NOTES TOWARD A NEW EROTICISM - 2
Sandra: Shouldn't what I am referring to as “The New Eroticism” really be about sexual healing, at its deepest and most transforming level?
I totally support your thoughts here. I'm delighted that you included the James Carse quote from FINITE AND INFINITE GAMES, which I regard as one of the most important books ever written - and, thanks for that link to more information about him.
I have shared elsewhere, but it bears repeating, Poet Robert Frost's statement that: “If there are tears in the eyes of the writer, there will be tears in the eyes of the reader.”
So one of the things we might consider, and think about in our work, is a complementary idea in terms of any erotic writing that we may feel called to do.
We might ask:”Is there sexual healing in this for me? Does writing this story, poem, or whatever put me in touch with some of my own unfinished sexual healing or unresolved issues around sexuality in my life? If I write this, will I feel more complete, whole, and balanced? Does this opportunity to write connect me to the deepest part of who I am as an erotic human being?” This of course is not the current, commercial or even conventional approach to erotica, but I am neither current nor commercial here. I want something better.
As in all things, if we write from a center of personal passion and authenticity in terms of who we are as evolving souls, if we write to connect with that which needs healing in our own lives and then do that healing work, we will create writing that I believe can be of genuine transformational value for others.
A New Eroticism, such as I envision (and invite all of you to consider), will find its purpose, motive and expression ultimately in unconditional love, powered by Divine Love. This New Eroticism will flow outward from a place of loving, forgiving and compassionate connection to ourselves and a transcendent purpose of sharing our own sexual healing with the world.
I have started to post sections of my Eco-Fiction adventure titled MINAMATA: POWERS OF TEN, (one of the books included in 23CN) which is all about starting a planet-wide healing process to support all efforts to clean up the environment, using small actions which can be magnified to “the power of ten,” and the role that artists, as the new shamans, and their art can play in this. In the Introduction, (which in the interests of non-linearity I have not posted yet) I use the alternative title for the work: EROS.
The Introduction opens with this statement, defining my comprehensive vision for this work and the Trilogy of which it is part;
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“WELCOME TO EROS, the first interactive global multi-media survival game! This online game is a personal performance adventure, an exploration of familiar and unfamiliar territory, in which you play the role of the Shaman/Artist. You may use this material in any way you find appropriate for the healing of yourself and your planet.”
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MINAMATA/EROS is part of a Trilogy, titled “Hero's Journey: Life Game: An Exploration into the Nature and Purpose of Divine Love. “ In the front of each of the three books in this Trilogy, I have placed one of the definitions of the word “eros,” which I feel is germane to our discussion here, as it brings forward a little known aspect of the erotic: This partial definition is from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language:
EROS: The sum of all self-preservative, as contrasted with self-destructive, instincts.
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Finally, in creating this material, I discovered something of tremendous interest to me, inasmuch as the trilogy seeks to define territory for personal and planetary healing.
This of course includes sexual, environmental, emotional, physical, and all other kinds of healing that will enable us to escape from the bondage of sin, disease and death which characterize so much of life on our planet today.
I must mention that I approach life, in all its dimensions, as a Heroic Journey. And I believe that a key part of this journey that we are each on is the need to bring our inner masculine and our inner feminine into balanced wholeness: this is where Divine Love comes into the picture as a meta-context.
So, imagine, if you will, my delight when I discovered what is hiding in the word “Heros”:
Here it is, and I have made a graphic out of this as a cover illustration:
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Planetary healing. Civilizational healing. Cultural healing. Personal healing. Sexual healing.
For those of us who aspire to be New Erotic writers of the deepest and most effective kind, I offer the idea that sexual healing is at the very core of our potential as humans. Until we come to grips with our personal issues around sexuality, and then transcend them into wholeness, we will not be of much use to ourselves, to our friends and lovers, to our culture, or to our planet.
Never have the words of the Hopi Elders seemed more relevant than they do for this calling to a New Eroticism:
Onward.
Alex Noble
An Excerpt from 23CN:
“The Book of Eros”
Copyright C 2007 by Alex Noble. All rights reserved in all media.
Art by Alex Noble:
“The Shaman is a Gifted Artist” – Xerox Collage from MINAMATA: POWERS OF TEN
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