January Podcast 058 - Authenticity, Community, and More Shibari You Can Use

Jan 20

Written By

With the upcoming launch of his new book, More Shibari You Can Use, Lee Harrington reflects on publishing processes, but more importantly, why he was drawn to rope. From rope community to what communities give us in general, he looks at the notion of emotional complex ecosystems and how we each deserve to be fully integrated beings. He leaks a discount code (see the show notes), and helps us all look at who we are as authentic sexual and kinky beings.

Announcer:
BDSM and non-standard relationships, power exchange and polyamory, sacred sexuality and fetishes, as well as Simply Fun Kink.

You're listening to the Erotic Awakening Podcast Network.

Thank you.

Welcome to The Passion And Soul Podcast, an exploration of personal and interpersonal desire, faith, and connection.

Your host, international sexuality and spirituality author and educator, Lee Harrington of passionandsoul.com, will take you on a sultry and intellectual journey through the soul of intimate experience.

Take a moment and breathe deep, and get ready for an adventure.

This podcast is a chance to glimpse into the ever increasing diverse world of alternative life.

The PassionAndSoul Podcast is intended for mature audiences.

If you are offended by adult topics or prohibited by law, we recommend you stop listening right now.

Lee:
Hello, fellow adventurers of sexuality and spirit, and welcome to the PassionAndSoul Podcast with Lee Harrington of passionandsoul.com.

I know it's been a little while since I've had a chance to share and talk with you all, but as you might know, it has been a delightfully crazy early part of the year because I am so happy to announce my two new books, Shibari You Can Use, Japanese Rope Bondage and Erotic Macrame, as well as More Shibari You Can Use, Passionate Rope Bondage and Intimate Connection are out.

I flew out to Boston for this adventure that was me leaving on Christmas Day, flying off and to fascinatingly half empty flights because it was on a holiday, flying to Boston and spending four days building a sweatshop of sorts made of love and doing a completely unofficial book signing and lots and lots of hours at the post office.

That might sound boring, but it was actually a really fun adventure because I got to have some great friends, both old and new, come out to a house of a friend of mine who I've known in the kink community for a really long time, a gentleman by the name of Just Derek, who helps run some of the rope bondage groups up in the Northeast.

And he made space available for us to bring in hundreds of copies of books and set up a system that I jokingly referred to as the Sweatshop, but it was really more a creation space of love and kink and sharing and community, where we brought in all of these books and set up a system for packaging and creating.

And it reminded me and created for me this experience of creating and bonding because we were able to craft together, this team and I, craft together a system where we would look through the giant spreadsheet of all of the Indiegogo supporters who I am profoundly grateful for and will continue to be profoundly grateful for.

We set up a system, passionately devised by another sexuality educator out there, Rika.

And she and I put together this giant system on the wall of who needed one book, who needed two books, who needed two books signed and bound in macrame by hand.

And we went through, one at a time, and packaged them up and filled out customs forms and told stories and laughed and joked and tied up books and giggled and stared at Rika's ass and took photos and had my printing liaison come out and bring us pizza and have a whole group of us go out for sushi with Rigor J arranging this giant boat of sushi.

And it reminded me why kink community is beautiful.

When I was, I don't know, young, six, seven-ish, I came across my father's porn collection.

And as I read through it, there were titillating images and women in sexy vinyl corsets and high heels and pieces of debauchery that really appealed to me.

But there always felt like there was something wrong.

Until in one of the Penthouse forums, it was a story about a woman who talked about her 21st birthday and dear Penthouse forum.

Dear Penthouse forum, my friend came to me and told me that I needed to dress up in my favorite fetish wear.

And he showed up and he blindfolded her, took her into his car and drove around town until she didn't know where she was.

They parked and he let her up a pathway to a house.

They were led inside in silence and down the stairs.

And she thought it might be a friend of hers house who was also in the kinky sex community.

She was tied down to a stone slab, to which I am still to this day sad that I do not have a dungeon with a giant stone slab.

I have in fact only seen one giant stone slab when I was in Ireland.

And that was in a really amazing ancient graveyard that I am also bitter that I did not get to have sex on top of.

Probably because of reading this story when I was young.

But she was tied to a giant stone slab, and they covered her with pudding and ripped off of her clothes, and spanked her and fucked her and covered her in wax, and eventually set down the candles and sung her happy birthday.

But what struck me about the story that was different than all the other ones was that she said that when she was unblindfolded, and she looked around the room, and it was her friends from her kinky sex community who helped make something amazing happen for her birthday.

And unlike all the other stories that had guilt and shame, that talked about how, and I'll never see her again, or they said, but this is our little secret.

Instead of any of that, it was friends and friendship, and I remember saying to myself when I grow up, I want friends like that.

And here, just outside of Boston, I had friends like that who came out to help make magic happen.

Rigor J, and Cannonball, and Rika, and a really beautiful crew of many others who I am so honored by.

And I say not the other names because I don't know who of you want to have your names on the podcast, so...

I am grateful to each of you.

And it reminded me of over the years, the people who have helped me make dreams come true.

Some of them sexual fantasies.

Some of them moments of needing somebody to cry on the shoulder of.

People who I met through a shared passion for passions outside societal norm.

And I wouldn't necessarily say they're all kinky sex because sometimes it's about a friend saying, hey, do you want to sit down and watch a dumb movie?

It's because we're both into age play, which isn't for some people's definitions necessarily kinky sex because it wasn't necessarily about sex.

It was just both of us needing to be eight, four together.

I think that day with Mako, it was more eight.

And it was a reminder to me that even folks who I had had step out of my life for a while, that they showed up in the most unlikely of circumstances and I got to meet new people through them.

I am so blessed by this thing called community.

And then I joke a little bit when I sign in playing well with others, that people should get to explore community with the word unity in capitals, because there are times when, gosh, I get annoyed, downright angry, I would almost say, but I try my best not to use that emotion too much in my life.

It is good, I think anger is useful, when we use it as fuel to do something with.

Righteous anger, for example, to proclaim, je suis Charlie, at the top of our lungs.

We are Charlie.

We too have been shot and massacred.

We too will stand up for free speech.

That is righteous anger.

When I say, I do not want another black man killed, a young black man shot, because he's wearing a hoodie, this is righteous anger when we speak for these things.

But to just be angry at someone doesn't serve, doesn't serve me, at least.

And I would ask whether it serves us and our energy on this planet, because being mad at someone in the community, because they said something dumb on a forum, does that really serve us?

Does that really do anything useful?

But so here I was in just outside of Boston, and folks came out because of community and the most unlikely, in some cases, of combinations.

I am pretty darn proud of this book.

And my hope is that you'll be able to see it, whether you're into rope bondage or not, whether it's even just looking at samples online.

You'll be able to see it and go, yeah, yeah, it's a pretty good project.

It's pretty awesome.

It's a worthwhile project.

Because we re-shot all of the images, and they're beautiful.

We were able to lay them out in a crisp, clear way that Rob River was able to deliver them in a way that makes sense.

And Rigor J's images flow into one another.

That we were able to take the work of Circle 23 that he and I did so many years ago in Portland, Oregon, that I am still proud of, even if that original book does not live up to my expectations nowadays.

And if you have the first version, please check out the new one.

That I was able to share all of this, but also in the second book, taken into notions of consciousness, to bring it into that space between understanding rope and understanding our partners.

Because I think sometimes we get so obsessed in sexuality, specifically in kink, about technicalities.

Which lube is the best?

How do we throw this single tail?

How do I tie someone up?

Instead of saying, oh, here is this person.

Or saying, hey, how do I, as a person being bound, connect better with my partner?

And what are their needs for aftercare?

What are their needs for a scene?

And I think it's really important that we have that human connection.

And that was a part of my desire to redo the first book and to shoot the second book is to make it more passionate, more connected, more inner personally beautiful.

I've been really honored in recent times as well that I have a wonderful partner who is a total rope sled.

And we don't get to do rope as often as I'd like.

We want to do dates every week, but sometimes life gets in the way.

And sometimes life gets in the way too much.

And that's not what we want.

But at the same time, I have somebody who loves rope and it's helped me love rope again.

Because I want to love rope again.

We deserve to love rope again.

And through her eyes, I've remembered, oh yeah, it's more than the technical aspects.

And I know this in my heart, but sometimes my brain forgets it.

Sometimes my brain gets into the tech of it.

And I know it and I admit it.

Because that's how life is sometimes.

But I get to watch her body writhe.

I get to tuck $20 bills into the chest harness of hers as a joke for how we're paying our bills.

I get to play and be and see her amidst all of the rope.

I get to see her for which I am grateful.

For which I am deeply grateful.

And it's a reminder that this stuff is not just about community, but it's about who we're with.

And it's also about who I am, both in throwing ropes and in being in rope.

Who am I?

Because when I am in rope, who am I?

Because I got to get tied up about a year and a half ago by somebody who I really cherish and really appreciate.

But I had hoped it would be ferocious and growling and energetically transferring in more of a vampiric way.

But instead it ended up being playful and silly, and it's not who I want to be in rope.

There is a power in being silly and a power in doing that stuff, but it's not where I was.

And sometimes it's important to be able to check in with myself as a rigger or as a person being bound.

And afterwards, a few days later, to say, hey, here were the excellent things that were great about that scene.

Here's what I loved.

I see you.

I appreciate you.

But to also be able to say, hey, maybe next time, can we do these things?

Because I want it next time.

I cherish it next time.

I value our next time.

Will you have a next time with me?

And I am sad to say I haven't said that to that person yet.

And if they're listening, I apologize for not saying it to you directly.

But I hope you'll understand that it means no harm.

And my hope is next time I see that person in person, that I'll say that.

Because I think each of us has the right to get to connect with another people, another person, I should say, to connect to another person better, more filling, more fruitfully, more beautifully.

And they are a friend, and even if we never play together, I want to say these are the things that I appreciated.

Because sometimes that check-in that people talk about after scenes, hey, how are you doing?

How's your body doing?

We forget to also say, hey, I really appreciated that.

Thank you for X, Y, and Z.

Not just, hey, thanks for playing.

But why thank you for playing?

Here are the ways I saw you as a person.

Here are the ways I value you.

Thank you.

Because oftentimes we forget as human beings when we say, sorry about that.

What are you sorry for?

Are you sorry that you broke the dishes?

Or are you sorry that you got caught?

What are you actually sorry for?

And are you actually sorry, oh, sorry, when you bumped into someone?

Or are you apologetic?

Or, you know, is it my bad?

Sorry, my bad.

What is the thing we are saying sorry for?

Because living in an apologetic culture doesn't matter, doesn't help if you're not apologizing for anything.

What is this thing that we are doing?

And I am working on this all the time.

It's not a perfect system.

I don't have a perfect answer.

But I'm trying.

And my hope is with these two books, I get people thinking, I get you thinking about it.

When Aidenfire and I were still in a relationship, which was a rich and satisfying experience for what I learned from it, definitely, and the times that we were amazing, I am especially grateful for something they said to me one night, which was along the lines of, I am definitely paraphrasing and reframing, but they said something along the lines of, you know what, Sacred Kink is a good book, but it's a dense book, and it's a 201 book, and it is, hell, it's even 301, it is a thing that's got things for beginners, but it's diving in the deep end, and then at the other end, you have your age playbook, and you've got the Shibari You Can Use, and there's a jump.

People think they read the two books, and they go, oh, okay, I'll get this third one, and it's a thesis, it's a dissertation.

What happens to something in between?

And my hope was with More Shibari You Can Use, there would be a space in between that people could go from Shibari You Can Use to More Shibari You Can Use to either a sacred kink or a spirit of desire and be able to have something that flowed through my work.

Because I am really honored to get to keep writing that I've been honestly blessed to have enough people out there who believe that sexuality is something that we deserve excellence in.

That in our spiritual journeys, we are not, that we are complex ecosystems, as I have written about before.

That we are complex ecosystems.

And that if we just say we are sexual beings, or we are just spiritual beings, or we are just beings who are parents, or we are beings who work, that it lets the other things say I am not important.

And in the notions of the work from Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, he talks about the notion from one of his organic farmers of the idea of it's not a functional organic farm if there's not forest land for certain types of animals to live in, because otherwise you have those beings, those animals trying to live off your land, and you can't honestly be a farmer that way.

It's not a hundred acres.

It's a hundred acres of farmable land plus an additional hundred acres of land.

It's two hundred acres total.

It's not two hundred acres of farmable land.

That it's a complex ecosystem, and complex ecosystems are important to sustain or else we must keep pouring fertilizer on it and having toxic waste of the soil spilling downstream and poisoning fish and leaving children sick.

I want my heart not to be sick.

And I am grateful that there are those of you out there who believe in the same thing.

That we deserve not to be sick.

We deserve to be fulfilled.

We deserve more.

For me, part of deserving more has been the process of launching a publishing company.

In the past, Shibari You Can Use was self-published, but it was a print-on-demand.

And print-on-demand projects are lovely and have a huge value.

But color print-on-demand is really hard to do in a financially viable model.

It really is.

And so it was important to me to be able to go out and to do something that was financially viable so that I wasn't charging people $40 for an instructional book, that I could make it affordable at currently $24.95 and have that be something that people would be able to take home and use, not have to save up for.

I want this to be accessible.

Because I believe information needs to be accessible.

And it's also for people who are listening to this podcast, I would love to give you an extra little added bonus that if you go to my new publishing company's website, Mystic, M-Y-S-T-I-C, Productions, P-R-O-D-U-C-T-S-I-O-N-S, Press, press.com, mysticproductionspress.com, at the checkout, please enter Podcast 10 to get 10% off anything.

Because I really want this to be accessible.

And feel free to pass that on if you'd like.

It's good till February 8th.

And because I really want to get this out there.

Now, part of publishing companies, what I've really learned, and I knew this a little bit already, but it really drove it home for me, that if you've ever gone to an author's book signing or whatnot, and then you go, OK, cool, I'll buy it on Amazon when I get home, you might not know that if you buy from Amazon, the author and publisher combined maybe get $1.50, $2, and then they have to split that between them, and sometimes less, right?

While if you buy from that author directly, the publisher gets that wholesale cost between the printing and the wholesale cost, and the author gets all the rest of those funds, which helps support them being authors.

Amazon is a worthwhile tool, and please, if that's the way that you can afford doing stuff, and if that's how you want to be able to list it on your wish lists and all that stuff, go for it.

The pre-purchase stuff for the book is already up.

The book goes live on February 1st.

And pre-sales are wonderful.

Fantastic.

Please, please, please do that.

I would love to have those ranks get driven up, and if nothing else, please go and visit the page and help us talk about that when you have the book in hand.

Please write reviews for both of those books.

It really matters.

But it really has reminded me, when I am now selling books wholesale to Amazon, it reminds me of what I'm actually getting.

It reminds me of those numbers, and wow, I've learned a lot in this process.

I have learned all kinds of stuff about distribution systems and paper stock and cover lamination and how to do negotiations, and it's a wild ride.

It's an absolutely wild ride.

And I am so delighted that I had an amazing web designer in Ben from aceofspadespdx.com, who took my vision and made it into something really beautiful that I'm proud of, and that I'm able to help people get this work in a more streamlined fashion directly from me, whether it's spiral bound books or print books or ebooks, signed books, keychains, any of this stuff, some of it that you can't, obviously, signed books and spiral bound that you can't get from Amazon, and that he was able to help me bring it to life in a way that makes me really happy, in a way that hopefully will help people out there in the world go, Oh, there's a free stuff section of this.

I should check this out on a regular basis, because, yeah, monthly I'm going to be putting up new free stuff, essays from the different books and material that hasn't been published and all of that.

But I think the thing that blew me away the most was that I was able to draw upon community, a community vision, a community concept that reminded me yet again that kink is not just about the technical details.

Kink is about interpersonal connections for me.

And yeah, are there times when as a fetishist, I am just looking at a nice pair of, a nice ass and a nice pair of jeans and going, mmm, yum.

Absolutely, total denim fetishist, and I acknowledge it.

Do I like a good pair of high heels?

And have I created an entire area for my partner to be able to display all of her fetish shoes so I see it every morning going into our closet?

Absolutely.

Are there things that I just nerd over, like types of ties?

Yeah, I like doing the technical formal systems, even if in my play most of the time, I tend to use a messier style.

But it reminded me of community.

Part of that messier style was also about developing my style of rope.

That I don't necessarily care.

As long as it is safe and as long as it does exactly what I want to do, I would rather play with the person I'm with than to worry about the exact formal katas.

That's my approach.

Do I do sometimes those exact step by step follow where all of the pieces go?

Look, you know, and have them all appear in the ways that are classical in kimbaku?

And shibari?

Yeah.

Yeah, I do that stuff.

And I find a grace in it.

And a power in it.

I can move from that sensuality to those torture poses.

And I like it.

But I think what I like more is fucking people up a little bit.

I like dishevelment.

I like one bra strap pulled down.

I like having his cock and balls hanging out with his pants still up.

I like one boot on.

I like hair pulled to the side.

I like uneven rope.

I like the discomfort in the...

I like the discomfort in the beauty there, in the beauty that I find there.

It's not right or wrong, but it's a style that I appreciate.

And it's funny because with somebody that I am with who has a mild grass allergy, I don't tend to use hemp or jute as often.

We do sometimes with an awareness that's going to be uncomfortable.

But oftentimes, we use other materials because I want us to be able to play for longer, and I don't necessarily want it to be a sadistic scene.

And so people will see, oh, look at these three.

I had a play party recently where I was playing opposite to other doms, other rope tops.

I'm not sure what terms they actually use in their life.

And they were both doing ropes.

We were all three doing rope scenes.

And one was using jute, one was using jute and coconut husk rope, and I was using a really shiny polyester.

That was pretty, and it made me smile.

And we were doing very technically very similar ties.

But you couldn't necessarily tell, because mine was in a really shiny blue rope, and those were in classic materials.

And that's okay.

I had to remind myself at one point that no, really it is okay, because the onlookers, oh wow, they're doing really beautiful classical work, and Lee's doing this really weird stuff.

It's not weird stuff, it's just another approach.

At least I don't see it as weird stuff.

I'm a big believer in people following what is authentically wonderful for them.

I'm going to be uploading shortly some, and actually it might even be up by the time these notes go out, but keep an eye on both the Mystic Productions website and Passion and Soul, because I'm going to be uploading some videos of the 10 things I wish I'd known as a bondage bottom, and 10 things I wish I'd known as a bondage top before I got into this stuff.

And one of them is do it your way.

Know the safety.

Know the elements.

Know the techniques.

But do it your way.

And your way also includes a way that pleases your partner, because your also equals your relationship.

Whether it's your relationship with yourself, with your self-bondage, whether it's a relationship with a single partner or triad or a complex poly-ecosystem, do it your way.

Because if what you want to do is have your partner put rope on you and then you put rope on them, go for it.

If you want to be sadistic, wonderful, make sure that all parties are on the same page and go for it.

If you want to be sensual, make sure all parties are on the same page and go for it.

Dive in.

And if I could teach you nothing else about rope, it would be be yourself and be with your partner as they are themselves.

Even if you're in the midst of role playing, find that core, that core of your kink, or that aspect of that beautifully complex gemstone that is you that as they turn that face and that aspect of themselves to you, let it shine.

Let that gemstone shine.

Please.

Let that gemstone shine.

Please go check out mysticproductionspress.com and there over on the show notes, you'll get information going straight to Shibari You Can Use, as well as more Shibari You Can Use, my other books and all of the things that I've referred to today over on the show notes, whether you find that over on my RSS feed by going to my audio page, checking out with the RSS feed being passionandsoul.com.libsyn.com forward slash RSS.

Go to my websites.

Please check us out over on iTunes by typing in Lee Harrington and you'll find it.

Go over to the Erotic Awakening Network and see all the different podcasts that are part of this fantastic network.

And go and be you.

I invite you to each stay cool, have fun, be authentically you, and embrace your dreams.
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