Ever wondered why finding out about Harry and Louis is like falling into a rabbit hole ?
A text I read in one of my courses this week really resonated with the questions I was asking myself lately. Why is Larry so fascinating ? Why are we so obsessed ?
" The hidden fascinates. (...) In dissimulation and absence there is a strange force that compels the spirit to turn toward the inaccessible and, for the sake of conquest, to sacrifice all it possesses. Fairy tales, works of realism as far as the mechanism of desire is concerned, know only hidden treasures, concealed in some dark depth. If these treasures must belong to someone, they will go to the one who has renounced everything, even the hope of becoming their master. The essence of mystery is to compel us to regard as worthless and tiresome anything that does not make it more easily accessible. Yes, the shadow has the power to make us release all our prey simply because it is shadow and provokes in us a nameless anticipation. Fascination persuades us, so that we may belong to it, to give up everything, even concern for our own lives. It takes all we have simply by promising everything we want. At first, we were able to dream of laying hold of what lay hidden, but the roles were quickly reversed : all at once, we found ourselves passive en paralysed, having renounced our will and allowed ourselves to be inhabited by the imperious call of absence.
Moralists, of course, have deemed this sacrifice outrageous. What ! Lose all that one has for an illusion ! Allow oneself to be robbed of the present and to live forever after in destructive ecstasy ? Scorn visible beauty for love of what does not exist ? (...)
The hidden is the other side of a presence. The power of absence if we attempt to describe it, leads us to the power possessed in varying degrees by certain real objects. These objects point beyond themselves toward a magical space. They are indices of something they are not. (...)
To be fascinated is the height of distraction. It is to be prodigiously inattentive to the world as it is. "
The living eye, Jean Starobinski.
