the same shivery frisson
I was reading about a special issue of Scientific American which likened learning about black holes to, "the same shivery frisson as watching a stalking horror-movie creature while knowing we are safe in our cushioned seats."
Some pretty frilly writing for a science magazine, and although I can gather the general meaning from the context, I wondered what the proper definition of "frisson" is.
frisson: a sudden, passing sensation of excitement; a shudder of emotion; thrill
Neat word, nice meaning, I like that sort of thing, so I started thinking it would make a nice name for a magazine. Turns out to possibly be a French cinema magazine, as well as a zine, "dedicated to Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos." I'm thinking neither of them will mind if I appropriate the word and try to get something going.
Sometimes I have this idea about starting my own magazine, because you know, I have ideas about the way things could be (in my opinion, a whole lot better), and nobody else is making the thing that I want to exist. Of course, I also think about trying to incorporate the thing I want to exist into a pre-existing thing, so I'm trying to figure out if the thing I want to exist could be a viable entity on its own. Hmmm.
In researching the word frisson, I discovered that there is a fancy restaurant here in San Francisco also named Frisson. They have decadently described dishes such as, "Frisson tuna tartare with chili-cantaloupe sorbet, meyer lemon & shiso emulsion" and "Maple glazed smoked sea trout with poached white plum, toasted walnuts, & aged balsamico tradizionale." Sounds delicious, but I can't afford to eat somewhere that it's $13 for an appetizer and $26 for an entree. And of course you want a drink, the pomegranate Manhattan sounds amazing - bourbon, pomegranate molasses, cynar, orange bitters, $11). No, I cannot spend $60 on a single meal. Maybe next year.
Luckily, shivery frissons can be had on the cheap. I think I had one a few minutes ago while listening to the chorus of "Here Is No Why" by Smashing Pumpkins. It was not "the same shivery frisson" that I had while reading about black holes (they can tell us about time travel, the nature of gravity, the ultimate amount of information the universe can hold and whether our seemingly 3-D reality is actually an illusion), but it was nice nonetheless.
[If I can figure out how to change the width of this column, I'll put photos in here.]