libertine(from Latin libertinus"newly freed slave", "freedman"...

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Libertines not always so free

Although having lived through a founding love triolism and a few other passions actively pursued at the same time, I am not a libertine. Why am I not a libertine? Because, very quickly, relationships with others invade me mentally and my work is disturbed by it.

This is paradoxical since the libertine spirit and practice must, I imagine, be able to respond to this need for solitude enamelled with encounters. But it is not so simple in reality since I am not capable of not being interested in the people with whom I have sexual relations. What kind of interest? Affective, certainly; erotic, frequently; intellectual, always; poetic absolutely and there is my business, since it is the poetic quality of the relationships that poisons or enriches my imagination. It is therefore no small matter to constantly widen the field of one's relationships while preserving, not one's independence, because only money seems to me to really give some, and I don't know how to be rich, but at least a recurrent space that is large enough to think alone.

Not that I reject the exchange (I'm talking broadly here, beyond sexualities), but it must in my case always be followed by a period of time long enough to digest the relationship in question, whatever its nature. I work in the same way, both with groups and individuals. So I am perpetually over-nourished. A reptilian being of my nature must therefore monitor his emotional and psychic overweight by means of adequate diets. No asceticism is recommended in my case, but an alternation and a vital nutritional diversity. I digest like a boa but eat like a bear, in an omnivorous way, i.e. I can ingest just about anything and everything. However, not all foods eat the same way and have a very different caloric and nutritive value depending on the case.

Loyalty is therefore not expressed for me on a daily basis, but on a long-term basis interspersed with breaks of varying lengths. It is multiplied through as many links as I have interests. This is called a small world of one's own or a social environment, depending on whether one favours a creative elaboration or a consumption of exchange in terms of finality.

I had the opportunity, through the festival... Erosphere in which I was invited as a speaker, to briefly rub shoulders with some libertines claimed as such or simply interested in the subject.

There were two training courses to which I had given, since they had to be named, a common title under the title "Outrance of desire". What interested me in the circumstance was to propose as a postulate that it had occurred in recent years (no doubt concomitant with the development of the Internet), a shift from libertine to the "general public" sphere. Moreover, I do not believe that this is in itself a propagation of libertine practices that have certainly existed since religious laws built the essential foundations of our societies (morals, education, sacralization of the family). I think moreover that the mediatization of sex, the democratization of objects (toys), images, testimonies and speeches on the practices of men and women, has propelled this aspect of human desire as a state of affairs to the forefront. Of course, in order for this to work, there had to be a population and a public that was sensitive, sensitized, even expert in libertine practices or, more simply, in "free love" as it was more readily said in the 60/70s and, in fact, since the anarchist movements of the end of the 19th century, in the 1960s and 70s.^th century.

This simple postulate, easily observable in the media and in commerce, polluting the walls and devouring the shop windows of city life, naturally presupposed that there was a before this thriving exhibition and a after. My point was in at the front while addressing an audience of thereafter and was bounded upstream by the immense coral reef that seems to be the work of Sade, which I am now gradually discovering in its entirety.

The device was simple as I like to practice it in certain workshops on other themes: a vast scenic space offered in this case by the great hall of Micadanses which hosted the festival, some music whose choice was mine, a panel of some texts by the said Marquis, a certain number of images on paper and without apparent relationship except by the use of the body present in all the human representations, a slightly mobile lighting, colored but subdued and 4 microphones on stands at disposal, intended to collect the words of voluntary participants according to the flow of their inspiration. Apart from a brief introduction, the instructions and indications had to be reduced to a minimum and the watchword would be: to improvise collectively in total immersion during the 3 hours we were given, with no other limits to the acts than the non-consensual violence, the authenticity of the desires and the perimeter enlarged to the widest possible extent, of the imaginations in presence. The materials at our disposal, in addition to sound, space, text and light, were the bodies, in their most carnal light, touch, relationship, commentary and address by word and look. In other words, self in front of others in the context of a third party, me on this occasion. Without doubt the simplest, if not the most original staging that theatre can offer. For it is indeed within the framework of the stage that I was situated, being invited here for my competences in the matter, associated with my interest for the sexual body and its pornographic representations, but especially for the speech and the quality of time which results from it. Which brain for which sexuality? What humanity for what relationships?

The first workshop was, in my opinion and that of a number of participants who testified to it, a great success. I was the first to be surprised, not expecting to see my proposal, from the outset, so well understood and experienced by a large number of players.

The nudity of the bodies quickly imposed itself, without clashes or resistance, even if nothing in my speech had deliberately expressed it as an indispensable prerequisite, which it nevertheless seemed to me to be. But I had opted for an experience as free as possible, based on trust in the groups that had been spontaneously formed, and I only wanted to border this great physical and mental bath with the smallest safety cordon so that the unexpected could naturally happen.

It is difficult for me to describe the emotion and the joy I felt during 3 hours to see evolving, embracing and dancing, to scrutinize and listen to this human group knowing instantly in these moments, to combine powerful desires, creative will and intelligence.

The groups were formed and then diluted to recompose themselves differently under the erotic influence of the heated bodies. The paintings followed one another with a powerful harmony without my having to intervene much, because for the moment, it was certainly not a question for me of rushing into the dirigiste pitfall of the stage direction which, moreover, certainly few of them would have followed, not being implicitly actors. Concrete sexual acts, which sometimes blossomed for a while, expressed in turn a marvellous power or an intoxicating sweetness. What more can I say except that I was able to witness many times the depth of Being merging with the appetite of the flesh and that it was to my eyes, of sublime beauty in this environment that the lighting, freely and just as intelligently led by the stage managers present this day and the next, encompassed of a smooth and mastered matter.

Vocal interventions made their way into the sound mass I was proposing, like snakes meandering through the swamps. One improvisation in particular was held for a long time by a man with a calm voice, staring at the scenes, spouting a dull, almost dark thought, with such sharpness and depth that it seemed to naturally organize the paintings into a clockwork system whose living mechanics no one could have brought to light without violently tearing the balance of the whole.

Thus opened before me, and I hope for some others, the gateway to a dazzling and splendid eroticism in the very place where I aspired it to take root; that is to say, at the antipodes of "fun" consumption and superficial jubilation, the avatar of a turnkey pleasure too fashionable not to yawn with boredom at the consumerist stupidity it conveys.

Of course, it was quite different on the second day, for it is very rare that miracles happen one after the other, even if the ingredients were all of such great value.

I, for my part, have no one to blame in particular for stigmatizing this failure, because it is inevitably included in such a plan, that the group, if it manages to federate its ardours, is able to turn all situations in the direction of a potential rescue. But it would have been necessary for it to feel this and for some of its members to decide to opt for vitality rather than slide down the morbid slope. As for me, both poles interested me for the demonstration that I wanted to make of it, even if I would certainly have had more pleasure in watching once again a debauchery of mutual listening blossom and unfold before my eyes a contest of intimate concentration of skins and neurons.

It was not without interest, however, and a few moments, which in my opinion were quite enjoyable and were the obligatory counterpart to the theme, were finally reached. Once the last lifebuoy was released and the plateau was like one of those terrifying deserts where one dares not venture, an infinite sadness began to hover like a drama suspended above the room and the collapsed bodies. I allowed the music to continue and further emphasize the contours of these banks now deprived of relief. I don't know where the eyes still present behind me in the half-light of the tier were, but closing my eyes for a moment, I told myself that there was enough to make me feel a little bit bewitched by such a shipwreck, so much so that man appeared here, as he could be, deserving as much of his destruction as of his coming into the world. In this instant, the death presently incarnated seemed to me as beautiful as the bride of the day before.

It was time for Sade, previously misunderstood, ignored by the group as he was undoubtedly in his lifetime, to intervene again to illuminate with his sinister and cruelly lucid gleam the surrounding space we had granted ourselves.

It all began with a torch of conquering resistance and superficiality that I felt from the start. Far from the subject matter, a few rowdy members had deliberately tried to twist it into carefree, infantile euphoria, under whose protection pleasure should have rhymed with leisure. Unfortunately lightness not being in my genes, it was without counting on the visceral attachment that I could have to my beliefs, translated here in terms of drift and excess around Eros and incompatible with the simple excitement of a carnal amusement.

After some time of a teddy bear love which without malice, I do not place in my strings, I waited for the heavy weight of introspection to sensitize the spirits and make the flesh quiver. The "anything goes", if it was well taken up, should satisfy those who were in favour of mad desire. There were a few who, as the hours went by, gave birth to a few nuggets just as gleaming as the day before, both in terms of texts and powerful acts or postures. A very beautiful union between a man and a woman lying on the ground, monopolized for a while the stage in a very beautiful way. A few spirits, full of alertness in the midst of a weary or circumspect observer, surfaced on several occasions, metamorphosing the atmosphere by their intelligence of the situation and their instinct. As I said, it was not my purpose to direct the game. As it was, it had to be, because it is as a mirror of mankind that the subject of a performance reveals itself to me, and it is up to each person, just as in life, to use their freedom to influence the course of things.

What better actor than proclaimed libertines could have decided in a context entirely devoted to their fantasies?

I learn from these two experiences only the renewed persuasion of the power of exhibition as self-assertion if one wishes to implement it. Far from the pushy actors of the theatre when it comes to the body, the amateurs of free sexuality have the potential of a strong and powerful show in their hands.

It is up to them, in my opinion, to have a sharpened awareness of it in order to escape from the sometimes present mawkishness in which they do not pretend to be, and to force the insipid convention of secular societies, as much as the obscure suppression of impulses by the religious, to be reflected in the drawn up and attractive portrait of a conscious humanity, full of charm, inventiveness and spirit of adventure.

There is in all of us, in every generation in my opinion, the ferment of a revolution through sex, which has been repressed many times, aborted many times, banally diverted, but still possibly enlightening for, as we will discuss later in other words with some of the members, that a "revolution through sex" is possible. brain tenderness for each other, annihilates abject frustrations and their sordid consequences, and raises the level of consciousness of a whole section of our humanity. This is what, certainly for my part, seems to me to be the most desirable even today, but which requires as much exigency in enjoyment as lucidity in ideas in order to overcome the coercive model of the couple and families where love is in many cases only a simplistic, white symbol on a pink cloth pennant.

Emergency, yes. To enjoy each other's company or to amplify freedoms? To each his own, if we still have it.