There is a masochism that is intrinsic to classical musical performance, and there are a lot of weird internal psychological positions inhabited and occupied by the classical musician that don’t often get airplay or visualisation. Except maybe in opera; opera can bring into palpable life some of the sexy craziness. When I play the piano, and when I listen to it, I feel all of the stuff that Theo is putting into sexual and melodramatic terms. For me, it is a bloody and visceral sport….I like literature that treats sex as an abstract, almost conceptual performance piece. Everything from Marquis de Sade to the novels of Jean Genet or Dennis Cooper; it’s a gay tradition, there’s a pervert tradition of erotic literature that pushes eroticism towards the implausible. I don’t write sex scenes, I write about them as performance feats.
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