Thinking about Fear

It's been rather fun teaching horror this quarter. Like I said before, it's great to be in a room and watch something and get that overwhelming reaction. It's different, in terms of say writing. When I write I'd like something to happen with my audience, but I'll probably never see that unless I stand in front of someone as they read my work. That I could not bear. Just last week I was with a friend and to play with the writerly insecurities she got a copy of a book I'm in and started reading it aloud in the book store. I had to tear the book from her hands because I felt that I would melt as the words were read.

However, having these film viewings is more like putting together a good mixed tape. Wow, I've written a lot about making mixed tapes, and I'm sure that many of my friends from the cassette generation will have their own nostalgia trips about it. But the whole idea was you take careful consideration in crafting this tape that plays a certain mood perfectly. You enjoy it when you play it and the person you made the tape for really likes it. Some level of music appreciation. Similarly, I'm getting a kick out of putting together a set of readings made to scare. And then picking just the right things for my class to watch.

Now the question comes: will I get better at this as the year progresses, considering that I'll be working in genres that don't generate such an apparent and immediate effect as horror does, or is this the peak since I'm very comfortable with this genre.

Teaching in genre has many challenges. I have taken on something pretty big. I think I went for horror since I've been thinking a lot about teaching it, and that results in it being the first thing my mind went to when I was pressed to come up with something to teach. Soon enough I'll be raiding my book closet looking for all of those old anthologies I picked up and making my selections.

Yesterday a co-teacher lent me a book on biopsychology. After she sat in on my class to watch the horror show she heard my mini-talk again about fear and the like. she recommended that I skip ahead in the book and read about the fear reactions.

So during some meeting yesterday I was reading and it turns out that a lot of the studies on fear are really interesting when it comes to the basic responses. One of the interesting things that came out there was that animals, when fighting intra-species, will not go for any lethal moves. Hence, the fighting stances of animals will allow certain weak points to be exposed because they know that those from their species won't hit them there. Interesting, parang yung usapang, sige pare sapakan, pero walang sa bayag. Possibly interesting too is this notion that in the animal kingdom, there's this implicit, unspoken agreement, probably brought about by evolution and the need to propagate the species, that you can hurt each other to establish social order, but you can't kill each other. Now line this up against man and our development and really, how easy it is to kill someone.

Another thing I read, which I wished I had read before, when the shitstorm was coming down on me, was about defensive reactions to aggression. It said there that in systems with a developed hierarchy and pecking order moves made by superiors are considered aggressive. And the common reaction to that kind of behavior is a defensive attack. If I had this information, then it would prove that my reactions were only normal. When the big bad wolf came at me, I had no choice but to mount a defensive attack to protect myself. Amazing what a study of science and behavior can reveal, how our most basic reactions are driven by evolutionary models developed over the millenia.

I can't help but be interested in evolution and these new theories in various fields that allow us to understand ourselves and how we function. Reading up on neuroscience, evolution, and all these trends forces us to consider that, no we are not merely products of our personal experiences, but the development of countless generations, genes passed on, behavioral traits and beliefs that ensure the propagation of the race. While we feel so much as individuals, and I personally have this tendency to think about my various failings, we are all part of this massive human project moving towards the highest and most efficient and developed forms possible. The immensity of evolution and an understanding of how large things are, a realizing of how large a scale things could possibly operate on, and how limited an effect we have on these things on a literal level, can be overwhelming. I'm thinking of a Flaming Lips song, "The Stars are so Big, I am so Small...Do I Stand a Chance?"

And so we can still turn to art, that imposition of form on the artwork, the creation of something, from materials already there, be it statue from stone or poem or story plucked from the language of the social subconscious. These are things that transcend space and time. With the immensity of it all, our collective understanding and knowledge, the awareness of how large the world is, sometimes, it's just a three minute ditty or a few beautiful lines from a poem that can allow us to transcend this world and enter some higher level of consciousness. Even with all our knowledge, there's still something mystical out there.

i'm getting to rambling, but now i have to start questioning, how do I reconcile all of this reading on science, the systematizing of knowledge, while at the same time holding onto these beliefs of transcendence and the mystical experience. In class, we were reading about Plotinus and the "A ha! I've got it moment" where it's not this conscious thought process that leads you to something, but at the snap of your fingers you just suddenly have this moment of understanding. I believe in study and science, but you can't deny that moment of sublimity. I guess I am deciding to live a life of inquisition and constant thought and understanding, in pursuit of that transcendental moment.