Actual Play Report: 'Storm Cellar' (Part 3)
(Continued from part one and part two, which reveals that I played in a LARP called 'Storm Cellar' at Go Play Northwest, as the character Emily Rayne.)
Part Three: Aftermath
After the game that night, I had a warm glow that lasted all night and well into the next day. I even had a positive dream about Donald Trump--he managed to escape his secret service detail by fooling an elevator into thinking he was Tom Selleck, and it took him to the roof, where he then had to evade the Secretary of Water, who was flying after him wearing a complicated personalized kite/glider powered by handheld water jets.
Sunday morning, I played in my second-ever LARP about kids learning sign language, which was also fantastic in an entirely different way. But somewhere around Sunday evening before the final slot, my emotions started to crash. And it was a highly specific feeling that I had no words to describe, so I’m using this space to try to package it all up, in the hopes that it can crystallize the feeling for other people who’ve felt the same way. Assuming I’m not the only one who’s felt this way. I’m not the only one who’s felt this way, right? Right?
I’ve felt this way at other times in my life, as well. The closest, though not as intense, is the feeling I get at the end of performing in a really good play. You work with other people for weeks to capture a setting and a group of characters, then finally get to show it off to others, and then it’s the final performance, and you’re saying your lines for the last time. I sometimes get a feeling of urgent desperation on that final performance day: every time I enter the stage, I’m reminded, “This is the last time I get to perform this bit; better make it good,” and as I exit the stage, I’m thinking, “Well, that was the last time my character will ever say those lines.”
There’s a vaguely similar feeling I get when friends or family move away, but usually the relationship isn’t as focused: friends are often friends in a variety of situations, so when they leave, the loss can be profound, but isn’t usually acute, per se. A lot of the intensity of the emotions I felt had to do with the fact that the timeframe was so short! I had gamed before with at least one other person there, but everyone else was new to me. So, we met, introduced ourselves, immediately dived into intense emotional scenes, talked about it a bit afterwards, then went our separate ways, all within the space of a few hours. A friend moving away can be as intense, but at least usually has a little more space to breathe.
I did some web searches, and managed to find a few different things that all manage to capture at least part of the emotional roil inside me. One is a phenomenon known as “Post-project depression”. It’s the let-down you feel after having worked on something intensively after it’s suddenly finished and out of your life. There’s an aspect to post-project depression that involves the sudden loss of a routine, which of course I didn’t have here. But the feeling of getting together with other people to make something happen, then being done and feeling the loss, is definitely a big part of what I was (/am) feeling.
A related-though-different emotion is what the Japanese call ‘mono no aware’: an awareness of the transience of things, which heightens one’s appreciation of their beauty, but evokes ‘gentle sadness’ that they are gone. Mono no aware seems to be more focused on things than people or performances (‘mono’ just means ‘thing’ in Japanese), but it seems particularly applicable to a improvised performance that by necessity will only exist in its moment. It’s transient. And that’s beautiful, but sad.
Also related is a feeling that doesn’t seem to have its own term, but many people share it: the feeling of emptiness or grief when you finish a good book. (‘Book hangover’ is sometimes used this way, but has other meanings as well.) As you read, you share in the lives of the characters, and when the book ends, you have to say goodbye to them. As one person put it:
“I cried because I knew that no matter what I could never read that book the same way. I would never wonder what was about to happen, never truly fear for the characters or the world. I could return, pay my friends a visit, but I could never share their feelings of tension and camaraderie. I cried because it was such a powerful connection, so wonderful and exhilarating.” --ancientvoices, on reddit
But perhaps the closest word I could find to describe how I felt was created by the Baining people of Papua New Guinea: Awumbuk, or, “the feeling of emptiness after visitors depart.” The Baining are apparently highly social, and notice when connections are made and broken very acutely:
“Visits are social occasions during which people share food, shelter, and friendship. The shared experiences erase the barriers between individuals and connect them to one another. When the social group disbands, these connections are severed. The socially extended persona is destroyed and individuals must reconstitute their boundaries. They experience this loss in the form of awumbuk. [...] Activities in which sociality is esteemed, for example, hunting and gardening, suffer most acutely from awumbuk.“ --from Person, Self and Experience, p380, Jane Fajans
‘Awumbuk’ seems particularly salient in this particular context, because it describes not only the loss I experienced from the fictional world of Emily’s farm when the story ended, but also the loss of connection to my fellow players, with whom I had worked intensely over a three-hour period to collectively create a beautiful thing. It was great, but the awumbuk is intense.
So I suppose that I could have skipped this whole essay in favor of a “Hey, I miss you guys and the story we created!”
But where’s the fun in that?
Part Three: Aftermath
After the game that night, I had a warm glow that lasted all night and well into the next day. I even had a positive dream about Donald Trump--he managed to escape his secret service detail by fooling an elevator into thinking he was Tom Selleck, and it took him to the roof, where he then had to evade the Secretary of Water, who was flying after him wearing a complicated personalized kite/glider powered by handheld water jets.
Sunday morning, I played in my second-ever LARP about kids learning sign language, which was also fantastic in an entirely different way. But somewhere around Sunday evening before the final slot, my emotions started to crash. And it was a highly specific feeling that I had no words to describe, so I’m using this space to try to package it all up, in the hopes that it can crystallize the feeling for other people who’ve felt the same way. Assuming I’m not the only one who’s felt this way. I’m not the only one who’s felt this way, right? Right?
I’ve felt this way at other times in my life, as well. The closest, though not as intense, is the feeling I get at the end of performing in a really good play. You work with other people for weeks to capture a setting and a group of characters, then finally get to show it off to others, and then it’s the final performance, and you’re saying your lines for the last time. I sometimes get a feeling of urgent desperation on that final performance day: every time I enter the stage, I’m reminded, “This is the last time I get to perform this bit; better make it good,” and as I exit the stage, I’m thinking, “Well, that was the last time my character will ever say those lines.”
There’s a vaguely similar feeling I get when friends or family move away, but usually the relationship isn’t as focused: friends are often friends in a variety of situations, so when they leave, the loss can be profound, but isn’t usually acute, per se. A lot of the intensity of the emotions I felt had to do with the fact that the timeframe was so short! I had gamed before with at least one other person there, but everyone else was new to me. So, we met, introduced ourselves, immediately dived into intense emotional scenes, talked about it a bit afterwards, then went our separate ways, all within the space of a few hours. A friend moving away can be as intense, but at least usually has a little more space to breathe.
I did some web searches, and managed to find a few different things that all manage to capture at least part of the emotional roil inside me. One is a phenomenon known as “Post-project depression”. It’s the let-down you feel after having worked on something intensively after it’s suddenly finished and out of your life. There’s an aspect to post-project depression that involves the sudden loss of a routine, which of course I didn’t have here. But the feeling of getting together with other people to make something happen, then being done and feeling the loss, is definitely a big part of what I was (/am) feeling.
A related-though-different emotion is what the Japanese call ‘mono no aware’: an awareness of the transience of things, which heightens one’s appreciation of their beauty, but evokes ‘gentle sadness’ that they are gone. Mono no aware seems to be more focused on things than people or performances (‘mono’ just means ‘thing’ in Japanese), but it seems particularly applicable to a improvised performance that by necessity will only exist in its moment. It’s transient. And that’s beautiful, but sad.
Also related is a feeling that doesn’t seem to have its own term, but many people share it: the feeling of emptiness or grief when you finish a good book. (‘Book hangover’ is sometimes used this way, but has other meanings as well.) As you read, you share in the lives of the characters, and when the book ends, you have to say goodbye to them. As one person put it:
“I cried because I knew that no matter what I could never read that book the same way. I would never wonder what was about to happen, never truly fear for the characters or the world. I could return, pay my friends a visit, but I could never share their feelings of tension and camaraderie. I cried because it was such a powerful connection, so wonderful and exhilarating.” --ancientvoices, on reddit
But perhaps the closest word I could find to describe how I felt was created by the Baining people of Papua New Guinea: Awumbuk, or, “the feeling of emptiness after visitors depart.” The Baining are apparently highly social, and notice when connections are made and broken very acutely:
“Visits are social occasions during which people share food, shelter, and friendship. The shared experiences erase the barriers between individuals and connect them to one another. When the social group disbands, these connections are severed. The socially extended persona is destroyed and individuals must reconstitute their boundaries. They experience this loss in the form of awumbuk. [...] Activities in which sociality is esteemed, for example, hunting and gardening, suffer most acutely from awumbuk.“ --from Person, Self and Experience, p380, Jane Fajans
‘Awumbuk’ seems particularly salient in this particular context, because it describes not only the loss I experienced from the fictional world of Emily’s farm when the story ended, but also the loss of connection to my fellow players, with whom I had worked intensely over a three-hour period to collectively create a beautiful thing. It was great, but the awumbuk is intense.
So I suppose that I could have skipped this whole essay in favor of a “Hey, I miss you guys and the story we created!”
But where’s the fun in that?