Life As A Series of Phases

“Everybody’s youth is dream, a form of chemical madness”-F. Scott Fitzgerald

Life as a series of phases

Urban dictionary describes a fangirl as “A rabid breed of human female who is obsessed either with a fictional character or an actor”

While most others will vehemently deny all such accusations of being “rabid” and instead self righteously uphold their honor (know that whoever does this is actually more rabid as a fangirl species than anyone else; it’s just the age old defense mechanism that our ancestors equipped us with), I will in fact almost violently agree with this definition. Now I know as I say this, my credibility is probably going out the window but all current and future acquaintances of mine should be well acquainted with a rather obsessed side of my personality.

A while back, when lunching with a few friends, I hit upon something which might well be classified as a revelation- my entire teen life can be summed up as a series of phases. Now the Urban Dictionary does not define “phase”, so I will attempt to define it satisfactorily. A phase is a “period of intense and heightened obsession experienced by a member of the female species that stems from either admiration or attraction to a certain unattainable member of the male species; the duration of the period differs from person to person and the strength of the obsession varies as such too.”

(I hope I have done the word some justice. Fellow fangirls please feel free to agree or contest)

All my life up until ninth grade I had known one true love- Feluda. He and I were introduced by a friend at a library (I am forever thankful to her) and he meant the world to me. We were together for three years. Romeo and Juliet were mockeries compared to what we had. We solved crimes together and slept in the same bed. I was a good partner to him- I learnt a smattering of Bengali and knew Calcutta inside out in spite of never having been there. I asked Topshe to teach me everything he knew about one Felu Mitter.

Stop right there.

Feluda is fictitious. He is just a figment of Satyajit Ray’s rather fertile imagination. One that I chose to adopt and live with. I watched the Felu movies in spite of not knowing anything but basic Bengali and I still have my first copy of a Feluda Adventure- it was Royal Bengal Mystery. As I open it right now I can read my scrawl “I love reading Feluda.”We lived happily ever after.

And then things went and screwed themselves up a bit.

So, class ninth, it all began with the Jonas Brothers. We listened to all their songs (or whatever three-minute-long wailings they produce; oops that sounds wrong), memorized all their lyrics and sang them between classes. We actually had sheets of lyrics lying around in our desks and we would frequently refer to them when singing (rather off key; not a pleasant sound, but to be fair to us, we sounded a damn sight better than the originals), reprimanding each other when we sung it wrong. We had Jonas Brothers screensavers and we seldom talked about anything else. I believe we all had subconsciously decide to kidnap and wed Nick (is that the guy’s name? or was it Dick? Wait, I need Wikipedia) and had more or less decided that the Jonas Brothers were the Next Big Thing after the BSB (as if). We hounded the copies of the Disney magazine for any article about the three.

It sounded a bit like this:-

“Oh my God, he likes blue. I like blue too. Oh, wait, he is a Virgo. That’s a perfect match for me. We should totally get hitched.”

What can I say? I was young and that was just the way I rolled.

Class ten. I scarcely have to refresh my memory to know what my obsession was back then. It was a twin mix of Linda Goodman and the elitist MUN crowd my school produces in hordes every year.

So Linda happened to me pretty much the way she happened to everyone. One dog eared copy of Sun Signs was passed around the classroom and we all hid it in our desks and read it in Geography class. It usually went this way- you read your own “How to identify a blah”, then you read “A blah woman/man” and then you read the “Blah woman/man “for whichever sign you liked (or the sign of whichever person you liked) and then you generally basked in the afterglow of the process- it was positively lovely to have someone praise you endlessly (she puts it in such a way that even your faults sound like applause). Sometimes it became a communal activity- you sat down together and a certain someone would read the “How to” of a certain other-one. And then the nudge-nudge-wink-wink process started. Conversations would sound like,” Do you know that Taurean is Section C?” or the prelude to a friendship usually carried the statement “When were you born?” and some super wonky analysis would ensue.

A bit of advice to my younger/more delusional readers- Sun Signs are totally bullcrap.Now I can feel Linda Goodman rolling in her grave, baring her horns in a very Arian manner-but honestly, from the bottom of my heart, do not believe in it.

As always there is a little tale behind my current disillusionment, which I would LOVE to recount here.

I am born on January the Fourth, a birth date I share with Newton. I always had this weird fascination for Sun Signs that someone could actually tell how I was as a person by knowing just my birthday. On my first reading of “How to Identify a Capricorn”, I practically screamed and flailed with delight-this was just SO me! And someone read “Capricorn Woman” to me. You’ll be interested to know that even though I found not-so-many-things in common between me and this mythic creature described, I was almost ready to bend backwards to match those descriptions. I was a January born, yes? I had to behave like a Capricorn woman. So, I pushed down that tendril of thought in my brain, the one that was screaming “This is nothing like you!”I pranced around, giddily happy like a unicorn, that four pages described ME so well. My BFF politely tried to nudge me away, but I was more than happy to ignore her advice and plunge into the happy world of a Capricorn woman.

Ladies and gents, you have the Biggest Idiot of All Times-Me.

I also berated and begrudged anyone else who was born in January because they were just not Goat-y enough. Don’t you see? I am THE epitome of everything Capricorn ever produced. Learn from me, you weaklings! And make your sun sign proud.

Finally, it dawned on me when I deigned to read the “Sagittarian Woman” section. (I f you have read it, it is a pretty accurate description of some parts of me)And then I read all the “Woman” sections. My conclusion, earth shattering as it was – I had a bit of all of them in me.

So this is my bottom line about the subject- your personality is not a three page document to be handed out. Sun Signs are not accurate because they are affected by a dizzying array of variables. It is rather better to be defined as yourself than as a fanciful description in a book. No offense, Linda Goodman.

On a side note, all those fellow Capricorns I had berated? Turns out, on closer inspection, that they were more Goat-y than I ever will be in this lifetime. Go, figure.

The second, rather more intense phase was the MUN phase. I choose not to talk much about this because that would require names and references and other things I am not happy divulging. Suffice to say, it was heaven when it lasted, and yes I had people’s names scribbled on my desks and I pretty much drove a friend of mine up the wall with my repeated chanting of two acronyms.

(All those who get it, do me a favor and shut it, yeah?)

As the end of class ten drew nearer, my hyper active brain found a new obsession-Ugly Betty. Actually, the object of admiration was her boyfriend, the scatter-brained Matt Hartley played by a gorgeous Daniel Eric Gold.(He looks  a bit like Josh Groban)I spent more time looking up “Ugly Betty Season 4 Episode 1: The Butterfly Effect” than studying Polynomials. My repeated references did not buy me any favors with my friends and they actually took to stuffing their ears at one point the minute I said “Dan”.

Come class eleven. I faced the Big Daddy of my problems- as has already been recounted in an earlier post.

But the most memorable thing about class 11 shall always be Gordon Ramsay. I owe this man my sanity. I have no clue at this point, why I chose to Google “Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares” one fine day, but I am glad I did. Gordon, if you have seen him in the KN UK versions (and don’t tell me you know him because of the Masterchef USA version-that’s not him him), is a pugnacious foul mouthed chef with a reputation of saying the f-word too often. But he does it so adorably, and he is so genuinely concerned with a total stranger’s welfare that you are too often charmed into liking him. I mean, he is a 12 Michelin Star guy; he does not need to go to some small restaurant in Wales or Inverness and take shit from the busboy. But he does. I watched Boiling Point I think, the show about his quest to get the Third Michelin Star which is notoriously hard to get and I was almost blown away by his perfection. He would have quality and nothing else and if he had to stay up all night, or miss the delivery of his twins, so be it. Yes, at times, he is almost hogging the spotlight and he is more obnoxious than a bagful of Kim Kardashians but the man is such a force of nature. His personality is almost tempestuous; he seems very concerned yet untouched, he is hot blooded himself yet he can be a total sweetheart to some 50 year old lady trying to run a tapas bar. With him it’s always sunny one moment and rainy the next. I respected him for who he was, and who he has become today. Most people might not agree in my opinion, but they need to dig deeper.

But Gordon Ramsay was not just another guy in my lineup of lookers. He belonged to what I like to call “The Character Guys”- people I admire for who they are/were. The list consists of Gordon, Bruce Lee, Lance Armstrong, George Mallory, Edmund Hillary and Stephen Hawking. (More about these guys later)

Twelfth Grade. Ooh, I already see people’s hand shooting into the air to guess my obsession. But.

But, I liked Colin Firth in June, Glee in August and Jude Law in November, before he came. (Boy, do I multitask)

Colin Firth- I have known the guy from like, the sixth grade when I saw the BBC’s adaptation of Pride and Prejudice (The Lake Scene, anyone?) and he was my Darcy. He always will be. And once again, I don’t know what kicked off the obsession, but I just found myself watching and reading Bridget Jones’s Diary (very hilarious, a must read) and then came A Single Man. A beautiful movie, with very subtle and nuanced acting, the way only Colin can. A full review to this movie will be posted later.

Glee- I livestreamed Season 4 and rehearsed singing Poker Face in my bedroom. The obsession started after I heard The Warblers’ rendition of Teenage Dream. There was literally no looking back. I had a dance routine to every song, I was so ready to burst into song at any given moment of the day (with an appropriate song choice) and I practiced my trills every afternoon. My playlist was entirely Glee and I seldom thought of anything else. I might still be a bit in love with this series. They are just so superbly over-the-top mawkish and emotional, and they always have the perfect song to sing. And it also probably is the only sitcom where a girl gets pregnant in her junior year, becomes an addict in her senior year, then breaks her legs in a car accident but manages to make it to Yale. And you thought I multitasked.

Jude Law- I was watching that movie about He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named that Jude was in with Downey Jr.Some fascination and minor drooling ensued. But I really didn’t find any movie of his which I liked liked. I liked Jude in them for sure, but that’s it. However, there was one interview with John Lipton (of Inside the Actors’ Studio fame) in which he was his usual charmingly bashful self and he was so bloody well read. He talked about Gerhard Richter and Greek Literature and other brainy things. So, yeah, I was a bit of a goner there.

But then he came.

He being Sherlock. Not Sherlock Holmes. Just Sherlock. The one with the cheekbones and the curly hair, the one who used nicotine patches and hated deerstalkers, the one who twirled around in his Great Big Coat and addressed Watson as John.(more like a drawl/moan). Played again by the undeniably handsome Benedict Cumberbatch.

I didn’t merely fall in love. I plunged, plummeted and ricocheted into the arms of a fictional detective much like a swooning Regency heroine. I had read the Sherlock Holmes novels in class eight and well, yes I had liked the guy. And forgotten him. This time he was back, here to stay.

So some confession here- I do not like like Benedict, even though I might give the impression. There’s that small voice in my head that always says”Not my type”. I tried to tamp it down but nowadays I can’t ignore it. So I settle for mooning about Sherlock. And John. I am in the Sherlock fandom where we do some VERY silly things and I live vicariously through S & J.Because of my obsessive fangirling, I have made a ton of friends online, who, for a change, don’t mind me going on about how awesome a certain consulting detective and his ex-army doctor partner(Partner? I meant Colleague)are.I dearly wish I had found such an online fan community for the rest of my obsessions too.At least then I wouldn’t have had to lose face with my friends and/or the general public.

So, that long winded parable was to answer a simple question-why do I do this? Why do I put myself through this boom, recession and depression cycle?

One simple answer might be that it is inevitable. I am a teenager, experiencing Wild Wild West (also known as teenage).My attention deficient brain latches on to the first shiny thing that walks my way.

I couldn’t disagree more. My fangirling is not the result of my hormones going haywire- although that may be where it all started. Those who have witnessed my “phases” know the kind of deep attachment, almost soul bond, which I nurse in my heart while it lasts. I plunge headlong into a certain thing, become so emotionally invested in it that I sometimes can barely recognize myself and it either fades way when I can give it no more or I get severely disillusioned about the Object of Affection, breaking my heart in the process. Sometimes, my own fangirling intensity astonishes me. I envy all those calm, placid people who remain untouched by anything. Yes, they also like people but they don’t end up as the hot mess that I become.

Truth be told, I need to be distracted. I need to have something to obsess and fixate over so that I stop whining about life in general. I also cannot deny how pleasant it sometimes is to have all your attention focused on something outside of you. It feels good to know that Kurt and Blaine are finally together after dancing around for so long or that Sherlock is really not dead. Or that Benedict is single now. Or that Gatiss is currently writing Series 3. (Yay!)I could go on.

Bottom line- fangirling keeps me happy. Yes, I might feel slightly (very) stupid at the end of the day knowing that the one thing that I am an expert at does not really exist or just doesn’t care. But there’s always that comfort blanket of knowing you’re not alone. Frankly, I am of the opinion that you can do anything that makes you happy as long as it is legal, does not get you knocked up and doesn’t harm anyone.

I have done a lot of things I am not proud of. Losing my head is on the top of the list. But fangirling? It’s on the List of Things I’ll Always Want In My Life.

On with the fangirling, then.