The second time I attended CONvergence, which was the third year of the event, was a strange affair for me. Very strange indeed. I was ill. 104 degree fever type of ill.
But I was not going to miss the convention. I double-checked with my doctor that I was not contagious and, since what I was diagnosed with was meningitis, after a week I was given the ok to head back out in public. It wasn’t a great idea - I actually stayed sick for well over a month and experienced migraines from the spinal tap I had to have. I wouldn’t say I am overly gifted with common sense. (It also turned out that my diagnosis was probably wrong since the spinal fluid tests are pretty much inconclusive for several of these mosquito-borne illnesses. They just treat your symptoms as best as they can.)
I didn’t have a hotel room, but at one point I had to go get one before I passed out from my fever as I was trying to watch masquerade from the tech table and almost fell off. This particular CON passed in a bit of a haze, as my headache meds kept me from thinking too clearly. I do recall that I went to several panels about prop-making that were just awesome, and kept walking around and around the parties trying to decide if I wanted to host one. By the end of the convention I was sure that I did and had the only semi-ok idea of a villains party. I ended up dismissing the idea quickly because as I threw out the idea to people they kept bringing up Disney villains and I was pretty much sick of Disney at this point in my life. (They have been slowly winning back my love with the female relationship focused movies now.)
I did spend time in the main foyer of the hotel talking with different people throughout the night after my fever broke and I couldn’t sleep.
I wasn’t sure what I was going to do or who I was going to do it with, but I definitely decided to have a party.
When the convention was over I was spending a lot of time collecting comic books that I wanted. It suddenly occurred to me that my favorite one, The Sandman, was filled with party themes. Plus, a lot of my new friends were Sandman freaks the way I was, so it made sense.
Welp, it didn’t work out for a lot of random personal reasons… some serious, some not.
So go to the convention, wander the parties and finally get someone who genuinely wants to try hosting a room party. Little did we know what we were getting into…
We settled on trying to put together some sort of Library of Lost Dreams. Books, as many of you will know, feature prominently in the Sandman series. Creating a bit of the atmosphere became the goal. The first big decorating project ever attempted for CON became bookshelves. It seemed like we should just carry in shelves and fill them with books but seriously, who wants to haul around boxes of books in the heat? No one. Plus there was nothing about that idea that seems particularly wonderful. It was too literal - not the impression of an illusion which parties should possess. The big catch with these things is also the amount of money you have to spend. Because, especially at this point, we were on a budget. (I might add I can’t even begin to describe what I would do with a giant budget… just know it would be spectacular, spectacular*.)
Brainstorm. When you are stuck, get everyone you can around you and just start throwing ideas out, no matter how dumb they may seem. We had already decided that we wanted one big project to center the decorating around and we knew we wanted it to be book related. I had collected dollar reprints of Sandman comics to make a collage wall (which was both met with adoration and horror during the CON “How could you cut up comics?” ). We cut giant, foil paper butterflies for the ceiling, had a project from a co-host's previous event, and some smaller details. It just took time to figure out the book part.
Cut to the idea of seeing if used bookstores had books they didn’t sell.
Turns out that they often do. In fact, the bookstore we went to I ended up working at for many years, and long before that they gave us many, many old books which were not fit for selling that we could reuse.
We sat for more hours than I can possibly count, taking the spines off of old, sometimes rotting books. We had to cut through ancient glues, papers and dried up leathers. Sometimes finding highly unpleasant things in them. In addition, in order to recycle them we had to take them completely apart, which took somewhere near the end of time.
We used 4’ x 8’ sheets of wood to be the backdrops of the shelves and became very familiar with the use of a glue gun, and thus the Library of Lost Dreams came together (and after many years of party decor, it is now a permanent resident at the Saloon as a Goth Prom decoration).
The party went off pretty well. However, I immediately took note of the fact that, despite seeming like we had too much decor, I didn’t think we had enough. When all was said and done that CON, the room was still a hotel room, and that wasn’t good enough for me, so for the next year leading up to CONvergence the ideas got some water in order to grow.
We also managed to not have enough alcohol to serve people and ran out at one point. I had baked 400 chocolate chip cookies and those disappeared very quickly. Getting comfortable with greeting the most awkward of people, trying not to put your foot in your mouth, and trying to make sure all the rules (which sometimes are not always clear) were heeded - the first year was a learning experience. And many, many notes were taken…
*Five points for Gryffindor if you caught my Moulin Rouge reference.
Part one is here, if you missed it.
