Tuesday 3.46: A day at the faire

There’s a great essay by David Foster Wallace about the 1998 Illinois State Fair. It’s one of his more accessible pieces, not so much because the subject is relatively simple to grasp, or because it’s like a straightforward, observational American Travelogue (he addresses his perspective as an East Coast Elite in the Heartland at length, if I recall correctly), but because in it, one of the more important conclusions he comes to is that most people would be more content if they learned to take themselves less seriously.

Although he’s usually understood to be deliberately, annoyingly inscrutable, I’ve never found his nonfiction, especially that which focuses on the American Heartland, to be as complex or ambiguous as the work of William H. Gass, or even John Steinbeck. American life contained the same contradictions and mysteries for Wallace, but in its practice he usually found some unambiguous sensibility, a practical method or answer to existential concerns that other American Writers are happier to leave unanswered.

Several weeks ago, I went to a Renaissance Fair(e) in upstate New York. Like most recreational events referred to as “experiential” in common parlance,1 my compatriots and I spent a lot of time waiting in lines: An hour on a one-lane road leading to the parking lot; 30 minutes for an ATM; 15 minutes for beer; an hour for food (which most of us abandoned); another 15 minutes for beer, &c. Everywhere we looked, people were waiting in line. Waiting seemed like the point. It was exhausting, but ultimately preferable, as the one member of our party with enough guile to obtain food managed only a gray, troubling sausage that he promptly vomited in the woods.

Hot and famished, we traipsed along dusty walkways, past heinously overpriced tchotchkes with tenuous connections to the actual Renaissance—a pretty impressive series of factual lapses, given the fact that painting with the broadest strokes, the various Renaissances ran (arguably) from about 1250 to 1700, a period of 450 years.2 This was one of several observations that I wisely did not vocalize, because the center of an infinite mass of Adults in Costume and Character is no place for a civilian to get pedantic.

I also saw some elves, a bona-fide Furry, and one of the aliens from Avatar, so it’s not like verisimilitude is very high on the list of factors in a Good Time at the RenFaire.

In their idle waiting, the crowd at the RenFaire is endearing. Subcultures, no matter how traditionally accepted they may be, take comfort in the idea that they are composed of outsiders. The level to which one feels alienated or misunderstood directly correlates to the sense of community experienced among others who embrace the elements of alienation or subjugation they experience. There is something comforting in this position. As a teenager, I embraced things like hardcore music and weird literature. I learned to (kind of) play instruments, and played in bands. It made me feel different, urbane, and connected in ways that the percieved monoculture of the suburban gentry—which is mostly just sports—tended to alienate me. But at the end of the day, I still played sports. I was troubled only in the ordinary teenage ways, I was smart and polite and got terrible grades, and with a few exceptions, I was generally liked and respected.3 For the denizens of the RenFaire, subculture is something different.

As much as I needed to feel like I was different as a teenager, that identity formation never extended beyond a few sartorial decisions that most adults would never even recognize. Here at the Faire, there are elves. There is body paint. There are handmade tactial leather accessories and a young man with an unflattering mop of black hair carrying a long, military-grade spear, which would be concerning if it were not clear, even at a distance, that the weapon had been painstakingly fashioned, and if the young man had displayed anything but a quiet exuberance at the opportunnity to show off his project to a willing audience.

And of course there are children, and their parents. There are princesses and little boys with wooden swords.4 We watch a performance in which Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men engage in a staged swordfight with some tax-enforcement officials representing the county of Nottingham (presumably; the audio wasn’t great), and shephard several small children in front of us, so they can see. We tip our beers and share knowing, sympathetic nods with the parents, shrugging our shoulders—we know they’ve got it the worst.

Leaving, our group gets separated, a sign of our individual anxieties bubbling over. I navigate the snaking lines, which are still snaking as evening approaches, and I’m struck by the final understanding that maybe these people have it figured out. While my own cynical, half-hearted foray into a subcultural life would have scoffed—and still scoffs—at the mindless waiting, the absurd consumerism, the painful lack of self-awareness or social refinement, in the end, it’s me who’s running away.

And it doesn’t feel like I’m running away from a reality that’s so detatched from my own. Some of these people, after all, will return to a world far lonelier and desperate than mine. Maybe the only one they’ve ever known. But by whatever circumstance, they have found themselves here in a way that I can’t help but envy.

The sun goes down and we finally make it to the car, parked under the hulking, rusted frame of a disused water tower. We kick up a trail of dust and rocks as we drive through the field, repurposed for parking, past a bunch of happy people waiting happily with their masks and corsets in an impossibly long line to some place they know they’re unlikely to reach.