Picture the scene: it's Christmas and you have for whatever reason carried on a tradition and your in the local theatre at the pantomime. The curtain pulls back and initially your still in a theatre, your pointing out funny details that surely the kids didn't understand and knowingly catching all the innuendo the chosen half celebrity had been allowed to hint at this year. It's silly, the make up is ridiculous the hair is fake and the main character is a badly mocked up man in woman's clothing. You know exactly what it is. Yet why then before the intermission curtain are you booing and hissing in earnest when the bad guy stalks on stage like a monty python character? Sporadically making sure you gesture to the young people you may or may not be with in case any one thinks you're buying into it.That is the beauty of humanity; you allow yourself to look past the obvious grotesque and momentarily attach to the rules your imagination has been introduced to. Drama and comedy blur the lines and you really do want them to just turn around and see the desperate hero who appears seconds after searching for his lost love.
Now picture another scene, you wake up and half your body is completely numb because you slept in a van on an inch thick mattress laid over wood. The lady next to you has three layers of thermals, a fleece designed for mountain hiking and a hat pulled down over her face it was so cold. There is a layer of condensation on your pillow and the creases in your eyes sting when they meet skin allowed to go cold while you were still. You pull back another curtain because you turned up at the camp site in the pitch black and have no idea what where you are looks like. In front of you is a perfectly still crystal clear almost ludicrous blue coloured lake, a shingle beach and a backdrop of snow capped mountains the likes you have never seen before. At first you can't appreciate it, yesterday you were in a forest spotting rare birds or the day before recovering from a clearly inhumane sea sickness as you hold onto each other because you can't even stand still on the spot while you ask an odd German in a trailer to cook your fish for you. But today... Today you are wearing long johns, listening to Lisa snoring and climbing out of a van with a bizarre hope that the mouse didn't freeze in the night. You struggle to stand on a perfect stone beach lined with yellows and reds only autumn in poetry and paintings can conjure; not sure that the mountains are real or very well done weta props. It takes a second but then slowly you begin to buy the story, you feel yourself begin to forget the rules you have lived by so far and you boo and hiss. You begin to cheer for the couple who got their dream jobs working on a steampunk exhibition because they took two wet cold miserable Brits in and gave them tuna bake. You 'ooooh' and 'aaaaaah' as the caricature of an old seaman with a pipe and an eye like pop eye, who doesn't want to talk to you until you have bought him two beers and is happily drunk, instinctively slices the head off an octopus that you accidentally caught and handed him so you could take a picture. You marvel at the bravery of characters that flew across the world after two years of not seeing each other and desperately hoping they work out! You pinch yourself when a Harris hawk swoops so low over the windscreen of the van you can count it's eyelashes. You give a breathe and a cheer when you turn a bend and the countries costume change from pine forest to marshlands gets a much deserved round of applause. Even the jump in your seat when over night twenty inches of snow threaten to trap you in a town until a crazy person you met leads you through a valley where you should legally have chains on your tires: but the view... real unadulterated dangerous snow so deep it becomes a drift, but is reduced by a magical spell to a mere picturesque postcard after a forty minute drive. You ACTUALLY close your eyes on the edge of your seat as you watch the main love interest's foot slip as she holds the wire left on the side of a mountain because the cloud you're climbing through has made the rocks wet.
At one point I was convinced that a wagon wheel was going to come flying out of no where and after all these years I would finally be the one... It is beautiful, it's so beautiful that it's sometimes ridiculous. It's drama and it's sometimes too much. The rules are different and I feel like so many people just shrug because it's too much. Why should you be able to skim rocks to an Iceberg!? Or meet a bushman who decides the track is lame and takes you straight down the boulder covered riverbed at a sprint wondering why you stopped to build the courage to jump two metres across an open glacial falls. It's almost scary realising you aren't watching and kind of wishing you could be somewhere normal for a short period to get back to what you know. It takes confidence to allow yourself to believe in a story, some people use it as an escape. Others take lessons from them, learning how to see things through other peoples eyes. To feel for something you know is fake is part of human nature and has been entertainment since humans were alive. But dipping your head into a reality that takes your breathe away so often you feel like your van windscreen is a theatre is even harder. Fantasy is half the reason I am here and it turns out you can live in a place where the scenery is magical and the people are ridiculous.
Now picture another scene, you wake up and half your body is completely numb because you slept in a van on an inch thick mattress laid over wood. The lady next to you has three layers of thermals, a fleece designed for mountain hiking and a hat pulled down over her face it was so cold. There is a layer of condensation on your pillow and the creases in your eyes sting when they meet skin allowed to go cold while you were still. You pull back another curtain because you turned up at the camp site in the pitch black and have no idea what where you are looks like. In front of you is a perfectly still crystal clear almost ludicrous blue coloured lake, a shingle beach and a backdrop of snow capped mountains the likes you have never seen before. At first you can't appreciate it, yesterday you were in a forest spotting rare birds or the day before recovering from a clearly inhumane sea sickness as you hold onto each other because you can't even stand still on the spot while you ask an odd German in a trailer to cook your fish for you. But today... Today you are wearing long johns, listening to Lisa snoring and climbing out of a van with a bizarre hope that the mouse didn't freeze in the night. You struggle to stand on a perfect stone beach lined with yellows and reds only autumn in poetry and paintings can conjure; not sure that the mountains are real or very well done weta props. It takes a second but then slowly you begin to buy the story, you feel yourself begin to forget the rules you have lived by so far and you boo and hiss. You begin to cheer for the couple who got their dream jobs working on a steampunk exhibition because they took two wet cold miserable Brits in and gave them tuna bake. You 'ooooh' and 'aaaaaah' as the caricature of an old seaman with a pipe and an eye like pop eye, who doesn't want to talk to you until you have bought him two beers and is happily drunk, instinctively slices the head off an octopus that you accidentally caught and handed him so you could take a picture. You marvel at the bravery of characters that flew across the world after two years of not seeing each other and desperately hoping they work out! You pinch yourself when a Harris hawk swoops so low over the windscreen of the van you can count it's eyelashes. You give a breathe and a cheer when you turn a bend and the countries costume change from pine forest to marshlands gets a much deserved round of applause. Even the jump in your seat when over night twenty inches of snow threaten to trap you in a town until a crazy person you met leads you through a valley where you should legally have chains on your tires: but the view... real unadulterated dangerous snow so deep it becomes a drift, but is reduced by a magical spell to a mere picturesque postcard after a forty minute drive. You ACTUALLY close your eyes on the edge of your seat as you watch the main love interest's foot slip as she holds the wire left on the side of a mountain because the cloud you're climbing through has made the rocks wet.
At one point I was convinced that a wagon wheel was going to come flying out of no where and after all these years I would finally be the one... It is beautiful, it's so beautiful that it's sometimes ridiculous. It's drama and it's sometimes too much. The rules are different and I feel like so many people just shrug because it's too much. Why should you be able to skim rocks to an Iceberg!? Or meet a bushman who decides the track is lame and takes you straight down the boulder covered riverbed at a sprint wondering why you stopped to build the courage to jump two metres across an open glacial falls. It's almost scary realising you aren't watching and kind of wishing you could be somewhere normal for a short period to get back to what you know. It takes confidence to allow yourself to believe in a story, some people use it as an escape. Others take lessons from them, learning how to see things through other peoples eyes. To feel for something you know is fake is part of human nature and has been entertainment since humans were alive. But dipping your head into a reality that takes your breathe away so often you feel like your van windscreen is a theatre is even harder. Fantasy is half the reason I am here and it turns out you can live in a place where the scenery is magical and the people are ridiculous.