Executive Brief: I believe that “hwimsicore” captures an essential aesthetic for me… and it just plain captures me.
After having considered goblincore, I wanted to look around for a more encompassing fit. I landed on the term ‘whimsicore’, only to find that it has already been in use. So I started writing down what I meant by the word, only to coin an ideologism that doesn’t risk the specific confusion of polysemy. Here’s how that happened…
Details…
I want to capture a sense of emergence, as I have been unmasking after having been subjected to DP oppression for almost all of my life. I have already talked about my prosblemania, and about disinhibition more generally in the context of unmasking.
I have to be careful about how strongly I express myself when I slip those bonds, and I tend to rely on a safety valve (more like a HIPPS); that is to say, I often end up couching those expressions in the safety of irreverent humor, so my rebellious behavior tends to be relatively subtle, but no less authentic for all that. This approach also helps to ameliorate the risk of rejection (to which I am dysphorically sensitive).
In that sense, hwimsicore is intentionally playful. Dreamlike. Gentle. Ageless. Mammalian play posture. Albeit with some mischief.. Goblinoid in the sense of being púca-like.⇲ Shapeshifting is a familiar state of being.
This is safer for everybody.
While I love radical visibility, I go for something more like compelling perceptibility. Brightly patterned, soft shirts. Plaid Japanese pants with cotton cords (when I can get them in my size). And when I “clean up” (rarely), I go for a nicely tailored (conventional) suit with a shiny purple paisley tie and purple argyle socks. (If you can get a linen half-lining in the slacks, I highly recommend doing so.) My socks in general are colorful, patterned, and pictured. I’m also working on mad scientist eyebrows. At work I wear all that sort of stuff (except for the suit), plus a lanyard made by my students (well over a decade ago) that has beads of all colors (and multicolored Lego heads).
Sooo many things weigh me down that I am avid in my pursuit of lightness… a floatiness of being. Releasing my songs out into the open is a manifestation of this jettisoning of ballast. Mythbusters demonstrated that lead balloons can be a real thing, ones that really do float. Cement boats also float. That sort of realization of incongruity is an element of hwimsicore, as is surreality and fantasy… and the porting of those fantastic entities into consensus reality.⇲ All of this lightening is another type of disregard for oppressive authority.
And this is the part of the essay where my brain remarked “hwimsicore” (and demanded that I go back and change the spelling). I think that’s what I have been looking for. English ‘wh-‘ words are ‘hw-‘ in origin, and are associated with the pronunciation difference between:
And yep, I know that this difference is being lost… or rather, that it has been being lost for a long time.
Organically, this distinction is hwimsicorical: subtle, playful, divergent, and considerate (of the existing users of ‘whimsicore’).
Cosmo Sheldrake’s songs would be an example of hwimsicore (from my perspective, anyway, to whose work I was introduced by my son Camrin). I love the song “Come Along.”
Finally, all of this appeals to the counter-conservative features of my neurodivergent, ideasthetic, highly sensitive, Empathic Self.
Koster, Henry (dir.). 1950. Harvey. Screenplay by Mary Chase (from her 1944 play). Universal Pictures.
One of the triggers for my unmasking was the hiring of a new HR director who ridiculed my clothing (and my anti-migraine glasses). She has since been swapped out for someone who sometimes does suits, and sometimes colorful shirts and beads.
While this part of hwimsicore is a process of objectification, it is lossless, and is paired with subjectification, where one also collects trinkets (overlapping goblincore) and brings them inside (for integration with one’s Self). This notion is related to the likes of extended mind, embodied cognition, and distributed cognition. The aesthetic is associated with not being binarily polar, but rather appreciating the relationship that holds between insides and outsides, real and {un/ir}real… which is another celebration of liminal spaces, and a type of disregard for conventional boundaries.
[2024-09]