What is horror?
I often ask myself that question. It's a hard answer to pinpoint, seeing as how most artists are different people from day to day. We are sensitive creatures. Things like temperature, music, decoration, and even light spectrum can effect our moods, can drive us upward like a rocket, or sink us like a railroad spike. What faces appear as horrific to one man, might evoke a smile from another. Though, different as we are, I think horror can be boiled down to lack of understanding, a lack of control, and finally, the overpowering realization of one's mortality in direct opposition to the present force or circumstance. Keeping this in mind, even the day to day disintegration locked into the framework of our DNA can be horrifying.
You wake up one morning, tilt back your chin to slide the razor across your nightgrowth, and notice a round protrusion just beneath the skin. It throws a shadow, faint enough for you to pass off as unreliable vision. But in a week it's twice the size. The shock of understanding hits like electrical current. What God would allow it? You've never hurt animals, or beat your kids, or cheated (not anymore than the next guy, at least) on your taxes. Yet, here it is.
The doctor comes, and with him--the diagnosis. Cancer. The Devil's black kisses. Your wife lowers her head to weep. And there's nothing you can do. Here comes the lack of control, like a hook after a good left jab. At first, there might be hope, determination, an unflagging resilience to beat the bastard flat. And if you win, why, this could be a story of redemption, an emotional onion-peeling that might lead a reader to realize what's important in the world. If, however, the character loses his fight, starts to flag, to question his decisions, slowly crumbling beneath the pressure, it might descend into the horrific.
And that is my realm.
Suppose you lose your mind, that those cancerous tendrils curl up around your soft pallet, and begin to lance your frontal lobe like some aggressive root? What psychiatric terrors might be unlocked? What sweet delusions might pipe to the dance of your lunacy? You think hard, recalling things said at past reunions, barbed comments made from the corner of your wife's icy smile. And then you remember her tears in the doctor's office, the way they seemed forced, despite some restrained undercurrent. It takes you a moment to pin it, but there it is, blazing in your mind like a neon roadside. Joy. The bitch was happy.
You become certain that your family has planted it, that the doctors, cops, and politicians are in on this little charade, that it isn't cancer, but the result of a tissue implant. Intergalactic or inter-dimensional organic material harvested by a government subsidiary, using techniques still outlawed in The States. A kind of beta test. There was that dental surgery last spring ... the way the doctor smiled assuredly as you drifted toward unconsciousness, and the way that, at the last moment, his round, inviting eyes seemed to narrow like a rat's above his blue canvas mask. Then darkness. Then a few months of life. Then Cancer. It makes sense. No matter how much you don't want it to. And now an unknown organism might be growing in your mind. What will you do to stop it, and those responsible, before it eats you alive?
Almost anything can be transformed to horror. It starts with confronting a force or circumstance beyond immediate comprehension, continues with the realization that that force or circumstance is possibly beyond control, and is bound by the realization of imminent injury (physical, emotional, spiritual) or death.
Well, fuck me silly, and call me The Constitution, I do believe I've written my first post.
I often ask myself that question. It's a hard answer to pinpoint, seeing as how most artists are different people from day to day. We are sensitive creatures. Things like temperature, music, decoration, and even light spectrum can effect our moods, can drive us upward like a rocket, or sink us like a railroad spike. What faces appear as horrific to one man, might evoke a smile from another. Though, different as we are, I think horror can be boiled down to lack of understanding, a lack of control, and finally, the overpowering realization of one's mortality in direct opposition to the present force or circumstance. Keeping this in mind, even the day to day disintegration locked into the framework of our DNA can be horrifying.
You wake up one morning, tilt back your chin to slide the razor across your nightgrowth, and notice a round protrusion just beneath the skin. It throws a shadow, faint enough for you to pass off as unreliable vision. But in a week it's twice the size. The shock of understanding hits like electrical current. What God would allow it? You've never hurt animals, or beat your kids, or cheated (not anymore than the next guy, at least) on your taxes. Yet, here it is.
The doctor comes, and with him--the diagnosis. Cancer. The Devil's black kisses. Your wife lowers her head to weep. And there's nothing you can do. Here comes the lack of control, like a hook after a good left jab. At first, there might be hope, determination, an unflagging resilience to beat the bastard flat. And if you win, why, this could be a story of redemption, an emotional onion-peeling that might lead a reader to realize what's important in the world. If, however, the character loses his fight, starts to flag, to question his decisions, slowly crumbling beneath the pressure, it might descend into the horrific.
And that is my realm.
Suppose you lose your mind, that those cancerous tendrils curl up around your soft pallet, and begin to lance your frontal lobe like some aggressive root? What psychiatric terrors might be unlocked? What sweet delusions might pipe to the dance of your lunacy? You think hard, recalling things said at past reunions, barbed comments made from the corner of your wife's icy smile. And then you remember her tears in the doctor's office, the way they seemed forced, despite some restrained undercurrent. It takes you a moment to pin it, but there it is, blazing in your mind like a neon roadside. Joy. The bitch was happy.
You become certain that your family has planted it, that the doctors, cops, and politicians are in on this little charade, that it isn't cancer, but the result of a tissue implant. Intergalactic or inter-dimensional organic material harvested by a government subsidiary, using techniques still outlawed in The States. A kind of beta test. There was that dental surgery last spring ... the way the doctor smiled assuredly as you drifted toward unconsciousness, and the way that, at the last moment, his round, inviting eyes seemed to narrow like a rat's above his blue canvas mask. Then darkness. Then a few months of life. Then Cancer. It makes sense. No matter how much you don't want it to. And now an unknown organism might be growing in your mind. What will you do to stop it, and those responsible, before it eats you alive?
Almost anything can be transformed to horror. It starts with confronting a force or circumstance beyond immediate comprehension, continues with the realization that that force or circumstance is possibly beyond control, and is bound by the realization of imminent injury (physical, emotional, spiritual) or death.
Well, fuck me silly, and call me The Constitution, I do believe I've written my first post.
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