User blog comment:EtherBot/RABBITS! -- Surreal Horror and the TERROR OF DREAMS/@comment-25941663-20180216142639

I might have to check this out. Sounds a bit too long for my tastes though.

I always found the idea of surrealism fascinating and I always craved for more of that in my life, but apart from Dali (even though some of his later works became weird just as "shock" value) and (I think that's his name) Rene Margrite I found the art not to my tastes. I always wanted to find art that was close to dreams, which I think is something tied to surrealist art, but I never found a consistent artist.

What springs to mind when thinking about dreams is that little weird thing that has no explanation. That little thing, when put under scrutiny, it forms into something that makes sense. That is why that little weirdness in dreams hides in the background or the "atmosphere" of the dream.

As hard as I try, I just cannot think of an instance where, in a dream, I focused on something weird. Whenever I did, that weird became normal. I'm not sure if what I say makes sense, but to me it seems that the "dream-like" weird things in dreams are no so dream-like when you focus on them in your dreams.

That is why I am disappointed in the surreal art body. The put the weird front and center. Anyone can do that. The goal of the surrealist should be to evoke a feeling of weirdness. Make a scene "smell" weird, without looking like one. Melt concepts together without being blatant about it. The feeling should come from the atmosphere of the art, not the images in it. Much like a dream, where you have a strange feeling, but nothing you look at seems to evoke that feeling.

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I also want to touch on surrealism and horror. I have to admit I have been trying to write a story that read like a fever-dream, but I have scrapped each and every one of these stories (I think they are 4-5 I tried my hand at). I found that what I was writing was just weird and confusing. There was nothing like that feeling on the back of your head that whispers "something is off and wrong about this". You never feel trapped, like you often do in a fever-dream, you don't feel like something is just out of reach, you don't feel like there is something that you are missing, but at the same time don't believe it's there.

I will probably come back to this concept, but I am not good enough yet.

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Anyway, this comment is turning into a fever-dream itself, so I'm stopping right here. Nice blog, got my brain juices flowing.