stella40
Posts: 417
Joined: 1/11/2006
From: London, UK
Status: offline
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This is my central analogy - BDSM = theatre. After years following the latter bas a vocation, the former as a lifestyle and both as a passion has caused me to draw numerous parallels. Both bring me an immense amount of personal satisfaction and allow me to share this love and satisfaction and also find for others their personal fulfilment and satisfaction.
We all know the term painslut. As a submissive I am a smile-slut and an appreciation slut. Why am I in theatre? I will spend weeks in isolation writing plays, countless days researching, months in rehearsal with actors and make no end of sacrifices and all for the last words an actor utters on stage, the final curtain and the round of applause from the audience. But this is not just personal but shared satisfaction. The actors are satisfied, the audience, and it is this ritual of shared and mutual satisfaction which keeps me in theatre.
Away from the stage I find I can only have this very same experience in BDSM, with a Domme or with a group of people. I will do chores,clean a house, cook a dinner, massage feet, allow myself to be tied up,humiliated, whipped, caned, pissed on, whatever - all for the end of a scene or the end of a day and that smile of satisfaction and appreciation which appears on a Domme's face. I crave her pleasure and satisfaction just as much as she does, sometimes maybe even more, I love to fulfil her needs, to know and share her experiences, dreams, desires. It doesn't need to be play. It can be sitting over coffee just listening to her speak about herself, her life, it could be making her her favourite supper. This is me. How I am hardwired. My own satisfaction and fulfilment is relative to her satisfaction and fulfilment - the best times are always those times of mutual, shared fulfilment and satisfaction.
I guess I am no different from most other people in the BDSM community. I too differentiate between 'vanilla' and 'BDSM'. Vanilla is real life, it is work, it is commitments, it is bills, and everything else. And I guess like everyone else here what attracts me to BDSM is the role I can play to express myself to explore ways of expressing myself and what lies inside my soul and not only to find that immense sense of personal satisfaction and fulfilment but to share this experience with someone trusted, close to me, who is experiencing the very same thing.
And just like the actor, each and every one of us are here to share our experiences, to learn, to find new experiences and new relationships, through which we can develop our role, work on ourselves, open up and express what we truly need and desire. We know that how we play our role is crucial to the scene, to the relationship, to the arrangement, and essential to not only our own personal fulfilment and satisfaction but that of the other person we choose to interact with.
But it is not drama or acting school which teaches the actor, but the stage, the director, the theatre and the audience. Each and every role, each and every part in a play, each and every rehearsal and each and every performance brings satisfaction because it brings development, it brings learning and adds experience. And so it is in BDSM, it is a room, any room, a fetish club, a party, the community, the people we meet and interact with, each and every activity, every scene, it all brings satisfaction through the acquisition of new experiences, through development, through interaction and the achievement of common goals, desires, dreams and ambitions.
For those who are new to BDSM, new to the scene and new to the community I recommend them to read a book. It is a paperback book about theatre, it was written by Peter Brook, who is an authority on theatre, and I ask whoever is reading it to draw analogies between what is written in the book about theatre and what they encounter in BDSM. The title of the book is 'The Empty Space'. The basic thesis of the book is that theatre is defined by an empty space, an actor performing an idea, and an audience watching this performance. He classifies all theatre into four main categories - Holy Theatre, Deadly (or Dead) Theatre, Rough Theatre and Immediate Theatre.
I feel a very close analogy can be drawn from this. What is BDSM? Is it not an empty space in which a Dominant and a submissive interacts? After some thought (beware - thinking can be dangerous - especially when it's me) I feel that I can classify BDSM in exactly the same categories.
Now these are not hard and fast categories. They may exist side by side, they may be separate, or they may be intermingled in the same relationship.
HOLY BDSM
I suppose initial thoughts would immediately conjure up images of Gorean BDSM with all the lifestyle,the values, the rituals, etc. But I feel Holy BDSM is much more, it is that experience which transcends the physical, the material, and which becomes spiritual, ethereal, esoteric and intangible. It is way beyond sensual, not sexual, it is those moments of subspace, of domspace. It is the touching and enhancement of our very soul, the additional yet subliminal qualities brought into our lives, our personas, our natures. It is what draws us to a profile, to a person, that inner voice which tells us we need to go through a certain experience or seek a particular feeling or emotion. It is that invisible quality which unites us in the community but also makes us different from everyone else.
DEADLY (or DEAD) BDSM
I guess we have all been there. This is when it doesn't work out, either through some tangible, concrete reason, a mistake, or something we cannot identify or define. It is the same experience as we had before, which brought satisfaction, but which no longer brings quite the same satisfaction or experience. However we return to it, either through habit or some vain hope that this time it might be different. This is the fetish club, the party, the 'scene', where people come together, they get dressed up, they bring out the equipment, and they play. But they play for play's sake, they can no longer explain why they are playing the way they're playing, or what it brings them, but they have no new ideas, no inspiration, and thus the satisfaction is compromised. This is the 'drop', the emptiness, the inertia, the aching, the boredom and the cynicism. I guess almost all of us know Dead BDSM. 'Oh yeah,' we say, 'Been there, done that, got the T-shirt'.
ROUGH BDSM
This is not Dead BDSM, this is very much alive. This is the very early stages of a new experience or new relationship in BDSM. We are learning to walk, but we want to run, we want to sprint, it's something inside us which tells us we want everything, we want it all, and we want it now. It is 'that' moment, the inner tension and 'butterflies' concealed within the Dominant meeting a submissive at play for the first time, it is the inner tension and anticipation of the submissive when starting to play with a new Dominant. It is not knowing what is going to happen next, it is the thrill, the danger, the excitement, that element inside us which tells us to go forward and live the moment. It is the mistakes, the trial and error, the goofs, the gaffs, the times when some invisible influence causes something to happen and we react differently or burst out laughing. It is a space at the very far edge of our BDSM experience which provokes our thinking and makes us curious as to what lies beyond.
IMMEDIATE BDSM
This is when it all works out. This is trust, this is confidence, harmony, mutual acceptance and respect. This is where the Dominant knows eye contact is more efficient than spoken command, and where the submissive knows and is able to second guess the Dominant. This is the scientific aspect of BDSM, where the theory and the knowledge has become habit and instinct, and the experienced Dominant and experienced submissive are together on the same page, reading the same script and achieving the same goal or objective. This is being able to take a whip as a Dominant and deliver a stroke with the right amount of force in the right place to leave the anticipated mark and have the anticipated effect. But this is also style, your style, as a Dominant or submissive, a style you have developed and created and which works for you. Immediate BDSM is what draws you to a scene or an experience every time. It's what causes you to write a profile, it influences what you put in a profile, when you change your profile, how you respond to replies, and how you approach each and every new experience.
This is something I've drawn from my experiences and from my observations. I feel they all fit into the above categories.
Does anyone feel the same? Does anyone have any alternative classifications?
_____________________________
I try to take one day at a time, but several days come and attack me at once. (Jennifer Unlimited)
If you can't be a good example then you'll just have to be a horrible warning.
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