Is there really a market out there for the type of work I’m creating or does it just become something of appreciation? With the Internet giving us such prolific access to all kinds of images and resources does the appreciation extend to gallery walls? Are these spaces mostly reserved for painters and other graphic artist? I am currently on a quest to discover these sorts of venues that will show these types of images. Does being in a remote place like Montana hinder my quest for acceptance? I feel my network on the Internet has allowed me to enter circles of people who are appreciative of this sort of expression, but there is a vast distance between chatting and actually talking to someone about the possibilities of your vision becoming a reality. For some reason, the European market seems more open and tolerant for this sort of imagery than in the United States. I wonder why? Some how it seems this market is closed in the United States as we are caught in the trap of passing fancy and moving onto the next “it” thing that can become a sensation. For some reason American culture seems to be drawing toward a more transient disposable nature. Is it because we are such consumers and the options are seemingly limitless? The American obsession currently is our handheld mobile devises that connect us globally to anything we could possible ever desire merely for the charge of its access. We can find clothing, food, and sex with a few clicks of our fingers. I have many friends that support and love what I do and enjoy my process of creation. They bring my images up on their devises and have a vast collection of those images stored. But nonetheless, art is art, and it’s creation and display of these images must survive. In the days of George Platt Lynn these images were taboo, rarely shown, yet still collected by private collectors of such art, still to remain hidden for decades before they could be brought out for public exhibition. Now they are highly collectable because of the beauty of his vision, use of light, and perfect exposure. The late 70’s with the sexual revolution seem to bring about a public awareness of such imagery with the bold ventures of Robert Mapplethorpe and the American sexual revolution. When the world was struck by a virus called HIV, with the conservative climate of the Reagan administration, this form of art began to all be vanish. Pornography becomes prominent, flooding the market with cheap access that could use for private access and then be disposed of. In many ways the world of being captivated by fantasy is lost. Our culture seems to be moving toward that of instant physically gratification. Perhaps it has become far too easy to pick someone up on a mobile application than to view art. Yet I think art will remain to remind of our culture and become a marker of where we have been.

What is it about the male form that is so captivating and alluring? Is it something that stirs our desire? Is it the association with strength? Could it be that we are just drawn to the beauty of the flesh? Sometimes, in the summer when I am driving around town and I see men outside in shorts and no shirt, I have to pause and gaze upon them. It seems that weather they are actually in shape or not doesn’t really factor into my fascination, though a great chest and arms can captivate me further. Some how there is an intimacy they reveal, the mystery of what lies below the surface of ordinary clothing is revealed. When I was younger I associated nudity with sex, and in my head it become a seduction of desire. What if I could hold that man close to me? Would he be a good lover? Would we become overwhelmed by our forbidden passion? Could I love a man like that, could he love me? Or perhaps it was the carnal need for being overcome by pleasure. But as I get older that gaze sometimes become filled with an envy to return to my own youth and become the object of someone else’s desire. For the most part I now look the form as beauty, form structure, line, curve. Our perceptions are altered as we get older and see our own youthful form change. The supple glow of the skin begins to fade. There is a point in our lives where we hit the peak of youth. It is a time we should cherish and reveal in that glorious moment, because all too soon that youth begins to fade. All too often that moment in our lives is over looked because it is taken for granted. We assume that it will linger on forever in our minds eye and become completely unaware of it transient glow. It is at this point that it still doesn’t seem to matter if we are overweight or out of shape. Perfection of form is an overrated misconception. There is something about all of us that feeds our discontent. Unfortunately we are fed by the compulsion of mass media campaigns that tell us we are in adequate. We all somehow want to have the beauty of build of a porn star. To be desired and consumed. I too am guilty of this myself. It feels like a great portion of my life has been a resistance against it; feel inadequate, not up to the standard. The older I get the further I get from desire or obtaining desirability. Now that desire changes to an emotional satisfaction instead of a physical one. I had a good friend that I grew up with come to my house one day and saw some of the images I was working on. He wanted to buy one, but the only problem was that it sexually charged him and he was afraid of being reminded of that constant arousal factor. It kind of shocked me. I don’t necessarily see my images as being erotically charged. Perhaps as an artist I have become dulled by their erotic nature, because to me it becomes a vision of light, color, balance, tone, curve, shape, line and form. Perhaps this is only my own sign of aging.

I am a bit lost this morning; my mind seems to be filled with confusion and I just can’t seem to stay focused. Today it’s a journey to the down side of my existence. First of all my father has not been doing to well and they have put him on some medications that he thinks are more harmful than helping him. I keep trying to talk to him but it’s been very difficult. I have never heard my father so irritable. He has congestive heart failure, which has created blood clots they are trying to prevent going to his brain and creating a stroke. The side effects from the drugs they gave him have made him miserable and he is very frustrated. I totally understand this myself after going through those feelings of my body rejecting itself doing chemotherapies several years back. There is a shock of memory coming back into my system as I can feel that overwhelming feeling of nausea flooding my mind of body again. I can feel myself crawling out of my skin in talking to my father and trying to calm him. The panic swells and I am aware of it and push it back into suppression. I keep telling him that he needs to communicate with his doctor, which he is reluctant to do. Why do we have these perceptions that doctors are so unapproachable? After all, we hire them they do not hire us. We know our bodies better than anyone else, what and how much it can and will tolerate. I know drugs are designed for the masses, but not all of us are the same and it must be tailored to match our needs. Therefore you must work with your doctor and develop a relationship of communication. First step is to educate our selves on what is happening within our selves. I have never just blindly put my trust in someone else. I must say I was a bit stressed all day yesterday thinking about my father and it was really having an impact on trying to create a video and staying focused. I talked to my father last night before I went to bed and he seems to have emotionally accepted and embrace what’s happening as opposing and fighting it. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Health is something so many of us take for granted. It is probably my greatest fear of aging, becoming incapacitated. My father is twenty-four years older than me and twenty-four years is not that far away for me to become his age. I feel my own health sometimes slipping out of control, a little extra fat here, a lingering soreness in the joints there. The red flags of concern are raised that I really must take better care of myself, but it somehow becomes harder to do, and often at this age more difficult to engage. Last year I did an exercise program called P90X and it whipped my body, mind and spirit into shape. It was a blast to do, but it was very consuming and as I got busy with this project at the beginning of this year, have let it slip away. Today I feel active and vital and take relatively good care of my health. In many ways I feel at the prime of my life, to be fifty this year, most everything is coming together for me. I am finally reaching for this photography dream and it is astonishing. The culmination of my life is being explored through my images. The story of my youth flashes within the flicker of my monitor. I was photographing a kid a while back who thought I was being a bit too serious. I told him that this is a gift he may not appreciate now, but he will someday. He came back several days later wowed by what we had accomplished and being able to see himself in this sort of light. My friendships and acquaintances are amazing. I see how lucky I am to have lived such an extraordinary life. I still have so much more to cram in. I think this awareness of health is good; there are things we can do to help ourselves maintain that balance. Today I am going to try to maintain my own sense of balance and move forward through today.

I have quite possibly been through one of the worst processes of my life. Being interviewed on videotape. My life and work in the theater always kept me on the backside of the stage or camera, but this morning I created an interview for the submission of my project for Kick Starter. Jumping out of a plane on my 50th Birthday was not nearly as difficult as today. How is it that I can be so articulate when I am sitting here writing, but then my mind and mouth become filled with garble when I am trying to explain what I am working on or doing? I have been working on this project for the past 6 1/2 months now you would think that would come flowing out; it seems to when I write. It’s funny because I have never really seen myself as a writer either, but I have always approached it by just expressing my thoughts and emotions and that I would be able to muddle my way through the process. I am surprised by how many people say how moved they were by the text and how powerful my writing has been. What I thought would be a simple twenty-minute process today turned into a three-hour ordeal. There is a reason I have always worked behind the scenes on creative endeavors. Tomorrow we will cut it down to a two or three-minute video and the submission process will begin. I am definitely gaining a different perspective on myself as an artist. Up to this point I feel that I have remained hidden and protected. You all may laugh when you read this and be saying how can a man who can expose himself so publicly through a process like this. That’s easy, up until now it has only been on the Internet where I am protected by the confines of my laptop. I am generally really good in dealing with and connecting to people, but there is also a part of me that is very reserved and actually quite shy. Today that side of my self resisted being exposed. I realized today, that some how as artist our creation comes from the minds eye, how we perceive our selves. The actual self may be different from that of the artist. It’s far easier to conceptualize your vision and just create, almost like a voyeur, watching, waiting, lingering. I often think the real me isn’t all that interesting, perhaps it is another reason I am driven to create so I don’t have to deal with the insecurities of my physical self. It was odd to feel such a strange fracture of myself and to become so keenly aware of it.

My perceptions of my imagery is changing the more I begin to look at what I have been doing and try to examine what the process is becoming. It feels like I have jumped from the creative mode into a marketing mode and it makes me begin to look at the process differently. Almost like the humanity side of my creativeness is being extracted. Or at least I am having a hard time seeing the images on their own. Writing about my process, and exposing images with it, seems to have created such a symbiotic relationship that becomes hard to separate. There was a simplicity in the beginning when all remained hidden and the images were private never really intended to be shown. I don’t think my process or approach has changed at all, but the exposure and expectations are now different. Before I had great difficulty finding subjects who were willing to expose themselves so the process become a struggle of searching for that identity. Now that people know what I am doing, and it is becoming recognizable, I have lots of willing subjects and they know coming in where the outcome will probably lead. In many ways this is liberating because an element of apprehension that I used to overcome no longer exists and I can get right to work and become more creative with the process. Sometimes it used to take me several sessions to get to that level of comfort. There is a part of me that misses that exploration because the revelation was not always with the subject but more often with myself, over coming my own fears, anxieties, and sexual phobia. I think this year my images have become much more interesting. The process of writing about my history and feeling bring my vision more into focus. I still feel like this has all is merely the study for something that I am on the verge, just about to discover.