Every so often, I return to Audre Lorde’s 1978 essay, The Uses of the Erotic. I first read it in 2016, and it landed on me like a pile of bricks. This definition and redefinition of the narrow conception we have of the erotic in the common vernacular was, at the time, new to me. Last week, because J Wortham included a link to it in her brilliant newsletter (and because Venus went direct on Sunday), I knew I was due a revisit.
This summer, I thought a lot about my own pursuit of the erotic (as Audre Lorde defines it) — what desire looks like for me and how it functions in my life. What I think I can get in relationship to what it is I actually want. Often, they don’t line up. I have often left parts of me behind because of how little I think I actually deserve. It has informed relationships, friendships, work decisions and, more importantly, a complete lack of action on my part. A lack of agency. A resignation to how things already are. Despair for how things have already turned out, rather than a reimagining of my future (and appreciation for the present moment). How often do I truly let myself want with abandon, dream without restraint, hunger for something because I can?
Lorde defines her version of erotic here:
“The very word erotic comes from the Greek word eros, the personification of love in all its aspects—born of Chaos, and personifying creative power and harmony. When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the lifeforce of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives.”
I was having a conversation with a friend this summer, and we were talking about how we’ve approached getting what we want our entire lives (we are both in our 30s) — which is that there has only been so much available to us. We spent much of our lives accepting that things are finite and that we should not get too big, too powerful or show too much of ourselves because somewhere along the way, we internalised a belief that we should be grateful for what we can get. I have shifted my perspective to move towards what I desire is what I desire, I am as powerful as I want to be, and that the enormity of my wants, pleasures, emotions, and the very largesse that I want for my life is not to be diminished despite the current circumstances of my life. This has only happened with considerable self-work, and it is a daily reprieve. A repeated forgetfulness and humble return.
It is very possible that many of us may feel hopeless when we look around at the world. I certainly do. For all of human history, it is possible that human beings could say something to that effect and feel that feeling. War, hunger, murder, racism, bigotry, climate collapse, and large-scale inequity terrorize us, the same as it ever was. Lorde writes: “In touch with the erotic, I become less willing to accept powerlessness, or those other supplied states of being which are not native to me, such as resignation, despair, self-effacement, depression, self-denial.” The idea that simply through a connection to my very own life force, my creative energy, I may be able to avoid self-denial and despair feels like revolutionary permission in this context (that of the world being on fire).
I experience it each day when I sit down at my altar to connect to myself and my spiritual life and when I sit at my notebook each morning to write my morning pages, no matter what absolute shite comes out (that’s the point), how I eat a peach, ripe with summer’s end. The lemon water I prepare for myself each day, with a reverence for ritual, a staple in my day that tethers me to the care I have for myself. And yes, to the creative power and energy I put into each and every action I take. I could really copy and paste the full essay here, but I’d rather you read it in its entirety here. She writes:
“Another important way in which the erotic connection functions is the open and fearless underlining of my capacity for joy. In the way my body stretches to music and opens into response, hearkening to its deepest rhythms, so every level upon which I sense also opens to the erotically satisfying experience, whether it is dancing, building a bookcase, writing a poem, examining an idea.”
If Serenity Never had a premise, it would point to this quote — I return to joy here time and time again: capacity for joy, the search for joy, and the fearless pursuit of joy despite the considerable barriers to it.
I do not write poetry, nor do I share my poems because I am a particularly good poet. I do it to experience more joy and connect to the erotic: an assertion of my lifeforce. I dance not because I can follow choreography or because I look particularly good doing it (though the booty can and will shake). I do it to open something up inside that unlocks something else that makes me feel something else that makes me remember I’m alive (and then do it all again). I do it also because, well, dancing is fucking fun. I do not sit and think about the existence of God in everything or spend time thinking about Mary Magdalene simply to pass the time but because it helps me to feel more. As my teacher, Leila, once said to me before I entered into formal study with her, “The time is going to pass anyway, so why not spend it in contemplation, increasing your capacity to live?” Time will always pass; it’s what we spend it doing that matters. My connection to the erotic helps me to believe in a deeper capacity for the depths of our feeling body in a world (and my very own body) that can sometimes be shut down and checked out.
May you carry your own sense of the erotic and your very own capacity for joy (because it’s right there in your body) into the weekend, the changing season and the rest of this year. May it help you stay light on your feet and deeply connected to your depth of feeling.
With love,
Nora x
Reread this 2x - simmering on all that came up, thank you for your words