Most of the time when I look at people I see relatively little emotion on the surface. I suppose a society could not function if everyone were walking around on the verge of exploding. When we see people on the street or on the subway who look like they are likely to detonate at any moment, we tend to steer clear — for good reason.
Yet if you spend time with anyone, especially if you spend time with them during periods of stress or great loss, you come to realize that everyone, somewhere inside, has a bubbling cauldron of rage, fear and anxiety, of dark emotions lurking just below that apparently placid surface.
I suppose this is why people respond so powerfully to art that exposes the dark underside, such as Pinter’s The Homecoming, Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, Harlan Ellison’s I Have No Mouth and I must Scream, or just about anything by Kafka.
We seem to derive a peculiar pleasure from watching literary characters we care about and identify with, that we understand on some level as being us, as they approach an emotional abyss and proceed to fall off the edge, descending downward in unchecked flight to some or other existential hell.
I’m not sure what it is that fuels these volcanoes in our souls. Perhaps it is some remnant of the terrible and fearsome three year old within us, that unchecked raging infantile id we all embodied before we ever learned to layer over our raw desires with a mask of social agreeability.
Or perhaps it is simply the knowledge, always lurking around the corner, that our own existence is finite — that for all our struggles and sometime successes, death inevitably awaits.
In any case, I am glad when I see these glimpses of naked truth, when a spark of anger flashes unchecked, or some hidden despair surfaces and reveals itself — even for a moment. I am glad that we all must bear witness, from time to time, to the raging and often ugly sight of other souls in all their ungainly struggle.
Because those are the only times when we know for certain that we are not alone.
Those who choose to be an artist, and also wants a “normal” life, have to somehow create an illusion there are TWO lives you live, in order to function in society. Or rather, thanks to this “other” life where you let the “volcano” out, you CAN live a normal life 🙂
That is a very profound point, Mari.
Regarding your experience though, I once went to a funeral of a good friend who died tragically. Her family was from a very old WASP family in Concord, MA. At the service, after a while I noticed I was the only one sobbing! NO ONE was even crying! Back in NYC a mutual friend said, “Ah, you just witnessed the ‘New England Lock Jaw”. So it also maybe cultural?