I didn't buy a gold ticket to my first "Xena" convention. I have actually never had a gold ticket. The first time I went, I bought a preferred ticket but chose to sit with my friends in the general admission section; after that I bought exclusively general admission. The preferred ticket came with a cabaret ticket.
I could really write pages and pages about my first "Xena" convention. The juxtaposition of new/strange and familiar/comfortable was like nothing else in the world.
Steve Sears, who I'd just learned was one of the writers, led several of the panels. I miss the conventions where he'd do three or four panels. It's funny ... over the years I've seen so many friends grow kind of bored, like it's not possible for Steve to say something in panel that they haven't heard before. And ... maybe it's not. But it didn't feel that way the first time. It all felt so exciting. I came with a question that seemed perfectly obvious to me: "What did Xena mean when she said Gabrielle was her light?" We'd debated that one extensively on the board, and a chance to ask the actual writers seemed surreally too good to be true. Steve gave a better answer than any on the board had come up with. I wish I could remember it word for word. At some point, at least if it gets to be not so painful, I may go through my notebooks (yes, I'm that kind of dork) and pull out the answer.
By the end of the first day of the convention, I was aware that I would be following Steve Sears around like a puppy and everyone would be laughing at me for it afterwards. The nice thing about being part of a big group of "Xena" fans is that there's always someone weirder than you (as one board member said and I stole for my signature file). There's also no one you see who isn't completely giddy fangirl-y over someone or something (yes, even the boys -- "fangirl" is a verb, and boys do it just as well as girls do). That's the sort of thing we hide in daily life and exaggerate at conventions. I think that's a great deal of what we call "con energy" is made up of -- the way that we are so far from the day to day world and behavior that is stupid is now actually encouraged. I got that, but I wasn't quite sold on the silliness part at that point. It was more that I'd been letting these ideas shape my mind for so many months (only months yet), and suddenly the creators of those ideas were accessible. So I wasn't thinking either that I was being ridiculous or that I was being ridiculous and that was allowed -- I wasn't thinking about that at all, I was just thinking about "Xena: Warrior Princess."
All that would come later, though. The first day of the convention I was still pretty unsure. I couldn't figure out whether I fit among the subtexters or the 'shippers (it didn't feel like I fit in either world), and there was other drama (which I'm not going into here). I got to the cabaret right after dinner that first night. I was alone -- my friends with general admissions tickets hadn't purchased extra cabaret tickets, and the only ones I knew with gold tickets had made other plans. I didn't even know what a cabaret was (yeah, I'm that sheltered).
Oh, a bit of background too. I knew the tune of the song "Hallelujah" because we'd sung it at Mass a year or so before. One of my friends had called it the "Shrek Hallelujah." It wasn't the whole song, and the words were changed to reflect the proper words for that point in Mass. I hadn't and still haven't seen "Shrek." Even though the tune and concept were familiar, I heard "Hallelujah" for the very first time at that cabaret.
When Steve Sears came out to sing, he introduced "Hallelujah" by saying that it spoke to him as a writer. I was blown away. The juxtaposition of Samson and Delilah with David and Bathsheeba has layers that I can't even begin to unravel -- "she broke your throne and she cut your hair" (one's beloved turning cruel) versus "her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you" (a love forbidden because she belongs to another). My favorite part of all is "love is not a victory march, it's a cold and very lonely hallelujah." Steve would later say over email that the song was about the kinds of spiritual heights that humans could reach and then the ways that we fail to reach them. That fits with my philosophy on life -- I think that we do a disservice by praising everything because sometimes to try and fail is better than to succeed since if we fail, it means there's a much loftier goal while if we succeed, that's all the higher there is to go. Like trying to sing with angels' voices, or like Lucy trying to reread the story in the Magician's book. It also fits very well with my philosophy on love -- it's not safe, it leaves you broken and scarred, but "I'll stand before the Lord of song with nothing on my tongue but 'hallelujah.'" And it is all bound up with music.
In that moment, for the first time at the convention (although not the last), I was ... happy. At peace. I felt like I belonged, like I was where I was supposed to be. I distinctly remember telling myself that. There are those moments. Not all the time, not even often. But moments where there doesn't need to be motion, where the stillness is enough because everything is right. That was one of those moments.
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