Fear, Fort Night, & Funerals
Listening: "Brutally" by Suki Waterhouse
Reading: The Communist Manifesto by Guess Who
(Re)Watching: The Office
Wanting: Sparkling wine
As it turns out, there is no way to cheat the "perfect first ____" pressure, and by choosing to make my first blog post more of an introduction than a true first post, I have only deferred this pressure to post #2. Postponed, if you will. We persevere.
Yesterday night, I was fortunate enough to partake in a wonderfully nostalgic soirée with some lovely people. After some air-conditioned amping up—various coolers, talks of ideal funerals (ceremonial versus intimate, funeral home versus basement house party) and lives—the four of us lugged folding chairs and a selection of plush blankets and pillows to the backyard and got to work. We masterfully crafted the most perfect little hiding spot, complete with string lights (on the outside, so as not to invite in more mosquitos than absolutely necessary). It was Fort Night. Inside, cards were dealt as if by muscle memory; I cannot think, offhand, of a day that the four of us spent together without at least once reaching for a deck. As Losers and Winner emerged, the conversation dipped into the realm of scary stories...
I rarely feel as human as I do while sharing stories. "Real" storytelling—IRL, out loud, technology ignored—makes me feel like I am tapped into an ever-expansive web, one that only stretches and never snaps or strains, touching both the ancient past and the inconceivably-distant future, gaining yet more infinitesimally thin silk strands with every new mind tapping in to add their own story to the network. Nothing feels as certain, as stable, as the indisputable fact that is: "Humans will tell stories." It is in this way that the web, while flexible, remains one of the sturdiest structures in the land of the abstract (another contender would be love, I suppose). The safe, warm feeling that surrounds "storytelling" like a body-heat-sun-shine aura, I think, is thanks to the web, which quietly boasts its longevity and durability, able to catch and hold whosoever were to fall backward, down, down, down, into its depths. Bending, stretching, and finally tensing, supporting. You can tell a story. Humans will tell stories. (This fact and) every story, past, present and future, reassures and envelops whichever storyteller is on the hot seat at any moment. You can fall back, the web, Humans will tell stories.
I wonder why it is that we like to scare each other. My first thought (me, ever grasping for a scientific, logic-based reasoning) is that humans have evolved to seek deep bonds with their pack by any means necessary. Stories that scare, stories about ghosts and killers and dogs who lick hands (but people lick too), stimulate and deepen this fierce bond. They do the heavy lifting by mutually heightening emotions such as fear...(assume my scientific claims are of zero academic merit, I'm truly just having a fun little guess)...The nervous system is set on edge, heart rate perhaps spiked, mind racing—and suddenly, calm. A realization that nothing is wrong; you are surrounded by allies, and you are not in danger. You are safe with your pack, like wolves. Seems like an intimate emotional bond speed-run to me.
A different angle: since we tend to share these types of stories with people already close to us, perhaps we are subconsciously seeking reassurance for our own wildest fears. The idea of speaking the most horrifying, the most unspeakable, into existence as a sort of (unproven) precautionary measure...Surely this unthinkable scenario could never happen to me, not after this, not after telling a story in this setting and to these people. I used to be grateful that The Hunger Games existed as a novel as it assured me that the same could never happen in real life.
Successfully scared and eternally bonded, we folded chairs and blankets and traded our roof of quilt for a roof of asphalt shingles. Ready to retreat to my bedroom instead of laboring over air mattresses, I found it nice when my sister took to rearranging the furniture at 1am, lifting the heavy wooden coffee table, coaxing tendrils of strength through the buzz of alcohol and the tiredness of the day just to sleep near each other. Like a pack of wolves.
Abby