I was walking to get pizza and a chasm opened up in the earth and I fell in and now I am at the bottom of this hole, screaming for help. And along comes you. Now, maybe you just keep walking, you know, there’s a strange guy screaming from the center of the earth, it’s perhaps best to ignore him. But let’s say that you don’t; let’s say that you stop. The sensible thing to do in this situation is to call down to me and say “I am going to look for a ladder, I will be right back!” but you don’t do that, instead you sit down at the edge of this abyss and then you push yourself forward and jump. And when you land at the bottom of the hole and you dust yourself off, I’m like “What the hell are you doing, now there are two of us in this hole!” and you look at me and say “Well, yeah, but now I am highly motivated to get you out.”
This is what I love about novels - both reading them and writing them. They jump into the abyss, to be with you where you are.
[…]
And I guess from the outside, it seems like, or it probably seems anyway that I jumped into the abyss with Esther. Right, like, here’s this author and he meets this reader of his and she’s a big fan and she’s sick with cancer, and so since he’s so awesome, he jumps down to be with her and he’s like “I’m with you to help you.” No. I wish, like, I wish I were that heroic. But where I’m standing, the true story is that Esther jumped into the abyss with me, because I was the one who was angry and hopeless and saw no meaning in life as it truly exists, and Esther came to me and said “You know, I’m not psyched about having cancer, and I don’t like being in pain all the time, and this is not by any stretch of the imagination an easy life, and I don’t wanna pretend that I’m excited about this, BUT, I like being alive, I am grateful to have loved and to have been loved. I have had a good life.” And that realization, that even though Esther’s life was a short life, it was still a good and rich and full life, that realization was central to The Fault in Our Stars.
John Green, An Evening of Awesome at Carnegie Hall
I have lost my ability to even
“My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations,” - a pretty good writer in an ok book
About a month ago, I was sitting in the bathtub when I got an email on my phone. (I always take electronic devices into the bath. It just seems smart.) That email was from Hank Green, who asked Daniel and I if we would like to come join him and John at Carnegie Hall and read a scene from The Fault in Our Stars. I… freaked out. I called my mom. I squealed. All from the tub.
This mirrors the first time I read TFiOS, which I started in the bathtub last June. (I don’t really take that many baths, but apparently great things happen when I do, so maybe I’ll start taking more.) I got all prune-y in the bath because I completely lost track of time as I was absorbed into the world of Hazel and Augustus. I read it in preparation for VidCon, where I knew I would finally meet Hank, and also John. I could never imagine that half a year later I would be onstage with them at Carnegie Hall, with guests like Neil Gaiman, reading from this incredibly beautiful book. Or that the reason I would get to be a part of this one of a kind event would be because I was cast in a web series adaptation of Pride and Prejudice a year ago.
I don’t ever want to forget the magic of walking onstage in front of 3,000 screaming nerdfighters at Carnegie Freaking Hall. I want to remember the way my heart swelled in my chest and I felt like I was on fire, in an exciting, non-burning kind of way. I want to remember the electricity in the air in that very large, special room. I want to remember the energy and camaraderie backstage amongst people like Grace Helbig, Hannah Hart, Daniel Vincent Gordh, John and Hank Green, Kimya, and Neil “Donkey Balls” Gaiman. I want to remember reading from this extraordinary book in front of a crowd that laughed, applauded, and cried. I want to remember singing and dancing along with The Mountain Goats and not caring if I looked silly in front of thousands of people because I was just having the best time.
Last night was an evening I will treasure, always. I don’t know how to begin to express what it meant to me to be included, or what it feels like to be able to participate in this extraordinary community and be so warmly welcomed. What John and Hank have built is difficult to fully understand, but not difficult to enjoy. I am extremely grateful to both of them for including me in their amazing celebration, and especially to Hank for giving me a job that made the people in that audience actually want to see me. The whole evening was just such a gift.
A big congratulations to Hank and John for their triumphantly awesome evening, 1 year of TFiOS success, and 6 years of Nerdfighteria. You are a very special breed, and the world could use more of you.
