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
dreamlanddancing 