Post 30: Mr. Krabs
I wasn’t going to write about this Mr. Krabs, but I think I have to. I wasn’t going to because I feel that I’ve been hyperfocused on it--at a place that overshoots words. But I think I have to because it’s completely filling up my mind’s eye. Especially so since this “I think I have to” thought.
Every so often I’ll hit on something that I have a sort of visual infatuation with. It’s this feeling that I can’t stop looking at the thing, or, I can’t see enough of it. Like, when I look at it, not enough happens. It’s a feeling of wanting to be able to see more, maybe more intensely. Or, rather, a feeling of wishing my eyes took up more space of me, so I could be a more useful seer. If this were the case, more could be gathered up in the process of seeing. Though I do wonder what there would illusionistically be more of. Even further, more implies that there’s already a certain amount of something. A something that I’m being given or that I’m taking or receiving. That has reached me. More of what?
All this is how I feel about the stuffed Mr. Krabs re Exhibit A. This creature was something that belonged to my brother years back (somehow the way that it never had a central existence for him and has so much been lost track of makes me hesitant to say it belongs to him in the present tense). I dimly remember this thing’s existence in the past, and I don’t think I had much feeling about it one way or another. In recent days, it was dug up from our basement, alongside some other ancient relics (to give a taste of these: twin alien figures I won from a street fair in 4th grade, a deeply jolly keychain of Oswald the octopus, a life-size, stuffed boa constrictor, . . .). I find that this Mr. Krabs newly came into my life in a course of action approximate to an event of passing by something I like while walking down the street--a similar unexpected and unanticipated excitement in response to seeing something I didn’t know was there. Moderately unpredictable courses of events like these can be conducive for developing visual connection to things. Visual attention can hold onto the speed of the unfolding of something unexpected in a way that other forms of attention are not quick enough for. The all-at-onceness to seeing something paired with the shock of seeing something new lends strength to the staying power of item's physical form . . . or something like this.
Whatever it is, somehow I’m just bowled over with seeing energy for this Mr. Krabs. This feeling actually makes it hard to not think of him (it just feels more right to say “him”) as a painting. As in, the feeling I have for him is very comparable to the feeling I have in being completely fulfilled by a painting. I’ve really been mixing the categories of “things I like” and “paintings” these days. I wonder what sort of, if any, qualitative difference there is between a painting I like and some other thing I like. What’s happening in these situations? One reason they feel similar is because neither a thing I like nor a painting could properly hold up the statement: “it’s so _______ [word].” I actually feel like they’re both “it’s so!!!!” (this built up feeling) without containing any words that would allow this statement to be finished. Neither are so beautiful, so interesting, so useful, but both have this strong, invisible quality of being so something.
I was actually trying not to write about this Mr. Krabs because I hate to bring something like this out of its 100% well-functioning, visual domain. It’s not that I think words will disrupt this path (this visual pathway from me to Mr. Krabs), but I do think they will have to work around it in a way that could be a compromise. The compromise being a form of writing that is a writing around something. (Likely what all my writing is anyway.) If there’s one satisfying thing about the lack of articulation to the act of seeing, it’s that you don’t need to be mentally designating something in order to carry on with seeing it. There isn’t a seeing equivalent to saying an item's name in order to focus on looking at him. Whereas having to refer to this thing as “Mr. Krabs” in writing in order to be writing about him (well, perhaps this fact is debatable), completely destroys any possible love I could have for him in the domain of language. It kind of kills the vibe? But this same goofiness in the visual domain is what I think is an asset. I mean, his existence is pretty absurd. He’s hilarious! I often think that’s part of why I take great pleasure in seeing things that are a bit dumb or silly (these never feel like the right words)--there’s an exasperation that goes alongside the joy. A “this???!!” Or, “how could you be doing this??” [a thing being what it is].
I suppose there’s a lot having to do with Mr. Krabs’s proportions that make him funny. It’s this mismatched funniness that endears him to me--his eyes become funny by the strange orientation they have to his head (not to mention the vast array of distance relationships the eyes can have to each other), his large claws become funny because of how small his t-shirt-sleeved arms are in comparison (in addition of course to being sewn into place in a hands-on-hips position), and his rounded bottom half is made funny by his mini torso. Looking at him is to look in succession from one extremely sized body part to the next and feel their tingling correlations. I also find funniness and objects to be a funny connection in itself. The pairing creates such a strange mode of funniness--a stilted form of it. So much to humor seems to operate around the creation of an expectation--a movement of this sort--but the lack of motion to this (or a) single object makes the humor here seem almost accidental. The funny object remains in a state of waiting for you to laugh. And this becomes accentuated by the object, Exhibit A, having eyes.
Adding to this, I’m beginning to discover that there’s nothing funnier than something funny next to something not funny at all. I’m not exactly sure why, but I think it’s something to do with how the reverse of this situation couldn’t take place; you couldn’t put something unfunny next to something funny and have the whole situation be unfunny--the funny thing always dominates. Why? What effect does a funny thing have on something that isn’t?
It’s been entertaining as well to refer to “this” Mr. Krabs. Is he a copy? It's dawning on me what strangeness this contributes to the pizzazz of his appearance. This weird existence of being a particular, real manifestation of something not really existing. How do his proportions become funnier by the fact that this physical Mr. Krabs is really an offshoot of the primary, virtual Mr. Krabs? What does it mean that he is somewhat of a foreigner to the 3-d world?
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