TTWDWW: Maybe someday, right after You Think it Can’t get any Worse…and then it Does Anyway….

This Thing We Do with Words, a slight return.

Part Eleven

Maybe someday, right after You Think it Can’t get any Worse…and then it Does Anyway….

It is also darkest before the Storm.

And so we come to ideas, concepts, and thoughts….

So much writing is formulaic, because if you want to get published…if you want a large following of readers, you have to consider that most film producers or publishers have so little imagination.

Every time new ground is allegedly broken in some area, the rush to judgment is to look for the next “Fifty Shades of Grey,” or whatever copy-cat trend is peaking at the time. Enough said.

Charlie Kaufman, Lana and Andy Wachowski, and Tom Tykwer remain some of the most notable exceptions to the rule as regards both screenwriters and directors. To my knowledge, they do not do erotica. That is unfortunate…for Erotica.

Virtually all great modern literature breaks, or at the very least bends whatever literary conventions and common period practices that are in place at that moment. Naked Lunch, Finnegan’s Wake, Howl, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas are all good examples for different reasons, although none of them are erotic, despite the fact that when they were originally published, Naked Lunch, as well as most of Allen Ginsberg’s writings were considered “dirty”, and subject to censorship.

Originality makes its own rules as it goes along while the rest of the world tries to follow or copy it, but only after first suppressing it. We are long since past the time for Erotica to do the same.

We’ve had more than enough suppression of art and culture in general for too long. Politics and Religion are the root cause, but as long as citizens are willing to trade their civil rights and liberties for safety and security, from an ever-increasingly parental and disapproving government, it will only get worse.

It’s hard to believe that it has been over fifty years since the sixties (the generation that took twenty years to act out), which may have been the last time our culture openly embraced the eternally questioning mind.

Fellini stated that he believed that in some ways, censorship helped stimulate creativity by forcing more creative ways to work around the limitations it imposed…perhaps.

Born out of reaction to the regimes of Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, racial prejudice and discrimination in general, Vietnam and decades of sexual and cultural repression, a political and cultural revolt was inevitable.

In this country, it provoked brazen challenges to tremendous social, cultural and political evils and unconscionable repression, fueled by a general state of mind that openly rejected hypocrisy and injustice as the worlds of Art, Film, Literature, Music, Sexual Revolution, as well as Political and Cultural norms exploded in defiance of a world that had gone wrong for too long.

“…I stood around Saint Petersburg

when I saw it was the time for a change….”

(and)

“I watched with glee as your kings and queens

set the barricades

for the gods they made.

…Pleased to meet you…

Hope you guessed my name….”

(Rolling Stones/”Sympathy for the Devil”)

It has been far, far too long, and maybe our time will come again, if we but choose to stand up and howl…not to repeat ourselves, but to re-invent ourselves timelessly, proudly and shamelessly.

Nothing is sexier than a truly authentic person living their life passionately and fearlessly with boundless curiosity, little reservation or caution, and few regrets.

Time to fish, cut bait, or swim.

Namasté

नमस्ते

Chazz Vincent

04/23/2015

 

TTWDWW: Shock the Monkey

This Thing We Do with Words, a slight return.

Part Ten

Shock the Monkey

I can think of two descriptive phrases I have used that were almost too off-putting to have considered using, and yet…the image that came to my mind as I envisioned particular feelings or situations left me compelled to use them.

One is clearly not erotic, and the other one is more of a sensual prelude to develop the erotic aspect of a particular character.

“…that sudden realization came upon him like hungry wolves running down lost children in the snow.” (There is nothing sexy about the phrase of course, but that was not my intention.)

Or (In describing one woman seducing another):

“She found herself transfixed and powerless to resist, like a child being lured into a van by some familiar stranger with candy, or a puppy…”

These may still be too bizarre a juxtaposition of images to be accessable to most readers as erotica, but I firmly believe that it is through the eyes of artists and writers that we learn to expand our visions of the world…it’s a dirty job, but somebody has to do it.

It would be safe to say that both are forbidden images. I am neither a pedophile, nor do I take pleasure in the misfortune of children… EVER…but it is in the very nature of the forbiden word or image that empowers it.

Namasté

नमस्ते

Chazz Vincent

04/23/2015

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TTWDWW: When is Too Much Just Right or Just Too Much?

This Thing We Do with Words, a slight return.

Part Nine

When is Too Much Just Right or Just Too Much?

Then again, I consider my own form of “enhanced and fortified non-fiction” to be predominantly narrative story-telling, much like the verbal tradition of the great American Tall Tale.

As much as I like the challenge of the bon mots, if you were listening rather than reading, you wouldn’t have the luxury of going to the dictionary every page.

Although I consider Tom Robbins to be one of the most brilliant authors of our time, his propensity for excess regarding obfuscation was perhaps best personified in “Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates” when the protagonist, “Switters” used the term phrontifugic (A reference to banishing or relieving anxiety by escaping from one’s thoughts).

As fond as I am of those bon mots, he alone has prompted me to go to the dictionary more than any other author. The Urban Dictionary, which was the only source I could find that used it in context, had to resort to quoting his own sentence in order to use phrontifugic as an example. Wikipedia does not recognize it, nor does Wiktionary.

It is currently the most obscure word I have ever encountered, but his prodigious talent as a novelist inspires me to want to be a better author.

In 2005, (Wild ducks Flying Backward) he stated that given the abysmal state of our national consciousness, if we can’t get our heads out of our own asses, the only hope left was to perfect brewing your own beer and making a good thin-crust pizza.

He described his last book, entitled “B is for Beer” (2009) as either a children’s book for adults or an adult book for children.

I got the distinct impression that “B is for Beer” was his way of flipping off his publisher for one last book. He is now 82 years old. If he were to publish another more challenging book, I don’t know if it would receive the wide-spread readership he once enjoyed. Not so much because of any shortcomings on his part, but rather an increasingly short supply of readers willing to make that much of a commitment.

I did not purchase “B is for Beer”. It took less than twenty minutes to read standing up in Barnes and Noble. Of course, maybe I was the moron for not recognizing its inherent brilliance.

In the near-silence of the bookstore, I was surprised no one heard my heart breaking.

Maybe he was right. Literature (by virtue of participation) is one of the hottest mediums of expression or entertainment there is. Two of the most important things you can bring to this picnic are an appetite, and an imagination.

A few decades ago, Marshall Mcluhan described Television and Film as a cool medium. Now it is colder than a gynecologist’s speculum. They only require an appetite or just boredom, like junk-food. There is no longer any need for imagination. Everything else is already provided, courtesy of digital effects. All you have to do is show up and pay your money. Television and Film are easy and seductive, so it is rapidly displacing Literature and reading as entertainment.

In a world of passive entertainment, reading is becoming as arcane and superfluous as conversation, letters, writers or readers.

Reading and thinking are just too much like work to the masses who “live lives of quiet desperation”.

Namasté

नमस्ते

Chazz Vincent

04/23/2015

 

TTWDWW: Define Your Purpose, Choose Your Audience

This Thing We Do with Words, a slight return.

Part Seven

Define Your Purpose, Choose Your Audience

Let’s face it, most of the great works of our civilization are now almost never read at all, and certainly would never have become famous or commercially successful today, especially given the “idiocracy” of our semi-literate cultural and educational system.

Much like the question “would you rather be right or happy?”, one may well ask “would you rather be famous and rich, or masterful and original?”

I am also reminded that even Literotica in and of itself is not my primary objective.

It is my goal to write creatively, imaginatively and never look away. As a result, I get my strongest support from my fellow travelers in the Kink/Fet community in general and Polyamory in particular.

Although I generally have come to believe that my lack of singularity of purpose as an erotic author has caused some to regard me as too esoteric, while the “serious” aficionados of Post-Modern Literature (or perhaps Post-Post-Modern) may find me too sexually preoccupied.

Sadly, as the practitioners of Post-Modern continue to age, it may all too soon become Post-Mortem. I prefer the label “Post-Neo”.

Most erotica has suffered from its narrow perspective. The fact that its primary intent is to sexually stimulate the reader is not a bad thing, it is just limited.

There is no reason one cannot be intellectually and sexually stimulated at the same time, and in fact for me, it almost has to be that way.

To me, Life is erotic. Mystery is erotic. Challenge and Adventure are erotic. “My advisors” tell me that criminal activity is also erotic, and Danger is most definitely erotic.

While the rest of the entire animal kingdom is dancing to a tune called “Let’s Fuck” Man alone tries to separate brains, hearts and genitalia into convenient categories, (despite whatever Feud may have had to say on the subject) as if they operated independently of each other.

There are few stories worth telling, let alone reading or listening to that do not have an undercurrent of erotica within the actualities of the entire story. As a culture, we are still so conditioned by embarrassment regarding sex that we think that there is no relevance to include it in “serious” works.

The film “Einstein and Eddington” is a perfect example.

Most people would not equate General Relativity, or Quantum Mechanics with the backstory of a man with both a family and a mistress, but then again, I personally find both subjects to be very sexy…but maybe that’s just me.

I was heartened to learn of his polyamorous history. I was already aware of his idiosyncrasies as well as his amazingly off-beat humor, but this just garnered more respect for him in me.

He was fearless in very fearful, judgmental times.

Although the film did not explore the erotic details of Einstein’s life, given the narrative, I believe that there would have been tremendous potential for truly erotic dramatic action.

After all, who knows what a man with enough imagination to come up with the Theory of Relativity might be capable of in the bedroom, or who-knows-where else? If they lived “in my perfect world”, they would have all gotten a house by the sea.

Namasté

नमस्ते

Chazz Vincent

04/23/2015