I've been listening lately to a singer that has returned to country music after a long stint in the goth/metal realm. He's put together a pretty stellar record, in my opinion (and I'm born and raised red state country). But a lot of people are giving him flack because they aren't quite sure how to "market" or characterize him. I think they are also worried that he's in-authentic. After all, it's a big shift.
I think part of the problem is that too often the clothes make the man. He used to wear black things with zippers and frankenstein boots. Now he's wearing cowboy boots and a black hat with a skull and crossbones. He argues he's always been this way, this mix of elements. But people in this day and age get worried if you change. You can't grow or shift or experiment. If you do, how do we know you're genuine? If, like Madonna, you change your look every few years, how do we know you're not just into "image making" as opposed to being a normal, growing artist who expresses themselves in a vast and myriad of ways?
I think somewhere along the line the collective we decided it was much safer to never change. It made us feel like there was some sense of solidity in our world, some safety that we've never really had but desperately want.
The other part of the problem is that people have issues trying to believe that humans can be many different constituent parts, and those don't have to necessarily be logical sense in their parings. I know a little about that, as two of my parings are zen and BDSM. I also like both the country and the goth of the singer I listen to (along with any number of other musical categories one might find odd in one package).
I have a young male friend who is struggling in resolving his feelings regarding the fact that he is deeply spiritual and terribly kinky. He doesn't know how a good man can be sexual first off. He has studied the spiritual texts and found not much which values sex at all (many of the histories are written by monks, and therefore discussion of the spirit is often couched in monastic terms as opposed to those of a layperson). There's not much guidance on how to live "rightly" and be a hot-blooded male where the brain fires off volleys of sexual hormones faster than the speed of light.
On top of that, he has desires that aren't necessarily mainstream. He likes it when girls cry when he's fucking them (not that this is the only way he gets off, but he does like it. REALLY like it). He also has a predilection for (giving) hard anal fucks and a number of other things he's discovering that are not acceptable in the vanilla cannon of sex.
I try to ask him, to loosely paraphrase Pirates, "Can you accept that you are a good man and a pirate?"
Many in the religious realm might tell him he needs to purge those evil desires. I know from experience that this is how monsters get made, or at the very least, deeply unhappy people who one day leave their sweet wives and 2.5 kids and run off with stripper twins (and people wonder what happened to this "normal" man).
Part of being self aware is figuring out what feels healthy and fulfilling for you and going with that. You can also make sure that what you are into finds a healthy outlet for both you and for those you play with or fuck. A good man is not a rapist, but perhaps a good man can enjoy some rape play with a mentally healthy woman who enjoys that sort of thing (I will probably post later what I think the difference is between healthy practitioners of kink and those who aren't so much).
I may just be trying to justify my position, but I think that much of life is asking us to use our own minds to decide what we are in an authentic way and practice it, even if that means we do things that puzzle or make others nervous. There may have been a reason that the Buddha didn't specify what "right" meant when he set out the 8-fold path.
I know I haven't been able to feel "right" about being half a person. I've done more things which I would consider unethical because of backlash from trying to stuff down my feelings and banish my "problematic" desires. That balanced self is far, far away when we are trying to be only one half of the scale.
I also realize that we are supposed to be working toward not desiring too much, which is the not going overboard on any of our desires. Some might consider BDSM a bit overboard. One also might consider it a bit unbalanced to go on a zen retreat. All I know, and you'll have to take my word that this is true for me, is that when I am going too far in any direction, my head gets weird. I don't feel healthy. And I know I need to correct.
This means that sometimes I need to get laid to get back in balance and sometimes I need to pray more. Just how it is, if I'm being honest.
At any rate, I am hopeful that people can find a way to allow themselves to experience the dichotomies that comprise them and to be ok with who they are.
I appreciate a good goth country boy upon occasion, and always need a good man and a pirate.
Cause I'm just that kinda girl;)
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