Ode to San Diego Comic Con

I'm sitting 18 floors upon the balcony of a condominium in San Diego. It's night, 10.41pm to be precise. Over to my left is the Hyatt, and the bay. The lights twinkle. There are a few low clouds illuminated by light pollution - just for added effect. You can feel the presence of the sea on your skin, taste it on your lips.

It's all very Bladerunner - except for the sea bit.

I remember the first time I flew to San Diego, and tonight I'm reminded that I should not forget; should never take it for granted. We get used to everything, given time. And too often we fail to take stock. To contextualise.

When I first came here I was a very young man just starting a career in comics - though at the time it felt like I was already a veteran! I was a working class boy of meagre means transported through circumstances, luck and a little talent to places of which youthful dreams are made. (My heart forever belonged to California, even before that became a conscious acceptance.) 

This circus, this flash-mob of geeks and freaks and artists and writers, of cosplay heroes, and heartbroken martyrs, misfits, maestros, millionaires and masturbators, playboy bunnies, perverts, voyeurs and visionaries, the victors and the vanquished of a myriad of media and mediums make this something we all have a collective propensity to belittle. We are the hunter-gatherers - short-sighted and hungry, too hungry in fact to take in the enormity of this mythic world we inhabit. The stars become a backdrop, a setting, a means of navigation.

Yes. Our feet will be sore, and our cheeks will ache through the act of a thousand disingenuous smiles, and yet another thousand more genuine ones. Our midrifts will swell, and our faculties will dim, and yet we'll all feel the post-con blues - the feeling that something happened that was important, and that we didn't have the awareness or senses to fully capture.

It was too big, and somehow we missed that.  

We'll be lost in hopes and dreams, the business of business, the betrayals and bastardisation, the bitterness and backstabbing, the curt and the terse and the politic.
But let's not miss out on the wonder, eh? Let's be bloody thankful for once!

Here we are, we one-hundred-and-fifty-odd-thousand lovers of what makes us human - our propensity to dream, and from that, grow. Our need to create what does not exist and to make it exist in thousands of fibreglass storm trouper costumes; cardboard swords; elf ears; paintings; words; films; apps; pamphlets and passion projects.

There's literally NOWHERE on earth I would rather be right now.

So fuck you, the bug that has bit my head, both arms and caused a large itchy bump to appear on my lower back while I wrote this. You'll not steel this moment from me! I'm here, in full appreciation of the curious, and delightful twists fate apportioned me. I was a midland boy who never thought to see such things, yet here I was, and here I am.

Here's to an amazing week at SDCC!