PAX: A Pilgrimage
by admin on Sep.08, 2010, under Video Games
Religious metaphors are, in my daily discourse, more often brought up as leavening for humor than as explications of my experiences. Still, it is easy to liken PAX to the sort of journey one undertakes in searching for a connection to something larger than oneself. The feet that tread this dusty path toward Seattle each year come not in search of the grand design, but for a chance to feel en masse the unity of shared cultural understanding that play creates. For one weekend each year in Seattle (and another in Boston), many thousands of lucky people are able to experience, at full potency, the unity of gaming culture and the joy of refusing to grow up.
I say all this knowing well that I risk seeming excessively reverent. Be assured that there is no (James) Randian “woo-woo” that is said to create a tabula rasa in all those who attend. PAX is more realistic, and the release more familiar. This is pilgrimage as only geeks could envision it; interaction with the masses to be had alongside the familiarity of game rule-sets and console controllers. It is a knowing glance at the airport, and a nod on the street as you’re identified as part of an emerging culture.
The creators of PAX are no longer its masters (though they are its most celebrated guests), and the idea itself is now alive and fluxing with the aggregate will of those concerned. It has come to be a celebration of digital and analog games, of comics and music, and of simple fun, enjoyed directly and without restraint. It comes with affirmations of our cultural status, as offered this year by one Warren Spector. He so eloquently confirmed what many of us already knew—that games are our generation’s most promising form of expression, and that they can certainly be held as art.
PAX is the reason your IT guy asked for that extra day off, and also why he came back with a goofy smile that he’s probably never shown you before. It is the safety of knowing that you can sing and dance and play without repercussion, and the feeling that anyone at hand is a potential new friend.
But perhaps where I find the most beauty in PAX each year is in the knowledge that this could happen anywhere, and any time. Though Gabe and Tycho set the stone in motion, all they did was reveal a yearning need for such a celebration. Religious metaphors seem best, though PAX does not need to appeal to the supernatural to engender brotherhood (and sisterhood) among strangers. All of the “magic” of PAX can be boiled down to assumed mutual friendship, the hard work of volunteers, and the good-natured interactions of people immersed in a culture of play.
PAX fosters an attitude which encompasses, in people of all ages, the best of childhood optimism. This attitude, if carried beyond the boundaries of the convention, is a tremendous force for good in the world and should be encouraged at every opportunity.
Can’t Smile Without You
by admin on Aug.24, 2010, under Football
Two weeks into the new football season and I’m already having to explain to those around me the mania that comes with being a fan in America. A self-proclaimed enemy of morning sets an alarm for 4:30am–on Saturday, no less. Colors become iconic, frustration becomes the clang of the woodwork or the gasps of the crowd. Hairs are at once stood up on the back of one’s neck and clumped between fingers that have torn them from their rightful head.
Growing up with Englishmen in the family, and as a voracious consumer of all things competitive, it was inevitable that I’d at some point drift toward the world’s most common sport. For most young fans in mid-1990′s Los Angeles, following the sport meant David Beckham and the style of Manchester United. I drifted away from football for a while, preferring hockey and other more easily accessible fare, but as I returned to it, I became interested in the relationship the game had with my more authentically Anglo relations. My sporting affection thereafter has been cloaked in Tottenham white, and my blood vessels have paid for that dearly.
I came into following Spurs at the beginning of the ’05-’06 season, punctuated with some sour food and the stereotypical Tottenham drama. In retrospect, it’s for the best that my first exposure to the team was realistic, if only so that I learned to appreciate the success in recent times and to stomach inconsistencies like last season’s FA Cup semi-final.
Or, for those with their minds alongside mine in the immediate future, there’s the lesson on how to quell the pangs as Spurs look toward a home tie with a Swiss side not a single one of us had heard of prior to our blushes in Bern. A season worth of effort was put on a razor’s edge, and a legion of support stands on the precipice between validation and a soul-crushing return to normalcy. Regardless of the outcome in London, and regardless of the percentage of my thoughts that will be dedicated to playing out every possible back-heel and through-ball before kick-off, I’m happier with the stress than without. As always, I’ll just wish I’d have been there to enjoy that manic rise and fall; to hate and to love along with thirty-six thousand of my closest friends.
All this for a team I’ve seen only three times in person, and from which I live a half-world away. Mania seems understated to some, and to others, it’s just the price of admission.
Up and at ‘em
by admin on Aug.18, 2010, under Personal
This domain has sat dormant for too long. Wordpress up, writing to come.
