Author: Shrimp Teeth
Exploring queerness, polyamory, and sexuality.
Creativity, Art and Eroticism
There’s a key link between creativity and eroticism: wanting to hold the unobtainable.
The act of painting/creating or having sex are both attempts to capture and possess the elusive quality of desire.
Since it’s never fully possible, we’re left with a constant appetite to chase.
Having and wanting are in opposition to each other. Most of us believe that we’re consistent in what we desire and what we acquire, but that’s usually far from the truth.
Often, the mere act of possessing dampens the allure that we initially sought out.
Basically, we expect the thing we cannot have to remain as appealing to us once we own it, failing to realize that wanting increases perceived value.
That’s why many people aren’t as happy as they thought they’d be after making a purchase.
Desire itself holds actual value. Now both creativity and eroticism are exercises in wanting.
Art requires you to understand what you desire, in order to create work that feels authentic; you seek out people and stimulation that are erotic and elusive to you.
The intangibility of desire is key.
The reason artists create a ton of work about a specific topic is partly because it’s not possible to fully capture the essence of what they seek to represent.
You can paint a million flowers or feelings, but you’re still only capturing a fragment of the possible depictions.
Desire drives a lot of creative expressions. The desire to externalize internal experiences, to connect with others, to capture what catches your eye, or merely the desire to engage in pleasurable activities, etc.
What we long for is a reflection of who we are as artists.
Eroticism is similar.
Sex offers us the possibility of acting on desire, but the crux of the issue remains, having isn’t the same as wanting.
You can never fully act on the spectrum of your wants. But we continue to seek the satisfaction of having what we truly desire.
What’s titillating about erotic work is that it touches on the metaphorical aspects of desire that sex simply doesn’t. Art does the same for everyday life.
What you see in both is the depiction of reality layered with the grandiose experience of wanting.
Unfortunately, when we seek (and are able) to possess everything we desire, we remove the alluring power that initially drew us.
Yearning, crushing, wanting, and without resolution sparks creative and erotic energy. If we tame our desires through constant fulfilment, we’re empty.
Not being able to have what we want is creative & erotic fuel.
When I say that consumerism kills our desire and our creative spark, this is what I mean.
Constant instant gratification numbs us to the potential of yearning for something that’s always slightly out of our reach.
Get more from Sam by following the Shrimp Teeth Instagram.
Sam is a sex educator and artist who explores queerness, polyamory, and sexuality through their work. She’s passionate about exploring ways to broaden relationship structures to foster more connections between people. They use art and illustration as part of their education process.
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