I’ve been meaning to write down my thoughts and feelings about the Ark gig I went to last week, because I realized something about myself that’s quite huge. Been procrastinating it though, because I’m not sure of how to put it so it sounds right. But I’ll do a try.

I’m over Ark.

I still love them deeply and they have meant more to me than anything else, and I’ve had some truly brilliant times. But the butterflies are long gone. Last week’s gig was my first in two years, and logically I ought to have been excited about it. I wasn’t. It was a great gig, I enjoyed it, I was in the middle of the first row like usual, nothing between me and the stage but a fence. I felt nothing.

At first I grieved, but then as I stood there amidst fans, I started to think back on these last ten years. Yeah, ten years since they entered my heart, eight years since I first saw them live, and seven years since the first time I met them. Those are quite good numbers. I was eleven back in 2000, halfway through elementary school. Now I’m 21 and well into my adulthood. The Ark were with me through a big part of my childhood and all of my teenage years. They were there when I needed them, gave me the courage to go my own way, and made me realize being a freak can be quite enjoyable.

I often think of how lucky I have been that Ark was the fandom to first grab me in such young years, god knows how I’d have turned out if Backstreet Boys had been my thing.

As with most fandoms, outsiders haven’t really been able to understand thr impact and the importance of the band. To most people they’re just a laugh, those crazy faggy glamrockers. And god knows I got ridiculed in my teens. So much abuse from people who don’t even have a clue.

To get back to the gig, as I stood there thinking about the past years and my lost childhood, the band had started playing “One Of Us Is Gonna Die Young”, which is basically a happy song about death and living life to its fullest while you can. How ironic. Then something happened that I hadn’t expected: the song morphed into Alphaville’s classic “Forever Young”.

Who wants to be forever young? Do you really want to live forever?

Maybe growing up isn’t such a bad thing after all.