My goal is to take the weekend off and have a computer free weekend, except for posting the blog. So today will be light. I have been trying to schedule a weekend with nothing for a month now and this is it. I just need to clear my head and get out and work in my garden. My nephew is coming to spend the day with me and help me get the garden cleaned out before all the leaves begin to fall. It is not raining this morning and it has turned cold outside, perhaps bypassing fall all together. I also got the materials yesterday to begin working on the deer fence in the front. I love to build things, and I have a very cool design idea for this fence so today I will be in heaven doing the things I love most. It is still a good time to get out and transplant ferns and hearty root based perennials. Yipeee!!! It’s time to put on my old rugged Carhart work pants, a wool sweater and boots on and head outside for a different kind of creation this morning. Today is about taking that breath and gaining a fresh perspective. But you still get to see your naked man image of the day.

The web site has grown massive and I think we are trying to over achieve for its launch. Keep adding new components and every time we do it seems to be several days of banging our heads against the wall just trying to activate the unit and get it functioning. Then once it gets activated, it becomes so easy work with. This is a very simple process and I love the way it flows once you have established the mode of operation. This week has been about creating shopping carts and ultimately being able to sell images on line. But, you know me I can’t do it the simple way and do it half way. Sometimes I think this is the bane of my existence. I try to do too much and never realize my limitations. I have always learned to dream big, that anything and everything is possible, you just need to figure it out. Julian, my site consultant techie keeps reminding me to take a breath and step away, that it is possible, but you just have to work through it with patience. I have patience to a certain extent, but when I get to a roadblock and it’s beyond what I can do and shuts down for several days while I wait for a response, patience goes out the window. I guess I am a doer and need things to be in constant motion, forward motion. I am not quite sure why? And I am not quite sure where I get this drive for over achievement. Nobody else in my family seems to be afflicted with it. I think part of it is my age, because it seems the older I get the harder I push. I am savoring the experience and am having a great time working on and creating it, but think I could have made it simpler out of the gate and perhaps let it grow gradually. I realize now perhaps I should take example from the garden. We sow the seeds and put the plants in bare root as starters and we know that they will with time grow and mature. This is the pleasure of gardening, is that we know the process and that things will follow a path to an end result, the final design of the blooming garden. Gardens do also do not happen overnight and often take years to plan, cultivate and become the things of gracious beauty. It takes a perennial three years to reach its maturation, growing stronger with each cycle until finally fully establishes its roots and spurts to incredible life and vitality on that third year, that is provided we continue to nurture it along the way. I have always heard that it takes 10 years to become a photographer. It certainly has for me. There is such subtlety to everything about the process and most of that was learned just as I am now, from trial and error and making so many mistakes and botching so many images. But then again I started before the era of modern digital imagery when mistakes were costly. We now live in a time where everything is solvable by the click of some button and or the movement of a slider in some piece of software. It’s almost fool proof now. But photography is a passion you never get to the end of learning or growing. I think that’s why it chose me, because I am not a person to give up easy and love the process of growth no matter how painful it may become in the moment.

I love that I am able to step back into the theater world once a month or so and photograph production images of the shows. I still get that tingly feeling when I walk into the place and always feel like I am returning home. Most people don’t realize what a magic playground theater actually can become. It basically starts with a dark empty space, where there is nothing, only a void. Through the collaboration of the creative teams it is transformed into a place that sparks your imagination, becoming a world where ideas and theories of human existence come together to be played out and shared. In Greek times this was one of the biggest and most social platforms for culture and people to merge. Perhaps the Facebook of its time. The ideas where often told in heroic tragedy or farcical parodies on what was current and reactions to whatever was happening at the time within that society and all without commercial interruption. Theater is able to transform us and give us a new perspective on the way we view ourselves. And since it is live, you feel the heartbeat and breath of the actors as they unfold and reveal life from their point of view. Good theater really captivates and makes us think about who we are and gives us a new view on our relationship to the world.

When you work in the theater you become immersed within the world of the play as you unlock the playwrights mind. Plays are often contained in their own reality and are told from the playwright’s perspective and can often be skewed to how they perceive and view the world. But when a talented director and creative team take hold, add their interpretation, the concept it was based on grows to become a collective of shared thought and meaning. Then ultimately the audience breathes in their interpretation and it grows to a universal consciousness. Many people out of the theater don’t realize how essential the audience is to the process of theater. They go to see a show and afterwards say, “I liked it” or “I didn’t care for that too much because… “, without really appreciating the experience they have just had. Though the actors may have rehearsed this play for six weeks to bring it to life, the element of the audience is still absorbed and impacts the show. You feel their presence, their mood, their discomfort, and their delight. I remember even as a stage manager, not necessarily on the stage, feeling the ebb and flow of the audience each night, as it became fresh and a totally different experience from the previous night, kind of like the moon and its pull on the earth’s tidal flow. This is why plays that run for years always remain fresh, making each night a new exploration.

I think it is this focused quality of my years in the theater that gives my images an interesting quality. Through the process of photography I am still able to create my own universe in a concept, thought or idea and transform into a visual representation that others can respond to. The stage must be set, the lighting balanced, the music added to create a world for the model to enter. Once they are there, the focus becomes about pulling from the subject the inner life they already posses. Helping them explore and relate to who they are and what has brought them to this moment. There is a moment then, when something very profound begins to happen as they begin to literally strip away and reveal what is hidden within. This too is theater in its purest form, to cut to the essence of humanity, with real ordinary people experiencing real honest emotions. This is the body of my existence as an artist in a secluded place like Montana. Sexual preference becomes irrelevant, as gender, age and physical deformity fade into the background. The essential emotional response becomes the essence of the ideal as we are drawn into the moment of revelation. I whole heartedly engage in the process of the theater when I view it and bring this sense of engagement into my studio as I work allowing the viewer to share and see the power of my experience.

I woke up this morning to the sound of the rain pelting the bank of skylight windows above my bed. A few leaves have begun to fall and dapple the window. There is a cold dampness that fills my room and I know fall is suddenly upon me. It was one of those mornings I just didn’t want to get out of bed, to just lie in the softness of my soft sheets, snuggled beneath the warmth of my down comforter. There is something about mornings like this where you suddenly become keenly aware of everything that surrounds you and you want to just wrap yourself in the moment and savor it. This has been the year of sudden season change, two days ago it was hot and in the eighties. I also see that the sudden change not only has applied to the weather this year, but to myself as well. As I lay in bed I thought what another remarkable year I have had. I never dreamed past 30, nor past 40 and now, to find myself again at this age when I thought for sure I had lost my way. I am beginning to see there are mysterious internal forces that guide us toward some sort of salvation. I am not a religious person and don’t believe in a redemption in the hereafter. My grandmother used to say, that hell is what we create for ourselves here on earth and I suppose in some cosmic way I have inherited her idealism for living in the moment, but the booze got the best of her and she killed herself at 42 in 1963. From the stories I have heard she was a woman far ahead of her time who had reached the prime of her existence and could no longer confront the passing of her youth. Better to die young and leave a beautiful corpse sort of thing, so much good that does her now. I, somehow always thought I would follow in her footsteps. Perhaps it has made me an over achiever to make up for what she had lost.

The other night I was looking through some of the books that I have collected over the years of male erotic art. I was showing Thor some of the artist who inspired me and as he opened them up, he would say, “Here is one of your images, here’s another, and another, and another.” Though I did not copy the images their impressions were unmistakable in the foundation and influence of my own collection. I had not looked at many of these image for quite some time, but I definitely saw the influence of so many great artists I admired and adored in these images and I realize how much their influence had somehow seeped into my subconscious and guided me toward my own process of creation. And as we read the text and bios, Thor remarked, This almost describes you to a T.” It suddenly dawned on me that I have become the master of what I dreamed so long ago. That I now stood with all the artists I so admired, adored. I spent hours looking through their images; “The Male Nude” drawings of Paul Cadmus, the photographic complexity of Minor White, the extraordinary light of Fred Holland Day and Caravaggio, the unabashed boldness of Robert Mapplethorpe, the theatricality of George Platt Lynn and the remarkable mythic beauty of Anthony Gayton. I suddenly see this year I have realized a dream and that others now look to my images for their sorts of inspiration. Julian Cameron writes in her book “The Artist Way” about how an artist must always be filling their creative well, collecting inspiration that can feed them. My entire life has been about filling that well, apparently to the point of overflow, because it keeps spilling out all over most of you. So though the seasons have changed and the rain is still pelting my darkened windows the studio is full of a warm glow of what I have achieved and become and a life I thought was once over has only begun.

“Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a dark forest
For the straightforward path had been lost”
The opening Canto in Dante’s Divine Comedy: The Inferno, as translated by Henry W. Longfellow

I realized today that I only have 90 blogs left to write and post. Wow, it feels like I am just beginning in so many ways! I feel like I have had so much to say and don’t really feel like I have really gotten to most of it yet. Some days seem harder than others and some of them become quite difficult to write because I may start off with an idea of where I want it to go and as I write divert into in another direction that I really hadn’t thought about. Most of it becomes stream of consciousness and I try to keep it relevant to what I am dealing with in my little world. My philosophy has been that I cannot change the world, that I can only impact my little corner of my little world. The way I write is also the way I photograph and live my life. I feel like I am a fairly grounded person, who has absorbed a lot in my life, the same as I absorb information for my creative work. I love research, reading, theater and particularly cinema; anything that captivates me emotionally. I generally come up with a plan or concept of what I want to do and often have a free flow, getting to the result. For the most part my days are completely unplanned and unstructured. Yes, I may have a few things that are planned, a photo shoot, or a meeting, and yes UPS in the evenings, and most definitely a walk each night with the kitties through their neighborhood after dark so they can show me all the amazing things in their tiny world. But for the most part I don’t really know what I am doing when I get up in the mornings. I don’t really have a set time I get up or go to bed and live my life in complete flexibility, working on and flowing from what feels important at the time or in the moment.

I would say my greatest asset is being present in the moment all the time. I don’t drink much, don’t really do drugs, well perhaps on a rare occasion and I detest television. Television is way too mindless for me and I hate the thought of someone coming into my personal space to assault and insult me. Obviously, I adore the Internet, but then again I actually limit it to about an hour a day socially or longer when I am researching something for a project. But, my approach to photography is the same as I live, it’s generally structured with a concept or idea that I want to explore, well researched but then when I get to the shoot I let go, let it fly out the window and put my focus utterly on the subject giving them all my attention. Then, together we explore the possibilities of where the shoot will lead, often someplace completely different from where it starts. I thrive on this sort of interaction and the spontaneity. I believe life is a collaboration of the people we know and become acquainted with and so photography also needs to be a collaboration of the best of both our worlds when I work with a model. It was one of the things I loved about working in the theater and one of the things I admire most within myself. I am admired at UPS because of my spontaneous nature and ability to creatively solve problems and issues because I am able to recognize both sides of the management structure as well as union workers, which are typically in complete conflict with each other. This is also what made me a great stage manager in the theater, my ability to look into the heart of everyone and figure out how to best draw upon their talents.

I am generous, kind, giving, compassionate, considerate and empathetic. Though I sometimes write about dark issues, I am really not one to brood. I think I am funny and I tend to laugh a lot and find such delight in simple things. I rarely get upset and when I do it becomes a remarkable marker making me aware something deeper is happening within myself. For the most part I totally enjoy my life and have a happy existence. Though my thoughts and mind tend to deal with heavy issues of trying to figure where I am in my time and my significance as to how I relate to it. But being a creation of the moment it is often pondered then forgotten as I move on. Kind of like this blog I would say. Dabbling in a bit of everything and going everywhere. I guess over all I am just the sum of all my marvelous parts rolled into one oozing bundle.