The Uncanny
“The uncanny is located in the uncomfortable regression to a time when the ego was not yet sharply differentiated from the external world and from other persons . . . When something happens to us in the ‘real’ world that seems to support our old, discarded psychic world, we get a feeling of the uncanny. The uncanny is an anxiety for that which recurs, and is symptomatic of a psychology based on the compulsion to repeat.” —Mike Kelley
Based on this definition of the uncanny by Mike Kelley pulled from his essay, Playing with Dead Things (1993-04) this idea of déjà vu comes to mind. It’s such a funny term we take from the French, because the French don’t usually say it like that, I’ve more often heard, J'ai l'impression d'avoir déjà vécu ce moment, which means I have the impression I already lived this moment, not already seen, and often you’d hear it said like j’ai comme une impression de déjà vu, if they were to use that phrase. Déjà vu, is also used in French to refer to the banal or art that has already been done, in a sense like cliché, we’ve already seen that.
Just this passed year I released a book on my website titled, Alps On Repeat. It is a collection of interrelated short stories that all hover around this alpine village that the character keeps coming back to at the end of most every chapter. And for a while, during my time in France, this was my pattern as well, I’d live a chapter somewhere else, then something would compel me to go back to the alps and live in that community again. I developed such a fondness for a time, vibe, place that whenever too much time passed without seeing it, I become overly melancholic, and nothing seemed to live up to the great experiences I lived there. The book explores this repetition and at the same time shows that each time the character comes back, the place feels different in both small and large ways. The uncanny to me is both a familiar thing and yet something that is slightly off, or something that will never be quite as we imagined it to be. Sometimes I would go back to the alps and things would be better than I expected, which is always a nice surprise, though sometimes I felt that I didn’t belong or that I made a mistake in my ‘real’ life and shouldn’t have returned, because in a sense, it always felt like my life wasn’t advancing in any direction, it was four steps forward and five back.
To expand on Mike Kelley’s quote, I’d say in that experience though, the feeling wasn’t always an anxiety based on rumination, but rather once I knew that new and fun memories and adventures were possible and even waiting for me in a familiar setting which allowed for me to feel myself and calm, I couldn’t resist going there.
