Introduction
Someone asked me what I though was erotic. It is something I know I find puzzling. I begin to think about it. I realise that I have never come up with a satisfactory answer to this question before. My questioner deserves an answer, a considered one, so I promise I will give it in a day or so. This is what followed.
Reflection
Any self-examination which concerns itself with the meaning/freedom to choose/action/how we should act sequence, must include an exploration of our sexuality — it is too fundamental a part of our being to ignore — and this exploration must, at some point, involve our understanding and appreciation of the erotic. I search for a description.
For me, the erotic is something which penetrates us, goes underneath the sexual, slips into us, arouses something in us which is beyond what we can easily or readily grasp. The erotic allows us to see something of that crucially important part in us, sexuality, in a way which is detached from the mechanics, from the act, from the involvement. Erotic is, in a way, a sort of pure sex. It is in mind, in thought, in the eye, in a glance, sensed with the slightest touch, perceived on a smell, involved in an idea, woven into a dream, part of a hope, painted in a portrayal. Erotic is anything which has sexual power but no other for the erotic caricatures representations of the other in ways the other cannot be — the other cannot be a speck of fragrance in the air. Erotic has physical presence, it is after all in our minds, but it has none of the physicality of sex. Erotic is captured in our minds, in the reality of our imagination, it moves up towards the idea of form, it has creativity within it, and it is a product of our creativity. Erotic is private, it belongs to our individual world, we can describe it to another but we cannot share it. Erotic appears to us only in our world, its very essence is its slightness: the merest sight, the scantiest glance, the quietest aside. Erotic is always unnoticed by others, it is innocent, and the recording of it is the writing of the erotic. But it is almost un-capturable, it slips through our mind and out of our grasp. How do we capture the feeling of seeing an undergarment, its colour barely, its shape hardly, what it covers not at all. How can we describe that which is merely a hint, un-shown, unknown, simply observed or only fleetingly, stolen for a second from the possessor who is unaware of it? Is it that theft which creates it beauty? Or is it the unawareness of its object? How do we describe perfection? How do we record that which can only truly be experienced, that which is so delectable we must suspect it of being unreal?
Erotic speaks of the prohibited and the unattainable. The erotic instructs us on human frailty — how the objects of our desire are never so desirable when obtained, or at least never so desirable as when they were desired. Erotic is a sexuality of the image. Erotic is readily created in the image, the film, the picture; sometimes unintentional, sometimes not. The erotic is usually brief, sometimes fleeting, sometimes no more than a flash and it is invariably unknown by the other. The best erotic goes unnoticed by all except one, and that is what creates it. It is being witness to that which is private and exclusive to me, it is that which is 'just for me' and known ‘just by me’. The erotic is our whole world in our whole mind. I think of Camus' Meursault looking down from his balcony, watching, seeing things which the objects of his glances do not know of, and which no one else witnesses. The delectable secrecy of the voyeur. I feel it. It allows me to describe in my mind what otherise I dare not. The heat, skin, clothing — that beautiful interface — smiles, smells of food, noises, glances, lipstick, shampoo, tossed back hair, the sound of the sea, the clatter of cranes on the docks, the burning of the sun (Camus, 1961). The erotic is captured in the moments we cannot admit, they tantalise our real world with delectable drips from paradise.
Comments
Reflection sometimes does not entail pursuit of the truth. This description of the erotic is keen but somehow guarded. It conveys in its obscurity the message that not all things are graspable, indeed, it is their very obscurity, and the ingredient tantalisation that goes with it, which makes them so fascinating, exciting, mysterious. We all need places of our own, corners in our mind which contain only our own things — and things we may wish to keep hidden even from ourselves. If there is no place like this, there is no mystery within us, and without that we run the risk of being all explainable sterility.
A short reflection on Actuality and Anticipation can be found here.
