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About the author:
Descended from old English money, Vidicon was raised by spiny echidnas in the mountainous rainforests of the North American Southeast. Lured back to society by time-traveling gray/reptiloid alien hybrids posing as renegade Jesuits, he has managed to maintain his outsider's perspective and an appetite for crunchy insects. Today, Vidicon is a world-class synchronicity surfer and an unlicensed quantum mechanic. He has a fourth-degree black belt in weird.
About his bi-weekly column:
Tales from the Third Lobe are the unfocused meanderings of the World's Smartest Moron. Topics range widely over the sciences, religion, philosophy, technology, modern culture, mysticism, Vidicon's personal history and viewpoints, and whatever pissed him off in the media last week.
View all articles by Laszlo Q. V. St-J. "Vidicon" Xalieri, 2HC Columnist...
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You Make Me Sick
It's days like these, when I can hear the eight-cylinder engine under the hood of my decrepit Caddy straining to accelerate under the weight of all this pollen, that I think of Stendhal Syndrome.
Doesn't everyone?
If you do a search for Stendhal Syndrome on Wikipedia, you'll note that the list of films from Troma has a relevancy of 0.4%. That's your first hint.
Hundreds of people per year actually seek treatment for what happens to them when they are overexposed to the work of master artists: dizziness, palpitations, fainting, mania, catatonia, severe depression, and even outbreaks of violent or destructive behavior. That's Stendhal Syndrome, named after the 19th century French author Marie-Henri Beyle. And that goes to show what pen names will do for you.
Stendhal wrote about the sensory and emotional overload he suffered during a trip to Florence, and then some (Italian) doctor in 1979 chimed in that it deserved an official write-up in the diagnostic manuals—and now we have a new disease which previously was just the way that some people are moved by art and stuff.
The relevancy of pollen? Probably less than that of Troma films, except that whether you suffer symptoms of Stendhal Syndrome seems to be governed by your sensitivity to the art in question. Everyone seems to react to some extent, but some are more allergic than others, so to speak. Some people react to some kinds of art and not to others. Perhaps it's actually closer to the sense of humor. Some things are funny, some are not, and we all react differently. Some jokes are knock-you-down funny to you but leave everyone else in the room standing.... It's all a matter of whether you get it and how much you appreciate what you get.
My wife, when she looks at a painting, sometimes experiences a sort of hallucination of being at the elbow of whoever did the painting, watching them work and empathizing strongly with the artist. She is one of those people who can be affected strongly by viewing art and has been known to suffer from "museum fatigue", which is a subcategory of Stendhal Syndrome in which you merely become overwhelmed and emotionally exhausted. I differentiate for the reason that sufferers of museum fatigue are rarely violent and not likely to seek treatment more extreme than, say, lunch, and maybe a beer or a glass of wine. Her degree of synaesthesia plays a factor, maybe. It takes me a little while longer to get to the "must stop, head full" point, but I get there.
Empathy and imagination seem to be prerequisites for any of the variants of Stendhal Syndrome just like they're necessary for the reactions that many people get when they visit the old ovens at Auschwitz. I imagine there might be quite an overlap between sufferers of Stendhal Syndrome and those who are big on picking up "vibes" and detecting "presences" in the room....
The point I'm getting at is that more things move us, more things knock us down than seeing Italian art and architecture in person. Wherever we find awe, wonder, elegance and such, we find triggers for Stendhal Syndrome or one of its close relatives. Any time we have to balance the acute awareness of what a true master is capable of with what you and I are capable of and find ourselves completely inadequate.... That's when we get overwhelmed. That's when we glimpse the Divine. Or Infernal. That's when we get put in our place.
Now it's a pathology.
Then speaking as an artist, it's my job to make you sick. You understand that, don't you? Speaking as a human being, it's my job to make you sick. How else can we actually make contact? I should make you dizzy and fevered with the histamine reaction. I should take away your breath. I should make your eyes water. I should infect you. Otherwise, I'm not even brushing you in time's hallway as I go past.
It should go the other way, too. I'm not really alive unless I'm sick with the fever of, well, everything too large to fit in my head in one go.
You make me sick. That's an order.
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Vidicon is sicker than you. |
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