Fear of the Matterhorn

[imomus]

I don't know what's the matter with me, but I'm afraid of the Matterhorn.

Image google the famous Swiss mountain and you'll find page after page of pictures of it -- vast, stark, dead, angular, permanent. I find it terrifying the way I used to find planetaria terrifying as a child; they confirmed beyond all shadow of a doubt that I was tiny and insignificant, and that within a nonsensically short time-frame I'd be dead. Space carried on forever, but I didn't. Only my death was as endless.



But although the Matterhorn, like space, seems vast and impervious to time, the way it's pictured isn't. I'm much more able to accept the warm, yellow, friendly, integrated Matterhorn in the 1950s postcard I have of it, pinned to my cork noticeboard, than any of the blue, cold, digital Google images that come up now. Each age depicts the Matterhorn differently. The internet Matterhorn is different from the postcard Matterhorn. We shouldn't think that just because there are 32 pages of images of the Matterhorn on the web, the "real Matterhorn" is there. Perhaps, like Alin Huma, we should draw attention to the artifice of our portrayals of the mountain.

In the images you find of it on the internet the Matterhorn is mostly aggressive, angular, sharky. It's vast and hard, and yet not too vast or hard for today's "we are so vast and hard" humans. The mountain, as depicted today, looks like something Zaha Hadid would design, something cold, technological and capitalist. Something filled with the fascist imagery of sport, and achievement, and challenge that we so often see around us. Is that cocaine on its slopes? Is it made of steel? Has James Bond skiied down the South face yet?

The mountain, in today's representation, isn't the warm, integrated natural shape seen in my old postcard. It seems to say "fuck you, losers, I'm the proud winner of the mountain race". It's often depicted with a plane flying by, or with adventurers with pick-axes and bad sunglasses "conquering" it, or as a theme park model under construction by humans, or as a Hollywood logo, or with a nightmarishly huge suspension bridge attached to it, or simply like a great bloody fang in the sunset.

The Matterhorn we get we deserve, I suppose. At least it will outlive us and our pathetic angular social Darwinism. Now, did I tell you that I'm also terrified of Mount Fuji? Fuck me, what a spooky mountain! I feel like I'm on Mars every time I see it.

Comments

[mini-snape.livejournal.com]

It is nightmarish, which is why I love it. It looks like it should be on the set of a 20s German expressionist film, or that of the Diamond Dogs tour. Maybe that's where all the crooked angular shapes of that style came from. But the surrealism is just beautiful I think.

[dehumidifier.livejournal.com]

that matterhorn suspension bridge is going to haunt my dreams.

[vanessarios.livejournal.com]

The last two times I've been to Disneyland, little kids have come off The Matterhorn with bloody noses. It's no joke!

[lautreamax.livejournal.com]

All gigantic things are terrifying to me.

The other day I was walking at the old port in Montreal where several huge cargo ships that look a hundred years old are parked. A friend of mine told me they were probably actually younger than we are, but they were all rusty and looked like obsolete, giant monsters from a different time. I found them terribly unsettling to behold.

fuji-san

[road-rage-bunny.livejournal.com]

FUJI is freaky! when you're climbing it after you get past the nice and the green it's 7 hours of volcanic ash on the way up and 6 hours of colcanic ash on the way down with nothing living in sight other then other crazy fuji climbing monkeys. there's an old japanese saying

"A wise man climbs fuji once, a Fool climbs it twice"

Re: fuji-san

[(Anonymous)]

my "expedition"

http://www.artskool.biz/newpics/japan04/travelogue.html

-nicholas d. kent

[beketaten.livejournal.com]

I've been afraid of/fascinated by mountains since I was little. They give me vertigo in in explicable ways.

[nicepimmelkarl.livejournal.com]

u r sweet u know?

jesus christ

[atarashi.livejournal.com]

mount fuji looks like the 'eye' in the Lord of The Rings movie trilogy!

[beverlyhillscop.livejournal.com]

I think this post says a lot more about your own personal perspective than it does about us as people.

When I looked at the Google Image Search results for 'matterhorn' I saw shot after shot of a breathtakingly beautiful natural formation. I didn't find any of it scary, morbid, oppressive, or any of the labels you've foisted upon it in your post.

[bricology.livejournal.com]

"...the Matterhorn, like space, seems vast and impervious to time..."

Of course, in 50 years it will be an barren gray stump, which should look a good deal more sinister.

I know what you mean about the childhood effects of photographs of vast natural objects. To this day, I get vertigo looking at high altitude photos of the ocean, such as those in the National Geographic Magazines I grew up with.

[wildbirdcall.livejournal.com]

when the mountain is returned to its context, it loses some of that. the bucolic swiss countryside undermines its angularity.

...beyond all shadow of a doubt that the pictures belonged to m-m-mat-matmatmat-matterhorn.

[alphacomp.livejournal.com]

Is it made of steel? Don't answer back.

Is that cocaine on its slopes? Shut up don't answer back!

Just tell it I'm dying to meet it.

[rumpelstiltskin.livejournal.com]

Could it have something to do with the very sound of the word? (sounds really scary even for me, and Russian phonetics is... you know...)

[(Anonymous)]

Even just the evocation of "Matter" and "Horn of Plenty" as if the Matterhorn itself were an ancient experiment in the very nature of Matter realizing itself and getting boastful and yeah, snorting some of that ~narcissistic cocaine of being the only "IT" there is and wow, "like shit am I baddass for making and being this monstrosity of Matter"!
You should really consider the self-negating inferences of the following title, 'tis yours now, to share this essay's sentiments in song: "Anti-Matterhorn [of Plenty ;)]". Working from that concept didn't really pan out for me in my turntable dabblings with old "Bavarian" records of alpenhorns, drinking songs, and yodeling put through ~Echo & delay pedals. Although the experience was fulfilling enough with viewing the vertiginous spin of the record reflecting the voluminously vaulting effected music.

[(Anonymous)]

...and if that's your hand in the bulletin board pic holding a carton of orange juice...consider that fruit without its fiber is like drinking soda and in effect to skyrocket your insulin level like that on a daily basis is just asking for diabetes at your age. Just watching out for you, mate. Consider a small bit of tea of lightly steeped laver seaweed for your morning metabolism kick(iodine for the thyroid).

[pixelmist.livejournal.com]

Fact check alert! The Paramount logo is not based on the Matterhorn, but instead on a mountain in Utah. W.W. Hodgkinson (early film distributor and a Paramount founder) based his design on the vista from his childhood home.

But beyond that factual error, good thought-piece.

[(Anonymous)]

Sights like that make us lose our sense of self ... it's another way to embrace n o t h i n g n e s s. Moreso than skyscrapers I think - we created those. Mountains, infinite space, all that crazy crap - we've got no control over, and can only accept its consuming of ourselves. ! Anyway.

Little big matterhorn...

[bloodyaustin.livejournal.com]

(http://photobucket.com/)

Re: Little big matterhorn...

[(Anonymous)]

What's the deal with Chief Strongbow in the second panel?

[(Anonymous)]

from a geological perspective though... the matterhorn is nearing the end of its time as a mountain. its been completely eaten away on all sides by glaciers, giving it that thin and fang-like shape. this angular remnant of the larger mountain it used to be is slowly wearing down and flattening out. give it several millions of years and, well, it won't stand as strong as some of its contemporaries.

[sopkin.livejournal.com]

i suppose what this really comes down to is the difference between a cock in hardcore porn and a lover's cock, lit nicely and stuff. Ditto girl's parts.

Max Hardcore's cock may be said to be sublime.

[alisgray.livejournal.com]

Dear Momus,

Upon finding this (http://www.hel-looks.com/faq.html), I wondered if you had seen it. It's street fashion from Helsinki.

Also, remember that the Matterhorn is more afraid of you than you are of it. I'm afraid I only know the Southern California (http://www.yesterland.com/oldmatterhorn.html) Canadian Matterhorn.

[alisgray.livejournal.com]

("Canadian" does not belong in that sentence.)

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Upon finding this, I wondered if you had seen it. It's street fashion from Helsinki.

No turn unstoned! (http://imomus.livejournal.com/156191.html)

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

[nicepimmelkarl.livejournal.com]

oi whimsy. heart attack dandy tart. there was an amphibian sort of thingie in our mint this morning. my missus asks: "maybe whimsy knows what it is?"
da shamrock 4sum !!! that's what i'm talking about. she luvs ya.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

http://cuppycake.ytmnd.com/

[(Anonymous)]

the inside of the disney matterhorn houses half a basketball court and used to be home to hundreds of feral cats (before the fleas forced disney to get rid of them).

[harveyjames.livejournal.com]

Momus, could you scan in that postcard at a high resolution? I think I would like it as a poster.

[bonsai-human.livejournal.com]

If Fuji frightens you, try this on for size:

Mt. Taranaki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mt_Taranaki_Drainage_System.jpg)

I didn't think perfect circles existed in nature.