BLOOD OF AURORA: PODCAST

say it how it is

dóri varga — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 18:50:43 GMT

fantasy. shame. desire. longing— i cannot stop the loop. i confess that im here to caress, lick, stick, hump, gulp, chew and screw the days i spend inside the sequence of my everydays.

as we write out our hopes, dreams and desires, we trigger the universe to act on our behalf.
—julia cameron, write for life

mark your calendar ::: sept 11 we are opening registration for edition 2 of our women-only writers collective bodytext. waitlist is now open here. the list is rapidly growing… get on it to get first dibs. you need zero writing experience— its all about freeing you and your authentic voice

there’s certain things my body won’t allow me to say out loud. i must dig. and by digging, i mean i must sit and write the julia cameron prescribed morning pages— aka three pages of long form, stream of consciousness type writing, every morning upon waking.

there’s a lot im able to say there that i wouldn’t know how to say otherwise. to be able to express to you here, fully as myself, treating my life as an open book… i first have to go in there alone, in my notebook, hold a pen to paper and release secrets i didn’t even know i had.

fantasy. shame. desire. longing— this summer i’m unearthing and willing to take the risk of following up with action.

tinder. hinge. feeld.
b&w nude and semi-nude self portraits.
flying dicks.
looking at my kinks under a microscope.
loneliness. or yearning?

- - - why am i like this?
keeps echoing in my head.

but writing can keep me company. even when what i find hurts, i am led to the truth of things… and to me there is nothing more valuable in this life than getting a clear understanding of my truth. once i know what i know, i can move toward my heart’s desires.

in this week’s ep*
**a porn-alternative, tinder date research, why “consensual non-consent” is the most submitted and most triggering fantasy, responsive vs. spontaneous desire and what it means for foreplay, the uprising of mommy kink, writing your desires into being. and more.

writer and founder of aurore, carly pifer and i spoke very directly. aurore is a hub of an ongoing collection of erotic writings, a major archive of hundreds of submitted fantasy stories, mostly from women. carly has quite a clear idea of what women actually desire.

listen here on substack or on apple podcasts / acast / spotify.
follow AURORE on ig

writing/prompts

if you havent yet, write those morning pages. julia says set your alarm 30m earlier every morning and before looking at the phone or the computer, write three pages of stream of consciousness. i just recently found out that she also recommends the notebook to be on eight and a half by eleven-inch paper. its meant to be a kind of meditation. learn more in her book write for life.

write down a fantasy of yours. yes, erotic. if it helps, you can burn the pages right after so nobody will see it. but write it down. see how you feel after.

make a list of the things you yearn to do but never make time for. it can be anything. the more simple the better! then choose 2 you promise yourself you’ll do by the end of august.
finish this sentence ::: my body wants me to know… do it 15 times. it will seem silly at first. let it be silly.
writing keeps me company. —use this as a prompt. you choose the time interval. set your alarm and do it in stream of consciousness.
in the convo carly says “foreplay begins right after you have sex. there should always be this low burning desire building if you’re doing it right.” —write down what this brings up.. how do you interpret this sentence/sentiment?
designate at least two spots in your home (or outside of home) where you feel comfortable to regularly write. this spot really matters… it is a place you keep returning to and which offer an atmosphere which helps you enter different parts of you

bodytext, our women-only writing collective has opened its waitlist for edition 2. beginning sept 19, ending mid-dec. get on it here

✦ ݁ blood of aurora is a bi-weekly audio series hosted by hungarian artist dóri varga, featuring raw conversations with women from the creative field on sex, motherhood, creativity, relationship and transformation. the same themes are explored inside our bi-annual, multi-month writers collective called bodytext.✦ ݁˖

the chains she chose

dóri varga — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 18:49:02 GMT

edition 2 of our women-only writers collective bodytext is held sept-dec this year. waitlist is now open here. you need zero writing experience— its all about freeing the voice

have you noticed that everything in life is about a kind of power exchange? that underneath every tiny —even internal— decision or choice is a product of a push and pull between two parts? there is an ongoing conversation no matter what… but how aware are we of it?

im hard-landing back in san diego after 3 weeks spent in hungary and im finding myself yearning for someone to take advantage of me.

yes— i wish for a man to come into my life and boss me around.

i’d say im in control most of the time— i single-parent 80% of the time (the other 20% i spend single-womaning,) i work for myself, i live alone, i have zero help in the physical space, my family lives on another continent, i have no more than 2 local friends and truth be told no real friends to count on if there is a sos situ. i got to be ready 24/7. i yearn to be in a space where i can relax and let go and surrender and trust enough that i can let someone else take all the weight of the moment.

so 5 days post landing and amidst jetlagging hard, i downloaded this app called feeld again.. this time with the following bio….

i’ve spent most my life inside the submissive role in relationships, not knowing what i was doing. i’m ready to try myself with full awareness. from a place of choice rather than some kind of unconscious arrangement i have psychologically agreed to without agreeing while being a child. im an adult now with adult responsibilities and adult needs and desires. only shame can stop me.

but as i have recently learned from my tantric therapist —you will keep hearing of her dont worry— shame is not a foundational emotion that exists on the wheel of samsara. it is a learned feeling… this means whenever i sense it, i get to challenge myself and well…. allow other parts of me to dominate and slowly suffocate that voice that tries to stand in the way between myself and my desires. aka: what would allow me to feel free.

as a mom i know this feeling too well. especially as a single mom. a divorcee, if you will. i’ve been a source of threat to other non-single-moms at the playground and am often someone who needs support when shit’s falling to pieces. but generally speaking, somewhere in all the responsibility i must take at all times, the last thing on the list keeps being my true desires. sexual or not. but since we are at it— being a mom who has sex or feels sexual and juicy and sort of wears it on their sleeve remains a controversy wherever i go. to many its a total no. to some its deliberately kink.

it was inside all this this when i sat down with the brilliant painter katarina janečková walshe, whom i’ve been following along diligently on ig for quite many years now. the themes she explores in her work seems to effortlessly seam the sexual+mother. every single piece she creates makes me emotional and helps me connect the seemingly separate parts of myself. a slovakian painter living in america whose studio practice has been shaped for years by painting with her two daughters, allowing the collaborative space to shape her current style. i spoke to her before she flew to NYC for an artist residency, her first residency since becoming a mother.

inside the ep
losing control of the canvas, children in the studio as part of the process, the sexual mother as a “taboo” subject, refinding sexuality and femininity inside a fourteen-year marriage, the mother archetype as the dominatrix

follow katarina on ig katarina’s work at harkawik

listen here on substack or on apple podcasts / acast / spotify.

writing/prompts
while reading this post and listening to this episode — do this with either or both — notice what words, phrases or sentences your body responds to. just notice. if you feel anything anywhere, make a list of it in your notebook. use these as prompts creatively this coming week. use katarina’s poem as its own prompt. use her painting shared here as a prompt as well, in fact, any other of her paintings. as you please babe.

our women-only writing collective *bodytext* already opened its waitlist for EDITION2 of this year (sept-dec) get on it here (peep there more info too)

controlled pleasure

dóri varga — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 16:20:31 GMT

its been four days and he still hasnt answered
at first i felt lonely inside the excitement meant for two
but soon came to reckon:
this excitement too shall pass.
i recall eartha kitt’s hysterical laugh while saying
“compromise for what?”
in an interview answering
if she’d ever compromise for a man
and count the many times i did not laugh.
not this time.
this time
i’m sucked in by counting grasshoppers
as i lay at sunset on the meadow
outside of mama’s kitchen.
this time
i’d rather say yes to tango with the wind.
no one will marry me
the same as the cloudy sky before a storm
or the rows of lavender in early june.
in steep distance i bow.

pleasure
a word overused in my world for a good reason: most women never have enough. enough is a bit vague, but lets be real… you know exactly what im talking about.

a couple years ago when i was diagnosed with anorexia i figured i have much to learn about simple pleasures. the only place i have come to know is rather a state of obsession. doing a little bit of something has never been my style. i go hardcore at taking advantage of what feels nearly ecstatic.

yes, my name is dóri and i’m an addict. but in this century… arent we all?

we dont even notice and under the veil of almost anything money and love related we surrender to hidden compulsions and call them the-stuff-we-need-to-be-doing. we dont notice and in order to avoid the anx that comes as a side effect of that stuff, we use whatever we must in order to… take our power back? from the grind. from the way we think we need to be in relationship with… you name it.

what not-small-thing are you addicted to?

in the past couple months, mine has been chocolate. at first it seemed like a simple pleasure, but this brown-romance has taken me through many twists, turns, mountains and hills. slowly over the weeks, this sweet innocent act has built a visible stamp around my waist, in the form of rolls i cannot un-feel.

at all times questioning whatever i get hooked on, i came up on this ted talk with june jo lee, food ethnographer, where she explained that the foods we eat and love can reveal a lot about our desires. this made me think… what am i feeding with my sweet treat?

~* an unmet need for affection and belonging
~* the accepting embrace of relationship where one feels known by the other
~* letting one’s guard down, opening to…
~* recreating the high only a newly discovered romance can bring

yes, i’ve been moving through that life phase again… i’ve been single for nearly a year. being a single mom at 39, divorced twice, and still feeling like im just figuring out what the hell i want my romantic life to look like… the day to days can get quite consuming and well, i hate to say it, but… lonely as fuck.

its not that i do not yearn to be met and caressed by a man in my depths, but that i’ve yet to stumble upon a man who can intellectually satisfy me– an independent man who i don’t have to “put up with,” take care of… you know the drill. and at this point of my life, after a series of monogamous and non-monogamous relationships, i am not willing to compromise.

iconic moment form eartha kitt (1927-2008) american singer’s 1982 documentary “All by Myself: The Eartha Kitt Story”

i have often felt more lonely inside relationships than when im single– i am no longer willing to compromise… and inside of this strong conviction, healing from anorexia, im learning to listen to my body’s subtle sensations, showing me the way to keep coming home to relating with pleasures which feel safe to envelop my life.

__
early this year my friend marchelle forwarded me a reel on ig, along with the message that said “i love her” which really meant you would love her. the video showed a small tin box with pieces of nuts and chocolate in it and this is what the voiceover said:

a palm to measure protein
not grams, not percentage–
a palm.
YOUR palm
is your protein portion.
some days you need one palm,
some days half,
and some days two.
so take your palm now,
look at it
and ask your body
before asking numbers.

followed by the caption:
every palm is unique. and so are our needs.

in this audio episode
”controlled pleasure” as its own kind of freedom, the snack tin as unlabeled meditation, farmer’s markets as a way back into your body, hunger vs. craving vs. what your body is actually asking for and why “erotic aliveness” might just mean noticing :::: with anastasia aka snack tin queen– the woman and yoga teacher behind the viral tin ritual.

listen here on substack or on apple podcasts / acast.
follow anastasia’s tins on ig

OH AND ::: our women-only writing collective *bodytext* already opened its waitlist for EDITION2 of this year (sept-dec) get on it here (peep there more info too)

writing/prompts

1. when it comes to your sense of aliveness what is one thing you are unwilling to compromise in this phase of your life?

2. make a list of the simple pleasures in your day to days. list at least 20. emphasis on simple.

3. try the tin box ritual for 5 days, then come back to your journal to reflect on the experience. detail the way you are relating with the process of creating it and also the experience of consuming it. what does it add to your life? what shifts from this little ritual?

4. controlled pleasure ::: use this as a prompt. set your phone to alarm you in 8 mins. write in any style you please.

5. what are some habits you indulge in daily because you have needs that arent being met? list at least 5 not-small-thing you are addicted to.

6. watch The Taste of Things, sleep on it, then the next morning reflect in your journal

writing has saved my life and i’ve become a little obsessed with it. a journal can be the safest, most private space to express what we otherwise cannot. so every thursday when i post i share prompts— mostly for writing, but sometimes also activity ideas that bring you back into your body and a sensual kind of noticing. i’d love to hear how the prompts land for you. leave a comment or reply to this email anytime. i read everything.

Desert Dominatrix

dóri varga — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 17:05:20 GMT

I’m in an excavating period. Always, but especially lately. After years of being partially submerged in a geographical place that doesn’t seem to speak my language and in a version of myself that has been responsible and present and quite honestly, deeply starving— something is cracking open in me.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO CONTAIN MYSELF?

water flooding
or
water finding its riverbed—
the search itself is my work

I’m discovering that I’ve been reaching for stimulation, in any direction available, and that this reaching is quite an intuitive kind of adaptation.
I’m like a plant, leaning hard toward whatever light is accessible when the conditions of life have not always provided what I have desired.

WHAT WOULD IT FEEL LIKE TO GENERATE MY OWN LIGHT?
TO NEED LESS FROM THE OUTSIDE
BECAUSE I TEND DEEPLY AND CAREFULLY TO MYSELF?

I deny any false solution… I am not a monk, nor dead without guts to remind me I feel and yearn. I’m simply, intellectually, sensorially… starving. Im learning that I must direct this energy or else I will keep doing what I know best ::: find boys to fill the void, the holes left behind by this city where I must stay. Perhaps this hunger was always here and this place, this city is only bringing to the surface what I can no longer hide from, but…

WHERE TO POUR IT?
WHAT TO DO
WITH THE DRIPPING,
THE GUSHING,
THE NEVER ENDING
QUESTION-MARK’D ACHE?

I feel tied up with a shiny golden chain… dare to say that at this point:
choosing it.

And amidst surrendering to this invisible chokehold, I met Lucy Mu Li, multidisciplinary artist, at this cute French cafe in South Park, San Diego.

Self Portrait in the Vortex by Lucy Mu Li 2025

Artist Lucy Mu Li has spent the last several years falling in love with land; the Southern California coastline, then the nearby high desert. Out of that devotion has come a phrase she’s still unearthing: desert dominatrix — the idea that the harshest, most unyielding landscapes don’t dominate us so much as demand a surrender so total it returns us to our own power.

inside the ep
Lucy shares her very first artist book titled Field Notes in the Vortex, talks about desensitization+displacement+identity, flirtation with landscape, what it means to listen to a body that isn’t yours and why the most commanding presence in the room might be the one asking you to let go.

Listen & download on Substack, Apple Podcasts or Acast.

more info about bodytext here
Find her work at lucymuli.studio and on Instagram @lucy_mu_li.

_{.✦ ݁ BLOOD OF AURORA is our bi-weekly audio series hosted by Hungarian artist Dóri Varga, featuring raw conversations with women from the creative field on sex, motherhood, creativity, relationship and transformation. ✦ ݁˖}

JOURNAL/PROMPTS

-who or what is your dominatrix? Describe the relationship

-describe an experience with nature place that left a big mark on you

-where do you pour your aliveness daily?

-imagine the city you live in is your lover and its taking you out on a date. Write it as a short story

-find one activity this week where your body is in motion. Notice your body as an entity you are in constant relationship with. Afterward sit down and write down your observations.

-go on a walk this week and collect as many kinds of leaves as you can. At home, choose just one and make a sketch of it in your journal. Once ready, write with the following prompt for 5mins: I am the leaf
-what is your relationship with surrender? Where does it come easy and where does it feel demanding?
-what is one non human , non animal body which have impacted you over time to a point of change?
-use the following prompt for a 15min free writing session: deep surrender gives me access to my greatest power

every thursday when i post i share journal prompts. writing has saved my life and i’ve become a little obsessed with it. a journal can be the safest, most private space to express what we otherwise cannot. i’d love to hear how the prompts land for you. leave a comment or reply to this email anytime. i read everything.

more info about bodytext here

more info about body text here

YEAR OF THE WHORE

dóri varga — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 15:26:30 GMT

hiiii <3
how are you feeling? what’s on your mind?

mean it. hit reply and tell me.

this is my first time introing a podcast episode this way— addressing you directly, sharing some thoughts as i am on the edge of my low seating orange couch in my living room, waring a loose little black cotton dress, open legs, no panties, smelling myself while typing on the laptop which sits firmly in front of me on a round wooden coffee table. its 19:04 (don’t forget, im from europe) here in sand diego and the sun is slowly beginning to go to sleep.

so a few weeks ago my friend hamsa (fellow local artist) and i talked about recording a conversation to explore the theme of her latest project ::

THE WHORE

have you ever considered yourself a whore? in any context? in a positive way. i have— usually in sex, as in being a girl who likes to be bad and doesnt apologize for it. also have thought to myself im a kind of whore because i like to talk about sex.. online, offline, doesnt matter. something about it is making me feel alive— even when others dont approve. maybe even because of it. like being bad is the right thing for me, makes me feel good about myself. but so each time i think of it, it’s inside a sexual context. never outside of, never imagining it by taking a step back to wonder ::: what does this word mean? where does it come from? who made it up and why? why do we use it the way we do?

ABOUT THE EPISODE
algorithmic corruption, the “whore singularity,” AI twins and digital data ownership, the invisible labor of trans sex workers, durational camming as performance art and a live poetry reading

I hung around on the carpet in my living room with my friend hamsa fae — a Vietnamese American artist working across expanded performance and time-based installation, whose decade-long land-based animist practice positions the body as a site of re-matriation — tracing the lineage of sex work from Mesopotamia to the internet while exploring her latest work “Year of the Whore.”

Listen here on Substack or on Apple Podcasts / Acast.

more info & waitlist for bodytext
follow hamsa on ig
checkout hamsa’s website
grab a copy of The Year of the Whore zine here

my cat Boo and hamsa posing for me with The Year of the Whore zine

SOME OF HAMSA’S REFERENCES

~’
in her project A Sexual History of the Internet, artist and researcher Mindy Seu — American researcher, artist, technologist known for projects exploring cyberfeminism +internet culture — frames the early internet and its fundamental tools as products deeply rooted in male desire +extraction +the uncredited labor of women. —as the root, Mindy uses the iconic “Lena” JPEG (one of the most famous and historically significant standard test images used in the field of digital image processing — a photo taken in 1972 of Swedish model Lena Forsen for Playboy mag) aka "tech’s original sin"* to illustrate this systemic issue.

MINDY SEU
\/
Three decades of online life have shown me that everything is in relation to sex and power.

There are sex workers who have been pushing forward these interfaces and environments for a long time because they naturally have an innovative spirit, and also because their online actions have largely been policed, so they were forced to be early adopters of novel technologies.

~,
author +sex worker rights activist +podcaster Tina Horn proposes the question “If everyone is naked online, is anyone naked?”—she asks that with the rise of digital spaces, social media, digital exhibitionism why the digital imagery of sex workers is heavily policed and stigmatized while similar expressions from mainstream individuals are celebrated. she says that the algorithmic surveillance, shadowbanning and censorship that sex workers have been fighting for years are now affecting everyone and that recognizing this shared struggle, society can build coalitions. she calls this ”whore singularity.”*

If women and women’s bodies created the internet and we are continually posting our bodies on the internet, nude or not, are we not all whores? — hamsa fae

This year seems to be the peek high of algorithmic corruption. I believe that creators and influencers are a new subclass of the whore. If you are being visible online, whether to express your world or your work, you’re a whore— in the most respectable way. We are all trying to sell something. We are trying to sell our identity, our brand, our art, build a community. In reality we are whoring out our energy for an algorithmic system that focuses on rewarding a certain group of people. —hamsa fae

hamsa fae on self authoring the body

Right now in my performance work, I rarely seek out someone else to take photos of my concepts. There are not many people who understand the vision of having imperfections, or having something that quakes your heart when you look at an image. A sense of uneasiness. Because it’s revealing, some sort of truth. I want what I’m documenting in my work to reveal that. I want to be the director and leader, and making sure that I execute that image or video based on my vision. So that I can convey my intentions.

After working with brands in LA who were extracting my identity to make money for themselves.. now I ask myself: Is the whore archetype a figure of freedom? I can whore myself out for whatever I want. For my art, my patron.

I think the word whore can become something similar to how the word queer was reclaimed. Maybe the word whore can be reclaimed too. That it’s not criminal.

Who creaes the judgement of what is a whore and what is not? W
hat is pure what is not?

THE COSMIC ENERGY OF 5AM

dóri varga — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 17:01:24 GMT

Danielle Fitzgerald is a documentary and portrait photographer, social worker, mother and the creator of Venus 8 — a long-term collaborative project documenting the humanity, multiplicity and inner lives of erotic dancers. Made over four years inside the locker rooms and late nights of the club, her work resists voyeurism entirely.

“I didn’t want to use the word subject,” she says, “because that feels like something you study — when I feel this project is more like something we do together.”

In this conversation, Danielle and Dori talk about the art of identity shifting, what postpartum isolation opened up creatively, the sacred rituals she has witnessed backstage, and why she believes intensity is a green flag.

Listen here on Substack or on Apple Podcasts / Acast.

follow danielle on ig
danielle’s website

This Saturday: more info and tickets for HOT MAMA

More info and waitlist for bodytext

.✦ ݁ BLOOD OF AURORA is our bi-weekly audio series hosted by Hungarian artist Dóri Varga, featuring raw conversations with women from the creative field on sex, motherhood, creativity, relationships and transformation. ✦ ݁˖

THERE IS NO WAY TO ESCAPE THE MALE GAZE

dóri varga — Thu, 21 May 2026 17:43:57 GMT

Observing the gaze, the subconscious in creative work, writing as exposure of the self and the radical act of bringing more mother into everything.

Madeleine Morlet is a British-American photographer, writer and mother of two, whose long-term, research-led practice explores the limits of what images can hold. Her work asks hard questions about how we see and who gets to look. Introducing her recent project The Body Is Not a Thing, Madeleine found herself “being confronted by the enduring influence of the male gaze.”

Listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts and Acast.

madeleine on ig
madeleine’s website

Vanessa Cuccia on Pleasure, Shame & Aliveness

dóri varga — Thu, 07 May 2026 17:01:58 GMT

Entering a conversation in progress —this is the BLOOD OF AURORA podcast vibe. Just two women speaking from wherever they are at, over the phone.

BLOOD OF AURORA is our new, bi-weekly audio series led by myself Dóri Varga, featuring raw conversations with women from the creative field on sex, motherhood, creativity, relationships and transformation.

You can listen here on Substack, Apple Podcasts & Acast.

Our first convo is with Vanessa Cuccia — musician, actor and conceptual artist behind the sensual wellness brand Chakrubs. We speak about navigating shame, permission in pleasure, embracing desires and nurturing a sense of aliveness through creativity.

Follow Vanessa on IG