Imagine living in a world where assembling flat-pack furniture, like IKEA shelving, that sort of thing, is considered the highest form of pleasure and intimacy available to humans, or a dangerously alluring vice; either way, everyone’s kind of obsessed with it. At least a third of all artistic and literary endeavour throughout history has been about the joys and woes of assembling flat-pack furniture; people speculate about what kind of furnitures celebrities or their own neighbours like to assemble in private*; people talk about wanting to find their perfect furniture-assembly partner.
And the thing is, you’re attracted to furniture-assembly too, as a concept. You enjoy assembling small model kits by yourself, so you figure putting together a couch with someone has got to be the same kind of feeling, but even better. Except, every time you try it —- it feels like assembling furniture. At best it’s an exhausting chore; at worst it’s frustrating and actually, physically, painful, because the parts won’t go together the way the instructions claim they should. You try to at least take pleasure in how happy it makes the other person, but even that is compromised because you know if you make the slightest mistake they could hurt their back or something, so you can never relax.
And you’re a reasonably broad-minded person, so you consider the possibility that you’ve just been trying the wrong kinds of furniture for your tastes. You also know that some people aren’t into assembling furniture at all, and that’s ok, and maybe you’re one of them. Except you definitely like looking at furniture, sitting or lying on furniture, and reading furniture catalogues. You wish you could experience furniture-assembly the way other people do, but you suspect you never will.
*also anyone who actually makes their living assembling furniture in a factory or working in a furniture store is despised and reviled by society, for some reason.
It’s a little sad to me that it’s a zero-comment post on an abandoned blog.
No doubt there are hundreds of thousands of great pieces of work that basically nobody ever sees, scattered throughout the obscure corners of the web.
I wouldn’t even have noticed this one myself, if not for three consecutive coincidences.
I have this nagging feeling there was another theorist (possibly several?) who wrote about the advantage of narratives that don’t explain themselves. Maybe I’m thinking of Adorno with his anti-capitalist/anti-meaning stuff? “Something something, Paul Klee painted an angel that takes away meaning and that’s beautiful”?
What’s interesting about the Slenderman point near the end is that I think its longevity plays into what Scott McCloud might call its “iconic” nature – the vagueness of the character is an advantage because it allows people to project whatever they’re thinking of onto it (this sounds like I’m just re-stating what’s written in the article, but it’s actually McCloud’s theory I’m citing from memory, which shows how similar/applicable it is).
Anyway, yeah, this is good. Glad to see someone write critically on BEN Drowned!
The OP blog isn’t dead! After more than a year of innaction, there was a post about tabletop role-playing games earlier this month! The blogger seems really good, and to the taste of the kind of person who is probably reading this tumblblog.
I think in discussion of horror, particularly horror movies, the idea of not showing the monster too soon, or ever giving the audience a good long look at it ever is brought up fairly often, if more to discuss the breach than the observance.
Mooncustafer 