Reclaiming the erotic (as feeling alive)

These are notes for a podcast that has influenced my recent thinking and ways of being in my body in this life. She has helped me to reclaim the word erotic as something I desire in everyday life, not just in private, hidden spaces.

Below are my notes for this podcast.

Podcast here.

People & works mentions during the podcast

Audrey Lorde

Here is Audre Lorde’s essay on the uses of the erotic.

The first 1/3 of the podcast above contains a great recording/video of Audre Lorde talking in public.

Adrienne Marie Brown

I am obsessed with how love and joy are the actual tools we need to move against the culture of fear and scarcity. We experts at deconstruction and tearing systems and each other apart, but if what we pay attention to grows, how can we be more mindful about growing our capacity for love?

~ Adrienne Marie Brown

bell hooks

Love makes us feel more alive. Living in a state of lovelessness, we feel we might as well be dead. Everything within us is silent. We are unmoved...

Our cultural obsession with death consumes energy that could be given to the art of loving.

about this podcast(er)

Ayandastood is a podcaster who has blown and illuminated my mind several times. Below are some notes I took during the beginning of the podcast above:

• Ayandastood introduces powerful truths that once we feel alive and become aware of that feeling, we want to bring it into our life and can’t tolerate deadening ways of living anymore (citing). Eroticism is not merely sexual.

• yes, we may feel alive/erotic energy during sex, but we can feel eroticness all around us, not just during sex. What if you allowed yourself the fullness of your aliveness?

• The people that love you should make you feel alive. But what if they make you feel dead inside?