Matrimony, napkins, principles and letting go.

One of the things that has kept me from writing these last couple of days was a wedding. My cousin, my mother's goddaughter, has tied the knot.

Marriage has always seemed to me like one of those useless side-effects of organised religion. Why bother going to a temple of a god you don't believe in to stand in front of family you're not particularly close to and tell them that yes, you're really serious about your relationship. Shouldn't this be a matter between you and your significant other? And how ridiculous to claim that you will be in love with that person for the rest of your life. Who's to say what will happen, or who you will meet.

Lately, as with many things that I used to be adamant about, I'm not so sure.

Quite a few of my friends are married. Many others are not. Neither am I, although I am in a loving relationship, and have been for more than four years now. Those friends who did get married all had their reasons, all slightly different for each of them. Some blatantly got married for practical reasons: it's still the most convenient way to take care of your affairs as a couple. For some it seemed like a very intimate thing, between the two of them. They only hesitantly invited other people to attend the ceremony, if at all. For others still it was a social happening. A reason to amass all of their friends and relatives around them and celebrate life together.

I have never felt that any of their weddings was a "mistake". So my theoretical objections to marriage never held up when confronted with the reality of a happy couple taking the vow.

I live in Flanders, the northern, dutch-speaking part of Belgium. I was brought up in a suburban, middle class environment and have always felt alienated by the hypocrisy and frigid atmosphere of that environment. From a very early age I decided to try and discard as much as I could of this culture that I hated, because the last thing I wanted to become was as lifeless en emotionally awkward as my parents and their friends.

Here's where the napkins from the title of this post come in. For decades now it's been considered appropriate to put on a certain horrendous French song at Flemish weddings, usually at the end of dinner. I'm not even going to link to the song, or mention the title. Trust me, it's horrible. And if you have ever had to endure that part of a Flemish wedding party, I'm sorry for even mentioning it, and possibly causing you to have the damn thing stuck in your head for the rest of the day.

Anyway.

Napkins.

When the pseudo-epic intro to this song comes on, the wedding guests all grab their napkins and stick them in the air, waving them slowly from the left to the right. The tempo of the song at this point is painfully slow, so the whole bunch of grinning aunts and uncles has to wait for seconds with their napkins to one side before they can move it over to the other. At this point in time, the air is filled with anticipation. While the singer sings about black clouds coming from the North to cover the scorched earth after a war somewhere in Ireland (hardly anyone speaks French well enough to understand, and those that do aren't paying attention), the whole family, and their embarrassed friends, are sitting there slowly waving their stupid napkin to and fro. 

A cymbal splashes, and the song switches to a horrid symphonic polka-beat. This -of course- is the cue for the wedding guests to start swinging around their napkins in circles, like shipwrecked idiots that think they saw an aeroplane fly over. At this point we are a minute and twenty five seconds into a six minute song. The singer butchers every rule of where the emphasis of a French word should be as he tries to keep up with the supposedly Celtic rhythm of the orchestra. Lyrically, he switches to pictures of springtime and naked women jumping into the Irish lakes. 

By the time the wedding guests have managed to synchronise their helicoptering, and found ways to wave their napkins around without hitting their neighbours in the face repeatedly, the song switches to a kind of operatic middle part. Cue the renewed awkwardness of a tempo too slow to do anything interesting with a napkin. The singer shows off his tenor voice with a Pavarotti-like loud note. The lyrics as he hits the high note translate as "over there". Why on earth one would choose to belt out these words at ear-shattering volumes remains a mystery to me. Meanwhile the wedding guests try to translate the passionate wail of the singer into kinetic energy. They're not hitting their neighbours as frequently as they do during the up-tempo part, but when they do, it hurts.

After this, the song switches back to the intro, only this time even slower. And it starts speeding up. Slowly. The anticipation is murderous. Some grandfather's grin has reached scary widths and with his face all red and swollen you're afraid he's going to kick the bucket. But he still has his napkin forcefully up in the air, so you guess he'll be alright. The singer growls. Again with the black clouds, only this time they're even more ominous. The string section of the orchestra delivers screeching stabs against the beat. The threatening atmosphere seems rather inappropriate for a wedding ceremony. Or is it? Like I said, I'm not married, nor have I ever been.

Then, rather unceremoniously, the song switches back to the up-tempo bit. And off they all go, swinging their napkins like there was no tomorrow. For about another minute and a half. By this time -I am certain of it- there isn't a single soul in that wedding party that doesn't realise they look like an absolute idiot. Even the bride is looking around helplessly, with a confused expression on her face that seems to say "Should we be doing this"? All the while relentlessly swinging around her napkin, narrowly missing her recently acquired better half on every beat of that French song about lakes in Ireland. At least if we knew the lyrics, we could sing along. Or maybe just listen to them, if it was a language we actually spoke.

Straight to the operatic bit now. Back to wailing "over there" loudly. This is the only part of the lyrics that most wedding guests can grab on to, and some sing along, or pretend to. Back to the forceful to and fro of napkins clenched tightly in sweaty fists. Only by this time the movement lacks conviction. By this time we're past the amount of time a song should last. And nothing manages to keep their attention from their painful shoulder muscles. Try holding up a napkin for five minutes. Let alone waving it around like a madman. 

The operatic bit dwindles into a suspended note that slowly fades out. Giving you hope. (One of the crucial ingredients of proper torture.)

But then synthetic bagpipes appear in the distance. A ghastly nasal squealing. Playing the up-tempo theme. Slowly. The only thing worse than a polka beat is a slowed down polka beat. That starts speeding up.

Back to the helicoptering.

Again.

Cramped up shoulder and all.

Back to full blast.

Whenever I have looked around at a wedding party this deep into this preposterous charade, I have seen nothing but dead looks in people's eyes. The singer has given up on making up idyllic scenes to sing about (he's been repeating stuff for the second half of the song anyway) and lets the orchestra and the synthetic bagpipes fiddle on while the choir lazily makes do with a "lai-la lai-la" that the wedding guests pretend to merrily sing along. Well the singing is mostly real. The merriment isn't.

And then, the music slowly fades out and the crowd applauds the newlyweds, presumably for surviving the first real ordeal of their budding marriage.

I never, ever used to take part in this nonsense. I think I have made abundantly clear why.

This week-end, however, I realised that just sitting there doing nothing while your entire family indulges in this ritual is about as horrid as taking part.

I realised that I might make my cousin and her fresh hubby, my mother, my aunts and uncles, and everyone there happier by swinging my napkin around.

So I swung that thing over my head like my life depended on it.

 I didn't particularly enjoy it.

But it somehow feels like a victory.

Here's a picture of the moon that I took just now.

The moon over Antwerp on the night of september 15th 2014.