Fear of clowns

Jen Titus - O death
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Fear of clowns is irrational, animal, primal. Clowns are distortions of humanity, they are reminders of something very old, so old it's become unacceptable. Like cannibalism. Like totemic religions. Clowns are the embodiment of man's inability to understand the world around him, of reason's failure to grasp the patterns of the world. That, in itself, is reason enough to fear the painted mask a clown wears, the chaotic clothes, even castrated to their amusing modern incarnations - even though I believe the way a clown looks cannot be dissociated from his origin, from the primordial idea of man posing as god. The presence of a clown is thus primordial blasphemy, and such blasphemy provokes primordial reactions of terror. A clown may laugh in the face of Order and Chaos alike. A clown may mock the embedded concept of gods (beings greater than oneself, controlling and watching and deciding). And, let us not forget, a clown may flash a wicked, insolent grin at death and beyond death. What is fear other than fear of dissolution in all its forms? Fear is a reaction tied inextricably to death. All fear is fear of entropy, of death. If a clown laughs at death, he commits the ultimate blasphemy, because death cannot be communicated with in any way. Man is wired to ignore it, to escape it. When a man pleads with death, he's actually bargaining with life. There is no communication with death.

And so, when a clown laughs at death, he laughs at life and living and all that is alive and structured according to life's ebbs and flows. Clowns become alien to life in that very moment, and their very existence is an insult to reality as we know it.

How's that for a "memento mori"?