But say we want to shake off some of those connotations, so as to be free of them, at least in part. First of all let’s modify our terminology, but just a little, because with some slight modification we can free some words from their connotational baggage. Picture a word as a traveler, a criminal on the lam, a political exile, a refugee, set to make a new life in a new land, and in order to travel expeditiously, to avoid detection and detention, they drop their bags on the platform and leave them there right as they hop on the train. Now this word-person still looks the same, has the same accent; much about them remains the same. They are, however, assuming a new identity although not trying to change their whole personality. It’s a partial disguise.
Let’s go back to the word “supernatural.” It’s not a complicated word. It just has two parts. Let’s take the root to be “nature,” meaning “the creative and regulative physical power which is conceived of as operating in the material world and as the immediate cause of all its phenomena,” from Latin natura: birth, constitution, character, course of things, etc, nat- participle stem of nasci, to be born. The native English word is kind.* “Natural” would of course be the adjectival derivative of the substantive “nature.”
The prefix “super” also is from Latin, an adverb and preposition meaning “above, on the top (of), beyond, besides, in addition, used in compostion with various meanings.”
Suppose the combined meaning of “super-natural” has centuries of connotational baggage it’d like to let go of. Of course the word has meaning and that meaning is useful to communicate certain sets of ideas. So what to do if we want to communicate some but not all of those ideas and also have it sound fresh, free of connotations of superstition, hokem, and charlatanry? Related “super” words like “superhuman” also have value connotations, in this case indicating superiority, i.e. a higher rank, status, or quality, a spatial indication of hierarchical structure. My proposal is simple: replace the prefix “super” with “extra.” “Extranatural” rings well, is immediately understandable, stands apart from YA images of wizards throwing fireballs out of their hands or religious conceptions of afterlife, and yet is able to contain those same images and more.
The prefix “extra” has similar meanings to “super,” albeit without the specific directional and evaluative connotations. It means “situated outside something, lying outside the province or scope of.” “Extranatural” would mean “outside the scope of the material world and all its phenomena.” More or less. It wouldn’t have to imply ghosts or goblins or unexplained powers beyond the scope of human ability, but it could. It can also mean something perhaps less astonishing—that is, avoiding the current one-ups-manship of ever more complex CG-rendered magical and superpowered cinematic set pieces—but no less strange. It’s not a new word, but a word that has had a makeover. A word making a fresh start.
“Extra” could be useful in this way in other contexts. Take a minute and consider what we call “reality.” For now we won’t explore questions of what is real, and whether with our neurological and linguistic limitations we are even capable of conceiving what reality is, but will instead stick with basic definitions of reality in a tangible, i.e. material sense. “Real” is an adjective that means “having an objective existence, actually existing as a thing... in philosophy applied to whatever is regarded as having an existence in fact and not merely in appearance, thought, or language, or as having an absolute and necessary, in contrast to a merely contingent existence.” Let us unsophisticatedly take this to exclude immaterial things as not existing within the bounds of the “real.” By immaterial we could mean incorporeal entities (ghosts, demons, angels, etc.) or places (the Celtic Otherworld, heavens and hells, for example) or concepts, feelings, thoughts, or ideas.
Say as an artist you wish to move beyond the limitations connotated by a term like “avant garde” or “vanguard,” but you still wish to explore. These are words with generations of artistic theoretical baggage and also a martial meaning, as the vanguard means the frontline in a battle. There you are on the frontlines in an 18th century battle, fresh off the farm in Virginia. You were milking cows or bailing hay three weeks ago. Now you face almost certain death. You have no horse, no sword. You are armed with a musket. You will march directly toward your enemy to a jaunty snare drum beat, and many of your comrades will fall. You are cannon fodder. Let’s toss that out. “Avant garde” we will still use in reference to some works of the previous century, but for the sake of our work, we’ll set that aside and let it represent a certain time and place.
Like “extranatural,” the word “extrareal” may have some usefulness, especially as an extension or sequel to the word “surreal,” which features the prefix sur- “beyond.” The surrealists, beginning with Breton, explored dream imagery and the unconscious mind as the ideational fountain for the movement.
I say let’s move past surrealism—let’s go through all the doors opened by surrealism at the same time. “Extra” implies boundaries and limitations, and a willingness to go beyond those. We can take cues not only from surrealism and its psychoanalytic approach to technique e.g. automatism, but also transgressive art and literature and cinema, work which seeks to surpass boundaries of all kinds. Transgressive work often seeks to trespass into forbidden moral territory, in terms of subject matter. The prefix trans- “extending across, through or over.” Transnational, translation, transsexual, transgender. We question and surpass borders.
As extrarealists, we embody a worldview that there is a fundamental commonality in all things in the cosmos owing to the primal unity at the instant before the beginning of timespace, a harmonic state of togetherness that shapes our existence by its absence. All things in the cosmos are animated by desire, which is a longing to return to our primal unified state.
Every extrarealist is a poet, whether s/he versifies or not, because poetry is a recognition of samenesses, especially far-flung and unexpected ones. As poets we recognize the tenuousness of boundaries, the fluid nature of matter and energy, physicality and personality, sex and gender. We see the overlaps in things, and how they are similar, whereas non-poets, non-extrarealists see discrete objects, ideas and concepts.
We move beyond surrealism and transgression, incorporating fundamental tendencies of both, and also add a mixed-means approach, exploring any and all media available to us, no matter our skill or training in said media. We explore the boundaries between forms, we occupy space between and beyond man and woman, we trespass and illegally dig for treasure in the territorial overlap between forms, for instance between film and painting or between music and fiction.
As Extrarealists, we seek limits in order to go beyond them. Sometimes these are the outer limits of a form—“is this even a sculpture?”—sometimes we are looking for the overlap between two or more things—“which is it—a sculpture or a film?”—sometimes we exceed the boundaries of personal identity and work alter-egotistically. We seek things that are beyond or outside the realms or nature (extranatural) and real (extrareal), fueled by the unquenchable burning desire for unity.
* all quoted definitions are from the Oxford English Dictionary