Reach your hands out, shine a light

[dolorosa_12]

I have a deep, earnest, and enduring love of Eurovision. I've loved it since before I ever moved to Europe — like a lot of Australians, I watched it fairly religiously on Australian TV every year, simultaneously baffled and gleeful. Thankfully, when I moved to the UK, I found myself firmly ensconced within a social circle which shared my love for all things Eurovision, with varying degrees of sincerity and irony.

For many years, my husband and I hosted Eurovision parties of varying sizes — over the past few years it had dwindled to notasapleausure and her husband, as our original crowd of local friends moved on to other cities. And of course, due to the pandemic, this year Eurovision was cancelled. Thinking we would get nothing, Matthias and I had already arranged to have a viewing party via Facebook — interested friends could watch the different acts on Youtube, and air their thoughts in the comments of a post I made. It was a great deal of fun, especially given I hosted it in the early days of lockdown, when there was a real need to lift morale.

I should have known, however, that even with the contest itself cancelled, Eurovision would find a way to infect our screens with sparkles, wind machines, and multiple lyrics featuring the words 'fire' and 'desire' rhymed together.

Instead of the contest, there was a simultaneous Eurovision celebration broadcast across all the competing nations — the performers who were supposed to have been competing this year played snatches of their songs and aired videos recorded in their homes, old winners (or simply old fan favourites) dialed in with performances of their own, and the whole thing just ended up being a sort of festival of Eurovision, celebrating this ridiculous cultural phenomenon, and the weird people who love it.

In any other year, I would have found it too treacly and earnest, but in 'these current challenging times' earnest was exactly what I was looking for. Matthias, notasapleasure and I aired our thoughts in a group chat, Twitter memed away as usual, Måns Zelmerlöw found yet another Eurovision-related camera in front of which to fling himself, and a good time was had by all.

This marks the second year in which I've spent Eurovision night crying. Last year Eurovision was on the same day as the Australian federal election, and I kept breaking into bitter tears at the futility of hoping for an even mildly left-wing government within my lifetime in any country in which I have voting rights. This year it was the montage of empty concert halls in Europe (and the Opera House in Sydney, my Sydney) which had me misty-eyed. Oh, my weary, hopeless heart!

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As an aside, I am feeling the lack of any decent Eurovision icons keenly. I shall have to investigate...

Comments

[wheatear]

I also watched it! From what I could tell the performers this year will get another chance to compete next year? It was quite fun.

[dolorosa_12]

They're not allowed to compete with the same songs, and it's up to each country to decide whether to allow the same performers to perform next year — my impression was that a lot of them would be, but it was in no way guaranteed across the board. And yes, I enjoyed the whole thing a lot, even if it did make me a little weepy.

[naye]

Oh, I'm so glad there was an event to fill the Eurovision shaped hole in hearts across the world. ♥

[dolorosa_12]

It was lovely! As I say, any other year I would have found it cloyingly sentimental, but these days sentimentality is exactly what I need.

[merit]

It sounds like exactly the sort of event for these times! And yes, generally I'm not much for treacly events but a time & place I guess!

Still try not to think too much about the last federal election tbh

[dolorosa_12]

The last federal election was the point at which I truly lost any hope of any large-scale political change not brought on by violence or catastrophe in my lifetime. I had long maintained a belief that the Australian political system was a shield: not against right-wing governments, since we'd had our share of those, but against wholescale far-right hijacking of business-as-usual centre-right politics. I thought our compulsory voting and preferential ranked list voting was enough to save us: the last line of defence against the troubles caused elsewhere in the world by apathy and voter suppression, and social media manipulation. And it wasn't enough.

The time difference between Australia and the UK is such that I went to sleep on the Friday night thinking, great, I'll wake up to some excellent news, woke up, caught a train to a conference I was supposed to be attending, and by the time I got off the train at the conference venue it was all over. I made an absolute spectacle of myself sobbing hysterically in the train station.

As you say, I try not to think about it too much (if nothing else, UK politics has much more direct effects on my life at the moment), but the reminder of Eurovision brought the whole thing flooding back.

[schneefink]

I completely missed that! I'm glad that even with the event cancelled, there was still a celebration :)
I participated in a fan-run Eurovision on Sunday afternoon and it was a lot of fun. I felt more invested than in other years, even, oddly enough. (Iceland won, not my favorite but I'm fine with it.)

[dolorosa_12]

Your fan-run Eurovision event sounds fun. I liked the Icelandic song, and think it was likely to win anyway, so it sounds as if your event reflected popular opinion! I'm glad you found a way to have a fun Eurovision event, even though the contest wasn't happening.