Titus Groan
Active Member
- Joined
- Jun 14, 2018
- Messages
- 27
So, I just saw Raymond Feist in conversation at city hall in Brisbane, Australia. When I booked my ticket I thought, what the hell, its only an hour and they'll probably only be about 200 or so people there. When I arrived there was a queue OUT OF THE DOOR AND AROUND THE NEXT TWO BLOCKS. Over 1400 people in attendance. People of all different kinds, labourers coming to the event just after work, smartphone-nice-suit types, groups of teenagers clutching new copies of King of Ashes, the to-be-expected shabby nerds in graphic tees, and, most touchingly of all, kids holding copies of Magician as if it were the newest, coolest fantasy out right now.
Feist was exactly the kind of person he needed to be for the event: witty and personable and wise. I'm still so incredibly moved by the amount of love that was in that room. Brisbane (for those of you not that knowledgeable about Australia) is known as 'A Big Country Town'. It's a city but it FEELS staid and stuffy and stuck in its ways. It's very drab and unexciting. If you do something you regret, word will get around and it will stick to you for the rest of your life. It's exactly the kind of place you want to escape from, the kind of quotidian non-place that drives you to chainsmoke and have existential crises every Tuesday. It reminds of the fictional town of Pawnee from Parks and Rec. Which, I think, is why fantasy has such a big foothold here. (Kate Forsyth, Kim Wilkins, Vernero Armarno and Garth Nix are all from Brisbane!). Knowing that over a thousand people also found their solace and strength in Feists books and that when I looked around me I could see them was a feeling I can't quite describe. I'm not the kind of person to splash on a signed copy or a picture, but I stuck with the queue just to thank the man for sharing Midkemia with the world.
I don't know where I'd be without it.
Feist was exactly the kind of person he needed to be for the event: witty and personable and wise. I'm still so incredibly moved by the amount of love that was in that room. Brisbane (for those of you not that knowledgeable about Australia) is known as 'A Big Country Town'. It's a city but it FEELS staid and stuffy and stuck in its ways. It's very drab and unexciting. If you do something you regret, word will get around and it will stick to you for the rest of your life. It's exactly the kind of place you want to escape from, the kind of quotidian non-place that drives you to chainsmoke and have existential crises every Tuesday. It reminds of the fictional town of Pawnee from Parks and Rec. Which, I think, is why fantasy has such a big foothold here. (Kate Forsyth, Kim Wilkins, Vernero Armarno and Garth Nix are all from Brisbane!). Knowing that over a thousand people also found their solace and strength in Feists books and that when I looked around me I could see them was a feeling I can't quite describe. I'm not the kind of person to splash on a signed copy or a picture, but I stuck with the queue just to thank the man for sharing Midkemia with the world.
I don't know where I'd be without it.
