You can listen to this musing here, or read it below.
This week I want to attempt to write about BDSM from a more philosophical and symbolic perspective. I do this to reach deeper because I experience that a logical approach limits me. I want to start in the ocean, as a symbol of life and motion. The depths can swallow me, and the waves can crush me. It is unpredictable and alluring. Temping me to let go. There is an ocean inside of me and an endless amount of unreleased potential. I’m 80% water. What would happen if I released its uncontrollable flow? Creative or destructive? Awesome or awful? Both at the same time. Ultimately the same. I have learnt to control my flow, to accept and respect the structures around me.
I know that I can’t be a tsunami. I’m a pack animal socialized to share my environment with others – to synergize for the greater good. But what is the greater good? The civilianization. From wildling to civilian. More structure. More predictability. I’m always balancing between control and freedom, like a humanmade dam taming the river, and harvesting its power. How much do I limit my flow due to the fear of being too much? Because I fear that the dam will break, my ship will sink, and that I will return to the wilderness. Leave civilization behind. And loose of the divine knowledge I have gained through the universities. To be civil is to know, to will, to do. To be wild is to trust, to be. Uncontrollable and free. Civilization provides an illusion of freedom, like a butterfly inside the glass cup. If I submit, I’m allowed to be as wild as I like inside the transparent walls. The civilization, society, capitalism, religion and all the structures are a projection of the battle already raging inside of me. My self-made glass bounds are the most restrictive.
BDSM opens up another stage to act out this drama of life. The offering is different for my submissive and my dominate personas. As the submissive, I get another kind of glass bauble, one where I can drop aspiration for civilization, and just be, wild and free. There is no goal-oriented will anymore, and no fear of being crushed or drowned. I’m no longer the captain of my ship. I’m the river flowing wild, without any care in the world about the dam of civilization. But my freedom is still an illusion because what I left behind is now picked up by the dominate. As the dominate, I get to own a droplet of the ocean inside my bubble. With the tension of bondage and the power in pain, I can build it stronger and stronger. As strong as my glass can hold, and I get to marvel at the wild display of force under my control. Anyone who thinks that a submissive is weak is wrong. And any dominate that wants to put their submissive down is afraid of them. The goal is actually the opposite; it is to fuel their power.
There is also a game of seduction going on. The ocean is continuously tempting the captain into the darkest depths. To let go of the control and experience the power of nature first hand, in their own body, through their own sense. To no longer uphold the structure of civilization against the wilderness of nature. If the temptation is too great, both may tumble into the wild. Then I no longer think about it as BDSM, and all that remains is a hedonistic release. In general, there is a fear of this power. Our civilization wants to tame the wilderness to make it predictable and profitable with a stable inflation rate of 3-4% while slowly building more knowledge. To be civil is to know. When my BDSM is the deepest, there is trust and presence. But not knowledge or predictability. Instead, there is an ongoing discovery of how much power we can hold inside the glass walls. We, as in the two sides of me, the dominate and the submissive. Together with the same two sides inside of you, we get drunk on the power, like a bumblebee on nectar.