On Distant Worlds: Final Fantasy 30th Anniversary ♬ ♡ ★

Music has such a strange way of travelling right down into your bones. There's nothing like it. It gets inside you like a ghost and wiggles around in your heart and your tear ducts. Whether you're performing or watching, I think this sense of possession is always present when you see live music. It's a spirit that consumes you. Beautiful music is almost magnetic, pulling you into a plane of pure awe. That's what it was like seeing Distant Worlds at the Royal Albert Hall for a 30th Anniversary of Final Fantasy show on 4th November 2017.

Arnie Roth conducts the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, the Maida Vale Singers, and that one guy in the audience who asks if they were going to play Wonderwall. I conduct a plastic cup of dark beer. They do a stretched arrangement of the opera from Final Fantasy VI and play game footage above the orchestra showing the in-game conductor manically waggling his entire self. It's a funny juxtaposition, but a lovely one too.

During intermission I see a lone Yuna clamber up the stairs. I fight the urge to yell "stay away from the summoner" in a comedy old crone voice. There are no Tiduses to say it to anyway. They show Final Fantasy VII remake footage during one of the tracks and the audience turns into 70% fist pumping glee. I close my eyes and think of marshmallow Barret as the cymbals crash.

I don't think I can do much justice to these performances, but there's a unique magic to the orchestra, the wry enthusiasm of Arnie Roth, seeing Nobuo Uematsu's perpetual grin in person, and of course being in such a beautiful venue as the Royal Albert Hall. I saw audience members clutching moogles and grinning hard at everything, roaring with excitement on introduction of Liberi Fatali (which, woah, sounds incredible with a choir). After all of it, I came away with all the stars in my eyes. Seeing an orchestra is like nothing else, but to hear everyone's love for these pieces of music, it makes me realise my total goal in life - that all I ever want is to inspire something in other people like that. I can't be an orchestra, I can't make a touching video game, I can't sing ominously in Latin (or can I...), but I can make someone smile, or feel excited, or encouraged in some way. In any small way I can, I can make some difference. And if I can inspire happy feelings in someone for even the tiniest fraction compared to Distant Worlds with my drawings or words or jokes, then I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to do.

Also Nobuo Uematsu is the best and he deserves to be licked by many dogs. ♬✧♡*+:•*

BONUS: Here are some moogles for good luck.