 photo by Nobuyoshi Araki, Kinbaku (1989) Experimentation in BDSM The basic element of BDSM sexuality is one of pure experimentalism. Approaching BDSM with open-mindedness is essential to the enjoyment of BDSM. A commonality between BDSM and other types of sexuality is the spectral nature of the experience. Fetish sexuality exists along a spectrum, perhaps even within a field or universe of its own, and at certain times, the only true tenet in BDSM might be the notion that one cannot enjoy what one has not tried. A list of hypothetical aesthetic and sexual analogs could be drawn up:
etc. What I do not wish to imply is that my artistic taste or any of my work in music, painting, collage, drawing, photography, or film is influenced by the notion of depicting sexual acts or is intended to be an expression of the emotions tied to sexual activity. All I mean is that the action of choking a blindfolded lover with a belt while she cums multiple times after an hour’s long lead up that involved high-impact flogging, degradation, humiliation, and tit torture—with a harsh noise wall used to drown out the sounds of her moans and her ability to anticipate the next crack of the whip—is about as far removed as you can get from the banality of boring in and out pumping with a club track playing in the background (those types of sexual encounters typically involve the participants fantasizing about other people anyways). I aim to achieve this level of unorthodoxy and rawness in my work, alongside the rational and calculated. What I am getting at is that the expression of the anomic, the alien, the primal; all those elements of the paradisiacal island of sexual and aesthetic maturity; these are the concepts that I look to express in my music, art, and writing. All by way of experimentation. The promiscuity of forms and content is an exploration that my work is currently focusing itself upon. Building tools from scratch (just as I have built toys from scratch) is also a focus; I currently write patchers in software like MAX and Reaktor for both visual and sound applications. In fetish sexuality, anything can be tried; the gratifying elements are to be retained and the extraneous are to be reserved. Fetish sexuality co-opts so-called lovemaking (which is an outmoded, strictly confined concept in and of itself) as an act that engages one’s creative faculties. The most intense BDSM experiences are abstract, a sudden and sustained shock of distorted meaning and signification that engages distinct antipodal points of our human instincts (the aggressive and the primal; Eros and Thanatos), into a singular experience in time and space. The experiences are intense, experimental and highly memorable bits of pleasure and pain intertwined with one another. To approach the act of creation in this manner, is not for everybody, and that is the appeal of BDSM. Psychical Exploration To get at a really satisfying BDSM experience, one has to explore one’s mind very much in a way that is similar to the methods of the Dadaists and Surrealists. Sexual experiences that have taken place between myself and various partners have been inspired by revelations made in therapy; dreams and nightmares; free writing; films; and the transposition of items not intended for sex into a sexual context (in fact, I pride myself on the ability to be able to walk into a hardware store with $50 and leave with enough material to pleasure a partner for the whole weekend without repeating the same sex act twice). My early sexual experiences were often boring, by rote experiences of light spanking and gentle hair pulling before I engaged in a long-term study of the human mind and human society. At one point, I intended to formally study sexology and commit myself to a formal research of human sexuality—but I opted for a privately, more personally funded research endeavor instead. Exploring my own psyche involved a long process of dismembering my preconceptions about personal identity, a process of ego-dismemberment that involved experiences that were wide-ranging and unconventional. Part of that self-discovery involved experiences with straight women, gay men, lesbian couples, trans-women and trans-men, married couples, and groups I met through swingers’ clubs and gay bars. These experiences included impact play, wax play, religious play, race play, age play, standard roleplay, WAM, watersports, emetophilia, and so forth. A turning point was when I began constructing my own floggers and canes; spanking benches and restraints; and ultimately realized that fetish sexuality is an art in and of itself that involves an understanding of one’s mind, one’s body, and one’s spirit. This is the key to creating true art. Mediation: Scarcity and Saturation In my life, I have had the recurrence of two extremes of BDSM experience: one with no toys and no paraphernalia; and the other with an overabundance of choices of toys and paraphernalia. Anecdotally, a long term partner and myself had engaged in a lot of different types of play and what we learned was the more complex the experience, the less satisfying it was on a primal level. What we eventually noted, was that when we had spontaneous experiences, say in a friend’s house during a party or in a remote corner of the public library, we still had a satisfying experience due to the presence of our natural sexual apparatus (genitalia and hands). I was still spontaneously capable of choking her, spanking her, and penetrating her. Those experiences were often more satisfying to us than experiences involving a spanking bench, a St. Andrew’s Cross, suspensions, a hitachi, a hundred yards of jute rope, a custom soundtrack, custom lighting, and so forth. In a technological world, we often forget that we are animals who really only possess the disease of religion, philosophy, opinion, politics, murder, art, music, racism, classism, and the like. We are Idiots. We are over evolved Apes. Our hyperreality is comprised of an abundance of individual choices between sounds, flavors, images, and other sensate experiences. The self-aware realize this and engage both the beast and the intellect. However, these extremes, the primal and the rational, need mediation. BDSM has taught me the importance of being resourceful when confronted with scarcity but also appreciating saturation and finding a time and place for each extreme. Currently, my work involves a data-saturation of sorts and the utilization of integer sets as generative material for various types of processing and calculation. At other times, my work will involve what might appear as childish scribbling or graffiti markings on paper and canvas. What is important is the mediation between extremes—the primal and the rational—between scarcity and saturation. BDSM can be an incredibly intellectual, but there is also a state of altered consciousness that is entered. Anybody who has lots of experience and has had satisfying experiences is aware of this state. I need not utter the name of this mental state. Those of us who are initiated know the name of it, and the herd needs to learn it for themselves. Lesser humans have used artificial means to arrive here (think LSD, alcohol, ecstasy, crystal meth, etc.), but this can be achieved by several natural means and BDSM is one of them. For those of us who have experienced great fetish sex, we are well aware of that moment when rationality and intellect cease processing the real and the hyperreal and a trance-state is induced. This is why the spirit has to be maintained alongside the body and the intellect. BDSM is ritualistic and requires endurance, strength, suppleness, and everything in between. BDSM is a true yin and yang experience, as I have said, a mediation.
I am including a list of books, films, and music that have influenced my explorations of the fetish lifestyle throughout the years. While this list is not definitive and it is merely subjective, these have all helped me to understand these concepts and I recommend that those who are interested familiarize themselves with these works. Some of them deal with unorthodox sexuality, others are merely unorthodox: Books: The Psychick Bible by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge Liber Null by Peter J. Carroll Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage by Midori The New Topping Book by Janet W. Hardy Female Ejaculation and the G-Spot by Deborah Sundahl Sex, Drugs and Magick by Robert Anton Wilson Modern Sex Magick by Donald Michael Kraig The Ultimate Guide to Cunnilingus by Violet Blue Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov 120 Days of Sodom by Marquis de Sade Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille A Season in Hell by Arthur Rimbaud Illuminations by Arthur Rimbaud Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs Cities of the Red Night by William S. Burroughs The Soft Machine by William S. Burroughs The Job by William S. Burroughs The Death of Bunny Munro by Nick Cave Crash by JG Ballard Music: Music for Bondage Performance by Merzbow Clitoris Projectile Pump Action by Masonna Ejaculation Generator by Masonna Adoration of the Faceless Woman split by Vomir/Paranoid Time Filmworks V: Tears of Ecstasy by John Zorn Ganryu Island by John Zorn and Michihiro Sato The String Quartets by John Zorn STRGTHS by SHXCXCHCXSH The Disintegration Loops by William Basinski My Love is a Bulldozer by Venetian Snares Films: The Piano Teacher (2001) In the Realm of the Senses (1976) Rubber’s Lover (1996) Año Bisiesto (2010) Get My Belt (2013) Crash (1996) Caligula (1979) 9 1/2 Weeks (1986) Lunacy (2005) Pink Flamingos (1972) A Dirty Shame (2004) 964 Pinnochio (1991) Visitor Q (2001) Graphic Sexual Horror (2009) Hakujitsumu (1964)
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There’s always been something of a unique aura about Grant Green’s music, an ability that is somehow mystifying and intangible. Green played the guitar more like a horn player, having copped Charlie Parker and Miles Davis licks in his youth. Being a guitarist, his music was firmly rooted in Detroit blues and his music swings hard. His solos are almost always perfect, notable for extending repeated three note phrases over as many as 6, 8, 12, and even 16 measures at a time, making subtle rhythmic variations with each repetition, generating an obsessive tension that is relieved with either a flurry of notes or a single held tone. His solos have a strong melodic sensibility and he rarely plays fast for the sake of playing fast. Green is one of the rare few who managed style and substance, rather than sacrificing one for the other. Green died in 1979. His distinct work has been sampled by Cypress Hill, A Tribe Called Quest, Digable Planets, Wu-Tang Clan, and Kendrick Lamar. Which is testament to the fact that you don’t manage to meaningfully contribute to history without knowledge, without taste, and without heritage. 
I first met James T-Model Ford in 1997. He had opened for R.L. Burnside. His music had a memorable approach to a number of blues standards I would eventually grow to adore. Ford’s music served as an introduction, as the necessary open-valve to a whole world of blues music. His renditions of “Cut You Loose” and “My Babe” showed an affinity for James Cotton and Little Walter; and his renditions of “Smokestack Lightnin’” and “Catfish Blues” were excellent covers of Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters. For me, his and R.L. Burnside’s music were the blues analog of Frank Zappa to classical modernism—that is to say, a gateway drug, so to speak.
I witnessed T-Model Ford play in 1997, 1998, 1999, and 2000. I was always the youngest person in the club when I attended those shows, always going with the accompaniment of a parent and always drinking Coca-Cola. One of my fondest memories was having the opportunity in 1999, to play guitar alongside T-Model Ford’s drummer, nicknamed Spam, at Santa Fe’s Thirsty Ear Festival, which primarily presented roots music and underground alternative rock. Spam and I played for about 30 minutes as a duo and he used a snare drum in a North Mississippi Hill marching style, which he muted with a handkerchief to match the dynamics of the small saloon we played in. I ran through a number of styles: Robert Johnson style Open-G riffs; John Lee Hooker style vamps; and Muddy Waters-influenced stomping drones in the key of E. Even to this day, this is one of my fondest memories of my adolescence. Later, Spam admitted that “a white boy learnt” him the drums. In the interim between these show experiences, I participated in weekly jam sessions and gigs throughout the bar scene in New Mexico. I was thirsty for playing experiences and I was often the first musician to arrive at 8 PM and the last to leave at 2:30 AM. I would be so wound up, I sometimes couldn’t get to sleep and I would cram in as much studying as I could before attending school the next morning around 7:30 AM. Those early morning study sessions often involved practicing for jazz ensemble; studying voice leading for music theory; and writing research papers on music (Anthony Braxton, Eric Dolphy, Arnold Schoenberg and Karlheinz Stockhausen are four names I remember writing papers on at this time). I remember the feeling of walking around school after a great show—having not had time to wash the cigarette smoke out of my hair—and I would have to listen to the other kids gossip and bicker; meanwhile I was living this double life of student and bar musician and there was always this compartmentalization between being the kid with a guitar that the high school cliques ignored and being the kid with a guitar that the college cliques cheered for the night before. After my third gig, I stopped telling the other children because they usually didn’t believe me, the response was always, “Sure, in your wildest dreams you played at a bar last night and some older girl with a fake ID gave you kiss on the cheek as she was leaving.” I was fourteen when this started and it went on until I was seventeen. I estimate that I had something like 8,000 hours of gigging, rehearsal and practice and jamming experience by the time I reached legal adulthood. Between studying classical, jazz rehearsal, guitar class, and watching movies with my guitar in hand; I was playing about 4 or 5 hours a day, and I’ve done my best to keep this pace up with all my passions throughout life. These were crucial, formative years for me and I still prefer early morning to any other time for work, often rising as early as 3 AM to start weightlifting, write critical essays, compose music, and create visual art; I also typically read for 1 or 2 hours every night before bed. I don’t drink, I don’t take drugs, I don’t pursue unnecessary partnerships, I make time for meditation, and I attempt to sublimate everything into my work. I feel truly blessed at this point. I wish I could tell T-Model Ford how much he and Spam set the forces of my passion for music into motion. James T- Model Ford passed away in 2013. He was about 90 years old.  shit pours from my lips
it fills the candlestick with gas and perfume corpses intertwine like egos and drips of alcohol ignite their perfume can you believe there is no censorship left in the newspaper? possibly the eroticization of relieved bowels will disintegrate your shallow ego your hallow ego your okra, your dildo, your potato skin your whole agenda is divided into white, black pink, blue fiction, fantasy and every shade of disbelief in between you owe us nothing yet, take everything for yourself you have already begun to undress yourself in front of the whole world this is why I could never love you everything and nothing is left for me artificial light battles me lightly attempting to write my own autobiography after all of my slander has passed into idiocy eternally grateful for the hateful anonymity of the blanket of digital stars fifteen awards fifteen directors emptiness knows his name emptiness knows my name attempting to remember where it all began innocence? power? wisdom? only the strong shall survive violence only the violent survive silence the silent will collect money, data, goggles, and heat the mute button writing for one more ride one last chance it is I who will write the story of our decline juices flow every passive aggressive nonsensical bit of censorship sucks up the savory worthlessness of its own ego I forgot you I forgot to indulge you I forgot to follow you instruct you and dominate you you have unwritten our own story our own revolution I can comfortably move forward knowing that our reticence represents an ending a quiet apocalypse the mute orgasm of the smile forget me forgetting you it is over.  The film Hidden Figures depicts a time not mythologically different from our own —or more specifically, the historical context of the film (which takes place in the early 1960s, just before the landmark overturning of segregation in The Civil Rights Act of 1964) was made relevant to contemporary audiences via the utilization of cinematic significations, by way of the interplay of symbolic representations of race and gender. This usage of signification was necessary to create the dramatic effect that audiences have come to anticipate from their collective experience of cinematic mythology, from the storytelling —or in this case— the retelling of a nonfiction, a recognition of the achievements of three scientists who happen to be black and happen to be female.  The production design was aseptically clean and perfectly arranged in its symmetry and purity —identical props were often present in the crash points of key shots, the hallways were always spotless, the movements of extras were seamlessly and sublimely choreographed, even the child’s drawing of her mother was aesthetically pleasing as an object of organic perfection. This was a quality that was essential in drawing attention to the films’ dramatic tensions of inaccuracies in mathematical computation and the inevitable shock value that would be experienced by contemporary white audiences in their viewing of the mythology of systemic racism and sexism (which is mythological to them as it can only be symbolically represented and never experienced as a pure reality). The aseptic whiteness of the production design carried a subtext that whispered into the subconscious of the viewer, “This is not our reality as we know it today. Our Golden Age could have been perfect if it was not for our lack of progress in science, gender equality, and racial equality.” It is almost as if the film itself has appeared at a time when Americans are in dire need of reassurance that these boundaries have been overcome —the film serves as a means of sublimating our collective desire for social justice. Monumental statues —themselves being phallic symbols of white masculine domination over ethnic and gender minorities— were seen throughout the film on campuses, near courthouses, and other significant locations. These monumental statues indeed exist in our present day society from the exact same cinematic vantage point from which the audience views them —that is to say, these statues are presented on screen in their ‘real’ life state, which is that of a perfected phantasm, a monument to the simulated history of America. The three women scientists also partake in bourbon or some other dark liquor at one point in the film, which is in itself a symbol of masculinity and particularly of white privilege (one is reminded of the mention of 'white man's burden' during the bar scene in Kubrick's The Shining). Their dark liquor is kept hidden away in a mason jar, which carries its own symbolic connotation of the clandestine male domination of America, which has arguably been achieved with the aid of the rampant proliferation of pleasures and intoxications. The phallic monuments are significations of the pain of male domination over the black women and the brown liquor serves to mute the effects of that pain much in the same way whiskey will cause a man to lose his ability to achieve a firm erection, an erection that can sexually satisfy a female or harm one.  There is a key point of symbolism in the film when the lead character, Katherine Johnson (played by Taraji Henson), spontaneously attends a meeting with high ranking military and government officials and she is handed a piece of white chalk so she can calculate the re-entry coordinates of John Glenn’s spacecraft. The hand off of the small piece of white chalk was shown with the chalk almost dead center, and the hands of Kevin Costner and Taraji Henson at complementary points of interest on the screen. The image served two specific means, although other meanings could easily be extracted from the image. First of all, Costner’s character did not suffer a xenophobia about handing Henson an item, yet this was not actual skin contact, but a vicarious experience of sensuality for the military personnel, a skin contact by proxy for Costner's character —much as a child imagines her lips touching those of her crush when she drinks from his cup. This is the climax of the emotional tensions experienced between these two characters. There is also a second meaning to be extracted from this gesture, the message was a silent means of granting the permission to Katherine Johnson to humiliate the gathering of powerful white men with a symbol of their inferior sexuality, to beat them at their own game of calculation with a tiny piece of white chalk—this was the moment of the revelation of Katherine Johnson’s powers of computation, her perfect 'blackboard moment', where her own genius as a mathematician was laid out on the chalkboard before the high ranking officials. This was her subjugation of these men —but granted only with the permission of a high ranking, powerful white male. The ultimate message of Hidden Figures, perhaps created unconsciously or as the result of an intellectual backfire by director Theodore Melfi, is that of a subtle piece of propaganda showing white and black audiences that our world could be perfect if it were not for our problems of racism and sexism, which are perhaps the result of a decline in intellectual faculties and reasoning —that is to say that rampant xenophobia and misogyny are the products of the stupidity of white males, although admittedly downplayed as male stubbornness in the film— however, Hidden Figures itself is littered with reminders that white domination is in fact our reality and that throughout American history the imbeciles have always decided exactly when freedoms will be handed to the ethnic and gender minorities for their use as a means of intellectual expression. In other words, the film declares the reality of the theme of white domination throughout American history, and rather than confronting the evils of capitalism directly, the film welcomes blacks and females as conspirators in the evils of capitalism —such as the destruction of the environment, such as class exploitation and the erasure of the third world and the cold war on communism. The audience is hoodwinked into thinking the film is a celebration of the achievements of these three women, when in fact it is an inadvertent celebration of their subjugation at the hands of white men—a message to which the viewer is comfortably, never overtly made aware. 
R.L. and his grandson, Cedric, who was 15 years old when I saw them in concert, just a couple years older than I was at the time.
I was very fortunate to see R.L. Burnside perform when I was 13. I was fairly unfamiliar with his music at the time, but the show changed my ideas about guitar playing. I had heard his collaboration with the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, An Ass Pocket of Whiskey, which was good, but I was unfamiliar with his music, the music of his family, the traditions of the Northern Mississippi style for which he was known —I was completely unprepared for what I was to experience at that show. R.L. performed with his son Cedric on drums and Kenny Brown on slide guitar. The show was legendary. He hit the stage at about 10 P.M. and played without a break until 2 A.M. I have never seen anything of this magnitude since then. 
Kenny Brown, who played slide guitar with R.L. Burnside.
I didn’t know it when I was in the moment, experiencing this music, but Burnside’s guitar was tuned to the same ‘Spanish’/Open G tuning that a number of the Paganini Sonatas I was learning were written in. The big revelation came when I was studying his music and realized that simply from watching him for four hours straight, I had learned exactly where to place my fingers to recreate these sounds of Northern Mississippi blues. As it turned out, Robert Johnson, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Mississippi Fred McDowell, and so many others had also performed in this key. It wasn’t long before I not only set about learning Burnside’s music, but started to learn songs like ‘Boogie Chillen’, ‘If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day’, ‘Rollin’ n’ Tumblin’, and other classics of the genre. Burnside was the gateway to Junior Kimbrough (who was appropriated for white audiences by The Black Keys), T-Model Ford, Lurrie Bell, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Junior Wells, Robert Nighthawk, Hound Dog Taylor, and literally a hundred other musicians. Aesthetically, Burnside’s music was pure —no sociopolitical or spiritual pretensions lyrically- the hypnotic rhythms and his voice had more soul than anything I had heard at the time. I consider myself blessed to have been exposed to this at the age of 13, it may have saved me from MTV and hip-hop. I consider this to have been a key experience during the formative years of my psyche, another formative experience for which I am eternally grateful. R.L. Burnside died when I was 22 years old, when I was in college studying engineering and computer science. |
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