Then to reply and react to your reactions.
In your comment, which you left a few blogs ago, you said:
“And I’m jealous! :) You got something with Jason that I never got with Jake, and I don’t know now if it would have made things better or worse had my situation worked out differently.”There’s no need to be jealous, cause in the end, I don’t have anything with Jason. Incidentally, or maybe not incidentally at all, I thought about me meeting him not long ago. I revisited every single time I met him, or I should really say: I revisited the times I specifically remember meeting him. I have a distinct feeling that I forgot about a few times, or maybe I dreamt it which is not unthinkable.
Yes, the first time was special. Not only because it was the first time, but also because Jason wasn’t that famous yet, nor did he behave like a famous prick yet. He was simply an American guy with a guitar who wanted to play some songs to us Dutchies. It was after his late afternoon concert in a sweaty little club name Rotown with restaurant attached to the back. Not to Jason’s back, to the club’s back. I mention this, because the restaurant played a big part in my first meeting with Jason.
I mentioned this evening in the “My Life as an Online Fangirl” blog. I was 25/26 and I had just met Fleur (25), fellow fan and liker of buns with tuna. We both felt we were too old and too cool to behave like fangirls, and Jason had to come to us if he wanted to meet us. It seemed Jason didn’t want to meet us and ignored us completely. How rude!
After the concert I decided I was going to stay a little longer to have diner in the restaurant and I invited Fleur to join me. Fleur, who was supposed to attend a birthday party, agreed. I’m guessing because Jason was seated in a lone corner of the restaurant instead of turning up on the birthday party. We sat down two tables apart from him. Fleur could see him easily, I had to turn my neck in an uncomfortable position which didn’t keep me from doing so every so often. Somehow between glare three and four I lost sight of Jason. He had moved from his table. Turning my head and neck back in a more natural position I found out, to my shock, that Jason was now practically sitting next to me.
Okay, don’t get too excited. He was not sitting at our table, he was sitting at the table next to ours and he was talking to two people and all I could see was his back. Sounds familiar? Also this is getting much longer than I anticipated. Never mind.
We, Fleur and I, still thinking we were too cool and old, ate our diner while staring at Jason’s back and exchanging glares which pretty much said: Now what!? Jason made up his mind and with that solved our problem of “Now what” by leaving the restaurant. Fleur and I finished our diner, debated if we should have a dessert, decided against it, because we figured Jason might be hanging around the area. Which he did. Closer even, than we thought. The moment we were about to leave the restaurant he came back into the restaurant. Fleur, in all her fangirlish behaviour and courage approached Jason telling him we were actually about to leave, but could she shake his hand? Jason agreed, extended hand, and then was engaged in a very frantic, three-handed handshake (Fleur provided the third hand) before she ran out of the door leaving me behind. Jason was now staring at me, hand extended. I’m actually very shy and choose that moment to execute my shyness and run out of words to say. So I grabbed his hand, shook it, spluttered something like “I’m with her” and then ran out of the door vaguely waving him goodbye.
That was the first time I met Jason. The second time was during the same evening and I was still with Fleur. Eventhough we decided we were too cool to behave like fangirls, it was during that particular evening I showed my most erratic and blatant stalking behaviour. After having left the restaurant Fleur and I made up excuses to go back in. After Jason didn’t approach us in the restaurant (How rude!!!) we left as well shortly after he left to see if he was hanging around on the street. I can even pretty much remember our conversation. Fleur was complaining we didn’t take our chances and I decided to try and comfort her by saying: “Maybe he’s hanging around on the street somewhere and we’ll walk into him.” To which she replied: “Yeah, there he is.” And yeah, there he was indeed. The second meeting was just as erratic and chaotic as the first one. Fleur went fan mad in a very 25 year old woman fashion, by rambling incomprehensibly and me, I didn’t say a word and neither did Jason.
After that evening every other meeting with Jason was boring and very typical and definitely not as exciting. It was meeting him with a bunch of other people. Asking autograph, Jason signing stuff, mumbling thank you, that’s it. No conversation, hardly any contact, nothing personal about it. To me, it felt empty. Also because in the end, Jason never remembered and I’m remembering less and less about it. Looking back, it all seems so far away, something from a different life. More important things have happened, and Jason never remembered me. I don’t mean to put you down, but yes, he was in some cases nicer to me than Jake was to you. Do I have something with Jason? No. I have something in my head, a memory and a deflated feeling, while Jason has no recollection of me at all. What did mean something to me and has given me a lot of joy and entertainment were his (Dutch) fans. We did wonderful crazy things, but that’s a story for another time.
2 comments:
Maybe “jealous” wasn’t the right word. :) Maybe I just meant that the grass is always greener and all that.
What it seems from reading through the last several entries (and this one in particular) is that despite sharing a lot of emotions and experiences, you and I were after different things. You seem much more invested in the concept of fandom itself than I am, and I was particularly struck by your mention of losing your ability to fantasize.
When I was 24, just prior to Jake really coming into my life, I wrote a blog entry on MySpace about how I missed having something in my life that I was really excited about. I was a huge Beatles fan (still am) and was completely dedicated to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which I still love), but at the time, there was nothing *new* in my life that grabbed my attention and held it the way I liked it to be held. I wrote about this a little in the first chapter of the book, how I took Jake’s appearance as a sign that he was going to be the Next Big Thing that I invested in.
But in the end, it wasn’t him that I dedicated myself to, it was Jake Watch. It wasn’t the real person, it was the creative expression of what I wanted him to be. I was far more excited about the Jake in ’08 campaign, for instance, than I was about Zodiac. But when it started to fade (as all things do), I actually felt *more* lost than I believe I would have had it been for Jake alone. It’s one thing to lose interest in something. It’s another thing altogether to lose interest in something that you yourself are creating.
Any time there’s a hole in your life, it begs to be filled. I just got sick of filling mine the way I had earlier in life. It sounds like you’re seeking right now, and I wish you luck in finding where you’re going... Please keep writing about your journey.
Not only were we after different things, we also react to things differently. You said about the ’08 campaign: “when it started to fade (as all things do), I actually felt *more* lost than I believe I would have had it been for Jake alone.”
I always walked away with great memories (and some others not so great). We did several t-shirt actions, designing a t-shirt and having all our names on it, or buying a bulk of t-shirts from Blend Apparel and distributing them among the fans. Though my favourite is the hats action.
Jason would come to Holland to give a concert and we wanted to do something special. Some suggested to design a t-shirt and give it to him as a present from the Dutch JM Forum. I thought that was boring and not very imaginative so I came up with the hat action. The hat action could actively involve eveyone who came to the concert and wanted to be involved. All they had to do was buy a hat and throw it on the stage at a before hand decided moment. Someone dared me, so I went ahead and organized to whole damn thing. For weeks we had discussions about how cheap the hats could be. How to attach messages to the hat and most importantly, when to throw the hat. Only those weeks organizing the whole thing was already worth it. After weeks of discussion and promoting we collected 40 hat throwers and decided the hats would be thrown after the song “Make it Mine”.
I must admit, I had more success with the hat action than you did with your ’08 campaign. We were lucky. During that tour, Jason was touring with someone specifically assigned to film the whole tour. And at the designated moment, the cameraman happened to be on stage, right in the middle, in the back were he could see the hat rain perfectly, from the best angle you could get. In the end the hats ended up in his new clip for “Make it Mine” and on his DVD accompanying the special edition of his album. I remember watching the DVD on my own in my living room. Jason talking to his cameraman: “Was that your idea?” and me screaming: “No, it was mine!”
No, I never told him it was my idea and I met him a few times after that. But he seemed to be impressed.
After the concert we shared the video’s and laughed heartily about his initial reaction; the shock on his face was hilarious. Then it was done and everybody moved on to the next big thing. I can’t even remember what the next big thing was, probably a tour trip by fans. Life just moved on and so did I.
It’s been only lately that I felt sort of *lost * after a Jason-related event.
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