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Rituals and Paradoxes, my book project (2023)

by andyburuabout andy

2023 is here. And I’m starting the year off in solitude in the Japanese mountains outside Osaka. I aim to work on my book project while walking the woods, relaxing in the hot springs, and learning my new camera. Here is what I know so far. The working title is Rituals and Paradoxes, which will be roughly 400 coffee table-sized pages. So it’s totally a tome. The bulk describes five paradoxes I’ve encountered during my twenty years of exploring sadomasochism and esoteric eroticism. And you have probably heard me speaking about them in some retreats, podcasts or musings. 

They are:

  1. Being and Doing
  2. Self-sacrifice and Letting go
  3. Selfishness and Holding space
  4. Polarity and Unity
  5. Reality and Symbols

The first paradox talks about what I needed to embark on my journey into sadomasochism and esoteric eroticism, the places that inspired me in Stockholm, Berlin and Tokyo. On a personal practice level, in relationship to others, and as a place in time and space, and a community. I have this goal for the book to be somewhere between poetry and philosophy, in a dream-like manner without any truths or sciences. It also contains little slices of my life based on various diary entries from the past ten years of exploration. Illustrating this will be pictures that I’ve taken while playing. Raw and unfiltered. 

The second paradox explores submission and surrender, from the physical to the emotional and devotional. It also opens up the topic of trauma, trying to answer the question of when things get destructive. And then the third paradox is about being vulnerable as a dominant and everything that can grow out of that. I’m also planning to include my journey on how I learnt to ride the demons that once hunted me. The fourth paradox is trying to fit sadomasochism and esoteric eroticism in modern society, addressing many existing prejudgements and problems. Finally, the fifth paradox is about harvesting the mysterious and otherwordly opportunities that come with playing in awe between the awesome and awful.

In parallel, there are the five rituals I have collected and refined to experience the paradoxes hands-on. They are on the themes of:

  1. Bonding
  2. Submission
  3. Rejection
  4. Unfolding
  5. Death

The rituals are still much more up in the air. Then maybe the book will also receive a short interview with me answering why I wrote it. My idea is to publish the book as a numbered and signed collectors edition and, in parallel, publish the material as a remake of my webpage for general availability. I’ve hired an editor to work with me for the coming months, and I’m looking for someone to make the design and layout. If all goes my way, I hope to have the new webpage online at the end of 2023, and after that, I’ll be thinking about printing and publishing.

In the meanwhile, I’m sorry that the musings are on hold. But I’ll try to keep updating my webpage with pictures and other tiny treats. Photo by Olavi Sõna for an upcoming article about me in an Estonian magazine.