I’m writing this article not as a finished thought but as an unfinished one. That may be part of what it takes to have this thought. I don’t know.

I’ve been thinking about the value of consensual powerlessness. No, that’s a lie. I haven’t been really thinking about the value of such a thing. I’ve been thinking only about the pleasure, the absolute enjoyment, of giving up power and losing control when it is done according to the needs and wants of your own spirit.

Giving up power is sexy. It’s erotic. That means that there’s a creative impact. Giving up power with consent is creative.

There’s a part of me that really likes to be in control of things. I like to track all of my purchases in a spreadsheet (before forgetting about it a week later). I like to know what I’m eating and I like to be in control of how I spend my time.

There’s also another part of me. This part of me wants to hand over my life to someone else and have to beg for permission. I want someone to tell me that they are very disappointed in me. God, wouldn’t that be hot? That would be so hot. I want someone to hold me in contempt and to step on me.

I’ve been thinking about what Jung said about archetypes being things that give us energy when we make contact with them. I’m talking about a real, physical sense of energy—emotional energy. I’m talking about the kind of energy that you get in your body when you have a crush on someone or when you unearth a latent contempt for something for the very first time.

Isn’t that what emotional expression is about? We find energy when we are able to express anger, when we are able to express attachment, when we are willing to state preference. Emotions aren’t about being good or bad, positive or negative. They’re the things that put us in contact with the energy of life itself.

I get a sense of energy when I give up power, when I lose control. There’s pleasure here. It literally feels so good. I feel alive, like I connect with my own sense of life.

I’ve been thinking about how all of the artists who really inspire me started their practice as children. I can appreciate an artist who learned their craft as an adult. I can admire how they think and work, feeling impressed by their polished finesse and the fineness of their vision, but I don’t think that artists who work from adulthood really inspire me.

Sometimes, you can tell when an artist is continuing a language or way or creating that they first started when they were a child. There’s a complete rawness that can’t be replicated as an adult. It doesn’t matter if the work is good or not. It will be inspiring even when it’s commercially irrelevant or institutionally at fault. An artist who works from their childlike self is inspiring because it comes from a place of vulnerable sincerity and astounding authenticity.

There’s an energy to remembering your childhood that you can’t source from anywhere else. Everyone has this energy even though our access to it might fluctuate at different times in our life. I think that this energy has to do with allowing powerlessness.

Children are powerless. That’s part of the experience of being a child. You’re literally too young to make your own decisions or to provide for yourself. Children aren’t responsible for themselves and they shouldn’t be expected to be. They’re not supposed to be in control of themselves.

I think that the pleasure of powerlessness is a big part of creativity. Those of us who have to try and survive in the West find ourselves putting too much emphasis on things like control and power. We pretend as though we can live like we are fully conscious being all of the time, as though our actions are not also absurd and as though we do not read into random events in our waking lives as though they are signs sent by our dreaming selves.

There is energy, vital life energy, in giving up control. Giving up control is the most magical, sexy, and thrilling part of creativity.

When art comes from that vital energy? You can tell the difference. You can tell the difference between a dirty story written by someone who is trying to hit all the right buttons versus one written by someone who is writing to turn themselves on. The one written by the one who is writing to turn themselves will be more arousing to read even if their command of language or grammar is lacking or faulty. You can tell the difference when someone is truly enjoying themselves, when they have surrendered to their own creative insides.

I think that we sometimes treat the desire for powerlessness like a moral failure. This actually goes hand in hand with the fear of being exposed as powerful. We imagine power, having it and the lack of it, morally. This happens when we try to protect ourselves from life through ideology.

But sometimes giving up power consensually or submission, if we can call it, is just about pleasure. It feels good so we like to do it. It puts us in touch with certain emotions—anger, fear, joy, and excitement. Those emotions remind us that our power isn’t something that can be ever taught to us but exist, simply, as something that lives inside of us.