Continuing Jon Jacob’s reflection on his relationship with this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, the man behind @ThoroughlyGood waves off the United Kingdom delegation from the Austrian Embassy, and wonders once more about what the Song Contest means.
I was late to the Austrian Embassy’s send-off party for Electro Velvet.
A combination of misjudging the often counter-intuitive London Underground, underestimating the size of Belgrave Square, and being distracted by the menswear department at John Lewis – my trip to Vienna is a busman’s holiday, surely that means I deserve a new wardrobe? – meant the final approach to the Embassy was conducted at a fast trot. I was there in the nick of time to take up position before Alex and Bianca sang their song. As I filmed their performance sweat rolled down my nose. Not a great look in an embassy.
There was a hint of the joys of international travel at the embassy. Doors that opened outwards, trim, good-looking European men in crisp white shirts and designer jackets and unfamiliar beer labels all combined to create a cosmopolitan feel to this island of Austrianness embedded in leafy West London. Did I want a coffee cocktail, a lager or a small glass of red? I went with the wine (most of the night). I would regret that decision in the morning.
I have avoided the rehearsal videos and the painstaking analysis this week. This strategy of delaying gratification has paid off for the most part too, concentrating my attentions of the UK act and how they’ve appeared at various PR events I’ve attended. It was at the embassy that the most telling observation sprung to mind. And for this, I need to recall a family memory in order to illustrate the point.
Free Your Family
When I was a teenager, I made the tactical error of signing up for a canoeing holiday in the South of France with contemporaries of mine at school. Reports of similar trips in previous years made the trip strategically valuable giving me a chance, I thought, of breaking down the considerable barriers between me and contemporaries and potentially making friends off the back of a transformative trip. The irony was that I wasn’t a strong swimmer, hated physical pursuits, didn’t like anyone on the trip and didn’t really – deep down – want to go. I recall sitting on the coach in the car park watching my parents wave me goodbye. I’d never seen either of them show themselves to be as worried for me as they did that day. I left feeling incredibly worried because they themselves appeared to be incredibly worried on my behalf, as though they knew something I didn’t.
The same feeling (but from my parents perspective) passed over me in the intimate surroundings of Embassy. There was a sense that the guests were waving goodbye to a couple of offspring embarking on a grand adventure. Nobody really knew whether they would come back, and if they did whether they’d come back the same as when we said goodbye to them. There was an air of concern about the goodbye, as if I was worrying whether they’d got their sandwiches, or their E111 (do they still exist?) and whether they’d got enough euros in their pocket.
It was the oddest and yet the most familiar of feelings at the same time as being totally pointless and just a little bit pathetic too. These people are adults. They’re professionals. They don’t need the likes of me fussing around them.
Electro Velvet at the UK Embassy
A Chain Of Light
It’s an aspect of Eurovision which is familiar to me – the angle on proceedings I’ve long found fascinating – that of the grandeur and scale of the Eurovision spectacular juxtaposed by the comparatively surrealness of everyday life. When on screen each Eurovision takes on celebrity status. Here in the Embassy they are everyday folk who could just as easily be colleagues from the office.
At these moments in time I’m aware or conscious of how different I feel from most other fans, something brought into sharp relief when I end up speaking to self-confessed ‘hardcore’ fan attending the event representing one of the sponsors. At various points he flags years, artists, song titles and dates unprompted, peppering our conversation with the data my research often lacks. At one point I tackle his considerable knowledge head on, telling him “you actually scare me.” It apparently is the case that I am not the only one who finds his recall rather frightening.
Flags aloft in the Press Centre, ESC 2014 (picture: Debbie O’Hare)
The truth is that – predictably – he doesn’t frighten me at all, I rather wish I could be a bit like him instead. Doesn’t Eurovision fandom demand an encyclopaedic memory?It is as though he and others like him are benchmarks for Eurovision fandom. Shouldn’t I be like that or at least demonstrate more attention to the detail? Eurovision fandom is a badge earned.
The wine flows readily – those small glasses really aren’t big enough to sate my appetite – and so a similar conversation to the one I had with the sponsor starts up again with someone else. Repeating the same questions about Eurovision is the equivalent of being reacquainted with a long lost piece of clothing buried deep at the back of the wardrobe. These are going to be the conversations I run the risk of having again and again and again over the next seven days and, as I recall now, they’re also the ones which run the risk of being the most draining through repetition.
“What’s your favourite?” asks one media-luv. I should have stopped to clarify the question first before I answered.
“Well,” I reply sheepishly, “as it happens, San Marino.”
A hush could have easily descended over the entire gathering, I wouldn’t have known, because the look on her face was enough to cut through the jovial atmosphere with a blunt rusty knife. She leans in and whispers in my ear, “No-one’s talking about them…”
I look aghast. “What’s your point?”
As it happens, I’m interested in San Marino not necessarily because of its musical merits, more that its sound is reminiscent of yesteryear Eurovision and has the musical stamp of a profilic Eurovision songwriter. That in itself prompts all sorts of questions I want answered about what motivates someone like Ralph Siegel to continue trying at Eurovision. When I start thinking of that, I start thinking of all sorts of other questions I’d like to ask him. And in that moment I realise that a lot of the time Eurovision songs are a framework for further research. It makes no difference if no one else is talking about the song. I’d really rather absorb myself in something few others are interested in.
I didn’t get a chance to explain all of this.
A Cunning Call Back To The Slogan
The music – by this point a seemingly never-ending string of former UK Eurovision hits – was blaring loud on the balcony of the Austrian embassy. No matter. Because in the self-imposed and highly valued isolation I suddenly found myself in, I realised that Eurovision means all sorts of different things to a whole lot of different audience groups. The fact that the fringes of the contest interest me doesn’t make those who only focus on the potential winner wrong. It just goes to shows the myriad of ways this miraculous television programme connects with its gargantuan audience.
Once again, Eurovision holds a mirror up. It provides me insight into myself and others. And so too I end up making a connection with someone I never thought I’d connect with. I’d long thought this media person and I could never get on because we see it so very differently than she does. And yet, because of the common bound I’m seeing things from her perspective and understanding a little bit more about myself at the same time.
That’ll be building bridges.
Jon Jacob is keeping a Eurovision diary. Read it at www.thoroughlygood.me/eurovision. You can find Jon on Twitter where he’s @ThoroughlyGood.