It's been a very long time since I updated. This is because I vowed to write only if it made me feel vulnerable. In the case that my writing does not leave me feeling exposed, it is not reflective of a deeper truth. Is it still art? "Porn is not art." I both agree and disagree with that statement.
There was an exhibit a year ago called Porn is not Art. I had made plans to go there with two different men at the same time. One was Efram. The other was a man who modelled for my college life drawing class. He was exceedingly clever, very book smart. And hella sexy. There was only ever the one date, because I chose to bring Efram and his sister to the Art exhibit. But on that one date, I asked why he liked modelling. He enjoyed meeting artists, he was touch vain (as all good models are), and it paid well. At one point he returns from the washroom and walks up behind me. I'm sitting on a high stool at a table gazing over the railing. He says "Look at you. You could model."
I mentioned his suggestion to an older woman who was modelling for my art class. When I asked her how she felt about being naked in front of young people, she told me this: "I'm far more likely to be embarrassed about the clothes I wear to class then my body. Because I picked my clothes. No one can judge my body like it was my decision."
After hearing that I was far more prepared to be nude in public. Sexapalooza was the first place I took off my shirt that wasn't my friends yard or beach. After that I wrote to a body paint artist on FetLife.com (An online fetish social network). I did a bit of modelling for him. Which meant getting painted and drunk and fraternizing with people in leather. I took a stance on nudity. My boobs became a proclamation of freedom, and of acceptance for what we really are. Last summer I rode a parade float through downtown Ottawa with nothing but a thong and paint. Parents didn't cover their children's eyes. No one ran away screaming. Nudity in public is okay if you're blue and firing a water gun.
The human form should always be okay.
When moving to Belleville, I tried to track down the artists. It felt like hunting narwhales. Where are they? Did they leave? Are there any like me? At the same time I was looking for a job. This led me to a retired arts instructor who needed a model for his private studio. The first time we drove out to the countryside, I worried that it would get pervy. To this day I have never gotten a weird vibe off him.
When we talk about his artwork it always comes back to the beauty of the form. Simple aesthetics. He almost never draws my face. But he never draws my body for anything more then it is or anything less. He wants me to convey my vulnerability. Often, I will try to conceal my embarrassment with bravado. I confessed to him how good I feel after a session, how I'm learning to trust myself to move and pose and portray emotion through limbs. How I'm learning to trust him and the students to patiently allow me to strike awkward poses now and then.
It is the vulnerability that makes art modelling a truthful and beautiful act. At the end of the two or three hours I'm left feeling really good about myself. In fetish modelling you feel good about being sexy, because that can be empowering. But in life modelling I feel good about being human, having hips like a waterfall running over stones, or about having an arm that hyperextends when I lean on it.
In these long stretches of silence, I sometimes have to detach myself from the pain. I gaze out the window at the expanse of sunlit nature and let thoughts drift by. Recently I thought about past lovers, short term and long. Quizzical memories stay with you;
One girl and I would kiss, and for no sensible reason there'd always be a red light nearby shinning on her face. Maybe at a club, or the red traffic light beaming into the backseat of a taxi.
Or the stunning clear blue eyes owl wide from a pale face enshrouded with long black hair. Looking up at me as I leaned over her, and told her I thought she was beautiful. The truth amazed her. This was a girl who had been told she could never be beautiful by her sexual partners.
The soft voice and caring touch of a woman while she french braids my hair.
Walking through the snow for hours on end, in the dark of night, in the suburbs. If the snowflakes hadn't been falling I'd have thought the whole world was paused just to hear the punchline of our ridiculous jokes.
The tickle of grass on my legs when I first kissed a girl outside an art museum. I can't remember actually kissing her because I was so excited. I had to catch my breath.
The sound of crashing dishes, when I threw them in a dumpster outside my first apartment the day I moved out. He looked so broken when I left him. I wonder if he's learned to live without shutting everyone out.
These moments come back to me and although I don't truly regret any of them, I wonder if I was responsible for their grief when I ran off. Was I leading them on? Was I sincere at the time? I've been thinking about responsibility lately. I tell people I love them so very quickly. And I mean it. But commitment is an entirely different matter. And as we all know change is constant.
Since my last 'break up' a few months ago I've vowed to take greater responsibility for the hearts I break. I woke one morning in a lover's bed. She told me the night before I gave the most adorable speech while drunk. I told her that it's considered crazy to tell people you love them when you've known them only a little while. But it isn't and I want to be courageous, and honest, and that means never curbing my feelings of love. I told her a loved what I knew of her. Not long after I was chased away by fear of her expectations. She wanted to date, and I didn't know what changes that meant.
Polyamorous dating seems like just a label. If I am polyamorous, and I chose to date someone who is also polyamorous. How is that any different then us both being single? What defines an "official relationship" as in "we are dating"? Is it just a hierarchal system? I'm dating X so their needs come above my other lover Y (whom I'm not dating.)
Standing perfectly still while the artists scratch away at newsprint. My leg cramps up from holding the pose. These moments are far behind me now. How do the ecstasy and the agony remain so firmly engrained in memory? What can I learn from it? That people are fragile, that I inspire people to love rapidly and then I hang them out to dry. I tell them that their love for me is entirely their responsibility. That I had no part in it? It was your fault for loving me, and it's your fault that your heart is broken.
What have I become?
Two inches from your face, I told you I loved you. And at that moment I meant it. But somewhere along the line I was dishonest about what I wanted. I didn't explain it properly. Or maybe you couldn't understand, or didn't want to.
So I must take responsibility. I don't want to create expectations with people I'm beginning to know.
But does that mean I should further entrench myself in commitment-phobia? Obviously that doesn't look good on paper.
We experience many different kinds of love. Maybe even a new kind with each person.
I've loved many friends, some of them I "dated." But among them there are a select few who stand out. I want to say that meant I was IN love. It's easy to feel it and look back and tell yourself it wasn't real. I was in love with my high school sweetheart, and I think that's actually pretty rare. That's hard to judge because the first time feels so strong. What does 'in love' mean? How is that kind of love superior to others? What separates it from typical love?
I've chosen to define it as romantic love, because anything above love is a cliche.
In the absence of monogamy and sexuality, what differentiates romantic love with that of friendship? I want to know what the essential difference between 'love' and 'in love' is.
Friendship+Love+Sex ≠ I'm IN love with you
If I am polyamorous, and I chose to date someone who is also polyamorous. How is that any different then us both being single? Perhaps it's about seeing each other as a partner, and treating that relationship with special care. Seeing to each other's needs before other lovers?
How do we treat our best friends and our love partners differently? How do we feel differently? These are questions I can't fully answer.
But I've asked a lot of questions of just about everyone I know. Because love, like art is subjective.
Here are some of the answers I've gotten:
"What is romantic love?"
"Recognizing the divine in someone."
"A societal construct, taught to us by romance films."
"It is an invention of high medieval literature."
"A neurochemical process designed to help us mate and rear children."
"1. The debate over an exact definition of love may be found in literature as well as in the works of psychologists, philosophers, biochemists and other professionals and specialists. Romantic love is a relative term, but generally accepted as a definition that distinguishes moments and situations within interpersonal relationships to an individual as contributing to a significant relationship connection.
2. The addition of drama to relationships of love."
-wikipedia on Romantic love
Last month I did some research Into various avenues of what it is to love on a psychological, and neurochemical level.
I dug through a lot of studies and thesis papers. Here are some neat findings:
There is a part of your brain right near the centre that is responsible for romantic love.
"In one preliminary study (Bartels & Zeki, 2000), the brains of individuals who reported being ‘‘truly, deeply, and madly in love’’ were examined under two conditions: while viewing pictures of their beloved and while viewing pictures of other-sex friends. Compared with viewing friends, viewing pictures of loved ones was associated with heightened activation in the middle insula and the anterior cingulate cortex, areas that have been associated in prior research with positive emotion, attention to one’s own emotional states, attention to the emotional states of social partners, and even opioid-induced euphoria. Viewing pictures of loved ones was also associated with deactivation in the posterior cingulate gyrus, the amygdala, and the right prefrontal, parietal, and middle temporal cortices, areas that have been associated with sadness, fear, aggres- sion, and depression. Notably, the brain regions that showed dis- tinctive patterns of activity when viewing romantic partners did not overlap with regions typically activated during sexual arousal."
-Bartels, A., & Zeki, S. (2000). The neural basis of romantic love. NeuroReport, 11, 3829–3834.
There is little cultural impact on how Americans and Koreans love. Women are more satisfied with companionate love then men. And Man are made happier by passionate love then women.
"Analysis of data from a survey conducted in Korea and in USA showed that companionate love was the strongest predictor of life satisfaction whereas passionate love was the strongest predictor of positive emotions
Gender did not affect the overall relationship pattern between love types and subjective well-being. Yet, differences were found between male and female samples both in the degree to which passionate love was related with emotions and in the degree to which companionate love was related with life satisfaction. That is, companionate love and satisfaction were more strongly correlated in females than in males in both the U.S. sample and the Korean sample. In contrast, passionate love was more strongly correlated with positive and negative emotions in males than in females."
-SOCIAL BEHAVIOR AND PERSONALITY, 2004, 32(2), 173-182 © Society for Personality Research (Inc.)
LOVE TYPES AND SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING: A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY
JUNGSIK KIM
Western Washington University, WA, USA
ELAINE HATFIELD
University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI, USA
Stronger orgasms make women happier then they do men. Also straight women who fall in love with other women can become bisexual.
"Among humans, women show greater oxytocin release during sexual activity than do men, and some women show correlations between oxytocin release and orgasm intensity (Carmichael et al., 1994). Such findings raise the provocative possi- bility that women’s greater emphasis on the relational context of sexuality—that is, their greater experience of links between love and desire—may be influenced by oxytocin’s joint, gender-specific role in these processes (in addition to culture and socialization).
Furthermore, the fact that women sometimes develop same-sex desires as a result of falling in love with female friends (a phenomenon rarely documented among men) might be interpreted to indicate that oxytocin-mediated links between love and desire make it possible for a woman’s affectionally triggered desires to ‘‘override’’ her general sexual orientation."
-Lisa M. Diamond
University of Utah
CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
Emerging Perspectives on
Distinctions Between Romantic
Love and Sexual Desire
According to Lisa M.Diamond (above) Romantic love in the abstract sense of the term, is traditionally referred to as involving a mix of emotional and sexual desire for another as a person. She proposes that sexual desire and romantic love are functionally independent and that romantic love is not intrinsically oriented to same-gender or other-gender partners. She also proposes that the links between love and desire are bidirectional as opposed to unilateral. Furthermore, Diamond does not state that one's sex has priority over another sex (a male or female) in romantic love because her theory suggests it is as possible for someone who is homosexual to fall in love with someone of the other gender as for someone who is heterosexual to fall in love with someone of the same gender.
Falling in love is like winning a revolution
"Falling in love is of the same nature as religious or political conversion. We fall in love when our attempts to save previous relationships have failed, and we are ready to change. At this point a rapid destructuring-restructuring process takes place within us, called nascent state. The previous relationship disintegrates and we rebuild our lives and futures around the loved person. In the nascent state the individual acquires the ability to fuse with someone else and create a new, highly supportive collectivity. Hence the famous definition: falling in love is the nascent state of a collective movement made up of just two persons.
Love is always revelation and risk. In order to find out if she has really fallen in love, the subject submits to some (truth) tests and, to find out if that love is returned, subjects the potential object of it to tests of reciprocity. This delicate process can lead to misunderstandings or even destroy the nascent state altogether.
When one falls in love the beloved is transfigured, because each partner is the charismatic leader of the other.At the same time, the fusion process is always balanced by a desire for self-assertion.This conflict lends a dramatic, passionate character to the love process. If the two persons in love fail to create a common project, or if their individual projects are too dissimilar, too incompatible, the love process may founder.
The falling-in-love phenomenon is identical in adolescent and adult, male and female, homosexual and heterosexual, because the structure of the nascent state never changes."
-http://www.alberoni.it/versione-inglese/falling-in-love-and-loving-summary.asp
summary of Francesco Alberoni, Falling in love, New York, Random House, 1983.
According to the classical definitions of romance and friendship the key differences lie in sexual relations, monogamy, commitment, and heightened drama. Since I'd rather the relationship wasn't based on sex, or Monogamy what is left but drama. Drama simply doesn't hold a good connotation. In an attempt to understand what I mean by being "in love" or "romantically in love" versus the classic definition of friendship I began to read "Falling in love and loving" by Franceso Alberoni. His book relates falling in love to to social movement of revolutions, in that the old which was unified has been disassembled, and that which was separate has been unified to create a new value system, and a new world.
Haddaway - What is love?
