Relating to the Erotic

This weekend, I listened to a conversation between Russel Brand and Liz Gilbert. In speaking to the nature of creativity, she spoke to much of my experience of the erotic. I took her words and substituted “creativity” with “the erotic”. This is the result.

“It is something that is coming to you from someplace else and that you are not the commander of, but you are in a relationship with. You are not the hand puppet of it, because you bring your own will, and your own consciousness to it. And then together, you and the mystery make a thing, and you negotiate with each other. You have a will, it has a will…. It’s a conversation that I consider to be the most interesting possible way that you can spend your life. To be in constant erotic response and conversation with a mystery that I do not understand and don’t know the source of and will never know the source of, but I am willing to spend my entire life engaged with it…

I see everyone’s tormented relationships with the erotic… People seemed to be at war with that thing, rather than being in a dance with it. And not only that, the war had been fetishized by culture, so that your badge of honor is how destroyed you are by it… Why do you want to fight with something that doesn’t want to fight with you? Why do you just not want to talk to it? Why do you not want to work with it, dance with it, engage with it, surrender to it sometimes. I feel like it’s really masculine, it’s really modern, it’s really western. It’s this idea that we will have dominion over this thing - that one of us has to die in this battle. I’m not interested in that...

All I can say is “How is that working for you to see it as a war? Are you good there? Do you want to stay in that war? Do you feel you have to stay in that war? Has anyone ever introduced you to a non romantic idea that’s based not in the romance of the blaze, but in the love of being a humble and amused and bemused servant and playmate with this thing. And may I introduce some ideas?”

Thanks Liz 🙏🏼

Listen to the interview here - https://open.spotify.com/episode/6J5e4NgHV76QQm31161A7S?si=ouLR-paESvGl7Ws33LbOcA&fbclid=IwAR2p86H7YxOiHqoMHvAQMcWVqWMdj3yfCEjcgBCxiJIYOkcqxtXEOy8Utu4