The Pornography Of Self-Perpetuation

"Mes pensées ce sont mes catins." [My thoughts are my whores.]
- Diderot, Neveu de Rameau

All the Google searches for "legs wide open" and "ass wide open" that guide people to this site have led me to ask if there isn't a link between pornography and what I do here. Implicit in the title "Head Wide Open" is the idea of an exhibitionism of the mind, a naked revelation of what is normally kept hidden by shame and decorum. Like a porn star, I try to be free of inhibitions in what I write. Like a porn star, I do not to shy away from the animal side of man in what I write. That may be vulgar and uncomfortable to some, but to slightly alter Larry Flynt: if the human mind's obscene, complain to the manufacturer, not me. Of course I am unlike a porn star in that I don't inspire fits of masturbation and don't get paid for my sometimes painful, sometimes pleasurable performances. Every analogy has its limits: but within those limits sometimes a universal can be found, even if it doesn't necessarily seem flattering.

I am a crypto-exhibitionist. The beautiful ones with their refined bodies, even through artful concealment, exhibit themselves to the world. Though it may not be so beautiful or refined, and though my concealment may not be so artful, I use this outlet to exhibit my mind to the world. For what purpose? The same as any human activity, sexuality included: perpetuation and expansion of self. Franz Kafka asked Max Brod, the administrator of his estate, to burn all his unpublished papers upon his death. This is an act of nihilism, the literary equivalent to killing your children: and my inability to do such a thing is why I am not a nihilist. As much as I grouse and despair in some of what I write, implicit in the act of writing is the idea of redemption through words: that subjective meaning can be fashioned out of objective meaninglessness. The man who kills himself is not necessarily a nihilist, for his suicide may be a means of perpetuating his memory; but the man who destroys his life's output wishes to undo his existence, to commit self-abortion.

The principle of life is self-perpetuation. At its most fundamental this means making children, but it can also include making one's body or mind known to an audience, even a future or imaginary audience, through art, words, deeds and yes, mass arousal. Whatever we believe makes us most vital we wish to impress upon the world. This principle of life unites as seemingly disparate roles as the writer and the sexual exhibitionist, both of whom are driven by the all-too human need to open themselves up. We fear obscurity because obscurity leaves no memories or works to outlive our brief presence in the world. The majority seek their self-perpetuation through children, or through subsuming themselves into an ideal: a cause, a nation, a collective self. This is the respectable means of perpetuation: to deviate is to be accused of egoism, obscenity and even pornography. But as a race of deviants from nature, perhaps mankind should learn to stop worrying and love its phallic monuments to itself.