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"The body is the only form of the soul." -Immanuel Kant "People who cannot tell the difference between [...] masturbatory stimulation and imaginative literature deserve, in fact, the garbage they get." -Erica Jong from her introduction to Nabokov's Lolita. "American Puritanism is more comfortable with sex when it stays in the gutter than when it rises to the level of art." -Erica Jong from her introduction to Nabokov's Lolita.
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In the long millennia since the insatiable hunger for power first perverted the teachings of Christ, we have gained only one thing and that is the word “fuck.” It is 2003, and, yes, we may now say, “fuck” on national television. We have, in fact, fucked ourselves so loudly and so well that we have lost the most precious element of our humanity: true eroticism. We have come to a place of two extremes where eros no longer exists and left in its place are only obscenity in one corner, and Puritanism in the other, neither of which are suitable substitutes for that which is the very essence of the human spirit. By striking down sexuality, I believe we have also eradicated compassion and understanding for fellow human beings. We have locked ourselves down, turning a cynic’s face to the ugliness and pain encompassing our world. We have, in short, lost the ability to give a shit, because without sexuality/sensuality/eros, we lose our vulnerability. We become hard, shellacked and impenetrable. What is more powerful than the heated core of human sexuality? I say that there is nothing else for it is our very drive to pleasure, our ability to find and pursue beauty. It is what allows us to consume and be consumed within the radiant light of each other. It is so much more than the cheap turn-on and obligatory thrill our current society makes it out to be. There is nothing objectionable in human nature, no matter how much and how often we have been taught to think so. Who told us that we were inherently flawed and that original sin would damn our souls to hell? Whoever they were, they lied. Masturbation will not make you blind and embracing the vulnerable but beautiful depths of your erotic identity will neither shame nor confine you. Sexuality is not naturally lewd, violent or ugly and, it is only fear that makes us think of it in such a manner. Sexuality is not about control over others or ourselves, as the BD/SM crowd would have us think. We are not simply a bundle of reactions, sicknesses or phobias. It is fear of our own nature, of the human animal, that sends us screaming into our closets. It requires great courage to stand up in the face of mass delusion and say, “I am... and I am beautiful”, to say that we our more than our urges, more than our genetic makeup, more than what we have allowed circumstances to bring us to in our lives. That spark --the light in our eyes, the human spirit itself-- is the red-hot fire of our sexuality. We must not turn our backs on that which makes us human. We must not conform to those mourning-clad effigies of self-destruction and hatred that lure us with the bittersweet candy of alleged futility. We MUST NOT wield whips of any form or essence in order to flagellate each other and ourselves for our natural desires. Instead, I propose that we live, that we live loudly and well. I want us to turn our faces to the sun and take in the joy that we were, every one of us, meant to experience. The origins of The Divine Animal arise from my own need to rend the fearful mask that the centuries have placed upon Eros and his consorts. I am sick to death of the pathetic caricatures who call themselves bearers of sexuality and the erotic, but who actually glorify the destruction and death of body, mind and soul. I wish to portray the beauty and strength of the human spirit. I wish to resurrect the knowledge that we are all born with: that life is beautiful and the essential foundation of life is to be found within the conduit of our own sexuality. I wish to transcend genre and label. I want to touch you with my fingers, my unclenched hand, so that, as Adrienne Rich says in her poem “Leaflets”, we may experience
We have embarked upon a strange and seemingly futile journey. There may be only a few who will even hear us or worse yet, WANT to hear us. Nonetheless, we feel that this journal holds within it a vision of ourselves that is desperately needed by a great many who have never heard any perspective outside of the current eroto-babble. We must be free ourselves of this slavery and finally rid ourselves of the implication of guilt for being simply and unerringly human. We advocate the expression of life in its highest form, and that is the writhing body of the divine animal. |
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Series 1, No. 1 by Georgia O'Keefe |
It
is the twenty-first century and yet we find ourselves firmly entrenched in the Dark Ages.
Sexuality has once again been relegated to the gutter, the smut sites and
the sex shops. We say nothing is forbidden while we smirk behind our hands
and trod with violence upon everything we claim to have liberated. We have
liberated nothing. We are willing slaves to our own cowardice. To be
liberated would mean that we have accepted ourselves for who and what we
are, which is NOT pseudo-intellectual apes doing our best to overcome our
“urges.” To be liberated would mean that we were truly free, free of
pretense, free of fear, free of fig leaves. We’ve got a long ways to go.