Bondage Yoga

Richard Burton, Ava Gardner and Deborah Kerr in NIGHT OF THE IGUANA from the Tennessee Williams play, directed by John Huston, 1964.


I'm not sure why I started this blog. In some measure it was probably to use up my spare time during a long stint of unemployment. However, I never understood just what a blog is designed to accomplish. I still don't. At first it was nerve-wracking trying to overcome the technical difficulties. Once those became somewhat tamed, I realized that I must maintain some degree of responsibility on the internet. If I put up sex pictures of children I go to jail (I learned that from Pete Townsend); if I write something tasteless and mean-spirited there's every reason to believe someone may use the comment box and write something even nastier pointed at me; but mostly I'm learning that there is an audience, a reader, someone other than myself. We all know Sarte's chestnut that "Hell is other people," but what does it mean? We Probably all need (or desire) to belong, be apart of something larger than ourselves. We want to be adored (as the Stone Roses say), but we want to be adored by not trying--that's the tough part. Each of us wants to be a genius of attraction. I do. But on the internet there are millions of people trying to be the one and only genius of attraction. Some are better than others.

I see blogs which combine interesting subjects, interesting photos and video clips as adjuncts to their writings. Some inform, some are humorous, some sexy, and I've even come across those who's intention is to make us all millionaires. Cool. But I'm stymied about what it is that I want to use this systematic billboard to do. Maybe I should just beg for someone that looks like Ava Gardner in NIGHT OF THE IGUANA to come and convince me that she loves me, loves my taste, loves my spirit, thinks I'm funny and that I'm not too fat. Maybe.

What I'm trying to explain is this awakening I've had that other people exist--even on the internet, and if this blog isn't to be totally selfish and exclusively ego driven, I have some obligation to an invisible and imaginary someone--that's you. Why do you put so much fucking pressure on me? I just wanted to muck around with stolen images and ideas and off-the-cuff remarks, maybe some music once in awhile. Now you want me to spell correctly, attribute each image to the source (which I never remember), be topical, witty. In short, to be in competition with everyone else who writes a blog. Oh fucking bother!

Swami Vivekananda ( 1863–1902) tells us to consider it all as Karma-Yoga (another name for work, ugh), "We see that the whole universe is working. For what? For salvation, for liberty; from the atom to the highest being, working for the one end, liberty for the mind, for the body, for the spirit. All things are always trying to get freedom, flying away from bondage." Well, uh . . . okay. He does dust off a common human polarity though: freedom vs bondage. So what's this blog to be? Who knows. But, if you see someone who looks like Ava Gardner in NIGHT OF THE IGUANA, you might mention this http address. Hey how about freedom and bondage?



Obviously, not everyone flees from bondage. The BDSM underground has been an active community for decades, gay and lesbian leather players have been involved in kink at least since WWII and before. Europe has a legacy going back centuries. More recently, Japan has given the world lots of new ideas on sex, power dynamics, freedom and stricture. Shibari, the art of knots, tying, suspending with rope has become very popular in non-vanilla groups. It's a good bet that every sex shop in the world sells ropes, cuffs, collars, chains, gags, and lots of other goodies to make consensual bondage a de rigueur sideline in bedrooms and hotels everywhere.

I first saw some rope play in a Japanese Roman porn film (pink film) years back, WIFE TO BE SACRIFICED by Masaru Konuma. The film was very odd, perverse and smart. The attractions of dominant and submissive characters were original, dangerous and oddly sexy. Since then I've seen quite a few Japanese films with elements of Bondage and assorted bizarre sexcapades. The French film, ROMANCE by director Catherine Breillat was another film which used rope play attentively. I'm not really much of a Catherine Breillat fan, most of her films are boring diatribes on sexuality rather than actually sexy films of believable characters. I've always considered her someone who's been too influenced by Godard, but who never commanded his trenchant analysis, balance or artistic eye. ROMANCE, at least the sequences which involve lovers engaging in rope play, was very interesting and illuminating in a psychological depth never seen before or since in her films. Of course there are scads of porn sites and dvd's available with bondage as an integral ingredient of the kink world. It's politically incorrect to be sure, but hot sex is most often about taboos.




















Merzbow, the musical project name of Japanese noise musician Masami Akita (秋田 昌美 ,Akita Masami), has a few albums with bondage as themes. He's also a tireless author, editing magazines and writing books. He's written widely on contemporary Japanese culture, S&M and pornography. I believe he's directed some porn for Kinbiken Video, for which the album shown above, MUSIC FOR BONDAGE PERFORMANCE, was used. He tours internationally and has played with many notable noise, metal, drone and ambient musicians. In 2000, Extreme Records released a 50 cd box set of his music titled Merzbox. I like his ideas a lot, though the noise is intentionally brutal. Another Japanese noise band I've heard recently and that I like is Boris, and still another is Ghost. They take your brain to the Laundromat.



Bondage, ropes, restraints, are all tools for hardcore and theatrical sex play, but of course bondage is also a major metaphor in the arena of dominance and submissive exploration. Swami Vivekananda was a wise man, but there's much to be learned by not always fleeing physical bondage "when descending into the sex pit," as Samuel Beckett put it once--at least if partners are of like mind. Political and non-consensual bondage, well, that's a much different story. Luckily, I'm not going there today. The YouTube video from Lorde Awesome is a mystery to me, except it comes from a video artist named spacemetalizer. Nice videos.
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