*And I don't mean to pick on the artboys too much, because you all DO make me tingly in my lady-parts. But still. Feel me on this.*
(Surgeon General Warning: Lindy Loo Hasn't Completely and Coherently Gelled Her Thoughts On Any of These Things Yet, So Prepare for Some Discombobulation)Art Boys can be really f-ing brilliant. They explode up the notion of language, of art. They toy with the idea of "play" in the projects they bump about in. But the strange thing I've noticed is that for many of them, it stops there. They don't move these notions from the world of theory and language into that of everyday living. And it's kind of weirdly fascinating to me that so many of them still cling on to very traditional views of love, sex, desire, relationships, dating, marriage, etc. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, bumping around half-formed ideas in my head. And what better place to share them than here, on my blog, where I can get publically chastised for a) overthinking everything, b) having way too nontraditional views of things, and c) making fun of Robin Swoboda? WOOT WOOT! So here you go: my musings, in all their glory (and with apologies to those who have written on these topics already and with much more verve, but whom I have yet to bump into in my nerdly readings). Please, feel free to shred. I'm still trying to make sense of these ideas in my own head, so the critical eye of outsiders is always much appreciated. Just realize: if you start yelling at me as though I'm a 'tard I will punch you in the nuts. It's called THOUGHTFUL CRITICISM please.
FALLACIES?TRUTHS?(Was gonna categorize these thoughts under each heading, but then I realized they all sort of fit both.)
Desire is magnificent. It is a fully active, creative, explosive event. The idea of it as a creative force is important. It
is a creative process: in desiring we are forced to read other people, to fashion our interactions accordingly, to engage in them, to create and fantasize inside our brains, to play. (I am speaking here of sexual desire, but also wanting to have a person in every way shape and form as well.) Desire feasts on the notion of play, one such way being through the activity of flirtation. It builds. It grows. All depending on what we choose to do with it. But then, in the act of finally satisfying it, it is killed in some small sort of way. Each time you satisfy that desire with a person, it's a nail in its coffin, until the coffin is firmly nailed shut. Not to say that desire can't be reignited now and again. But once you KNOW the person, once you've satisfied the desire again and again, once you've figured out how to read them, examined and understand the play involved, have read the text one too many times, then the creative spark begins to die. (Case in point: old married couples. The boredom of knowing someone so well as to be able to complete their thoughts, for example. Desire: dead?)
It's not to say that the sex act isn't a creative force (though I haven't quite decided whether it actually is or not for certain). But this death is why I am often hesitant to involve myself relationship-wise with anyone that I *SHARE* an extremely intense desire with. Which sounds counterintuitive or self-punishing or something. But when the desire does
not meet fruition, it at least continues to exist as a driving, creative force between the two people. Once it IS "achieved," it begins the slow decline. Desire is what drives us towards a person. Once it is quenched, what is there driving us forwards towards them anymore? So why would I want to kill off the creative energies between myself and another just for the fuck? (Not to say I don't DESIRE the fuck, but sometimes it's bigger than that.)
Boys don't understand this always, but sometimes the fiercer the desire, the more amazing the energy, the more I'd rather NOT be with them in any sort of sex or relationship-type way. (I mean, I still want in their pants. But the tease of it is often more exciting to me than the having. The build of energy is more exciting to me than the snuffing of it.) Perhaps I am a cynic (and I know I will get yelled at for saying this and told, it's not true! it's not true!), but the "relationship" tends to stifle the desire, the creative force, the active energy that drew us to it in the first place. So why be complicit in its suicide? As we all know, the desiring, the wanting, the flirtation, the play, are the most exciting things about loves--otherwise why would almost all the good love stories be about everything up to the achievement/having? Most love stories, from shit as bad as
Serendipity to brilliant films like
Amelie, are all about the chase, all about the play, all about the desire--all about all the moments leading up to the having. Same with love songs--they are either about the desire or the sadness at no longer having. No songs are actually ABOUT the having--because that's (sorry to say) the boring part. The desire and the wanting are the juicy, amazing moments. The having, the fruition of desire, may be the pinnacle of those moments, the ultimate achievement, the attaining of one's goal, but it is also the death.
Which leads me to the notion of wanting and having.
I would argue that wanting and having are in complete opposition to one another. If you don't have something, then you can want it. If you have it, then there is no longer a need for the wanting. The wanting is an active force. The having is a passive force. Admittedly, not everyone is seeking out the constant creative turmoil of wanting. Those are the folks who more readily settle into the having. But even with these folks, the active is still attractive. That is why, once we've settled into the having, we often start looking for more of the wanting (affairs, for example). It's what invigorates. It forces us to move from the passive into the active. And I think that even the laziest of us would rather be doing something than nothing. That is the life force driving us all to not kill ourselves.
Where does the notion of fucking fall into all this? I don't quite know. Perhaps the bridge between the wanting and the having? I need to think on this more.
But on to the notion of "fucking and relationships." What is the one thing we use to define ourselves in a "relationship" with another person: the fucking. No, you say. It's more than that. Bullshit, I say. What is transgression within a relationship? Fucking someone outside of the relationship. Not "sharing the intellectual stimulation of conversation with someone else," not "loving someone else" (we do that all the time--friends, family, other loves), not "engaging in an emotional connection with someone else." Fucking.
We may take issue with all the aforementioned activities, but only when we're paranoid that they're a springboard to the fucking. If we were doing any of these things with someone we didn't desire, a "platonic" friend for example, no lover would take issue with them. "You just had an intellectually stimulating conversation with your best friend and it left your cheeks all flushed and your heart pumping with excitement? Well, that's ok, 'cause she's just your best friend." But as vehicles towards fucking, THAT'S when people start getting up in arms. "You just had an intellecutally stimulating conversation with that very attractive boy that makes your insides flip-flop and it left your cheeks all flushed and your heart pumping with excitement? NOT ALLOWED!" Fucking is what bounds the relationship, whether we want to admit it or not. And who gives a shit: fucking is fucking. If we can get beyond that fact, then really, what differentiates our relationships with one another? Nada. Then again, if we get beyond the fucking, toss it to the wayside, then things become fluid and indefinable and that FREAKS PEOPLE THE FUCK OUT.
I can't wrap my head around those who don't get this on SOME sort of level. All the things that drive us in our connections with another person are always there, regardless of whether we're fucking them or not. Say I have an intense desire for both Person A and Person B. They both fill me up with fiery energies, make my mind go a 100 miles a minute, stimulate me intellectually, get my juices flowing. Now, society says you should not fuck both in the same window of time: you pick one and you fuck just that one. Fucking two is transgression and taboo. It happens. But we tend to shake our heads at it. And even if it's us DOING it, we find ourselves uncomfortable on some level. It doesn't fit into the neat little picture. So, let's say I choose to exist within the idea of societal norms. I take one as a lover. Let's say Person A. Does anything change in relation to Person B, other than that they're not getting fucked just like they weren't getting fucked before? No. So why the wounded ego just because you're not getting fucked? If I still want to spend ridiculous amounts of time in your company, if I still lavish in your every word, if I still get saucy and flirtatious with you, if we still share EVERY SINGLE CONNECTION THAT WE HAD BEFORE, then why get all pouty over not fucking? Are we really that fuck-driven?
I mean, it's slightly insulting, truth of the matter, to have someone stop talking to you just because you're in a relationship (aka. fucking) someone other than them. Because really, was that all you were to them--potential fuck? Hopefully not. And if not, then who cares, because everything else is still there, just not the fucking. Hopefully what compelled you towards one another was something larger. And the something larger is what can't be possessed anyways. Fucking: ownable. Desire/love/energies/the-intellectual-fuck: unownable.
PLUS, for some strange reason Person B is failing to see what's so very fantastic about this situation: the desire I rambled about in the beginning of this confusing diatribe is not nipped in the bud. The desire burns and burns and burns. And it's not put out by the fucking. So if you're someone who relishes in all the wanting, all the desiring, all the creative forces of wanting to sink your teeth in a person (in every which way--intellectually, emotionally, fuckily), then WHAT THE FUCK?!?! Not fucking them and not being in a relationship with them actually means you get to hang onto all that fierce, fantastic shit longer than you would if the fuck had taken place. So unless your goal in every single relation with a person is sheerly the animal fuck, why can we not let it be what it is? You can have the exact same fierce energy with Person B, you can flirt, you can still offer each other EVERYTHING (but the fucking).
This is why I hate the way relationships constrict. When you get in a relationship, you don't stop loving/cherishing/being stimulated by all your friends in the same way as you were before, do you? No. Because the fucking is just the fucking. So why does it need to affect other fiery interests or the chemistry of relationships with others around us? It DOESN'T. I mean, if you start fucking Person A, is your relationship with your mom distorted or affected in any sort of way? No. So why is it any different with someone you share an intense connection with? In fact, it could hypothetically feed the passions and creativity more than the fucking could. Some of the most intense relationships/friendships/loves I've had were at least partially fueled by a desire that was never quenched with fucking. Just because I call my relationship with one person a "relationship" and my relationship with another a "friendship" doesn't change the fierceness of any feelings involved. It's all fucking arbitrary wordage. And wordage fails miserably. So what causes Person B to become disgruntled at the not-fucking when they were ok with it as long as there was the
potential for fucking? I don't quite know to be honest. Perhaps it's some shitty desire to possess and own? Maybe THAT'S what it comes down to? To horde and not want to share? Kind of like kindergarteners and their pretty-colored crayons?
And I don't mean to pick on the artboys (but they seem to GET things in a different sort of way, which is why I'd expect more from them maybe?), but it amuses me is that these artboys who DO want to tear everything up, explode things, play with the notion of play itself, that these very artboys STILL CLING TO THE SAME OL' STALE CONSTRICTING DEFINITIONS OF HOW WE LOVE LUST DESIRE FUCK RELATE. What the fuck is the deal with that?? How can you explode the fuck out of language, out of an art form, out of thought, and yet still retreat back to the same ol' dusty views of relationships?
I've talked about this before as well, but I tend to think the notions of how we define love to be bunk: the categories of love fail us as soon as they're placed on any love. Friendship-love. Familial love. Sexual love. Romantic love. Love is a different equation with EVERY SINGLE PERSON you meet. And each time you put something in a category, it immediately tries to resist it. Proof positive: the frequency in which people who've been married say that DESPITE THE FACT THAT NOTHING HAS CHANGED IN THEIR RELATIONSHIP UPON MARRYING, just
defining it (
naming it) as marriage changes it. Because as soon as you put that label on it, it struggles to start resisting it, to poke holes in what it is supposed to be, to not be stifled by it.
I'm beginning to understand less and less the need to define things. Girlfriend. Boyfriend. Lover. Dating. Feelings shared, love between people, desire WILL EXIST regardless of whether you choose to define or name it it. I can call a cat "Cat," but does that make it any more "cat-like" than it was before I chose a name for it? No. Love and desire exist in ways that cannot be bound or owned by stupid silly words. And they are not given any MORE force by the words. Oftentimes it's actually quite the opposite. (Here is where I wish I had a bit more language theory under my belt, but ah well.)
No matter how you name something, it is what it is. I can say "lover" and I can say "friend" just because I'm fucking one and not the other. But the explosive whirlwind of feelings for both is not affected by the labels. UNLESS "lover" or "friend" clings to them and gives them weight and validation. And that's what I'm saying: I don't get the artboy need to do this. Why resist language and placing things into boxes in every other realm BUT relationships?
I'm actually NOT promoting open-relationships in all this (to each their own on that, really)--I'm moreso just saying, be fucking aware of the system you're working in. Especially if you pay so much attention to it in other realms. More and more I find myself wondering what the fuck is the point of the Traditional System of Relationships (as defined by marriage or girlfriend-boyfriend relations) and/or whether it really exists anyways.
I know I know I know: I overanalyze. How often do I hear this in every motherf-ing circumstance I start ruminating on?? Fuck you'all. That's what I have to say about that. You wouldn't come here to read it if you didn't find it interesting on some level. And the thing is, I'm not so much analyzing THIS specific relationship. I am examining
myself. How can you latch on to people, engage them in relationships, if you don't at least try tackling the understanding of where you stand in relation to relationships first? And the thing is: I *AM* going with the flow in the way of love and sex and letting it take me where it chooses to go. I'm NOT letting all these thoughts stifle me. But does that mean I can't THINK about them, for chrissake?!?!
(All that being said, it truly
is amazing that anyone would EVER want to be with me in the first place. Ha ha ha. And yet: somehow this keeps taking place. *Amazement*)
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