Noa Fischer
Friends, family, and all of you who have made a great miscalculation. This is probably the essay that I have struggled with the most. Out of all of the things I have ever written— countless diaries, unfinished manuscripts, magazine and zine entries — everything but poetry, really — to write about fandoms I found most uncomfortable of all. I think why for a second. I conclude it must be because of the love that has poisoned my blood and body, like a spring hay fever infects those lesser mortals who have allergies. To write when one is happy is gravely rude and considered bad manners, at least by my heroes, at least by those who I consider myself a fan of. What utter betrayal, what inconsiderable grievance it must be, to write and not complain, to write of feelings other than suffering. That, at least, has been how I’ve always understood creation, creativity, expression, and honesty.
A great writer once told me, when I asked how us young artists shall separate ourselves from our idols, become not merely a shell and a copy of agglomerated readings, and he said to me: “The only path to originality is honesty. Not because anybody gives a shit about your truth, but because only then will people believe you are lying. Because nobody can accept that someone has nothing to hide.”
Fandom as we know it is dead. He is no longer with us. He, I say, as fandom is indefinitely and unquestionably a male. He is obsessive, he is a maniac, he will persuade you and buy you flowers and tell you he loves you after the first date. When you say it back, however, he will immediately retrieve and disappear. Ghost you, if you will. He will lose interest and make you run after him, like a dog trying to catch its own tail. He will allow you to marvel only from a distance, closing the gap between love and insanity. We may mourn his death. We should, however, celebrate it. Though Fandom may seem dead, he is alive and well. He has merely moved to another continent, an exotic island whose name he cannot pronounce, under a pseudonym, escaping all of those who wish to murder him even long after his passing.
It is no longer erotic to be a fan. It is no longer a fulfilling task, a diety to follow. Now, rather, it is cooler to listen to artists nobody has ever heard of, go to gigs in places Ubers don’t drive to, reside in backstages where the singers practice lines in bathrooms. We have moved, too, to another continent, one where the air smells of orange cherry blossoms and the sun never comes out. With accessibility came indifference. As artists and idols came closer than ever, we have invented a new kind of spectatorship and audience. One where, if you can describe an idol without speaking in absolutes such as “he could run me over and lock me in his basement and I would say thank you” - they are not worth mentioning. Being a fan is no longer about community, about celebration, about adoration and infatuation. Being a fan is now as important as political orientation; it is weaponized to exclude and systematically rank one in a pseudo-social hierarchy. To be a fan is no longer to be a pedestrian - fandoms are as accessible as taking a hot air balloon to the function.
Now, for the following part, I bid you, lose me and find yourselves. Allow me not to be so rude as to call myself an artist, but certainly not punishing enough, either, to call you a fan. Let me, simply, remember the first time the artful act of being both happened to me. I was 16. I lived in Zagreb, Croatia. I lived at home. I lived, actually, in the basement of a bar. The pandemic had just started and the whole world seemingly came to a halt. There was an earthquake the day before my birthday, my sweet sixteen, and on the morning of, it snowed. It was March—March 31st. All the bars were closed, a la legal prohibitions and whatnot, but a handful of daring business owners kept a separate room, a small storage space, a basement, a garden, open. They would only tell good customers who came and drank daily, customers who they knew would keep their mouths shut to keep their beer-sucking throats open. One of these bars was across the street from my high school, and I had been going there to smoke, drink, and waste time since freshman year started. It is beyond me why they let me in, let me be with them, let their trust not fall loose like change from open pockets after a few drinks. Maybe the guys were trying to fuck me, maybe they just, fucking liked me.
I digress. In any case, I was there, at the bar across from my high school, at a bar called Roxstar, and I heard a man across the room drop, carelessly, out of his mouth, the words I had not been looking for, but felt I waited for - for what felt like a lifetime. A 16-year-long lifetime, that is. Not a long-lived one, but an obnoxiously restless one. The guy was trying to seduce some irreverent girl with his irrelevant soliloquies; saying how he was a writer, an important person, a man of the culture, a man worth listening to. I tilted my head upwards to get a whiff of what these writers looked like. His presence made its way onto me like the smell of piss on the street corner: rudely and suddenly, without an invitation and inescapably. I dropped my cigarette on the floor. I stood up on the chair my bum was sitting on and shouted from across the bar's basement. “Who said he’s a writer!?”.
A rumbled look shot out from flushed skinny cheeks and said, “Me?”. It was Sven. The person who said that was Sven. I walked over and introduced myself. He tried to make me leave him alone so he could get back to his futility of seduction. He was not handsome; he reeked not of charm: He was tall, had bad teeth and cursed too much. He was a writer, alright. So I said to him — I remember I said, “Well I don’t know any other writers, so let me tell you: I’m going to be a writer. And I need you to tell me everything about writers because I don’t know if I’ll ever see one again. I heard they die young and forget to tell anyone.” He nearly strangled me on the spot and swatted me away like a swarm of wasps on a summer day. “Take my email”, he said, “send me your writing, do whatever you want with it - just fuck off for now.” I was a fan, immediately. I joined the fandom right then and now. Immediately and irrefutably. I was a fan of every writer that had ever lived. I was a fan of all of them alike—each of them I had never met and will probably only bump into in the afterlife. Without a destination or a return, I bought into the sold-out life of sell-outs and swines. I was convinced. I never wanted to live another lifetime.
That was a couple of years ago now. Four years ago, to be precise. Sven is a colleague and a close friend now. But Sven was the last person I was a fan of. My fandom was fueled by infatuation and envy. It stained like red wine does a white t-shirt. It rang, like a broken record, it rang through my ears as the blood pumped to my brain. I needed to be with him. I needed to become him. To be his fan meant that it had to seem impossible. When I became it, when only one salty drop of success split my tongue like summer rain splits day and night, it was over.
So why has fandom died? Why are we no longer true worshipers of our mortal Gods? Love is out. Monogamy is out. Commitment is out. Religion is out. Polygamy is in. Sex parties on Sundays are in. Ignorance and irreverence reek through the streets. Members-only clubs have never been more popular. What the actual fuck is Soho House. We should tax the tasteless. Make London, but a smaller one. It would also be great if they heat it up a bit. 20 quid cocktails and 20 inch cocks are getting a bit boring, even for the younger crowd.
Sometimes I lie down, I take off my broken skin, and let my bones breathe through the night. I take out my contacts and then my eyes. I let them rest in a saline solution while I take my moles off, my nose skin, my eyebrows peel and sleep on the pillow next to mine. And I think of what a fan I am of my life in London. Then I remember the love I felt back home, back where nobody put on anything on their bodies besides a cheeky attitude and the scent of sleepless desire. And I realise that to be a fan is to not know, to be distant, to be far away, to admire without touching and slouching your back. Every day I hear how far away everything and everybody is. But perhaps we have gotten too close. Too close to love without boundaries.