We Are The Creators of New Expectation

November 25, 2017 by

My “Ropes” performance adjusted for a film scene. Photo still from the short film “Legitimate” by Izzy Lee

Unless you’ve been under a very large dense rock for the past month or so, you’re aware of the current conversation about Harvey Weinstein’s history abusing women, the emergence of #MeToo, and the subsequent steady outing of a long list of popular men in the arts and politics as rapists, abusers, sexual predators, and unthinking opportunists. It’s an amazing time to be (or have had the experience of being) a woman. The bedrock concept that “women and minorities should be believed” is having a moment, and it’s striking how many people are absorbing that thought for the first time as a basic step toward building equality. At this same moment we are learning to let go of our desire to support certain celebrities as we take sexual assault and harassment more seriously than before. We are wading through the meaning behind which actions should get someone fired from their job or investigated, strung up by mobs, or lauded for the sincerity of an apology. Amidst these trials I recently read the article “What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?” by Claire Dederer in The Paris Review. It’s a good article which acknowledges a lot about the corners of current affairs which aren’t being mucked into. While I don’t share her point of view entirely, nor think her assessment of women’s transgressions are as applicable to current events as they could be, I applaud her willingness to stand squarely within a quandary we’re not talking much about and pose the question: what do we do with the things we love when they’ve been sullied.

In reaction to her article and in conversation in general I’ve often heard the sentiment: It’s art. We enjoy it. We also acknowledge that the creators of art leave a lot to be desired as role models.

I don’t think that answer goes far enough. Hearing that makes me pause and wonder if the person relating that perspective is already over the moment we’re having — trying to quickly move past “listen to women and minorities”, and leap all the way over to “we really grew as a society when all that happened”, which I feel is where we get to after we give up on hard conversations and move back into our comfortable old coping mechanisms. We’re in the middle of growing pains right now trying to evolve away from those old coping mechanisms, but without holding out into discomfort and examining our impulses for quite a while they will not change for the long run. I will note here, because I think it’s important to think about, that it is usually a cis male who has uttered this sentiment. In radio interviews, on social media threads, and in articles I hear women and trans people retort, “I hope we keep talking like this. I think we’re far from over, this is just the beginning and I hope we keep having these hard conversations. There is still a lot to uncover and learn”.

There’s a disinfected truth to it: “It’s Art. We enjoy it. We acknowledge that those guys who made it are shitbags…”. I can hear the “but” hanging at the edges of that sentence every time it’s articulated by someone new. “…But I like that movie and don’t want to have to boycott it”, “but that guy was my friend and I don’t want to feel weird getting beers with him”, “but eventually we’ll get to a place I can be comfortable again, right?”

There’s an impatient rush to say “we got better at the thing” and forget about it so we don’t have to examine ourselves or our friends anymore. Isn’t that entirely the point in this whole uprooting to begin with though? We must become comfortable not being comfortable in order to grow and evolve.

What artists wrestle with in the creation of their art is often (always?) intersecting things they wrestle with as human beings. This is especially true of (and often visibly outlined within) artistic careers. I think it must be hard to be great at anything without wrestling — even enjoying the wrestling which comes from — the uneasy factions between your personal instinct and impulses, against a history of professional training and the system of knowledge that’s come before. Assaults and molestations and taking advantages of are about power. Abuse takes in hand opportunity and pushes boundaries in order to one up and push out. Artists and other people of power must daily be opportunistic, manipulative, and transgressive to bring their particular (often unique) point of view to the forefront at work. Yet we know it is entirely possible to make great art without being abusive. How often have we lauded the alcoholic or drug addict as “art genius” in the past, even knowing it’s entirely possible to be sober and great at what you do? Conflation. Storytelling. Romanticism — beware of it.

We’re fascinated by these stories because we feel morally superior to them within the broad strokes, yet we’re also implicated in the details through our consumption and support. Is it a guilty pleasure or form of self flagellation to consume these good arts made by bad men, waving away the implication that we would ever do such things ourselves? We’re still maintaining a certain edge, a bit more raw and verboten, when we say “it’s genius regardless of the person who made it”. What we don’t say (but can be read between the lines of position and behavior) is “and I just keep giving them my money. I just keep giving them my time and attention. I’m not doing research to find the women and minorities and not abusive people who have also created genius things for me to consume”. This is not evolution. This is maintenance of the status quo even after declaring we have moved on and learned society’s current lesson. This is the Patriarchy profiting off of a good mic drop moment because we love a good mic drop, but what happens after the mic is on that floor? We go back to our beers. And pettinesses. And comforting privileged routines. The mic has become highway litter no one feels a personal need to be responsible for. Who picks it back up? The women and minorities. Always.

I believe there is no answer but to struggle. Struggle to invest in the lives of victims rather than perpetrators. Struggle to believe women and minorities and listen to their perspectives on transgressions and their transgressors. We must struggle because through struggle we begin to really know something, and a knowing struggle is what instigates those artistic articulations we believe to be genius in the first place. We (you and I) must remember those who struggle and do not transgress at a predatory level as a result. Nonabusive artists and politicians may not have had the privilege to become lauded heroes of the patriarchy before their fall — yet their existence proves struggle and creation within art/politics/etc. is possible to do with some amount of grace.

Until we can leave behind those who maintain abuse of power during the workings of their genius, and start supporting the geniuses of those who struggle to make without harm, we are only feeding the beast we profess to abhor and starving the healthy ones out. Shitty abusive coping mechanisms don’t change because someone gets slapped on the wrist and then goes back to their regularly scheduled programming. Shitty abusive coping mechanisms change because they are suffocated out when they cease to work anymore. When we empower those who wield power and genius humanely, we create a new standard for getting attention and resources. Only when we leave those with stunted coping mechanisms behind, will those people have to do the work of learning new ways to work and new ways to be.

We must be willing to do our work first. We must find ourselves loving and supporting different people. We must research and find alternatives to what the Patriarchy and white privilege has served up on popular demand for so long. We must demand more from one another. We must get comfortable being uncomfortable, and struggle, and do better. We must always reach for more.

Play On My Friends,
~ Creature

Please support my work on Patreon. For one time donations click here: Support the Artist 
~Thank you.

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The Other Side of Expectation

November 11, 2017 by

I found myself in the middle of a wonderful moment the other night. It was simple enough, I was eating dinner with a couple friends in my bedroom. I was dressed comfortably for the cool weather, and relaxed on my bed as we ate. We were in my bedroom because I have just moved to a new apartment and don’t have any furniture for the living room yet, and our kitchen is too small for a table… One of my friends was collared with a dog collar around their neck and topless, wearing only a rope harness I had tied onto their body earlier. They were eating out of a dog dish with no hands at the foot of my bed and grinning ear to ear while chatting about this and that between mouthfuls… This charming pup/boy had cooked dinner and served my guest and I: a wonderful and tasty vegan dinner paired with wine. They were collared and harnessed because they are my pup/boy, and it was the least I could do in appreciation of their service and care for the evening. (Well, I suppose I also beat them up a bit as well — just enough to get them giggling and smiling and merrily on their way to the kitchen…)

My other guest was stripped completely naked and kneeling properly on a blanket on the floor by my side. Beautiful posture, quiet demeanor, and holding a small tea saucer and chopsticks in his hands. His eyes were big practically unblinking saucers throughout our meal, experiencing the moment he was in wholly, and taking small bites of the food I placed on his dish from my own plate. His attention was studied and careful, eating when I ate, drinking when I drank, and gracefully taking the whole experience in. This guest of mine had just cleaned my bathroom while dinner was being made. Earlier in the evening I had brought him to his first proper sex positive/kinky/queer/feminist sex store… If his eyes were dark saucers of pupil now during this meal, you can imagine how the soft brown of his irises had disappeared in that environment earlier. Under my instruction he had bought a new toy he was curious about trying out. I am holding the gift in my home until he has learned enough about pleasing me to earn his reward…

In the middle of our simple dinner I thought to myself, “Oh this, this is my life — this is my life and I am so very happy and grateful for it”.

Is this blog meant to brag about my situation? No, but I do want to talk about that feeling. I experience this particular shade of gratefulness not infrequently in the midst of nontraditional happenings. It creeps up on me during sex and fetish parties while trussed up in bizarre predicaments, or watching a room full of people vulnerable, raw, and connecting deeply. I get it performing onstage with talented politically adept fellow actors who are telling their stories and raising fists against the ghosts and injuries of their pasts. This feeling washes over me on perfectly temperate days sitting in the sun deep in nature away from other humans, and it comes to me when I’m lost in writing or my art making process. This feeling tastes like contentment infused with excitement, there are hints of sensuous power at the edges of it’s balanced and grounded finish. The feeling is a restful animal, turned on, full, knowing all is right with the world.

How did I find myself here in this beautiful moment surrounded by good food, a happy pup, and turned on houseboy? In short, I got here because I made it happen. The more detailed answer is through years of hard work examining my own issues and trying out different paths towards pleasure. I got here by fighting for my own identity to be acknowledged — first by myself, and then by others around me. I got here by studying sexuality and human behavior, by making mistakes along the way, and acknowledging the depths to which I self-repress. Like most people I sometimes release my needs sideways, which is a problem I’ve consciously kept examining and challenging, and committed to work towards a more and more direct path to pleasure — my own and others’. I’ve zig-zagged through relationships which did not suit me finding a million reasons to better learn “no”, I’ve learned to stand my ground about gender, sexual identity, non-monogamous heart longings, kink-over-sex limitations (my healthy preferences)… I’ve had to accept myself first against deep fears that I will be abandoned or slandered by those who don’t understand my wants and needs in effort to be happy. I’ve battled guilt about advocating for my desires, and I’ve come to the other side stronger and more fully realized after each ending.

Along the way I’ve met more and more friends who understand me layers down deeply. Friends who see me and who value my voice as I celebrate and thrill at the creatures they are too. I’ve met people who have given me permission to be wholly myself, who’ve demanded I say what I mean rather than what I think anyone listening expects to hear. I have learned to better love from these imps and faeries as they’ve allowed me. I’ve started to dare showing up in spaces I was afraid were not mine to inhabit (though I’ve fantasized for decades about being welcomed in them), and I’ve felt my jaw drop in awe at the beauty there which I’ve spent years missing out on, by way of fear, self worth traps, and denial.

This is what it’s like to live outside the comfort of dominant society. There are gifts glittering in the trees and campfires of our queer Elders who reside on the outer edges of normativity. I’ve found new breath in dirty drafty bars smelling of stale tobacco, leather, cheap beer, and human musk. There are concrete rooms draped in cloth and furnished with benches, wooden rigs, and outfitted with toys of every imagined use, which hold onto the sweaty stench of lust while nightly showcasing mad desires and the everyday stunt people who conquer knives, needles, whip lashings, feather ticklers, gruff melting words to the ear, bootprint bruises, chains for hitting or bondage, seduction via a potent mix of jealousy/shame/compersion/voyeurism released during a bull’s intentional thrusts, and in dark corners you can find instances of heartbreaking love coursing through the body of a kneeling silent creature holding onto the well known leg of their Master…

From the years of puberty on we are taught to see some “thing” that we want, and conquer it with a quick fuck, a ring, relational rules tempered by selfishness and leading frequently to lies. I am grateful to be sitting in a room with people who make my heart sing. I am thankful to have scattered across the country playmates of varied genders and relationship styles who are as happy to have me in their bed as they are to simply take tea and catch up, or choreograph an evening of humiliation and pain, or submit to my will, or mold me, putty that I am, between their own fingers for a night… I like this adult life of eyes which sparkle, pupils that dilate wide in awe and anticipation of what comes next in our scene, of building trust through clear and open communication of our fantasies, our desire, boundaries, always ruled within the constitution of presentness, consent, respect, and earned trust.

We are a tradition of animals who have told ourselves “no” enough times to understand what we are capable of, and not starting in until we are ready to jump. We are improv performers gifted at exiting gracefully from our scenes when we are ready for an end. We are bodies full of scars and pleasure points hidden sometimes from even ourselves, scouring each other’s maps for adventurous answers to common problems. We are simple. We are ridiculous. We are educated in the dangers we employ, and oathed to take responsibility for inevitable downfalls, for our mistakes and unforeseen consequences. We find happiness in silly places — and goddamn if that in itself isn’t some kind of satisfyingly sexy win.

If  you didn’t know it, this is a love letter. Thank you to the scores of friends who have guided and helped shape my journey, to the hands pleasuring my way on each new adventurous day, and to the future teachers and students of my body, my heart, and my mind. That I can experience and articulate my joy is in service to every single one of you. May my findings be permission for others to wonder what might be if they seeked out a new kind of happiness, one that looks like a private fantasy but exists somewhere safely and consensually close by, a fantasy shared by other architects and creators of desire.

Play On My Friends,
~ Creature

Please support my work on Patreon. For one time donations click here: Support the Artist 
~Thank you.

Filed Under: Brain on Download Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Telly from Sesame Street

September 22, 2017 by

Telly from Sesame Street, remember? Most people don’t. He was the purple monster (I think I learned in later years — our tv was black and white) who worried all the time. He walked around like a muttering animated fur covered ulcer feeling awful, guilty, and worried about e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. He was constantly being talked down from ledges and explained to that everything was going to be ok.

Telly was my favorite, even though I hated his scenes.

I really felt him. I understood those overpowering huge feelings — unquenchable terribleness concerning anything and everything — in my little two and a half foot tall body. On the inside I was more often than not like Telly as a kid. I don’t think I’ve outgrown him, but the Telly inside me and I are better friends than we used to be.

Inside me there are settings that look very black and white. Yet I don’t believe in such dichotomies. The dimmer switch doesn’t work that well, it jumps around turning the lights on and off jarringly. Life is complex and even though we are constantly trying to hold on to some sort of “truth” to keep the fear of hopelessness and meaninglessness at bay, we are also lunging forward every day with mistakes and experiments. Our animal selves are reaching out to connect with one another in the most meaningful and inappropriate ways, and our brains are making rational decisions irrationally based off a chart of “acceptable ethics” we didn’t each actually internally create.

When I’m emotionally strong and feeling well I celebrate my feral deeds with hedonistic campfires and the barbaric yawp of an animal in heat, victorious in my fuckall war against repression — crystal clear about the effigy burnt up made of shame. When I am low, depressed, shaky, or weak inside, out come the tears and quivers, begging forgiveness for what I have done, thought, or risked, infected with remorse and self loathing at my counter-understanding of the the world, different from what I’ve been taught… Fear bleeds and creeps under my skin and I lie awake terrorized at who I might be: in fact who I am. What I’ve done for the freedom of my soul and the pleasure of my skin, I wring hands over moments later awash in guilt and shame. The concept that I should ever become an anybody terrifies me when I realize I might be crushed under the weight of facing this monster publicly who is me…

Neither of these, of course, represents truth. My mind ravages my body, my body in turn continually finds time to overpower my mind. Each of these moments an ultimatum for my heart, poor beatup civilian in the middle, to take sides. My stomach seethes and rebels, trying to shut the whole system down, while my head chatters incessantly allowing me no repair and no rest, so my heart (Maria or Gordan in this story), searches for the answer to this chaos, the understanding which will bring meaning to each of these feelings, mellowing out to find the line I can live with somewhere in between. Inside there are many wars being raged every day.

Why, even as a young child, did I perseverate so deeply, disquietly questioning the very basic impetus to remain tethered within my own skin? Why such intense and early connection to guilt and shame. I had (have) a ton of it.

When I found out about the concept of reincarnation I was appalled and depressed for days. I worried that there was any truth to it because “WHO THE FUCK WANTS TO DO THIS AGAIN?!?!?!!!!” I was staunchly aware that I didn’t. Life was not weight which should be borne again and again, one time was enough! Maybe even too much. To imagine rediscovering all the pain that emotions bring, again and again, even once, seemed too much for my young mind. Later on in High School I read Camus and learned his theory of the “Theater of the Absurd”: nothing was, nor ever will be again, this window of living is but an absurd moment in chaos. Theater. I was finally pacified, satisfied, and hopeful about my eventual nothingness.

I’ve gotten older though and I want to travel the world outside of storybooks, and I doubt I’ll be able to see as much as I desire. I probably won’t build that house with my own hands. I don’t think I’ll have children. There is a growing list of professions and experiences I’d like to have which I never shall wrap my hands around, a list of mouths I’ll never kiss, stages I’ll never touch, levels of ecstasy I’ll never reach, plateaus of peace I’ll never find…

In this life I’m living I’ve repeatedly made mistakes, gone too far, felt remorse, cut myself off, pushed boundaries I felt were important to push, trusted my instincts, fallen on my face, picked myself back up better skilled, and championed the challenge. I am teasing free this ball of twisty knotted line and it is chaos theory, way way bigger than only me. The older I get the more easily I recognize the cycle of it all too. I can, from further and further distances away, observe my moments of burning high flight before the fall. I recognize myself bottoming out. I know I am not in truthful territory during these highs and lows. But there’s Art there. Struggle is integral to seeing complexity and finding undiscovered degrees of perspective. I connect with ideas that are beyond me, larger than the sum of of my experiences, feelings I could not follow were I not here now in the middle of the up and down agony of… whatever it is I’m flying and crashing about right now.

The up and down agony of reality. Nothing about our lives is ultimately controllable, yet without our struggle to organize, life is not energetically sustainable.

So I come to my theory of perfect tension. The meaning of life is, I think, to find proper tension. Adjusting constantly, tendrils snaking out to each body one is connected to, keeping time with the cyclical humming we are all a part of/immersed in. Now tighter, now loosening up, now hold it firmly and breathe, breathe together, let go slowly, don’t fall if you can help it… We’re balancing in our separate corners with the million lines to one another continually supporting and threatening each other as we go. I am feral. I want to be loved. I am perverse and sexual. I want no shame within my vulnerability. I must trust. There are walls. No one will catch me but me. Autonomy. Interconnectedness. It is a mess to be born of atoms, and a challenging blessed practice to be.

Does it matter that I cheated on my vocab test in second grade? I was a wreck for weeks. I didn’t tell anyone until now. Really. The shame of being a disappointment to my parents. Whispered promises to a god I don’t believe in begging for some peace from this feeling of inner decay. I begged to that anonymous bigger thing in high school too, worried so deeply, hoping I’d start to bleed. I find myself there in adulthood about saying the wrong words to people I love, or afraid I’ll have a heart attack from eating the wrong recreational thing, or when worried I’ll find myself exploited for my mistakes which might look like tresspasses to the people not inside me… Of course I do better on my strong days, a purring lion-faerie riding dandelion seeds on the wind. On those days nothing can harm me, for I believe above all in my reasons for doing what I have done, in my own intentions and decisive jumps. Still, moments, weeks, years, decades later I can locate each rotted gut feeling, tendril upon tendril of tension wracked with guilt and disharmony carried alongside me still, worried I did the wrong thing. It is a messy gaping bag of cancer I haven’t figured out how yet to set free.

This is the struggle of humanity. Born alone, dying alone, with all of these others that we feel around us — so deeply, so tenderly, so savagely, so cuttingly, so movingly (for better and worse) — in between.

I’ve been told more than once that I’m a path cutter, wielding my machete and hacking into wilderness, looking for the more that there is. Covered in scrapes and bruises, falls, twisted ankles, yet also sitting in wonder at the solitude and beauty I find when the moon is just right and the animals and insects around breathe with me.

I make mistakes, I’ll never stop. I try things I’ve been told not to and creep toward being a better more understanding animal. I stand up for my beliefs and hold a tense line when I must in the face of judgemental reproach. And I am weary some days. I am wrong now and again. I get crazy ideas and start racing head down into the unknown future: danger be damned! This is ultimately all I know how to do, and yes, I know it ain’t pretty… But when I stop and listen: “Human child” I hear my heart say, “there is no other way it is possible to be”.

Play On My Friends,
~ Creature

Please support my work on Patreon. For one time donations click here: Support the Artist 
~Thank you.

Filed Under: Brain on Download Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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