cultural commentary from the desk of Don Shewey
Easton Mountain, the gay retreat center in upstate New York, will celebrate its 23rd anniversary with a weekend centered on celebrating the work of Joseph Kramer. I’m delighted that I will get to take part in saluting the founder of the Body Electric School and one of the most influential teachers of my life. Look who else: Betty Martin! David Dunn Bauer! JoJo Bear! Join us for the festivities! For more information and to register, go here.
In the spring of 1992, I interviewed Joseph Kramer, the founder of the Body Electric School, for an article that was published in the April 21 edition of the Village Voice (“Sexual Healing: Joseph Kramer Sings the Body Electric”). I used only a few brief excerpts from the interview in the published article. But the conversation with Kramer covered a lot of territory above and beyond the “Celebrating the Body Erotic” workshop. He spoke in much greater detail about his own background, the evolution of the workshops he taught, his vision of the vocation he named “sacred intimate,” Andrew Ramer’s notion of the “consciousness scout,” and his own understanding of the erotic consciousness scout and its function in society, among other topics.
I’ve come to view this interview as a historical document, so I’m publishing the complete transcript here for the first time, edited only in order to be comprehensible.
another eye opens 