Cynicism Fail

Yesterday, my daughter and I watched a slightly bizarre documentary call 'We Are Wizards'. It's a poorly made film that documents a small number of creative Harry Potter fans. There are a couple of bands featured - 'Harry and the Potters' and 'Draco and the Malfoys'. The former are a couple of nerdy teen brothers who reminded me a little of Napoleon Dynamite or Jedward. The latter seem a bit more self aware and are having fun being a bit silly.

It's tempting to laugh at 'Harry and the Potters'. It's also a bit too easy to do that. I checked the movie on IMDB. Finding that it was about 5 years old, I wanted to find out if they were still a band and whether they'd improved.

This is what I found:

Musically it's pretty mediocre, which is a considerable improvement, but that's not important. Don't listen to this critically, watch and understand what's going on here.

These are Harry Potter fans singing a song at Leakycon, a Harry Potter convention. The song, Luna Luna, is basically Louie Louie. It's about the character Luna Lovegood. Now get this… on stage with them is Evanna Lynch, the young actress who plays Luna in the movies. She's buzzing. The band is buzzing. The audience, which must number at least several hundred, is buzzing.

These kids must've endured a fair bit of ridicule from their cooler peers for doing what they do. By simply ignoring that and just getting on with what they love doing, they've experienced something wonderful and will always have the memory of that.

While I could easily laugh at them, in truth I'm a little envious of just how much fun they're having at this gig. It's something I've experienced in an audience, but never as a musician. I probably worry far too much about how other people are going to react.