Awakening: A Tragedy

We all know full-time debunkers who trumpet the obvious. For example, I was at a party where a  jackass triumphantly informed two opera-goers that "people don't walk up to each other in real life and start singing."
One of the operaphiles (not me I'm sorry to say) had a comeback: "I'd never thought of that! People DON'T sing their conversations, and I'll NEVER ENJOY OPERA AGAIN!"

Suppose you waited outside an opera house to get an autograph. Up close the singer had acne scars and his coat smelled like onions. So what, right?
Did you sit in that hushed opera house, as the curtain rose, to watch this . . . guy? Of course not - you came to hear a god betray his daughter, and lament the fall of heaven!

I experienced my first community in Second Life as a grand tragedy. The sim centered around a palace, a temple for our pagan rites, and a sort of forum or curia where we gathered to argue civic matters. It was an awesome build, complete with neighing from the stables and the distant roar of waves against the pier. The avatars wore an unearthly beauty I will not attempt to describe.
Like classical tragedy the story seems inevitable in retrospect, the realization of painful and all-too-common flaws. Like nails and cracks in a theatrical set, the lag and graphic imperfections were beside the point - we were enthralled by our tale.
It took the community three years to collapse, through the usual grim dynamics of hubris, lust and revenge. Our Valhalla burned away in seconds, with no orchestra. The sim owner, sporting a strange avatar, clicked "take" and the palace, the pier, the temple and the oracular shrines all popped into his inventory.
Now there's nothing left, because the virtual world leaves no ruins.

Of course you could describe those same events as a bunch of dorks quarreling online. Nothing is easier or more trite than insisting that all big things are little.
It felt big to us, as our devotion crumbled into rancor and our city crashed into a folder.

After a show closes, the cast gets together for a few drinks. What's the harm in that? Since the last of our community were scattering, I finally came forward, after years of resistance, to share my "real self."
And in a sense I regret it. Oh, the real-life people behind those strange avatars are nice enough - an artistic librarian, a gentle veterinary nurse, a raver homebound by illness. I love them and I'm glad we'll stay in touch. Probably.

But you see, I didn't join Second Life to meet librarians. The others didn't walk our virtual city to meet some dufus from Colorado - that is, "the real me."
In our grand tragedy I had a role. It wasn't a role-playing sim but we play roles in every realm - we must - it's called "living."
In this simulated world, a certain avatar joined the community and by his sweetness and charisma we were doomed. One night he had his tarot read by one of the founding residents, and the cards said "you will ruin the happiness of others." Which seemed laughable at the time, but the cards did not lie.
The new avatar was beautiful and he caught the roving eye of our high priest. This passion set the final act in motion, a battle of thwarted love, jealousy and revenge.

Fatal passions are grand in one aspect and mundane in another, just as characteristic of Chekhov as of Sophocles. In Chekhov passions bring down wannabe poets and alcoholic landowners - their fall is disillusion. Their lives are small, and Chekhov found pathos in the smallness and banality of these vessels. My real life avatar - the dufus from Colorado - must inhabit the Chekhovian world where love dries up and passion gives way to boredom or cancer or accident.
Second Life, at least my Second Life, felt like the other kind of drama, grander and larger than life, just as a panoramic novel or widescreen feels larger than life. Virtual worlds immerse us in big sets and earthquakes.
OF COURSE ordinary people sit at their keyboards and guide these dramatis personae. OF COURSE people don't sing to each other in real life! Unless you're Dwight Schroot, who creates a lookalike avatar named "Dwight Schroot," you didn't join Second Life to replicate your first life. What's the point of that?

My avatar did NOT live in a suburb with his family. He did not fly to Cincinnati for a presentation, or gain back ten pounds or sprain something in his shoulder, any more than Emma Bovary was "really" a balding bourgeois, or Wotan a preening little shit.
When I shared my "real self," in effect I pulled off my costume and said "see? An ordinary person." Like the opera singer - and so what? What did I expect to gain from mixing the fabulous with the banal? From diluting elixir with water?

The cast party is breaking up. We take a last sip of stale beer, find our coats, hail taxis.
Years later we won't remember each other snacking at the party.
We'll remember each other in full regalia, sweating under the lights, when we WERE those other, grander beings. As music thundered and towers burned, a god lifted his spear and we sang.