The Curse—An Aficionado's Introduction
One of the students is assigned the task of giving an introductory lesson in Curses as penance for a minor infraction. The author listed is "Elmer Sobev" for some reason, but there is no such student.
In my living days I had a long-running art project. Some days it was more of a writing project, some days it bordered on guerrilla performance art, but it was ongoing and private. Or at least the fact that it was a deliberate ongoing project with many, many parts was private.
I called it “Here, Let Me Ruin Something Beautiful For You.” HLMRSB4U. Helmer Sobefy. These were some of the little codes I’d put on things in my journal or social media posts to show that they were linked to the project. Stuff posted around here and there under the pen name Elmer Sobev, or variations on that theme.
The connecting theme was loose and simple and explained in the name. The goal was to attach something—an unpleasant fact, the thought of an unsavory sensory impression, something along those lines—to something that someone loves and watch them immediately pivot to despise it, to be disgusted or grossed out at the thought of it.
It’s an easy game and more than a bit childish. Which makes perfect sense given that it grew out of a grade-school lunchroom game, where if you could put one of your classmates off their feed with a gross-out, you could—if you didn’t gross yourself out at the same time—finish their meal.
I had to move on from food because it was just too easy. All food is gross. What you have to do to something alive to make it into food is gross or cruel or both. Mouths are gross. What happens in mouths is gross. Saliva and tongues and teeth are gross, the uvula is gross, the organic process of swallowing is gross, and everything that happens after that, including an acid/enzyme treatment and a nice warm dark bath of anoxic microbial fermentation and rot, it’s all dynamiting fish in a 37°C barrel.
What happens at the end is even worse. Unless you’re into German performance art from the 1960s and 70s. I have to say I don’t miss it, the whole metabolism thing, even though I have a fairly strong stomach. Well. Had.
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I know several of the lectures you’ve been through by now ought to have addressed the phenomena of names. I was sitting in during the most recent “Your Name Here” lecture to make notes for this one and I remember seeing some of you. For those of you who might have missed it, part of the power of children calling each other names on the playground comes from this kind of curse: attaching a term that invokes a mental image of disgust to the proper noun associated with a target—not just in your own mind and in the mind of your victim, but also in the minds of bystanders. If the poetic rhythm and flow are good, your victim will be “Sydney Shitsucker” well into middle school.
Entire political campaigns have been built on this simple technique. Recently. People who lack the capacity for better strategies will always fall back to what they’ve found to be effective.
Sorry, Sydney.
These count as curses because you are using indirect (i.e., not traditionally violent) methods to cause discomfort or harm. Poetry. Song and dance. Graffiti. In the older forms, you’d pronounce one of the names of one or more of your invisible friends and designate your victim as a target for illnesses or injury or terrible luck of a number of different kinds, including financial, legal, and romantic. Boils and disfigurements and horrific body odor were favorites once upon a time.
As long as your victim might harbor a reasonable suspicion that you could be morally and technically capable of maintaining some sort of favor-trading relationship with unsavory supernatural creatures, they couldn’t take the risk that you were bluffing and would have to stop everything immediately and scare up countermeasures to protect themselves. And if they didn’t know how or didn’t think they had sufficient mojo or assistance from someone with sufficient mojo, you could count on the nocebo effect to take over.
If you haven’t heard of the nocebo effect, you’ve almost certainly heard of the placebo effect. Without trotting out a dictionary of psychological or medical terminology or anything, I’ll just say that the well-documented nocebo effect is the dark reflection of the placebo effect, and you can work it out from there.
People can get really sick and even die from thinking that they’ve been cursed and have no recourse, or from any of a number of other Bad Ideas, really. You can get some idea of what I’m talking about here if you review your notes from the “Poison Control” lecture from a while back. If you haven’t been through that one yet, you should look it up when you get a chance.
But who knows? Maybe you do have an invisible friend who/that—in exchange for a tablespoon of fresh chicken blood or candy or liquor or cigarettes or ganja or a crumb of meth or a used Band-Aid or tampon to suck on, or whatever vices one uses to pay helpful spirits these days—is willing to fuck somebody up because they gave you some disrespect. Hell, I hear there are some who will do it just for permission, but those guys really need to be kept busy or they’ll come back to pester you when they get bored.
Even in that circumstance, you’re associating a name with a name and watching the fallout.
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Does it seem mean? Well, it is. The whole point is malice—to satisfy one’s urge to make the world just a little darker. To select a target and take action to increase their burden. And, to a certain extent, to feel powerful and effective as an agent of change, as one who can make a mark. It’s the same motivations that are behind vandalism. Anything you can mark is part of your territory, and by extending your territory you expand the effective size of yourself. Therefore, anything you damage is a bit of displaced self-harm, because if you’ve expanded yourself by expanding your territory, and what you’ve marred is your territory, then what you’ve marred is yourself.
You could go through the bother of trying to make an improvement instead, but then you might feel responsible for maintaining that improvement against entropy or other malicious forces, and that’s just exhausting. It cuts into other hobbies. Maintenance is so much more work.
Does the ethics of it all bother you? Perhaps you could just intervene at random, knowing that good people will make something good out of what happens to them and everyone else will just struggle along. That way you’re not good or bad yourself, just an agent of chaos, but at least you’re an agent, with agency and everything. Or you can do a little research and apply a little judgment and only add to the burdens of the deserving, possibly only proportionately to whatever you imagine their infractions might be, providing the narrative for yourself that you might be an agent of justice or vengeance.
But please understand that these are all still just outlets for a malicious streak. Justifications don’t counter the malicious drive in any way. They just try—and usually fail—to give it a more acceptable direction and put a fancy bow on it. Or a hat. Or a unit patch. Or a badge. The uniforms and badges warn you about the malice. They don’t cover it up.
If there is a malicious part of you, you can’t just ignore it and pretend it doesn’t exist. That is exactly the same as letting it get up to shit on its own and disavowing responsibility, because it will find an outlet. You’re going to be responsible for what it does either way, so you might as well try to steer it.
How much of a mark do you need to make in order to feel larger and more powerful? What kind of a mark does it need to be? Do any of the usual suite of justifications appeal? Where does the mark need to go? Who or what deserves your attention?
Targets of curses can be any size. People, families, residences, geographical regions, items and objects, and entire abstract concepts can be cursed. Once you’ve decided to cut loose, anything is fair game.
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I tell a lie. Malice isn’t the whole point all the time. There’s always extortion, to burden someone with a curse and get them to pay you or perform a service to get you to mitigate the damage. Or to be strictly mercenary about it, placing curses for money or other favors. But it’s better if you enjoy what you do for a living, isn’t it?
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There are so many types of curses to consider. Earlier I may have mentioned that diseases, disfigurements, and disabilities are all traditional, dating back to when people thought the sources of these things were disrespected ancestral spirits and wandering demons in the wastes. Painful infections both microbial and macro-parasitic can be cultured at home by the sufficiently careful. Seizures, weakness or numbness, tremors, arthritis, migraines, sensory disorders, pretty much the entire suite of autoimmune disorders, weight gain, weight loss, digestive difficulties, incontinence, sexual dysfunctions, fatigue, stroke, and embolism—all of these are exceptionally good choices and come free as side effects to many popular medications. A few of them come from certain species of mushrooms.
Rotten luck is also quite popular and is an easy nocebo win. Long-lasting emotional trauma is also an excellent choice, but this frequently involves an interaction with a human agent.
Personally I’m fond of persistent delusions—just, you know, those terrible ideas that seem so utterly reasonable and poetically correct that they’re nearly impossible to exorcise or dispel. Once you’ve helped somebody see the world in a particular way that makes sense to them, they’ll cherry-pick every scrap of supporting data they can find in the world around them, often unconsciously, to bolster the bad idea. If you have trouble making something up, there are an enormous number of popular conspiracy theories to choose from.
But you can take a short cut by targeting a visible weakness. If your victim has an undeservedly low opinion of an ability or trait, a little criticism (or even backhanded praise) can go a long way. Likewise, if your victim has a bit too much confidence, a little flattery can inflame them to perform a lovely act of public humiliation. Or, if they are confident enough, a long, unceasing stream of them.
For many curses to get a good grip, especially the ones that rely on nocebo amplification, the subjects must know that they are cursed. But also, what’s the point otherwise? Every good vandal has a tag—a signature. The reputation of the source of misery goes a long way to contributing to the efficacy of any curses that have been distributed.
But be sensible. You probably don’t want to sign your real name. Choose a nom de guerre. Build a whole persona for it. Construct it a home in an inaccessible location. Build it a legend. A whole mythos. And let it attract any ire and retribution, hopefully a comfortable distance from your own lair.
Or you can use the name and persona and legend of any of your favorite invisible friends and sign your work with their glyphs or signs or calling cards. Many of them will be glad of the press and attention. And, for many of them, we are their hands in the physical world, after all. Just like Santa and Jesus. They would get nothing done without our sweat.
You know. For those of us who still sweat.
Elmer Sobev is always available to do a little work for you should you need him.
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Anyway, I know I’m just a fellow student. You all are very kind to give me the same attention that you would give one of our honored/terrifying professors. I’m sure that by asking me to give this introductory presentation on one of my specialties they’re just making the point that we all have a lot to learn from each other as well as from them. But now it’s time for me to put on some false bravado and prepare to be roasted concerning the critical points I’ve missed and where I’ve left the waters muddier than they were when I got here.
I look forward to your questions and criticisms.
Fire away.