Month in Review: November

November started with the release of Red Unseen, a 3 song EP recorded one evening. 

The month continued with an abundance of collage work. I've slowly adding them to my Gallery page and DeviantArt and anything that moves to YouTube and Giphy, while adding older works too. 

My erotic works had to take a backseat this month. I've spent almost the whole month dealing with a serious health issue. My body needed time to heal and the medication made me feel extremely fatigued and dizzy. I expect to be feeling better soon. Filming new works pretty much came to a halt, but it gave me a chance to finally slow down and get the Surrealist Erotica and The Blue Period films up on Vimeo. I plan on adding more to the Surrealist series, but they take longer to produce. I think my best works are the themed videos. I'm open to suggestions for a secondary theme to work on while I slowly chip away at the Surrealist videos. 

I just want to say that my erotic works are meant to be arousing, but they are also meant to invoke something deeper. Sometimes my energy is weaker, and I think when that happens, it shows. When my energy is stronger, it feels sexual and sacred at once and that's the point. Sex is the ultimate act of creation, the highest and lowest form of art. 

Surrealist Erotica // from Joan Pope on Vimeo.

Ritual invocations of Surrealist artists and literary figures:

Erotique Voilée // inspired by Man Ray
Dream of Venus // inspired by Salvador Dali
The Doll // inspired by Hans Bellmer
Imagine a Bullfight for You Alone // inspired by Laure
The Story of Death and Sensuality // inspired by Georges Bataille

...more to come...

The Blue Period from Joan Pope on Vimeo.

Erotica in Blue Light: a 5-part series

The month closes out with the release of my latest full length album Death is Coming. The album is a companion to my poetry book published earlier this year.

Death is Coming

By Joan Pope

Book Preview

The album features collaborations with a variety of artists that I really enjoyed working with. The day it was released was one of the most traumatic days of my life. This album was supposed to be released on tape, but it couldn't wait. I needed it to be out there, to be shared. The book and the album are a good starting place to start understanding the philosophy behind SexDeathRebirth. So much of my philosophy is communicated through the universal language of symbols. Here, some of it is translated into words, into sounds. Sometimes people ask what has inspired my words.... my main inspirations are comparative myths and religions, gnosticism, alchemy, tantra, catholic saints, Georges Bataille, Laure, Carl Jung, sex, marriage, birth, death... Musically, I draw upon the punk and trip hop influences of my youth, and my obsession with Ravel. It doesn't sound like a punk record, or a trip hop record, or a classical record but all those elements are there. Sometimes it sounds soft and gentle, sometimes the sounds are so piercing they hurt. A union of opposites. 

Lifting of the Veil

I was recently pregnant then had a miscarriage. For a brief time, I was the happiest I ever was. I knew the exact moment of conception. Its difficult to capture in words because it was a moment where we were in touch with something bigger than both of us. My husband and I had a moment of what I can only describe as “clear sight.” It was the way I always felt a child should be brought into this world.

Dead Mother by Egon Schiele 

The changes in my body were happening right away but once I had confirmation of pregnancy my heart and mind expanded. I felt that I was being initiated into life itself, beginning to understand the great power of creating new life. As a female philosopher, I always knew I had to create new life to fully understand life. Sex-Death-Rebirth is not a pleasure cult, its a fertility cult, and a continuation of all the fertility cults that came before. Creating new life is the highest expression of our humanity and the greatest power of the female body. It is the most physical act and the most spiritual. Creating new life, is everything. And that’s not to say that those who are not physically able to create new life are lesser. If one cannot give birth to a new body, they must give birth to a new idea, to art. Human beings are creative. 

I often feel that my art is misunderstood. I use eroticism and intend for my artistic creations to be arousing, but carnal delights have always been secondary. Of course I want sex to be pleasurable, but I can pleasure myself. Sex, for me, has always been about intimacy and creating a deep connection with another person. I’m not an orgasm seeker, I’m seeking to understand life itself through the sexual act with a man. My desire was always for enveloping everything about my partners- their filthiest desires, their soul’s highest aspirations, their physical beauty, their physical flaws, their emotional intelligence, their vulnerabilities, their strengths, their intellect, their creativity. I want everything about a man, not just his cock. I have always sought to understand The Masculine and to teach men about The Feminine. I want knowledge pertaining to the meaning of life itself. That is the duty of a philosopher. 

When I channel the goddesses, I do so with the purpose of teaching about the different aspects of The Feminine. Women are full of carnal delights and have the power to spark the erotic imagination, but women also possess the amazing power of birthing new life. The same body can do both. I want to experience my Femininity to the fullest. I want to experience everything that is erotic about me and I also want the experience to be like the gods. In modern times it seems we have forgotten where sex really leads. When I say that sex is a path to the divine, look to the ancient traditions; humankind was their greatest creation. In the sex act, we channel the power of the gods.

As painful as this experience has been, I can’t fight nature. The natural world is my god and I accept that this was what nature intended. I feel completely different about my body. I still learned something about life and nature through this experience. I know why I’m here.