hello π ! you left such an intriguing tag on my post about felix - about seeing him up close? would you mind sharing about that experience?
I've seen him in concert twice, but I never got that close π thank you!
Ah, WELL, I'm currently unemployed so I've got a lot of time on my hands. Strap in and I'll tell the whole story (if you want to skip to Felix, it starts at the fourth paragraph after Changbin, with 'ANYWAY').
It was a blisteringly hot July day and I drove to London in my mum's 20-year-old Aygo with my phone on the passenger seat next to me providing the music because the car radio does not work. Thanks to some very helpful people in a facebook group, I had found some free parking close to the stadium. I drove up, delighted to see that there were no cars. Less delighted to read the signs and discover why: absolutely no parking. Parking had, for reasons I can't now remember, been prohibited in toto at that time. Even were it NOT totally prohibited, the rules had changed and you could now only park for a maximum of two hours on event days.
I panicked. I called my mum and asked if I should risk a parking ticket. I drove around and walked into a corner shop in my concert outfit to ask if I could park on the street opposite (no). I dithered. I googled it. I decided to return to the original spot, pay for the maximum two hours it would allow me to, and cross my fingers.
I'd heard Tottenham was a shithole and allow me to confirm: it is a shithole. It is a terrible place to wait for a concert to happen. I met @yoongihan outside the stadium, we got our wristbands, and then we looked helplessly about us as we tried to find somewhere we could get something decent to eat and drink. No such luck, we walked into a corner shop (who probably love event days as attendees have no choice but to patronise them) and got a drink and a snack.
Then we went inside, bought some merch (I resentfully bought a wolfchan keyring for THIRTY WHOLE POUNDS and was then very excited to discover it was the LAST wolfchan available).
We had been banned from bringing in our own suncream (though, it turned out that the bag searches were laughably ineffective as we ran into multiple groups of people who'd managed to get it in) so I spent the following couple of hours in the queue desperately trying to shield my shoulders with my hair (did not work) and protect my extremely new tattoo on my ankle (worked a little better; it healed just fine). I read a book I didn't really enjoy while Thea made friends π€£
I have to say that I think the VIP soundcheck tickets we got were the best of all the options available. Soundcheck? Sick. VIP? Sick. Wait, hold on, we get to SIT DOWN? Mission status: triple sick. We were seated in the second row on the right arm of the thrust stage but, during soundcheck, we were allowed to crowd the barrier.
My phone was deeply unhappy about the heat that day and basically refused to work, so I got no photos at all from soundcheck. This is a still from a video Thea took just to illustrate our view:
My first surprise was, wow, these guys really are wearing a LOT of make-up. This is not surprising from a practical point of view. We all know stage make-up is thick as fuck because it has to stand up to all that heat and sweat. It surprised me because, from any farther distance or from the on-screen view, you really couldn't tell. Hats off to the k-pop MUAs: they've nailed a natural look with stage make-up.
My second surprise was SEUNGMIN???? The two youngest skz members have never really done anything for me or piqued my interest or taken attention away from my hyung-line faves. I had recently started following a Seungmin blog which had given me way better insight into him so I felt like I knew him better but he still left me cold in the heart-fluttering, skin-heating kind of way, y'know?
Yeah, well, he's handsome as fuuuuuuuuck, dude. (Helps also that he [and the others] are reaching the facial maturation age where they lose all that boyish puppy-ness which doesn't really do it for me). I was shocked. I was gagged. Snatched my wig and all that.
ANYWAY, onto the actual matter at hand. Felix. I will start with my general thoughts and feelings about Felix and That Face because, frankly, any opportunity to rhapsodise I'm gonna take.
I am obsessed with his face in a way that I have never been with anyone else's ever in my life. He's not my bias and my biases do not have perfect faces (they're obviously handsome enough to be idols and attractive to me personally but they're not Felix). I love his face like I love a beautiful piece of art. I could stare at it forever. It is inhuman in the sense that it is a thing of beauty (and a joy forever!) requiring no participation of his personality or expression to draw you in.
As we get to know people, we often find them more attractive and begin to lose any ability to be objective about their attractiveness. We don't see the structure of their cheekbones and position of their eyes; we see their smile and their laughter and the love that exists between us. With Felix, it's different somehow. Yeah, yeah, there's his painfully powerful puppy-dog eyes and his wide, bright smile; there's his enoooooorrrrrrrrmous heart and his kindness and sweetness and energy and and and... but there's also That Face.
It is pure perfection. Harmony. The Platonic ideal of a face. The archetype. He has been blessed specifically and personally by Beauty itself.
Then he came out onto our little bit of stage and I was like, HEY! He was impish. Rascally. Cheeky. A glint in his eye. A smirking corner of his mouth. He kind of looked like this:
My reaction was: oh my god, somehow this makes him even more perfect. I WISH, I WISH I had (been able to take) a photo; even though I know it wouldn't have captured the essence of him, I still wish I had one. It made him look more normal, more like an actual person rather than being the Face of Beauty, more real and I was hit with the knowledge that damn, he really exists. Just walking around looking like that. He isn't a thing of beauty, he's a man!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How am I going to live with this?!?!?! The world's most beautiful piece of art just stepped out of the frame and started performing on stage?
It was one thing to see photos of him (even lively ones! Screenshots of him laughing or talking or whatever!) but it was another to actually see him in the flesh and see that he is a real guy who just happens to look like that. His impish real-face knocked the edges off the perfection and, in doing so, increased it.
Anyway, blah blah blah, rest of the concert, got to touch some of them, died happy etc. etc.
I hope that had anything you were after!!
EDIT TO ADD (because apparently you can't add videos in a reblog? who knew):
asked Thea if she had any photos of Felix during soundcheck.
Thea: I only know i have that video of Felix with his vest undone
yeah. yes. that one. that'll do. definitely.
