ENQUIRY :

1) How do you describe sensual pleasure ?
(That which you feel, that which you share in.)

A sudden and joyous quickening of normal sensation, a giddy slide up the exponential curve. There is always a sense of surprise. This is not simply a matter of novelty ; sometimes the surprise, is that, even now, THIS is still new and as pleasurable as ever. Contrariwise, when a pleasure is experienced for the first time, this surprise is balanced by a sense of familiarity and rightness : as in an unexpected meeting with an old friend. Convulsive beauty can always be recognised in a crowd.

2) Do you think that, beyond pleasure, orgasm and its enjoyment, there are particular conditions in which the sexual act brings sensual pleasure about ? What are they ?

’The sexual act’ : Which one ? It would, of course, be absurdly limiting to consider any sexual act purely in terms of orgasm and its enjoyment. (And is it an orgasm if you don’t enjoy it ?) Any sexual act is made up of an infinite number of subtler pleasures. Equally the orgasm seems an unreliable gold standard for pleasure ; they are only as alike as snowflakes. From a male point of view, orgasm is a double-sided coin, as it is both climax and end to sexual pleasure - for a while. To return to the previous response, my first experience, for all its awkwardness, was haunted by the most intense sensation of deja vu.

Particular conditions ? Lines from a storybook echo from childhood "A train ! A train ! Would you ; could you, on a train ? . ."* It is possible to stage any number of whimsical sexual fantasies, but in the end it all depends on who you are with. This is not the platitude it may seem ; compatibility seems an unpredictable thing : I’ve had disastrous sexual experiences when I was certainly in love, balanced by marvellous ones with acquaintances I came to regret.

*From Green Eggs and Ham by Dr Seuss (Theodore Giesell), whose marvellous lyrical and graphic work is, I feel, long overdue a serious Surrealist assessment : "I would not, could not, with a goat .."

3) What does it tell us about our condition of being alive ?

I think that a form of disembodiment (disembrainment ?) is a significant element in the alienation of industrial life in the age of the Internet. People increasingly work hunched over PC terminals, and when at leisure, slump in front TV screens, or return to the PC to surf the net. The ’shadow work’ of commuting fills the space between. Where is your body in all of this ? An awkward impediment that adds no value, which must be exercised like an animal and for which air-conditioning and all the amenities must be provided. Sensual pleasure can force you to acknowledge your physical being in the face of this ghostly existence. Or allow you to reclaim it.
During a period of crushing personal responsibilities and gruelling work I came across the following lines in Pessoa’s epic of office life, The Book of Disquiet : "I’ve become a shadow of myself to whom I’ve surrendered my whole being. Unlike the character Peter Schlemiel in the German story, it was not the shadow I sold to the devil, but my very substance." At the time, I laughed in recognition ; fortunately, I’ve found that as little as a few chance bars of music or the sensation of rain in the face can break the spell, or at least offer the hope of a loophole in the deal.

4) What light does it shed for you upon the sense of life, of death and of their reproduction ?

I don’t know anything has ever made me so aware of being alive as the sensation of sliding between clean sheets on returning from a prolonged and methodical wake. The funeral had left us furious at its utter irrelevance to the friend we had lost. We ate far better than we could afford, drank our way across the city and played all our friend’s favourite songs loudly and repeatedly, but it was this final pleasure, small, but poignantly intense, that made the difference between being alive and dead absolutely real.

5) Do you think it can be considered as the absolute good ?

I am wary of considering anything as the absolute good. I will say that it is almost invariably a good sign, just as physical suffering is almost invariably a bad one.

6) Does it - at the centre of a heightened consciousness and/or unconsciousness - constitute a part of the supreme point of the spirit, as André Breton expressed it ?

Yes.

7) Was it able to inspire, more or less directly, any civilisations, any traditions, any utopias ?

Pagan, pre-industrial, societies appear to have been based around sometimes brutal orgies of sensual pleasure, modern Christian ones on at least equally brutal repression and rationing of pleasure. The more interesting utopias have sought to maximise the availability of sensual pleasure to all ; to each their own cathedral.

You still encounter the miserablist attitude that indulgence in sensual pleasure is incompatible with ’serious’ aspirations towards revolutionary betterment of society. I feel that sensual pleasure must occupy a central place in any imaginable utopia ; the experience of sensual pleasure is one of the things that make utopia imaginable. I sense utopia closest at hand in the unplanned moments of collective pleasure ; the unexpected carnival.

A very early memory : a 78 record of a folk song I now know to have been associated with the Anarcho-Syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World : The Big Rock Candy Mountain, a Rabelaisian utopia of small pleasures "The buzzin’ of the bees in the cigarette trees, near the soda water fountain . ."

8) Could it, without in so doing being made banal or exploited, be taken up by a society, and to what ends ?

Sensual pleasure is, every day, taken up by society, made banal, exploited, but somehow returns, incorruptible, breaking through when least expected. For me, it has often been the subtlest and most marginal sensual pleasures have allowed me to survive the worst society and life has thrown at me ; very small pleasures can loom infinitely large against a dark background. A faint trace of perfume on the air can evoke the possibility of a whole other life.

9) From the infinitely small to the infinitely large, does it relate to cosmic phenomena, of which we only understand the mechanics, but of whose actions give us recourse to analogy ?

The only association I can make with this question is that sexual climax is, for me, frequently accompanied by a sensation of being hurled into space. I realise that this sense of free fall is due to a violent spasm of the diaphragm muscles. However, this rationalisation cannot account for the feeling, sometimes lasting for many minutes, of falling down the rabbit hole afterwards.