KMFDM’S MENTAL SNAKE OIL (THE UST SPEECH)

Back in August I delivered this speech in front of a crowd of UST communication majors with the rest of the Visprint authors for promotional purposes in line with my new book News of the Shaman. This is where a student asked me the "JAWS question."*

HORROR STORIES AS SHAMANIC REMEDY AND PSYCHIC SELF-DEFENSE FOR THE 21^st CENTURY

 Thank you to the Thomasian Writers’ Guild, UST’s Faculty of Arts and Letters, The Varsitarian, Visprint Enterprises and the other awesome authors. And you guys for coming down to hear us natter on about scribbled stuff.

When I was a kid growing up in the ghetto of Novaliches the water would only flow from the tap at intervals. Usually it came on early morning and late afternoons.

So I had this daily grind of filling up several buckets of water for our family’s daily use at around 6AM. I did this before I used the water to take a bath myself and prepare for school.

Eventually this routine became my space for daily meditation. A Zen time to muse and dream and make-up stories in that state between the daze of just having woken up and still trying to get in control of your senses.

Eventually the bathroom became a place for me to think out things. Stuff. Knots. Girls.

Over the years I’ve been in worst places trying to iron out plot points (very odd, little odd, extremely odd) but filling up a bucket with water with a pail, especially if it’s a very big pail, NEVER fails to put me in a contemplative Zen mood.

Today, the water from the faucet was black. Probably from some fluke of cloud seeding up at the dam or probably some secret experimental serum designed to make me and my neighbors the first official bio-engineered mutants in the country.

I tell you, it took a lot of courage for me to take a bath today. 

*   *   *

Anyway, this black water got me to thinking about horror stories. And how important a role they’ve played in the choices I’ve made both as an individual and a fictionist. And how it all came to be in the book that Visprint has just released. I can’t tell you how many times reading and writing stories of dread, fright and terror have saved me from a self-destructive abyss.

What I CAN tell you is that we tell stories in psychic self-defense because all sensation is already memory.

Many of my colleagues say journalism is a gun. If journalism is a gun then horror is the serrated knife of fiction that can be used as surgically precise as a scalpel or as brutal as a bucher’s hack.

Horror is the only genre that’s named after an emotion. Horror is the attempt to keep us from forgetting sensation, to enshrine all that intensity in memory before the wind blows it away. It’s the fiction equivalent of a shock and awe campaign.

Nothing but a display of SHEER power. Horror is a Blitzkrieg. Horror is a Brock Lesnar. Horror is the majesty of a millennia-old octopus god that eats planets.  

Sometimes you just gotta say “fuck subtlety.”

*   *   *

In Japan they have a rite of passage for being brave. It’s called kimodameshe. It’s literally translated as “test of guts.” These tests can range from staying overnight at a haunted house or enduring a hazing of a 2x4 plank. Usually it’s the teenagers go for the haunted house. They even have theme parks especially built for it. You can even get a group discount.

Why do we Pinoys have nothing like that? I think maybe getting into your first brawl or your first unwanted pregnancy are probably the things that come close. Anyway, why DO the Japanese do it?

The experience of kimodameshe returns us to the primal experience of living in caves, curled up like bitches dreading the dark and the things that live in the dark who want to eat us. Or worse. 

It is a HUMBLING experience. It is also a THERAPEUTIC experience.

It returns us to the fact of our primal being. That behind you stands a long line of people who have experienced the very same thing and lived to tell the tale. As a corollary it sends a message to the depths of your being that if you DO survive this then you CAN certainly tackle future challenges. TOUGHER ONES

Half of the fun of horror stories is the schadenfreude of it. Schadenfreude =  pleasure at the misery of others. I mean, let’s face it, the heroes in horror stories are in really bad situations.

So you, the reader, can go say: Thank God I’m not possessed by the Devil (Exorcist)! Thank God I’m not being chased by a haunted car (Carrie)! Thank God the dead stay dead in the real world (any number of zombie films)!

If you haven’t noticed, horror is also highly educational. Where else do they teach you how to survive a zombie apocalypse? Or what kind of gear to pack for a righteous exorcism? WAIT, OR DO THEY TEACH THAT AT UST?  

Horror not only lets us resist the psychological drought that comes from having a lack of stories, it also arms us with the weapons to heal ourselves with an inoculation of terror in manageable doses.

It’s like those miraculous concoctions or snake oil that travelling medicine men use as a cure-all. I imagine this liquid thing as black and neutrally scented. Like the water that flowed out of my tap today.

For me, yes, horror is a kind of mental snake oil. It may not taste good but it sure gives you the confidence to charge the zombie horde at your doorstep with a machete. Screaming all the way.

Often, that’s all it takes to survive the horrors of the 21^st century. The catastrophe of 9/11 and our drowned city. The sudden outbursts of political violence. A new President. Magunidanao.      

Sometimes. With all that. I often think it’s a miracle we’re sane at all.

 *   *   *

Which brings us to my new book. NEWS OF THE SHAMAN. Wow. Five years waiting in its Pandora’s box to be released into the wild and shake hands with you bright, young, ghoulish, Dominican-educated minds.

The biggest themes in this book I think are heartache and loss. For some characters it’s the loss of a friend and comrade that drives them to do things they can’t fully explain even to themselves.

For some it’s the heartache of discovery, and yearning for more of that mystery only glimpsed that becomes their motivation. For some it’s the loss of faith in your fellow man. For some it’s the loss of God.

At the core of each story is a return to a primal state of the human condition. And how that can either destroy or heal them.  

Again, without stories there is only psychic drought. With NEWS OF THE SHAMAN I hope those of you who pick it up find your way back to that primal state of mystery and grandeur and terror. Find your own kimodameshe. Find your own salvation in the sea of darkness.

The shaman bears good news for all of us.  

But only if you have the courage to drink the snake oil and follow him into the void.

Somewhere in there is the key to an infinite, obsidian wisdom.

Or more likely you’ll find a huge and hairy beast bent on devouring your brains and guts.

The shaman will be with us either way. Thank you.

*THE JAWS QUESTION: "Sir, when JAWS the movie came out tourism in Australia took an all time low. When is horror going to be held accountable for all the damage it's inflicted on the minds of its viewers and readers?" (or words to that effect. i kid you not)