itsallovernow: (Default)
itsallovernow ([personal profile] itsallovernow) wrote2008-03-03 11:21 am

Project Whore

So, it's no secret that my brain is like a magpie on crack, always looking for shiny things to distract it, obsessing about them and then leaving them behind in the nest.

I never abandon my projects, I just put them on hiatus when other stuff (read: distractions) appears.

So, last week, someone sent me this article: Eek, Run for your lives! The snakes are coming.

Despite my healthy fear of snakes, this just killed me!! Visions of hippy pythons trying to hitch-hike to San Fransisco filled my weekend with glee. (It also guarantees I'm never going to Florida.)

But it also lead to an idea I had for a list project (I want to write a story in list form, sets of lists as communication, the way we meme to show ourselves, the way a good list, like those "My character X" lists are so evocative). And I wanted to start with an "irrational" or "unusual" fears list.

When I mentioned this to Sh., she suggested I turn it into performance art, collect the lists of fears and have people interpret them at will- through poetry, dance, visual arts, type, textile, whatever. I love that idea, love it very much, and so, at the very least, I want to start collecting lists of things that people are afraid of (or that give them a visceral shudder) that are maybe out of the ordinary, or things that are unlikely to happen, but still provoke a sense of dread. So help me out folks, tell me what you're afraid of. It can be anything - big, small, silly, terrifying, absurd, impossible, etc.

I'll even start.

I am afraid of:

1. Snakes falling out of the trees onto me (and while this is irrational, it's also not impossible. Snakes live in trees sometimes, just not in Southern California. This is also why I'm never going to the rain forest. Or the Philippines).

2. My teeth breaking against concrete. (Yes it's specific. No, I don't know why concrete. The teeth thing is all encompassing but only concrete makes me sweat in a bad way.)

3. Sharks swimming in through the pool drain.

4. Earwigs eating my brain. (I blame Star Trek)

5. Tapeworms. Or any sort of parasitical worm that one could see through one's skin.

Sh. is afraid of falling into a volcano and of Big Bird. One of the women in my writer's group is afraid of moths.

*
In further news, I'm currently indulging my historical Americana trivia kink and reading a book on baseball, a book on New York oysters, and the Nixon/Kissinger book.

[identity profile] elliejane.livejournal.com 2008-03-04 12:36 am (UTC)(link)
Hmm. This is a relatively traditional fear, but i am practically phobic about wasps. Bees, as well but especially wasps. And hornets. They fly too fast, and they STING YOU! Nothing gets me out of a room faster than a yellow and black striped flying stinging machine.

I once found one in my bathroom of all places, and the only reason I managed to sneak up on it with a plastic spider trap at arms length, trap it and get it out of the house, was because my Dad was away that weekend and couldn't do it for me. I couldn't spend all weekend being looked out of my own bathroom so I had to be BIG and BRAVE. VERY, VERY BRAVE. SERIOUSLY.

This next isn't so much a fear as squirming discomfort. I hate listening to unscripted interviews on the TV and radio. Chat shows especially, but also reality programs and game shows have me wriggling in embarresment on behalf of whoever is speaking. I guess I really, really don't like people to potentially make fools of themselves in public, and in things like that, it could always happen.

Conventions and the like, where the person has to speak at random about anything, are a mixture of squirming and relief when it's done. Pleasure and the like come afterwards when we are all cheering them at the end. (Huh. I wonder if this is "fear of public speaking by proxy" or something??).
Edited 2008-03-04 00:42 (UTC)