PS007 - Rope Authenticity, Rope Bliss
On this weeks show, Lee Harrington shares about rope! Rope authenticity, rope bliss...and not letting the idiots and one true way folks get you down. Plus, stacks of funny and personal learning stories from the bondage journey of the author of "Shibari You Can Use".
Music on today’s episode is from the album Torrent by Pocket Universe
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[music intro]
Announcer:
Welcome to Erotic Awakening, an educational and entertaining exploration of all things erotic. From sacred sexuality to fetishes, power exchange relationships and leather life, BDSM to polyamory, as well as simply fun kink. Each week, we bring you a diverse offering of erotic life in its many forms. This podcast includes frank discussions of highly sexual topics. If you are offended by this type of content or prohibited by law, we recommend you stop listening right now.Lee:
Hello, fellow adventurers of sexuality and spirit, and welcome to Erotic Awakening with Lee Harrington. Now here, during our monthly show, I am delighted to be joining the folks at Erotic Awakening, such as Dan and Dawn, Barak and Sheba, and everyone else who comes and joins us from time to time.And I'm here to be - happy to be back for yet another month. I’m up to podcast number seven! Oh, it's crazy as I look at these notes and go, wow, when and how has the time flown? It's amazing. But here we are in June, and as I promised last month, this month, we're talking about rooooope! Rope, rope, rope, rope, rope! Rope bondage, rope restraint, rope art, rope passion, all kinds of art stuff that has to do with rope, all kinds of rope stuff, I should say. (laughs)
And for folks who don't know, I've been doing rope for a really long time. I grew up with fiber between my fingers. My great-grandmother on my father's side, my father's father's mother, was a woman named Kay Smith, who was part of the “Who's Who in World Art” kind of thing when it came to the craft world in the 1920s and ‘30s, and was involved back with the Dadaists and Surrealists and whatnot.
And crazy, crazy great-grandma Kay, who when I was eight years old, I remember she sat me down and said, (granny voice) “Ah, now kid, kid.” Now, gotta remember, I was a little girl at the time, right? (granny voice) “Now kid, you're not going to believe this, but I was a mover and shaker and I was a wild thing. I used to even model with Charles Guyette back in the day!”
And I'm thinking, “Okay, grandma…” This is my grandmother who had a loom that was almost six-and-a-half feet across and was just monstrous. And I would help her send things back and forth, the shuttle.
And it didn't hit me how crazy great-grandma Kay was and how wild she was until I was in Cincinnati at Fear Fest, which was a - or I think it might still even be - a kink event that was happening out in Cincinnati.
And a gentleman by the name of Robert Bienvenu was running a thing on the history of American fetish. And he's flipping through the slides, trying to place how, you know, these different people knew each other back in the teens and twenties, and how the different sexuality populations were moving around and connecting with each other. And he said, “yeah, we're trying to place how Charles Guyette knew these folks.” And I just raised my hand and said, “Um, through the surrealists.” And they said, and all the people in the room are looking at me going, “what?” And I'm like, well, according to my great-grandma Kay, who I think you just passed a photo of wearing a metal bikini…. Yeah, I thought I was a second-generational pervert. Well, turns out that I was a fourth-generation pervert.
Anyway… so Rrpe, it's been part of my life for a really, really long time. And that's what we're going to be talking about today. It's also incredibly fresh on my mind because I just went to ShibariCon. Well, kind of, sort of. I'll talk about that in a moment.
But coming up, there's a lot of really amazing events that I'm going to be throwing some rope around at. I teach on all kinds of stuff, from sexuality to spirituality, to intention to connection, and all kinds of things as well. And it seems, though, that between here and the end of September, I am on this crazy, crazy rope kick.
So if people want to do some rope with me, I'm going to be at Rope Camp, which is coming up in Maryland in August. I'm going to be at Twisted Leprechaun in Dublin, Ireland in September. I'm going to be doing a little bit of rope at Floating World in New Jersey. I'm doing a class on Sacred Rope this coming week - oh, my gosh! - at Dark Odyssey Fusion. And I'm also doing a bondage intensive up in Columbus, Ohio, coming up here in July. So lots of chances to connect with me, and with rope.
Now mind you, if you're not into connecting with me and rope at the same time, you're thinking, “okay, I'll come back next month, Lee, thank you very much, what's the July topic?”
The July topic is going to be consent and its place in kink and alternative sexual practice, in role playing and fetishism, all of that kind of stuff. And that is because Ben, who runs theconsensualproject.com just did a really fun interview with me, and it should be coming out around that time, so I want to be able to tie in with him and what he's doing.
So if you have any questions or ideas or comments about consent, about connection, about how consent has gone wrong or right in your relationship, how you continue to check in with consent, how to remove consent after the fact, all of that kind of stuff. If you have questions, throw them at me. Drop me an email at Lee, L-E-E, at passionandsoul.com with the subject line, “Ask Lee.” And if I don't have a chance to get to those questions and responses in the podcast, I will make sure to respond to them somewhere online, usually at my Ask Lee column on passionandsoul.com.
So! With that said, and with the people who aren't into rope happily moved on to their next adventure, let's talk about rope. Rope is a very interesting theory, an interesting concept. Hanging out with JD, who I interviewed on here a couple months back now - god, time flies. Anyway, when I was hanging out with JD, I was talking with him about the fact that - and asked him why does he like rope? Why does he like Rope so much?
And he held up a piece of rope and said, “Inside this piece of rope is the potential for every knot ever tied.”
Rope is what you make it. Fiber is what you make of it. We weave, we tie, we spin, we craft, we do. As human beings, we make and do stuff with fiber. Fiber has been with us since the beginning of things, since mats were woven out of palm fronds, and tops of houses were woven out of pieces of cedar.
We weave, we spell, we do.
I remember being a kid and playing around with cross-stitch thread, tying fingers together of friends, braiding hair, seeing what would happen if you grabbed somebody and pinned their wrists together and held them down and declare, “I win, I win, I win.”
Rope is an interesting thing for me.
And at the same time, I have found that compared to the person who got in the scene 15 years ago, who was so excited to have a piece of twine wrapped around my wrists and held down in place, I've gotten kind of bitter and jaded. Not intentionally. Not because I wanted to be, not because I need to be. But because, I don't know… because I've been doing a lot of it. And I think that sometimes when we get overexposed to things, we forget that freshness, and that joy, and that jubilation that comes with newness.
So in the past four years, teaching a lot of rope bondage classes for newbies, I've been doing a lot of stuff at sex, like, sex shops, like Fascinations, which I'm doing in Arizona in August. You know, a lot of these kinds of spaces were university classes. Like I was at Washington University earlier this year doing a Rope 101 class. And I've been really trying to re-embrace in the last couple of years the perspective of just being new.
Just being new. I actually shouldn't even say “just” because that devalues the experience of it. It's not a “just” kind of thing. It's embracing new. Embracing excitement, expressing and embracing that… that pure-ness. That pure essence of delight, and desire, and debauchery.
And I've been really good about it, in teaching. And I think one of the things I want to talk about today is what happens in the rest of my life too. And in the life of some of the people in my world who do a lot of rope. But when it comes to teaching, I think I've got it down pretty good, because I can look in the eyes of the people in front of me and see that spark of hope, and that spark of fear, and remember in that moment why I even started tying people up in the first place.
That it's about safety, that it's about lust, that it's about connection, and desire, and figuring out one single tie, instead of knowing four thousand ties, and just doing that same one column cuff over, and over, and over again, because at the end of the day, I don't need to know four thousand ties.
I need to not be nervous doing one.
I need to be able to look in my partner's eyes and kiss them sweetly, or punch them in the chest, and pinch them down, and pull them down into my arms!
And I can see that in my student's eyes. I can see that in that moment. And it's so important. And I'm really grateful that I got an email.
I got an email about two or three weeks ago now, from a student of mine who came to a beginner rope class that I was doing at an event called Queer Playcon up in Hartford, Connecticut.
It's crazy delightful to have this be my full-time living that I get to go around and introduce all these really amazing people to really fascinating concepts, and then they actually write me back and tell me things! It's pretty cool.
And this individual wrote me a letter on a day that I was having a really bad day. “One of those days where you wake up and go, really? I'm doing this for what? And currently balancing out over the end of a year to be just over minimum wage? What?”
Yeah…Kids, as a note, being a sex educator is not as financially glamorous as some of us would like it to be! We're working on it, though. Day at a time, right? Support a traveling artist, buy Shibari You Can Use! It's good stuff.
Anyway, so I got this great letter on one of those days where I was just wondering “why I even do it, and why don't I go back to being a database administrator?” And I needed it. So thank you, first, King B, for sending it in, and thank you, secondly, for letting me share this on the air, because I asked him if it would be okay.
And they wrote me and said, “Thank you so much for teaching the Genderqueer Rope Bondage class on Saturday afternoon. I passed on a slot in the skill share because I so adamantly wanted to be at your class, and it was worth it. Oh, my goodness, it was worth it. And here's why. I am the shittiest rope top in the world.”
Now, side note, when I heard this line, I'm like, “No, you're not!” Okay, I had to pause myself. So, back to their letter.
“I am the shittiest rope top in the world. No, really, I was until I came to your class. For ten years, I have lived under a really ridiculous assumption, and it was an assumption I didn't even know I had, which is the worst kind of assumption to have.
My assumption has been that in order to play with rope, I have to know rope techniques, rope philosophy, and write a rope dictionary, a rope sonnet, and learn Japanese, and make my own sumi ink to write the names of all the Shibari ties, and then, maybe then, after a decade of apprenticeship, I too would be allowed to learn the rope.
Lies, I tell you, all lies! In one afternoon, you showed me that I will not be disrespecting the rope if I just play with it, not knowing all the knots, or any knots, not knowing all the ties, or any ties for that matter, not knowing anything except that rope looks hot and feels good.
Maybe it's okay to queer rope, to queer rigging. Maybe my little fibro arms are just as good as my rope work if I say so. Er, just as good at rope work if I say so. This is one of those things that create a crossroads right there in front of me. It happened there in your class.
I can either keep non-consensually torturing myself into memorizing all kinds of complicated ties and feeling crappy about myself, which isn't sexy, or I could just say, ‘Oh, hi, Twisted Monk Rope I just bought for this class. You smell like furry animals, so let's wrap you around someone that I like, and torture them while you're all pretty.’
This is a major thing for me, and I'm really thankful for it. My partner loves to be bound. Wrapped up, mummified, held close, shackled, whatever. Rope is a natural interest for that creature, and thus, finally, I'm able to give my eager slut a precious gift that she desires and therefore deserves: My confident tying.
Fuck the canon!” Oh, sorry, I should bleep that. “Bleep those elitist people who don't even know what they're playing with. If Lee Harrington, who's obviously so damn classically knowledgeable and passionate about these things, isn't a rope snob, isn't laughing at my technique, and is being supportive of me, despite the fact that I can't spell my name in knots or suspend a victim on the edge of the nearest Rube Goldberg machine…then maybe I don't need to be embarrassed. Maybe I can give good rope, too.
So, you know, I just wanted to thank you for opening up a new world to me this weekend. I was so sure that I was going to be overwhelmed and intimidated by all kinds of new information, and I'd be intimidated by you, too.
There are folks of all manner of skill sets in that class, and that was a testament to how awesome that it was. I've never taken a class with you before, and this will not be my last. And I know you teach highly involved rope work, and I saw the crazy stuff that you were doing that put your partner into bliss on Friday night, but I'm not afraid or intimidated now, and I appreciate it.
Sincerely, King B and their cherished object.”
King B, thank you!
First, thank you for having the courage to come into one more rope class. I remember talking with Barbara Carrellas, who wrote a really great book called Urban Tantra, and talking with her about the work of Louise Hay.” Because Barbara also works with Louise Hay, who's been doing stuff in understanding how our thoughts become things, and understanding how our own psychological and well-being ends up affecting our physical well-being, and has been writing books since the ‘60s.
And she was saying that Louise Hay does weekend-long 12 to 14-author crazy intensives, all basically saying the same thing, that you can make your life whatever you want it to be, as long as you're willing to put the thoughts, the energy, the love behind it, then take some action afterwards. But it takes 12 to 14 authors, educators, speakers, to say basically the exact same thing before it finally clicks for you.
What other people do with rope might not click for you. It might not be perfect for you. And so the fact that they were willing to come to one more class hoping that, maybe, this time, it will click, that's huge. That's an investment in what somebody was really passionate about and trepidatious about.
I love my Genderqueer Bondage class because it's not about “how to” necessarily.
In that class, I teach people how to do a basic crotch rope, which as a note, I'll spell it out for you here. You take a piece of rope, you find a crotch. It can be your own! You take the piece of rope, and you fold it in half. I use something about 20 feet long. I fold the rope in half. I take the two loose ends of the rope, and I tuck it through the middle of the rope, creating what's called a “lark's head.”
I then tie it off with something. I run it between the legs, after checking out to see how comfortable the person is, whether it should be going around their bits, whether it should be going through their bits, and then I pull it up the rope on the other side. Done.
I can tie it off if I want to. I can splice on pretty things. I can add knots. I can tie in vibrators. Whatever. That's all it is. It's all it is. It's a piece of rope around the waist, that then goes between the legs. Bam. You're done. It's a crotch rope.
But when we hear fancy terminology like “sakurabano,” which basically means cherry tie or butt tie, when we hear these fancy terminologies or we see people do these really intricate things with, you know, “clover hitch this” and “fancy lucknot that” or “good luck double coin French harness,” whatever, they're all made up terms, folks. It's all made up.
It's all made up! It might have been made up 10 years ago. It might have been made up 3 days ago. I'm all about the Somerville Bowline right now. Look it up. S-O-M-M-E-R-V-I-L-L-E Bowline. It's a cool tie! And it was made up by a dude in Somerville, Massachusetts, who's really into stuff that involves tying people up, and he made a revision on a classic bowline that works really, really well for wrist cuffs. That's cool! But it's made up. We make up stuff all the time.
That's not to say there isn't lineages. That I can't tell when somebody has read my rope bondage book, because I can tell that when I look at your rope corset, it looks exactly like the rope corset that I tied in Shibari You Can Use, on page whatever-number-it-is.
And you know what? I got that rope corset from Joel Albert, who got that rope corset from Lou Duff. And each of us modified it. But I can tell when I see a specific type of rope corset that I'm like, oh, got it. You either got that through that lineage, or you got it through Midori's lineage, or you got it through the Two Knotty Boys lineage, or I can tell when somebody learned it from Dov because there's always that weird splice-start at the beginning that I don't really like visually, but it works for them! That's cool. But we made it up.
My genderqueer bondage class is about remembering that you can make it up. That no one else can tell you what's right, that no one else can tell you that you're “tying it wrong” because you're not. You're tying it your way. And tying it your way matters. It seriously matters. Because if you're not emotionally invested in it, you're not going to tie with passion. You're not going to tie with connection.
You're not going to tie looking in your lover's eyes, or pulling your fingers through their hair, or whatever it is that you do, no matter how sensual you are, no matter how sadistic you are, you got to do it with what's authentic to you. And if you're really turned on by damsels in distress, why in the world are you spending 30 hours going to some four-day intensive to learn Japanese aesthetic rope work if it's not going to get you turned on?! If it's not going to engage you, why are you doing it?
Now as a note, there are some ties that need to be done more safely. If I'm dangling someone in midair, I need to know how to check out that overhead point to make sure that it's not drilled in simply into drywall, and it's going to collapse with my partner falling on their head. And I saythat from life experience.
I was at an event, and I'm not going to say their name because they have since fixed part of this issue, but I was at an event on the East Coast, and I was performing with my partner Aiden. And we were doing a piece to SJ Tucker, Sooj, who is amazing. Her website is skinnywhitechick.com, and she is one of my muses. I have performed live with her. She's written songs based on the work of Catherine Valenti, who I was delighted to get to be the officiant for Cat's wedding. Who, Cat has now written work - based some rope aesthetic stuff in some of her fiction. So it's like this crazy incestuous family. I love my straggler family.
And I was performing to “Firebird” by SJ Tucker, and here Aiden comes out in red belly dance garb, and I am in something else. I think I'm in my satyr gear or something like that. And I start tying red rope around them, and red ropes get thrown up into the suspension frame, and up to these little eyebolts that are bolted into the suspension frame, spinning them around.
Now, the suspension frame was shaped like a big upside-down U. Wood, 4 inch by 4 inch giant wood beams, with big brackets on the corners, and then these long stands, so it was 8 foot by 8 foot by 8 foot - giant frame. And I’d played on something that looked like this at this exact same event a couple of times before and had no problems with it.
In fact, the first time I saw that frame, I climbed up on a ladder, or a frame that looked like it, I should say - and looked down at the top just to see how the bolts were going into the wood, because some bolts go in only an inch into the wood, and some bolts go all the way through that 4 inch by 4 inch beam, and are cross-sunk with washers and bolts on the - you know, so it's the ring, washers, bolts, all this stuff. One big thing. I looked at it and I'm like, this is really cool. I love this frame. We're good to go.
It's 15 minutes of showtime. The frame shows up that they constructed. I look at it and I go, oh, I know this frame. It's a U-shaped frame, it's got the same three bolts at the top, we're good to go.
How wrong I was.
Learn from my mistake. Look at that frame every single time. Look at how it was built, because you know what? That thing? It’s is the overhead beam? Just look for termite damage, just in case. Look to see if that same bolt that looked really good five years ago, maybe you just keep spinning it obsessively to the right when you're spinning your partner, maybe you've wiggled it loose, I've had that happen to a friend…
And here we are in the middle of the show, where it's, (sings) “I am the firebird, I am his daughter!” And we're just beating and pounding into this, and it's hot, and it's fun, and it's sexy. And I flip them upside down, and Aiden's spinning with one foot up in the air, and chest down and head down. Spin them around another 30 seconds later till they're sitting upright and are swinging back and forth. Ass down, feet down, head up, eyes locked with mine. And I give them a good push, just like I'd push them when they were upside down. I gave them a good push --
and they flew off the suspension frame and in towards the audience.
Whoops.
Inside my head, I'm freaking out. Inside my head, I am losing my shit. Inside my head, I'm like I've just broken my play partner.
What the hell? Agh!
But I'm on stage, and I have a partner who is now on the ground, eight feet away from me. So I dance on over there and no one comes rushing up, no one's worried. I see the head of medical in the back, kind of looking confused, and I'm just like - “give me a moment.” Because I'm still trying to hold some semblance of decorum, since I'm on stage being looked at by over a hundred people!
And I dance up to Aiden and I'm like, you okay? And Aiden's like, what happened? I'm like, we'll deal with that later, are you okay? And they're moving their body around as I'm kind of undulating in time with the music, pulling them back and forth on the ropes on the ground. And they're like, I think I'm okay. And I'm like, cool, I'm going to hold on to these ropes and lift you up.
And I'm like, I'm going to hold up your entire body weight. Check out your ankles. Can you move? And they're like, I think my right ankle's a little bit tender, but I think I'm good. I'm like, great. Let's dance off stage in time to the music. So we did. We danced around a little bit on stage. We danced off the stage. We danced over to the, you know, the green room area, closed the door behind us, and everybody applauded.
People were so amazed at how we managed to fly off perfectly in time with the music. “That was cool! How'd you do that?” And can I repeat that? No, don't.
I actually went up to the suspension frame after the show, and put my hand on it and thanked the frame profusely - for not breaking a minute earlier. Because if it had, Aiden would have landed on their head, instead of on their ass and ankle. And I can only imagine how damaged their body would have been if they had landed directly on their head when they were upside down.
But I look at things like that, and you know what? If I'm going to be throwing people around in the air, I need to know what I'm doing. I need to study, not necessarily from some book, not to say the two books that are out there, that actually the two books in English, plus the, you know, 20 or so books in Japanese that show different techniques on how to do suspension bondage, I'm not saying they're not valuable and amazing tools. They are.
Hey, when we were starting to quote “reinvent this stuff,” I remember being in the Northwest, the Seattle and the Northwest scene, when, you know… James and Eddie, and Kevin Sluggo, and gosh, that whole crew, Emma Hui. Yeah, when we were all at, you know, when we were at - Joel - when we were all hanging out and looking at these books that had gotten imported from Japan, trying to take them apart and put them back together.
This is long - this is back when I was on the bottom side for the most part, I was still playing around with rope as a top, but mostly on myself or on people behind closed doors. And long before I got anybody in the air. And we were all looking at these books, and trying to take them apart and put them back together. And you know what? We hurt people.
We hurt people.
Friends of mine that have had nerve damage, that, you know? Just from not quite learning it right. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. Yes, we are all unique and amazing artists. And to do a crotch rope, or a basic chest harness, or to tie up someone's hair, or take a piece of rope and wrap it around somebody's face lovingly, brutally, tenderly, with great class… or with anger, whatever the vibe is, right? Whatever turns our crank.
Do it. Go for it. Play with it. Pick up a piece of sash cord from Joann Fabric. Buy a piece of coconut husk rope with splinters still sticking out of it from Maui Kink. I don't care. Do what works for you.
But I would argue that if we're learning things like hojujutsu and - which is, you know, basically speed bondage ties used in ancient Japan, for being able to restrain prisoners quickly and efficiently. Whether we're doing that, or whether we're doing suspension rope, I would say not just learn from someone, but learn from a few someones.
Learn a few styles. Don't just take one piece of advice on the right way to do things, because it doesn't matter if somebody's been in the scene for 30 years. (goofy voice) “And I've been doing this for 30 years and therefore I should know!” You know what, maybe you've been doing it wrong for 30 years.
Maybe that person who's been doing stuff really passionately for the last two years and has been obsessively, hyperactively learning from 40 different teachers, and compiling all the information, and cross-referencing them, and actually reading a copy of Grey's Anatomy to see what actually affects the body. Maybe, yeah, maybe they've only been doing it for two years, but maybe they actually know. Maybe they actually know what's going on. And that's kind of what matters. That's kind of what matters.
So as I mentioned earlier, I was at ShibariCon recently, on a fluke. On a fluke. I am working on a project with the beautiful and amazing Mollena Williaaaaams. Oh, Mollena! Mollena, Mollena, Mollena. The perverted negress, how we love you.
And she and I are working on a book project that's going to be coming out, hopefully with Greenery Press, fingers crossed, but we'll see who it's going to be published by - for 2012, on interacting with the community. It's kind of fun, kind of a fun thing. And I decided that we were going to meet up in Chicago.
She and I were both teaching at Twisted Tryst, which is a fun event that takes place one time a year in Indiana, and one time a year up in Wisconsin. And she and I were both going to that event, so why don't we fly into Chicago a week early, and connect up, and see what we can do there. Instead of her being in San Francisco and me being in New York, let's actually meet up in Chicago.
And so part of that meeting up in Chicago was that she's like, “Oh, well, I'm teaching at ShibariCon,” and I'm like, “great, I'll come in Sunday.” I'll come in on Sunday, and I'll be able to fly in and go to the IML, the International Mr. Leather Vendor Market, with my leather brother, Scotty Thomson, and we'll have a great time. That'll be fun.
And my friend Jerry, Pendragon Chainmail, was working security at ShibariCon and said to me, “Hey, Lee, if you're going to come in for IML, come in a day or two early, and I'll totally ghost you into the con for ShibariCon.”
I'm like, “Jerry, you can't ‘ghost’ me. You can't sneak me into Shibari Con. People will notice.”
He's like, ‘no, I'll get you a security vest. It'll be fine.’
I'm like, ‘Jerry, I'm Lee Harrington. I wrote Shibari You Can Use. I edited Rope, Bondage, and Power. I've been doing rope stuff for 15 years in the scene. I teach rope bondage all over the globe. People will notice.’
And he's like, “oh, okay.”
But Graydancer then also asked me, “hey, are you going to come by the cabaret? It'd be really fun to have you at the cabaret.”
I'm like, “great, I'm not coming to ShibariCon.” I'm not a paying attendee this year. My budget's a little tight. At the end of the day, I'm sick of the politics. I'm sick of the, you know, rope-ier-than-thou stuff that seems to have erupted since this thing called “a rope community” has come out.
But I was able to - through the kindness of the beauty that is Diana, who runs ShibariCon - I was able to get a pass for a couple of days, which was pretty cool. So I came by, for the cabaret. And I came by to vend.
But I chose not to go to classes because, even though I want to keep learning stuff, I now tend to learn at smaller events. Because when I show up at big events, I don't get to be Lee. Lee, that dude who actually likes to tie up my partner, who actually likes to tie up some of my friends? I get to be Lee Harrington, the educator, and I love my career. I love being Lee Harrington, the educator, but I also want to attend classes as Lee. And I don't get to do that at ShibariCon so much.
But I've also noticed that as this thing called “rope community,” as this cult of rope - and I use the word cult on purpose. A cult, a collective of individuals who follow with profound passion a thing that they believe in, so powerfully, that they exclude others and they exclude other possibilities from their own life.
It's not wrong to be in a cult. If it fuels you that profoundly, go you.
If you're not sure if you're in a cult, or if you're just in a really organized form of religion or collective, I encourage you to look up Isaac Bonewits's piece, The ABCDEF, the Advanced Bonewits Cult Detection Evaluation Frame, written back in the ‘70s to figure out whether or not you're in a cult or not. Really cool tool.
But you know what? I am disheartened. It's not everybody. It's not everybody by a long shot. But I am disheartened by the one true wayism. I am saddened by the need to tell others that you're doing it wrong.
Just because I cannot, or choose not to, do your 37-step perfect chest harness, your takate kote, that you can tell whether I did it right - because you studied with someone in Japan, who knew something, who met someone. That's cool. That's totally cool.
It's amazing what you've done, and maybe I don't want to. Or it's amazing what you've done, and in turn what you've inspired me to do, that is mine, that is beautiful, that is profoundly perfect. For me, today, in this thing that I'm doing. Because rope is what I make of it. Rope bondage, erotic restraint, is what I make of it.
For some, it is rope without cruelty. Where it is rope done with sensuality and love and not a stitch of pain. Let me hold you. Let me wrap my arms around you and pull you in tight.
For others, it is sadistic rope. Let me take this 4-millimeter parachute cord and wrap it around your wrists until you scream. Let me put you in that joint lock and stress you to the edge of what you think you can take.
For some, it's decoration. It is erotic macrame in the truest form. Let me make you into my art. Become my chandelier. Become my decoration. Become my craft, my trade. Become a part of me. Let me weave my love around you.
For some, it's faith. Let me use this ball of tangled twine as a metaphor for untangling the tethers of my life. Let this silver rope show the silver cords of my astral body. Let me visualize this line, going from my heart chakra, out to the frame, and show the things that I am bound to in my life.
Rope can be what you make it. Rope can be a tool for connecting to yourself, for connecting to your lover. It can be a craft. It can be what you make of it. That's totally rock on.
I hope that you make rope what you need to be for you.
What was the first thing you thought about when you thought of rope? Before you got into this thing called sexuality, what was the first time you played around with a piece of fiber? Was it weaving with your great-grandmother? When she was telling you about Charles Guyette, and how bad-girl she was? Was it binding two logs together when you were in the Boy Scouts? Was it fumbling with a piece of rope because you know what, maybe you don't like rope, and maybe what you're really, really good at is Velcro handcuffs.
Velcro cuffs that - you know what, they're there for a reason. Support a local craft artisan. Support a local toy shop. Yeah, maybe it's cheaper on Amazon. If it's what you got a budget for, buy it on Amazon. But there's a reason it's cheaper on Amazon, which is that they undercut artists. They undercut tradespeople.
And when I have somebody buy a book on amazon.com, I make maybe, if I'm lucky, if I’m lucky - 10 to 50 cents depending on how it was purchased. And if I have somebody buy it directly from my website, directly from my publisher, mysticproductions.com, I make like six bucks. That's a big deal. That's a big deal when you're an author.
That includes to tradespeople. It's why I love supporting the artisans like Boss Bondage, like Maui Kink, like Twisted Monk, like Aja Ropes, like Venus Ropes, like any of these amazing craftspeople who are going out and doing things and making things. Because you know what? They're working hard. And I'd like to support people within my own tribe. That's cool.
Go out, buy things, make things, have fun with things. Go to Homo Depot, and buy a cheap spool of white rope, and have fun with it. But if you're not called to it, buy a pair of leather cuffs. Try pinning your lover's hands overhead.
Try doing rope that isn't restrictive. Maybe it's that they're not into bondage, but they're into erotic decoration… that happens to match their lingerie. That's hot too. But make it yours.
Make it yours.
Yum, yum, yum.
So, as I mentioned before we began, this was June. And join me in July, when we're going to be talking about consent, and a whole bunch of different things around the notion and concept of consent. And if you want to think about consent ahead of time, go check out Ben over at theconsensualproject.com. And if you have questions, drop me an email over at Lee, L-E-E, at passionandsoul.com.
Or you can find me through all kinds of other ways. If you go to passionandsoul.com, scroll all the way to the bottom and look up the area called Stalking Made Easy. You can find me on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, DeviantArt, all of that kind of stuff.
Or at the top of that webpage at passionandsoul.com, find my books. If you want to learn how to do rope bondage, start there with the Author section, where I've got Shibari You Can Use, or The Whys of Rope Bondage, the anthology of Rope, Bondage, And Power.
Or on the left-hand side of the website, you'll see a section called “Shopping for a Passionate Life.” And I've got a huge thing - whether you buy it from me or not, I could care less, but I've got a huge rope bondage resource section there. So click on the green shopping area and go there to the rope bondage resources, and you'll find about 30 or 40 different books on rope bondage, and rope art, and rope tying, and knot tying. Check it out.
For folks who want to come and learn with me in person, I'm going to be, this coming week at Dark Odyssey Fusion - and registration I think should still be open the day this podcast goes live, and maybe on that day after, but after that it's going to be closing up. 700-person event in Northern Maryland, where I'm going to be teaching Sacred Rope and Human Animal Play, leading three rituals, and also leading people on a hike. So I'm going to be crazy busy that weekend, it will be fun - for that full week, actually.
Fourth of July weekend, I am in Houston, Texas, teaching Erotic Macrame, as well as Erotically Kinky, in Houston, followed by being in Austin, where I'm teaching Sacred Kink.
Join me in Columbus, Ohio, July 22nd through 24th, where I'm doing two different rope bondage intensives with Adventures In Sexuality.
Last weekend of July, join me at The Floating World in Edison, New Jersey.
And of course, the first full weekend of August will be the debut of Rope Camp.
200 acres of land, and amazing, beautiful people, nothing but rope for four days straight, beautiful property, come join us.
And for people who are interested in a more intimate experience, I am going to be doing my Dominance and submission intensive, and we've got a handful of tickets left for both of them, called Delving Into Power, and you can find that there on my website. I'm doing Delving Into Power in Massachusetts in August, and Toronto in September, and it's limited to 16 attendees.
So please check those out, and I really look forward to seeing all of you again, whether it's on my website, looking at my blogs, or listening to other things here on Erotic Awakening. So, thank you so much, fellow adventurers of sexuality and spirit for joining me.
This has been Erotic Awakening with Lee Harrington, and until next time, stay cool, have fun, be authentically you, and don't do anything I wouldn't do, which luckily isn't very much.
Have a fantastic journey.
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