Freedom and compulsion

I have a tendency to write manifestos for programmes and then take the programmes no further. Like the old manifestos of the futurist art movement of a hundred years ago - the manifestos were the works of art. Oh but art ... a good thing, surely, but seeing a picture of a good life is hardly the same as living a good life, is it?

Yet I have a sense with some artists - the novelists Angela Carter (patron saint of this blog) and Isabelle Allende spring to mind - of a world conjured up that is somehow more substantial than mere fiction. Deep realities of human psychology are given new air in which to breathe differently, in a resculptured environment. In some way, to some extent, what they create in art becomes real. Our psyches posit themselves in relation to these new realms, which can be liberating. The reality of our external lives becomes relativised: one avenue out of numerous possibilities. Perhaps there is some choice about the extent to which we occupy only the one reality.

And now of course the internet...

And gender... the wonderful self-assertion of claiming one's own gender, not accepting it as given at birth without choice.

And yet this existential assertion tallies with something deep within that is emphatically not chosen. An inner imperative, which we can resist but not remove. For crossdreamers it is a sexual imperative.

I am choosing despite external reality, yet summoned by internal reality. A sexy union of freedom and compulsion.