
Of course, this principle applies to everything: school, workplace, relationships, families (I swear my brother and I had two different families with shared players and specific events, mediated by our ages and genders). It’s not a matter of position, exactly. It’s a matter of what matters to you, how you’re treated, what distracts or focuses you in a given situation.
So how was my convention? I saw many people, some I hadn’t seen in years (including one of my stage-combat teachers and colleagues: it had been 30 years!). I met cool new people, or people I only know from the realms of the internet. I ate (Indian, Nepali, Italian, and more quotidian fare) and talked and laughed and listened. I visited a foreign land (with Canada within a 15 minute walk across the Rainbow Bridge, how could I not?). But mostly, I talked and listened and laughed and thought about things in new ways, which is really what I go to conventions for. I had beadwork in the Art Show (every time is new–last year my climate change necklaces all sold; this year none of them did) and a gratifying number of pieces went home with new owners.
It’s a huge indulgence, being able to do this: go to Another Place, see friends, and talk about the issues and ideas that writers worry about and gnaw on. I’m very lucky to have the time and the finances and the flexibility to be able to do it at all. But I also spent a good deal of time talking with some people in indie publishing, and now have –maybe not a publishing plan, but enough hard information to be able to put together a publishing plan so that the 4th Sarah Tolerance book can see the light of day, and I can bring out the backlist in a uniform edition. I call that a successful business trip.
Short answer: My Convention was good. Now to go home and start the real work.
ale or whatever passed for it). I grew up in the era of folk music, where almost everyone I knew had a guitar, banjo, recorder, or equivalent instrument. Maybe a dulcimer, castanets, or lap harp. Sure, we went to concerts, but we made our own music, too. For the last couple of centuries, folks who could afford it had a harpsichord, clavichord, pianoforte, as well as a harp (ref. any Jane Austen novel or film). Composers wrote for their patrons (or their patrons’ families), music simple enough for an amateur to enjoy playing. Even with the shift through recorded media to professional concert music (everything from symphonies to metallica), folks continue to enjoy playing music. Perhaps it’s a bug they catch in high school band or orchestra. Perhaps their moms forced them into piano or clarinet lessons and they found themselves wanting to play long after lessons went by the wayside.