You've been practicing Kinbaku for a while now. You've learned the basic harnesses and you know how to attach them quite smoothly. Fantastic, bring on the unbridled Kinbaku sessions!
The blank page
Yet, when you set out for a gaming session, once the Gote is attached and the first futomomo is in place… Nothing, no ideas, a blank page. My god, what am I going to do next…
Don't panic, and there's no shame in it. We too experienced the agony of a lack of inspiration or a complete lack of ideas when we started out.
It's normal, indeed; it's very difficult to find yourself having to imagine and create patterns that make sense (in terms of constraints, aesthetics, and respecting the body's mechanics) after absorbing months of technical training or basic patterns. It's a void, a nothingness. Inspiration is nonexistent.
So, I'm going to give you some ideas to find inspiration and avoid that little panic attack in the middle of your Kinbaku session.
First of all, you should know that almost no one creates patterns anymore. Even though Kinbaku is relatively recent, the human body is made up of only two arms, two legs, and a torso, with quite a few physiological constraints. Every conceivable position has already been tried. This is a good thing because it gives you a huge number of patterns to test!
But where on earth can one find inspiration…
Before sites like Tumblr existed, or before enthusiasts like myself created blogs compiling thousands of photos of traditional Japanese bondage, there was simply no way to find photos of Kinbaku. So I uploaded an archive of 20,000 photos collected over four years. This archive is available here on BDSMlr.
So what's the solution? A good source of inspiration is Instagram , where most of the top rope artists have an account and regularly post photos of their work. Another source is well hidden in Japanese Kinbaku books. These books, rated for adults only, are prohibited from being exported, but there are ways to obtain them. It's in these books that I find most of my inspiration.
Art books are also a good source of ideas. Some are rated for adults over 18, but many of these photo books are available for export.
And in a more discreet and indirect way, all Japanese films allow us to get an idea of their aesthetic concepts, the state of mind of a tormented person and the melancholic beauty that results from it.
Some books on aesthetic concepts, light, and theatre allow us to better understand Japanese culture and what we want to convey through Kinbaku.
Finally, Ropeflix, which offers dozens of bondage films for streaming via subscription, is a gigantic source of inspiration.
Finally, being inspired doesn't mean copying… Replicating exactly the pattern that someone else has found and implemented is not elegant at all 😉
Your Kinbaku should reflect your personality!
