"We are all esotericists and fetishists"
Things Magazine complains: “we are all esotericists and fetishists… There is no arcana any more, at least not online. Attending unusual trade shows will become a new leisure activity, as perverse fascinations and hobbies spill out of the world wide web in search of a physical manifestation.” I’ve got to admit, I’m a sucker for esoterica. The intricate, the mysterious, the little-known, the weird, the stuff that you’ve got to ask who the hell cares about, the niche, the mechanics of stuff that you never considered there was a mechanics of. Or, like China Miéville says it (and I agree):
What I love is passion. One of my fascinations is trade magazines. I love picking up specialists’ magazines about subjects I know nothing about. For instance, you pick up a magazine that is the house journal of tropical-fish keepers or model-train builders. I have no interest in model trains; I have no interest in tropical fish, but I love reading the magazines, because you get this insight into this world of debate and passion and argument, and then you get two competing magazines with different platforms who are dissing each other because this is a world where the people involved in it are absolutely in love with what they do.
Any explanation of what fascinates oneself is an exercise in post hoc rationalization, insofar as we never consciously choose to be interested in anything — it just sort of springs from who we are and what we were before. So I can’t really say if I like arcana because it’s stuff people do ‘cuz they love it. That sounds a bit cheesy. It sounds like something someone would say because it’s the most romantic rationalization they could come up with. But maybe it’s true.
Aside: the antonym of “esoteric” is apparently “exoteric”. From now on, I’m not going to call the mainstream mainstream, I’m gonna call it exoteric. How’s that for esoterism?
