#the whole hslot experience meant a lot to me

[maleksrami]

hey have you talked about your personal experiences at Harry’s tour at all sorry I couldn’t find anything but would love to know !

not really!! I think it’s because I just..had no idea what to say? It was all so overwhelming, I couldn’t find a way to put it in words, and I figured by the time I processed it, it’d be daaays late. i can give you a recap, but it might be long, so i’ll put it under a read more…

It was literally the best experience. like, I was shocked at how well everything went? There were so many opportunities for a disaster because this was essentially a four day vacation from home for me, so i had to make sure I planned everything and made sure I packed everything I needed, and I was soooo expecting something to go wrong at SOME point, but nothing did. 

The San Jose show was incredible, though a tad lonely because I went alone and I roadtripped there so I didn’t know anybody. But I did meet two mutuals who were super sweet and lovely and that made me feel really good :) one of them gave me Harry guitar picks! and the show was amazing because for some reason, my seat was almost in a private box? At the bottom of the floor? So I had a lot of room to myself and nobody was blocking my view while I took pics and nobody was in front of me, so I was like!!! thriving!!!!!!!!!!!! And I also cried during If I Could Fly… which..oh my god. I’ve literally never cried while seeing any of the 1D boys (at least not until AFTER the show) but hearing that song live for the first time just really got to me and I was so happy to be there. I felt like I could feel the rest of the boys in that room and I got really choked up and I cried teeeeeaaaars. plus..you know… my LARRIE ass was hearing IICF in person for the first time after three years. Of course I was shitting myself. and the baby gender reveal happened and it might have been my favorite thing of the WHOLE trip, if not for him WAVING THE BI FLAG. i..can’t explain it, but seeing him pick up THAT flag in person was a real full circle moment for me and I’ve never felt more loved than i did right then. 

and then…the LA shows. I’m still so…shocked. Because everything went so smoothly, especially things I had been anxious about, like being in the pit at the Forum shows and how the lining up process would work, if I’d have to “camp out”, if I’d even be very close, etc. but the way the venue did it was SO amazing and convenient for everyone (they started giving out numbers at 9am, so I got there at 7am both days and was within the first seventy people in my respective pit section both times. Then they let us leave the venue and come back later in the day and we got back in order and they took us through security and walked us into the pit) and the staff couldn’t have been nicer or more accommodating, so I felt so much better about it because I didn’t have to wait around in the sun, I was able to go back to my hotel room and get ready for the show on my own time, which!! god, I appreciated so much, lmao. 

The LA shows themselves were UNREAL. I think I favored the first night a tiny bit more, only because of the people around me in the pit compared to the second night. On the first night, I got to stand with a mutual who I’d met that morning and who I’d hung out with a bit during the day, so I was just SUPER happy to be with someone so lovely and we got second row, so were like FLIPPING OUT together. And before the show, I was given a little mini pride flag outside the venue…which… I’ve never owned before. And a few years ago, I might have been too nervous to hold that up and wave it around, but I DID IT. I held it up during IICF, and during WMYB when Harry was back on the main stage and I swear at one point he saw it and his eyes sparkled while he danced around right in front of me. And i just felt so damn whole, man. I don’t get to celebrate Pride month so like..these shows were my Pride celebration, and I was doing it with the person who literally helped me come to terms with myself. I took the mini flag with me the second night, but I never took it out of my pocket because the people around me didn’t feel as…uh….warm. If you know what I mean. But just knowing I had it with me, branded to me against my side, was very comforting and I’m glad I had it that night too, I just didn’t feel very safe taking it out. 

I had second row again the second night, right behind Laneone people again, but I was alone this time in the pit because the lovely people I’d been talking to in line went towards the aisle when we got into the pit, whereas I went closer to the stage. So alas, I was solo again and immediately felt a coldness from most of the Laneone people around me, so I just kept to myself because I wasn’t gonna let them ruin it for me. But the show was GREAT. Harry was emotional from the very start because it was the final show. When he came on, he kept taking deep breaths and grinning really big like he was trying to keep it together. HE DID GIRL CRUSH WITH CHASM ON THE B-STAGE??? and my mom texted me during that song and told me she was watching a live stream!! Which..oh my god, I’d never even told her about livestreams hahah. So to know my mom was watching from home was so sweet because I had sent her a text before he came onstage: “I wish you could have seen this show” :’) so overall it was just fucking incredible and I’m so proud of Harry and everything he’s accomplished. It was a fucking honor to see him play that venue because it has such a personal meaning to him. And obviously him doing Kiwi 3x…he didn’t wanna leave!! The pit got kinda scary at that point lmao, I still have some bruises. One of the cold Laneone people literally PUSHED me when I briefly grabbed the barricade when I lost my balance at one point. so..yeah, hets are just as much angels irl as they are online! anyways. 

Yes, it was all wonderful. I got to meet up with some mutuals on the way out, but I didn’t meet nearly as many as I’d wanted to due to the strict pit schedule. That was the only downside! I just wish I’d gotten to meet and hug more mutuals! But I was so happy to get to meet the few that I did and I made memories at those shows I’m gonna have forever and a lot of really beautiful pictures to keep from it so :) My body definitely paid for it when I finally got home, I was WEAPING when I walked through the door because it was all over. And when I woke up the next morning, my poor body hurt and I could barely breathe and I just soooobbbbbed my eyes out. But it was all so worth it. I’m still so so so happy fulfilled and overwhelmed by the whole experience. 

[hearttstopper]

“i have a lot of thoughts about this too especially with the whole watermelon sugar/nameless thing” pls miss britt share ur thoughts id love to hear them

This got so long. I’m really sorry. My thoughts about HS2/In Watermelon Sugar/a bunch of other random stuff under the cut.

These are all thoughts that are only vaguely connected, and stuff that I’m sure has been said a hundred times before mixed with a ton of my own personal conjecture, so please bear that in mind… This is just like total rambling from me. 

But I have been fascinated with Harry’s connections to In Watermelon Sugar since we first heard the stupid rumors about the song. Especially the quote from the book about the narrator’s name. That quote got me thinking about how when it comes to Harry, tons of people only see what they want to see based on whatever ‘version’ of Harry is most appealing to them.

Read these quotes from the book with that in mind:

My Name

“I guess you are kind of curious as to who I am, but I am one of those who do not have a regular name. My name depends on you. Just call me whatever is in your mind.

If you are thinking about something that happened a long time ago: Somebody asked you a question and you did not know the answer.

That is my name.

Perhaps it was raining very hard.

That is my name.

Or somebody wanted you to do something. You did it. Then they told you what you did was wrong—“Sorry for the mistake,”—and you had to do something else.

That is my name.

Perhaps it was a game you played when you were a child or something that came idly into your mind when you were old and sitting in a chair near the window.

That is my name.

Or you walked someplace. There were flowers all around.

That is my name.

Perhaps you stared into a river. There was something near you who loved you. They were about to touch you. You could feel this before it happened. Then it happened.

That is my name.”

and:

“My Name. I do not have a regular name. I am a mystery to you. I wished Margaret would leave me alone…”

— Richard Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar

The narrator of In Watermelon Sugar isn’t just a nameless figure, he actually invites the reader to give him whatever name they find most fitting for him. A positive connotation, a negative one, a nonsensical one… whatever you, the reader, decides. And that feels like a very apt description of Harry and the various ways fans have perceived him from the very beginning… by now, so many people have projected so many different images onto Harry that over time it has completely blurred all lines as to who Harry actually is. 

Here’s a review I found of the book that summarizes the world within In Watermelon Sugar better than I can (as well as somehow still aligning perfectly with the concept of struggling with fame and identity, etc): “Much of the sense of disparity in [in Watermelon Sugar] results from the incongruity inherent in the person of the narrator, who insists that everything in iDEATH is exactly as it should be—the people gentle, pleasant, and tolerant. Despite the narrator’s insistence that iDEATH is a stable Utopia, however, many of the things that happen are fraught with pain and violence. Balancing the easygoing and vegetarian people with their light chores and flower-filled parades are the man-eating tigers, the burning of the mutilated corpses of inBOIL and his gang, Margaret’s suicide, and the emptiness felt by the narrator but never named.” 

So essentially within In Watermelon Sugar, we’re shown that in the surrealist, post-apocalyptic setting of iDeath, things are only perfect on a surface level. Everyone in this world appears to be happy (or at least, they should be), but a closer look reveals the true nature of iDeath: it’s beyond grim. And so despite the happy, shiny surface, being a part of that happy, peaceful commune is unable to cure the narrator of the inexplicable emptiness he feels inside of him. (‘All the lights couldn’t put out the dark running through my heart.’ ‘Having sex and being sad.’)

The sadness that Harry has already admitted is very prevalent in HS2 has already been implied to be about a ‘breakup,’ but it’s clear to me that Lights Up is anything but a breakup song… (“[Lights Up is about] freedom, self-reflection, self-discovery, things that I had thought about and wrestled with…” + “For me, it’s a very uplifting song. In some places, it’s kind of dark, but to me, it’s like, very liberating. I think, you know, over the past couple of years… It’s about self-reflection, and freedom. It feels very free to me, which is I guess things that I’ve been trying to process… I guess, kinda wrestled with a little over the last couple of years. It’s kinda like, about accepting all of those things.”)

His sadness/whatever emotions and problems he’s been wrestling with have seemingly spanned the course of a few years, and are very personal to him… which is why I feel that releasing Lights Up as the first single sets the tone for the rest of his album centering around his own identity. The line “Lights up and they know who you are, know who you are… Do you know who you are?” poses the question - who is Harry? - and then, “Shine! Step into the light… Shine! So bright sometimes. Shine! I’m not ever going back.” shows us Harry having the strength and bravery to overcome his fears (stepping into the light, although it’s ‘so bright sometimes’ - overwhelming) and reclaim/express his own misunderstood identity.

A lot of people have been trying to tie the In Watermelon Sugar thing back to someone else, but at this point I completely disagree. Not only have we seen him make literary references in the past (the Charles Bukowski reference in Woman), but… given everything that he’s said about Lights Up so far – which was surprisingly a lot – I think that Harry genuinely just took a lot of inspiration from the book because it seemed to hit close to home with his own feelings about self-acceptance and living an authentic life within the public eye. 

I think a lot about the scene we’ve yet to see from the directors cut - a room full of many different iterations of Harry.

“My name depends on you… Just call me whatever is in your mind.” 

Which leads me back to more total conjecture on my end, but I think that when Harry initially set out on tour / kicked off his solo career, he seemed determined to continue performing within the safety of the walls that had been built around him, so to speak. In one of the interviews he did earlier, he talked about tackling his first album from the perspective of ‘bowling with the bumpers up’ - he wanted to play it safe. He didn’t want to veer too far out of his own comfort zone and fuck it all up… and in doing so, he seemed to hold himself back quite a lot. “I wanted to see if people would enjoy an album without knowing everything about me.” 

I think that heading into writing with that mindset explains songs like ‘Complicated Freak’ and ‘Medicine’ being scrapped and excluded from being released on HS1. In retrospect, all of his tour - and especially Medicine - seem a lot like Harry dipping his toes in the water. Being totally presumptuous again, but I find it likely that Harry has had it ingrained in his mind for a long time that he needs to fit certain molds and keep certain narratives alive in order to continue to be successful. And I imagine that this idea is not his own, but instead something that has been hammered into his head over and over from a young age. And I would guess that a lot of anxiety and doubt has stemmed from that - go back and watch that shaky first performance of Medicine and tell me what you think he was likely feeling in that moment. But again, it circles right back to the strength and bravery of doing what he knows needs to be done to expel all of the darkness inside of him - stepping into the light. (“Never going back now / Be so sweet if things just stayed the same.” It’d be so sweet if he could live in that fantasyland forever.)

Anyway. I really don’t think Harry was at all prepared for just how many people would show up to support him in that sense… but his own community just rolled up in droves, bringing a total outpouring of love for him every single night. He had entire arenas lit up in rainbows, people bringing hilarious and heartfelt signs, flags after flags after flags after flags… all in celebration of him and the feelings of safety, strength, and bravery that he has continuously imparted back onto his fans. It was such a queer lovefest that even other artists likened his tour to “pride parades every night.” That’s so unbelievably powerful? I can’t think of any other artist who’s crowds do that for them… not even gay icons like Elton John? I still maintain that one of the most incredible things to have come out of HSLOT was the safe spaces he + his fans created for one another. It meant a lot to us, and it clearly meant a lot to him:

“The tour, that affected me deeply. It really changed me emotionally. Having people come to sing the songs… For me, the tour was the biggest thing in terms of being more accepting of myself, I think. I kept thinking, “Oh, wow. They really want me to be myself. And be out and do it.” That’s the thing I’m most thankful for, of touring. I feel like the fans in the room — it’s this environment where people come to feel like they can be themselves. There’s nothing that makes me feel more myself than to be in this whole room of people. It made me realize people want to see me experiment and have fun. Nobody wants to see you fake it.” 

I think that going on tour, and seeing the reaction and the acceptance of his audience, definitely made him want to take the bumpers down… to ‘be out and do it’ because ‘nobody wants to see him fake it.’ It seemed to help him massively in terms of his own ‘self acceptance and the things he’s been wrestling with’ and to make an incredibly, incredibly long winded answer short, it’s why I STILL do not think that releasing Lights Up on National Coming Out Day was in any way incidental. I think that was a big part of what Harry meant when he said that no one wanted to see him ‘faking’ things.

And… that’s basically it, I think, for now. I’ve just been sitting here nodding along at everything he’s been showing us the last few weeks… Impressed by the direction that he seems to be heading. And taking notes. I’ll go ahead and shut up now because I KNOW it’s still too early to draw definite conclusions on his intent for this new ‘era’ (and this new song could be about choking on literal fucking watermelon seeds for all I know, nothing Harry does ever makes any kind of sense does it), but I can’t help but come to my own conclusions based on what I feel he is sharing with us.