I dunno... maybe it's just me, but I react well to things like madness and bloodlust and nightmare. In fact I get rather bored with it. I'm more enthralled by suspense -- the darkness which doesn't reveal its horrors all at once -- than some terrible thing which you must see and can't escape. I'm not real sure if that makes me jaded or detached or maybe just because I've seen and heard real horrors in my life, even if I wasn't participating as more than an observer. It's the secret of the Other; it's only horrifying, IMO, if you don't know its name. It's the pre-birth horror, the world that hasn't happened yet because you haven't entered it.
I guess the key is that I've always been the Other. Even if I didn't consciously exclude myself, I was doing it to myself, stepping back in my 'role' as observer. Watcher. I could never watch carefully enough if I was involved. I honestly never in my life have defined myself with anything bigger than myself. Everything's labels that peel off rather easily. My duties, responsibilities, and capacities, perhaps -- but not my own *self*. And from that perspective? Being the Other is not so bad. It gives you a freedom that's both scary and unlimited.
So I guess... a lot of the things that intrigue, beguile, terrify you -- I find to be expected if not normal. Normal is just when something happens a lot. It doesn't necessarily link, in my head, as the subset of things that are possible. In that sense you have an edge on me, as I can't easily replicate that wonder of finding the Other, when I'm sitting here in its territory and eating its food.
What does it leave? The stories I love the most are the ones that reveal what was always there. Seeking out the Other is such a fraught and violent business. How pointless to me, when we are all the Other.
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Date: 2005-02-12 03:36 am (UTC)I guess the key is that I've always been the Other. Even if I didn't consciously exclude myself, I was doing it to myself, stepping back in my 'role' as observer. Watcher. I could never watch carefully enough if I was involved. I honestly never in my life have defined myself with anything bigger than myself. Everything's labels that peel off rather easily. My duties, responsibilities, and capacities, perhaps -- but not my own *self*. And from that perspective? Being the Other is not so bad. It gives you a freedom that's both scary and unlimited.
So I guess... a lot of the things that intrigue, beguile, terrify you -- I find to be expected if not normal. Normal is just when something happens a lot. It doesn't necessarily link, in my head, as the subset of things that are possible. In that sense you have an edge on me, as I can't easily replicate that wonder of finding the Other, when I'm sitting here in its territory and eating its food.
What does it leave? The stories I love the most are the ones that reveal what was always there. Seeking out the Other is such a fraught and violent business. How pointless to me, when we are all the Other.