Word: laughters
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Bloom, quite literally the image of Falstaff, caused an eruption of laughter from the audience...
...phrase "great laughter" that captivated Buechner. It now fascinated me. Why, at such a moment, would there be "great laughter"? Relief? Some exuberance released by the act of confession? Ecstatic joy? Can you draw a direct causal line from tears, through confession, to great laughter? Laughter about what, exactly? About something in the content of the confession? Was the laughter involuntary? Isn't all laughter involuntary...
...wondered if that onset of divinity might have some relationship to the physiology of tickling. I'm serious - if that is the word. The (humorless) physiologist describes laughter as spasmodic, rhythmic, vocalized, expiratory and, when due to tickling, involuntary: Those studying the neural pathways of what is called "the tickle-laughter reflex arc" postulate that tickling results from the simultaneous sensation of both touch and pain - a kind of benign assault, wherein Normality of touch (N) and a prospective Violence of pain (V) suddenly occupy the same space. N + V = H (hilarity...
...know. Laughter is one of the mysteries - an out-of-body experience, an exuberant jailbreak of the self: a detonation. In that, laughter resembles sex. Or do I mean sneezing? Anyway, there's an outburst, a blast of something that aspires to ecstasy. But unlike sex, laughter (unless it is bitter, derisive laughter, the weapon of scorn) has a gregarious quality: shared, social. Why not? Comedy originated with phallic pageants in ancient Greece, in which men would caper around wearing immense penises. Lots of laughs...
Buechner did not venture an answer to my question about the meaning of "great laughter." Difficult enough to talk about grace; impossible to explain laughter. We passed on to a discussion of secrets. I thought again of the humorless man I had met, and it struck me his affliction amounted to a form of stupidity. Stupidity, too, is one of the mysteries...