“I will re-characteri[z]e the primary emotional operation of [folk horror] as something more like a pleasurable Pan-ic. By which I mean that overwhelming feeling of eeriness or portentiousness, without any visible cause, but nevertheless a primal one, similar to Søren Kierkegaard’s descriptions of ‘dread.’ Such Pan-ics are markers not of fear but of potential, felt prior to opportunities for action.” - Phil Smith, “Albion’s Eco-Eerie.” https://temporalboundary.bigcartel.com/product/albion-s-eco-eerie-by-phil-smith #affect
I want to apply this insight more broadly, beyond #folkhorror or for that matter any #horror at all, save the everyday one we all confront and shoulder: not all of them, surely, but perhaps some of those moments of dread and dis-ease are precisely a premonition of some rapidly-approaching juncture at which we have to choose between one becoming and another?
