27/06: Farewell and thanks for all the support

The Salon is now closed...join me soon at my new members only site. Details coming soon...

Lily x

07/06: Members Preview

The members only part of the site is now available for preview.. Please bear in mind that this is still at the testing stage and may render differently on different browsers. Hope you like it. Lily x

29/04: Google Boob

Yes I know this was picked up way back by the evening news, but I just noticed Maps had been added to the Google Search page and decided to try again - brilliant! Try it yourself, go to maps.google.com and type Edinburgh Brothels into the search box: the traverse and an episcopal church - who would have thought!.

14/02: Happy Valentines Day!

Its that time of year again, so have a good one - some of you will have a special treat in your inboxes this morning so enjoy! The members only site will be coming soon so I'll keep you posted on the details.

Love

Lily xxx

27/12: Seasons Greetings from Lily

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all my friends old and new. I hope to see you all again soon...

01/05: A Life Falling to Pieces or Less Ordinary?

I have just finished a biography of a man named Alexander Trocchi: junkie, visionary, pimp, beat, literary outlaw, pornographer, philosopher, pig farmer, underground organiser and antique book dealer. Author of Cain's Book and Young Adam as well as erotic novels most notably Helen and Desire which has a sophistication unusual for its "porno" genre as well as irresistibly a custard scene! Trocchi has been an influence on almost every facet of post-war underground culture, despite being virtually unknown. His talent was mostly overshadowed by his drug addiction, and his writing continued only by a publisher canny enough to pay him by the page to support his habit.

It is telling that many artists and people seeking discovery of self turn to the darker side of life to find what they think they need: the sharp edge of experience, human nature alive and well and at its most visceral. Often this is drugs, alcohol, the bohemian lifestyle but also the underworld, the sex industry, the seedier side of life, where everyone is not who they seem. Is there some correlation between a life lost in a written or artistically expressed labyrinth and the taking off of masks and putting on of others in this other hidden world? Think of Toulouse Lautrec and the other artistic inhabitants of Hausmanns Paris, Isherwoods Berlin. Perhaps it is more to do with the twists and evolutions promised by periods of change - debauchery and decay. Is it a coincidence that the periods of greatest change and threat lead to a rise in promiscuity and a loosening of morals? Intimations of mortality making a life lived to the full more urgent a desire.

Leonard Cohen sums it beautifully in a quote about Trocchi, which could be applied to the many other people who have chosen to live life differently:

"I think that anybody who wants to do anything in their life - and I don't mean anybody that's going to attract renown - but anybody that wants to fashion their life or take a stab at it anyways, is going to have some of these qualities. They may not manifest them in exactly the same terms, they might not come out that way, but somehow you have to cross the line and somehow you have to flip out a little bit to do the things you really want to do. I'm not talking about art, I'm not talking about fame, I'm more or less talking about love and friendship and keeping the heart open. Sometimes you have to take some drastic measures or what appear to be drastic measures, or radical measures - and without that kind of activity, the human heart seems to close little by little, by imperceptible degrees until you forget that you were really alive"

Fine words to contemplate on May Day bank holiday, if you are feeling suffocated by your significant other, your job, or life in general. What would you do if there were no limits? Go on, what have you really got to lose?

03/04: Quote for the day

If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of potential -- for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints; possibility never.

Soren Kierkegaard

18/03: If music be the food of love...

"Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without. Confucius"

Music is an intrinsic constituent of culture and as such can be examined in an evolutionary framework through the physiological and neurological effects on human biology, both in production and reception. Herbert Spencer tried to trace the development of music from speech gestures: Darwin suggested that music preceded and gave rise to speech. No consensus has yet been reached, but it is clear that as with so many things in the natural world, there is a hidden arithmetic at work. The Pythagoreans observed that the ratios of strings, or other vibrating materials, follow simple mathematical relationships with the sounds produced. Preferences for chord sequences, or neural oral mathematics, in most people follow the lines predicted by Pythagorean theory.
The phenomenon of synaesthesia shows a link with music and another of the senses: colour perception. Analogies have been noted between the seven colours of the spectrum and the seven notes and increasing audio frequency of the diatonic scale. Newton pointed to the resemblance between the colour scale and the musical scale.
This sympathetic response between the senses is mimicked by the temporal art of music and the rhythmic patterns of the body. The two most dominant being the rhythm of breathing and the heartbeat. The heart, lungs, brain, body, even the swing of arms and legs in motion account for most of the small units of pattern by which we break up our lives, essentially our perception of time is the origin of our sense of rhythm. This duration seems to be a psychic constant for the complete process of perception as well as the one chosen by the brain for controlling muscular processes.
Music also has a direct effect on the motor and nervous organisation of postures and movements. This is manifested in complex combinations and recombinations of the individual joints and muscles. Motor responses are elicited, most notably foot tapping and activity in the cranial muscles when at rest, however in more public overt settings, music sharply increases the muscle action potential in the legs, hence "dance" music.
Perceptual and emotional musical experiences lead to changes in blood pressure, pulse rate respiration and other autonomic functions. These changes represent the involuntary bodily reflections of the psychological process. In tests on conductors, the highest pulse frequencies are not reached at the moments of greatest physical effort but occur at passages invoking the greatest emotional response. It is also possible to produce changes in the pulse rate through dynamic changes in volume, crescendo and decrescendo. The same phenomenon can be obtained by changes in rhythm, sometimes synchronously with the respiratory rhythm. Muscle strength can also be altered by music: lullabies invariable decrease it and rousing march songs increase it.
The patterns and resolution implicit in music are translated into the pulses of the neural patterning of the brain that is used in common for all the senses, including hearing and bodily sensations. Musical patterns that are strictly speaking meaningless in themselves are translated by the brain into the lingua franca of all the other patterns - mental, emotional, bodily. Hunger, pain, fear, sexual excitement - in fact any of the tensions associated with a raising of the adrenalin level in the blood. Musical patterns are similar to personal ones. Susanne Langer points out that tonal structures (music) bear a close similarity to the forms of human feelings.
None of the arts are simply manifestations of emotions though; they are formed from intellectual, emotional and bodily patterns. A synthesis or fusing of many events and memories is experienced through them.
Most of the preceding relates to the effects of music on the hearer or performer, rather than the creator, however the creator or composers neural system, the physiological bases of his emotions and perceptions are the same as the latter, or the responsive listener. The structure of the music and the emotive and other effects, are derived from the neural patterning associated with the composer's non-musical experience, the neural record of his own life, emotions, perceptual organisation and bodily feelings of all kind.

Music really is the food of love, a communion of mind and body.

Thank you Arch for the quote, and for the beautiful and thoughtful gift, Lily x

06/03: Comments

Some of you may have noticed that comments are now moderated and have to be approved before being posted on the Salon. This is because the spammers have finally found the site and instead of spending all day removing ads for poker and viagra I have had to implement moderated comments: unfortunate but necessary. Believe it or not I don't write the comments myself, and unless they are downright obscene or offensive they will be posted, so I hope this move doesn't put people off leaving them in the future.

Lily x

06/03: The Dark Side Part 2

Sadism is the sexual pleasure or gratification from the infliction or pain and suffering upon another and its counterpart masochism is the reverse, having pain or suffering inflicted upon the self. A salient point is that these behaviours may be either an enhancement or a substitute for sexual pleasure and the focus of the experience is not pain or discomfort (in fact it may not involve pain at all) but rather a transfer of power or control.

Sadism is of course derived from the name of the Marquis de Sade, and masochism takes its name from Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the author of "Venus in Furs". The words themselves are now commonly used to describe emotional personality or character traits rather than the original sexual sense, which is interesting given that it is widely believed that it is the emotional aspect of sexual desire, the need for dominance or submission, which drives S&M. The surrounding behaviours, role-playing, props and mind-games, and the giving and receiving of pain being used as a means to stimulate and reinforce the emotional feelings.
Perhaps in the participants lives, the only way that these emotions can find expression is through the world of S&M.
An important point to be made is the paradoxical nature of consensual S&M, whereby pain (or the simulation of violence) is not only used to initiate pleasure, but to express love. A friend who indulged once described it as "inflicting pain in a loving way". To be successful this requires that both parties have a strong sense of trust in each other and are able to successfully pick up subtle emotional cues from each other. Often a safe word is agreed upon to stop proceedings at any point. Sensory deprivation or a sense of isolation seem to be important because they enhance the pleasureable feeling of a lack of control over the situation.
Another aspect of S&M is the semi-confessional aspect of the roleplay framework. Guilty thoughts can be worked through, destructive impulses can be expunged, it is almost a purification rite in that many people report, that after being able to express the unexpressable they feel relieved, stronger, calmer, more in control. Essentially it is an eroticisation of your worst fears or nightmares.

The process by which emotional experiences lead to sexual gratification, or how that connection forms is little understood, however it is apparent that at some stage of the dance of life a deceptive pirouette is performed and the unusual, fearful or painful becomes erotic: pain and fear are transmuted.

I have no experience in S&M however, I strongly feel that it is everyones right to express themselves in this way if they want to, whether society likes it not. Have fun but stay safe!

Lily x

02/03: Under the Cover

I recently read a book called The Storyteller by Mario Vargas Llosa, which I didn’t particularly like, or dislike but it featured a character that absolutely fascinated me. Large sections of the book are used to narrate myths and legends of the Machiguenga tribe through the figure of a Habladore, a sort of travelling storyteller/shaman/witchdoctor. This habladore acts not only as a messenger bringing news and gossip from distant villages, but also as a sort of collective memory for the tribe. Their identity, knowledge and sense of belonging is rooted in the storyteller and his stories, he’s a primitive Google. Looking further into the subject I discovered that almost every culture, East and West has a long tradition of this oral storytelling: in Europe the troubadour singing his tales of courtly love, and in France the jongleur and his jokes, in Britain the court jester, not to mention the long-standing and respected eastern storytelling performers.
This being a Salon topic I then started to wonder if there was another more hidden tradition of erotic storytelling. There are after all, even in the most primitive, archaic cultures, strict rules, and rites surrounding puberty, birth, sex and 'marriage'.
After much trawling of the internet I could find only one oral tradition which is the erotic storytelling practiced by the Lawbé griots of Senegal, through music and voice. Of the written word there is plenty and perhaps surprisingly there is also a longstanding tradition of erotic narrative in the histories of Middle Eastern countries. The Book of Pleasure (Bah Nameh) was translated and circulated widely in the Ottoman Empire; The Perfumed Garden was widely read in Iran, and probably most famous of all Scheherazade or The Thousand and One Nights of Omar Khayyam. Khayyam's model of a framework tale finds later echoes in Boccacio's Decameron, Margaret of Navarre's Heptameron and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, none of which are without an element of the bawdy.
Even in ancient times there are tales: fragments of the Alexandrian erotic romance, which was later imitated in the 12th century by Eustathius Makrembolites, Theodorus Prodromus and Nicetas Eugenianus. There is even believe it or not, Medieval Welsh erotic poetry!

On that note, Dydd Gwyl Dewi hapus! (Happy St Davids day) for yesterday.

Lily x

28/02: The Dark Side Part 1

"A chronicler and analyst of decadence, a lover of the pathological, a lover of death, an aesthete with a proclivity towards the abyss." Thomas Mann(pre-war period

What two topics across history have exercised the human emotions more than sex and the supernatural?
Sex, supernatural, sensual, sin, succubus...All these alveolar fricatives, is there any connection between all these s's? Perhaps their etymology can be traced back to the sibilant hissing of the snake in the Garden of Eden...but that’s a whole other topic...
Spurred on by the spirit of adventure and a certain sympathy with the Devil, who notoriously, has most of the best tunes, I've decided to do a series of articles on The Dark Side, starting with Sex Magick [sic].
Sex magick means using sexuality in order to work magick, more specifically the resacralization of sexuality and nature. Many Esoteric systems of belief use sexuality for spiritual and magical aims, witchcraft, shamanism, alchemy, Buddhist and Hinduist tantra and ancient Egyptian religion.
This notion of the sacramental nature of sex is perhaps most obvious in the ceremonial sexual union of man and woman on the land to ensure a good crop, May Day poles and harvest festivals are faint echoes of this, resounding to this day.
Western Sex magick has its roots in Hebrew Kabbalah and is spread further through several occult doctrines like the knights Templar and the free masons. Britain’s favourite self-styled Beast, Aleister Crowley, "wished that physical love could be delivered to his door along with other necessities of life": he would have loved the Internet!
There is nothing new or outrageous in this. Phallic symbols and sexual symbolism are rife in the literature of DH Lawrence as well as other writers of his generation concentrating more on the mystical, not to mention Freud. Going further back we have John Dee and the alchemists, whose Enochian magic formed the basis of much of Crowley’s theory and practice of magic, except that he included sex rites.
The 60s and the so-called Age of Aquarius threw up a lot of witchcraft and other tomfoolery. In particular the dark and dangerous element of the occult found a home in the myths and lifestyles of the famous rock stars and artists of the age. Crowley’s "Do What Thou Whilst” mantra finding its perfect exponents perhaps. There was also Leary and his LSD trying to open the doors of perception and know the mind of God. It was also the start of the rise of free love, the sacramental nature of sex interpreted as promiscuity: black is now the colour of cool and S&M has since acquired a certain respectability, often featuring in such mainstream publications as Cosmopolitan and Vogue, and the fetish photography of Helmut Newton et al. Hallucinogenic drugs and anonymous sex are now almost seen as acceptable pastimes, and there has been a rise in dark fetish clubs and iconography.
Michael Foucault, one of the most influential thinkers of the late twentieth century, was an advocate of sadomasochism, hallucinogenic drugs and anonymous sex, items in high demand in our own fin de siecle. It would appear that neither sex nor the supernatural are going out of fashion anytime soon, it’s just that the practitioners don’t wear pointy hats and stir cauldrons anymore. Watch out for the full moon tonight folks!

22/02: The pleasure of cloth

Puis, elle faisait d’un seul geste tomber l’ensemble de ses vêtements’
Flaubert, Emma Bovary.


As part of the recent special offer I sent people questionnaires to fill in to gather the requirements for their stories and one of the questions was "are there any phrases, words, images, or sensations that you find particularly erotic? I was surprised to find that every respondent replied with not words, images or phrases, but sensations, mainly those of fabrics and textures against bodies: namely satin and silk.
Of course, silks or satins are classic fetish material along with hair, that conventional site of feminine allure and displaced object of desire. Is it any coincidence that women have been throughout history and in different cultures, required to hide their hair as well as their bodies. But what interested me was that although the stories requested were of very different types, this was a common denominator.
Thinking about it further though it makes absolute sense. Clothing is used not only to cover nakedness but more importantly to cover nudity: a different matter entirely. Perhaps it is this desire to uncover and to make something more desirable by concealing it that is the salient point. Think of the popularity of the seductive process of stripping, in part or whole. Uncovering breasts, removing stockings, lifting skirts...
Erotic focus can be displaced onto the textures and touch of a fabric, or onto folds and undulations of something that is not flesh but which may stand as a substitute for it. Just as it covers nudity, there is always the promise that it is precarious and may at any moment slip and reveal the money.
Although clothes hide nudity from view, they cannot help but court the shapes of the body. Concealing becomes revealing. Tight fitted dresses, stockings, latex, transparent fabric, or merely bodies draped in ribbons or strings: the popularity of the wet t-shirt competition all show this.

This process of concealing and revealing is given new impetus when the body is covered by more than one layer. Think of Salome and her seven veils, prolonging the process and the erotic tension produced by her dance. Even better than extra layers though is contrast between layers, hence outerwear and underwear. Satin and lace, once worn as outerwear are now a favourite for lingerie. If the task of revealing the bodys contours is relegated to underwear, then the outerwear has to hint at the presence and reveal the nature of the next layer. That’s why we have cuffs of sleeves peeping out, ribbons, straps, edges of bras, stocking tops or the outline of underwear through semi-transparent fabric, lingerie shown in bas relief through a tight fitting dress.

Tellingly, when this unveiling is short-circuited, erotic tension can be heightened in an even more thrilling way. For ladies, wearing no bra, wearing no panties, or contrasting the expected even further: which man hasn't dreamt of a woman turning up on your doorstep naked but for a coat.

Lily x

21/02: Disruptions to Service

The Salon is undergoing some maintenance work today, so apologies for any interruptions to service. I will try and keep any downtime to a minimum. Thank you for your patience.

Lily

19/02: Special offer

The lucky five who responded first to the recent special offer should now be enjoying your stories. The even luckier sixth respondent who snuck under the wire by asking nicely should check his inbox round about now. I was impressed by the charming, respectful and well-though out storyboards that you supplied me with so I hope that the results are worth the (considerable) effort of writing them.

Lily x