Where do we go from here?

I had a long and fairly verbose post worked up about the continuing fallout of yesterday’s announcement, and how the last twenty-four hours have affected Alizée’s international community of fans. Halfway through, I realized I was just regurgitating things that had already been better-said by others elsewhere, and trying to frame them with a completely unnecessary rundown of the events that led us here…which, if you’re an Alizée fan reading this, you’re probably already well aware of.

To sum up in as few words as possible, then: things are, unsurprisingly, pretty much a mess. Fans are turning on Alizée. Fans are turning on each other. Baseless speculation over the true reason behind the postponement is running rampant. Whatever small amount of momentum we may have built up here in North America appears to have been dashed, at least for now, as a number of previously-stalwart fans have been left questioning why they’re investing so much, when they’re getting so little in return. Cooler heads are attempting to prevail here and there, counseling calm and patience until we receive some kind of explanation from Alizée herself…but twenty-four hours later, she remains silent on the subject, while posts even remotely critical of the decision continue to disappear from her official MySpace…which is only serving to feed the cycle of anger and recrimination.

In short, it ain’t pretty.

In light of all this, I’ve spent a good portion of the day wondering about the future of Operation: Disque Drop. I’ve been going back and forth all day on whether or not I ought to hang it up, or at least suspend it for the time being. Not out of malice or anger towards Alizée, mind you…far from it…but just because now is clearly not the right time to be trying to lure new North American fans into fold, not with the community in the state it’s in at the moment. Though the quixotic in me is howling that, now more than ever, it’s important to stand up and be counted…that times like these are what make ordinary men into heroes, just because they staunchly refuse to give up in the face of adversity and find a way to persevere …I can’t deny the fact that the problems we’re facing aren’t going to be solved by throwing more fans at them.

(Or maybe…are they? If low ticket sales are truly the culprit behind the sudden rescheduling…maybe? I dunno…there’s so much that’s not clear, right now.)

I still want to help Alizée to succeed in some way, very much so. I’m just not convinced that putting CDs or DVDs into the hands of random strangers is the best way to do it, right now…and I’m at a complete loss as to what else I can do.