Letter from the Editor, Vol. 6
Updated: Oct 24, 2022
BY PENELOPE DARIO
This season we explore healing powers of eroticism and the art of pleasure with clients, providers, and performers alike. You will find parallels between the adult entertainment industry and houses of worship, the subversion of our ideas of power, and the dismantling of structures that have long divided us from the divinity within.
La petite mort is a doorway.
Only a fraction of the sex we have as humans is with the intention of procreation, yet sex in it’s essence is inextricable from the creative force within all of us. Whether conception is the motive or not, for a brief moment during orgasm you are connected to the source. Anything that ever was and anything that will ever be distilled into several seconds of euphoric abandon.
Disappearing into the void then slowly emerging back into the matrix of reality.
We can look at the process of creating art like deconstructing the sexual climax. Entering into a trance-like state, becoming completely unaware of ourselves—a conduit for divine inspiration, savoring the relationship that develops with the medium who becomes your most intimate lover. Finding ecstasy in the push and pull between your body and the material. You let yourself get lost in this dance until you reach a point where you must stop before going too far.
Never betray this romance in search of perfection.
Material art, like procreation, provides us with a tangible substance where we can see ourselves as separate from our offspring. Perhaps a satellite to our ego in some cases, but separate nonetheless. Conversely, performance art, like the act of sex, is completely ephemeral. Once the show is over all that is left is a memory, and time has a way of twisting and turning it whenever we try to reach back and hold it.
Adult erotic entertainment is not only the oldest profession, but arguably the oldest form of performance art. Evolving and diversifying over the ages, ballooning into the demimond we know today as a myriad of performers and creators honing their craft. Artists and teachers who explore the limits of our bodies and minds to provide safe spaces for connection and transgression.
If Jung is right in his belief that the sexual drive is in its essence a desire to access “the world of the gods”, and that women’s sexuality is spiritual while a man’s is terrestrial, then sex workers must therefore be the priestesses of these divine rights.
An orgasm, a little death,
granting you a glimpse into heaven.
The whore, completely lucid,
a conduit for pleasure.
The executress of desire.
The client offers his pentacles for a chance to peer through her soft guillotine.
PHOTO BY SYDNEY TATE