There's also an interesting comparison of sexual satiation with multiple partners (Nymphomaniac Vol.1), to the musical phenomenon of polyphony, where the polyphonic chords in a Bach excerpt are paralleled with three of Joe's more sentimentally recalled lovers.
Firstly, my grindr experiences have definitely fallen into the former category. In fact, most of the sex I have is to kill boredom, segueing naturally from menial chat which honestly holds the same interest as a facebook check, when I don't have anything better to search or to commit my time to. It's a kind of 'why not?' with apathetic underpinnings, even an awareness of said-apathy and the dim hope that this one, maybe this one will break on through. But nothing in service of the ego can penetrate ennui. That's what makes the films of Sofia Coppola so utterly dishonest.
It's the same as smoking, or any activity that's become habitual rather than a sincere commitment of ones time and energy with a specifically envisioned arrival point. Any such 'thing' becomes a pointless sublimation of life, that energy is dissipated for a static image rather than harnessed for a dynamic with the truer, changing Self-image.
Grindr (and social media generally) definitely utilises self-image, but the parameters of self-expression are even more constricting there than amidst the varying etiquettes of real interactions. I'm suggesting the nuances of the physical cannot be perfectly emulated. Ever.
To be a 'saleable' thumbnail with a winning profile is key. For the successful grindr user a brand is cultivated, by necessity a static image that panders to the genre ie what is generically considered 'hot'. This is the beginning of every hookup, not the chat itself but the projection of a curated self-image, in the framing of which is a latent request. To whom? To the Internet, the Universe, the grindr community. A request of what? For specific sexual partners and experiences, not boldly stated but inherently, according to the homeopathic mandates of 'like begetting like'. The more accurately the Self is advertised, the more chance a sequence of truly gratifying hookups will ensue (this belief in a world responding continuously to the observer, for myself extends beyond the rhythms of grindr).
Also, what is the value of self expression? Am I talking artistic? Would an orgasm be the ultimate form of self expression? What is the social value of what's being expressed?
Is that a scientifically regressive notion? The idea of sexual energy, or the substantive circuitry of desire and the endless transferrals-ebbs-amplifications of couplings (from the build-up of attraction to coitus itself), culminating in the orgasm like an infrared lotus; this concept flirts with New Age sensibilities, giving materiality to the subjectivities of sex.
Okay, so what is sexual energy? Is arousal quantifiable or unequivocally relative? Free association or embedded reproductive edicts?
And what is the social value of an orgasm?
John Cameron Mitchell's Short Bus is a so-so movie about a post-9/11 New York, focusing on the titular anything-goes type sex-venue and it's patrons. At one point the flamboyant hostess is describing sex as a 'magical circuit board' by which everyone is connected, and in their own sex lives expressing the same numinous synergy according to the cognitive/experiential epithets of the individual.
I like this image. It socialises sex (as the film intends), and gives sex precedence over the monogamous relationship, which one could argue epitomises the anti-social by establishing an exclusive locus of sexual and contractual rights between two people, away from 'the commons'.
The social value of an orgasm by the circuit-board model would be the endless transmission of sexual energy (or Life Force). Monogamy, defended no matter what internal impoverishment might ensue, would by this model be hoarding energy outside collective use and thereby stunting it. Empirically preposterous but beautiful (not so preposterous if you substitute energy for assets under the contract of marriage).
This model parallels the redistribution of cultural content as decentralised by the Internet (commercial whiplashes be damned), a quasi-spiritual mapping of the flow of Chi, as well as showing crude infrastructures of a socialist society (there's no trickle-down on the circuit board).
What really is the difference between all of these things, and sex?
What I'm doing is hypostasising sex as anything with vested human interest, sex being the embodied realisation of human interest. From desire to orgasm, from ideal to manifest destiny, the Realised is the Orgasmic.
Reality = Orgasm.
The remotest inkling of an ideal or desire is the human subject (that's us) deciding affirmatively to be here in Life as anchored by a specific form (as yet imaginary), which the subject wishes to possess or embody (I favour embodiment, Things are clutter).
The form itself is almost arbitrary. What matters is the tension of desire rather than its gratification, as tension brings 'process' into focus, aka Life.
Grindr and medias like it diminish this process, littering the path with minor gratifications which are either harmful if they usurp the aim, or helpful if a wider conceit is remembered under which each hookup is a burning shrine. Is that a Romantic notion, to live under a bannered Idea?
I don't think so. Rather, I think it's the supreme rule of living a life of embodiment, whereby the self-image is consciously aligned as much as possible with an Essential Truth, that envied state of Jungian lucidity. I don't think there's any clear manual in existence on how to attain this Truth, but mindfulness and a certain earnest are generally advised (the importance of Being, cough).
To make a return, how is having sex from boredom compatible with ideas of sublime-process and affirmation?
The depressed sister Justine in Lars Von Trier's Melancholia does this. Profoundly dissatisfied with the monotony of her own wedding day, Justine lets a stranger follow her alone to a golf green, where she turns and fucks him in flippant disregard for the propriety of the ritual (mostly trivia) surrounding her, of such importance to Justine's 'well' sister Claire. There's a suggested sublimation of intuited untruth in ones surroundings, with the sex-urge harnessed to explode these perceived extrications, returning the subject to some sort of Natural State.
Is sex, by way of being closer to 'animal' nature, a link to biological truths which society has thus far failed to domesticate or total? Does the sex urge, springing from boredom or aggression, only partially stand for psychological avoidance, and in another part tell of thwarted self-expression, resorted to when no other idiom suffices?
Justine's forfeit of her own wedding day is a rejection of the symbolic order. She strips her reality back.
Alienated by the hack-affluent wedding reception, and by proxy institutions sustaining a way of life such as marriage/money/reproduction (for all of which sister Claire is a passive advocate), sex (with a complete stranger) reinstates Justine as a subject.
Sometimes all you need is a good fuck, and the recipient of your fuck in that instant is a non issue.
I guess grindr can't be reproached as a provider of fucks. And what else is it trying to be?
Necessary to add, the repeated film references come down to the subjectivities of sex being fed by the iconic. Personally, my sex is still being conceptualised by cinema, and a steady diet of porn. Also advertising; some of my earliest stirrings were over male underwear spreads, a carefully assembled consumer lure for which we've Calvin Klein to thank (it also ingeniously skates a straight/gay crossover market with equal appeal to women, and then there's the celebrity device e.g. David Beckham, that Jonas brother, or even Justin Bieber).
With sex being so textured and plural, so tied to the shape and limits of selfhood, not just biological function but a whole imaginary with assured market interest; yes, with sex being all that (and who knows what else) we should be able to take our time and sexualise ourselves however we please, building with each fuck to bigger and better orgasms, to cement our successively more refined ideals/desires.
However we identify should be comprised of whatever we want, from wherever we see fit to lift it. The psyche doesn't patent.
Let every Orgasm be a Divine Statement, and Amen.
