I cannot quite express how obsessed I have been all my life with the Titanic - I mean, just deeply, respectfully, humbly interested and concerned, not rooms-full-of-crazy with replicas of the ship or third class passengers or life boats or anything creepy like that.
Would you believe, I actually sourced this image from a website that recommended it as a "Fun idea" for a gift. Ho-ho-ho....I will never see the 'umour to be had in making light of human (or any living thing) tragedy and suffering. Never ever ever. Mind you, my one exception is the now seemingly endless/timeless "I'm the Kinga tha Werrrrld" ridiculing of 'Titanic' Director,
Nor would I ever be seen at any tribute stage shows ("Titanic - The Musical" is not on my bucket list).Steve keeps singing to me this morning, "Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip..." and I have to admit, I have been chuckling at that, despite myself. Not that the Titanic even fits the description of a "tiny ship" leaving from a tropic port for a three hour tour.
Some may say I'm caught up in the romanticism of it (neh, I don't think so), or the rubbernecking "value" (ummm.... maybe a little, but it's not the driving force of my interest in the disaster). I've thought about it from time to time over the years and certainly in the past 48 hours since discovering the exhibition is on from this month until October and I reckon what it is, is purely a deep connection to the human element. Imagining myself in a life boat watching that enormous stern rise up out of the water. Then also imagining myself surrounded by other doomed, screaming or silent souls as we plunge into the water. Unfathomable, consuming, suffocating grief and tragedy. Not that I am a ghoul about that part of it - shit, I've had enough of my own unfathomable, consuming, suffocating grief and tragedy that I don't go looking for more of it. But there's something almost symmetrical in that same emotion that I think I now recognise and can instantly connect with.
So on the trip to the museum today, I wanted to have as much time to freely browse (and cry, I know I'm gonna need tissues, for I am a sap) and honour the stories I'm going to come across. I made a vow to myself that I would NOT take the LGBB and, if he was not so interested, I was also not going to take my other whiner in galleries - the husband. I was fully prepared to go by myself and thought, there was only one friend in Melbourne I could think of who would take an equally leisurely amount of time to blubber and read, snivel and be surprised and amazed.
Yesterday, those friends came to lunch. And without me even needing to bring it up, she mentioned the same thing: that she was going by herself if she had to, because she knew it didn't (sorry) float her husband's boat.
So we're going together. In about 15 minutes! Sheet, better go get ready. Such a crisp, sunny clear day here in Melbourne. A stark contrast to that dark, below freezing cold night in 1912.
