Wow, it’s hard to believe I have made it to the half way point of this project. Half a year down already. It has gone quicker than I ever imagined and it feels like I have covered a lot of ground. I figured that I would run out of things to say, but that hasn’t happened yet, and I still have a lot more thoughts swimming in my head. At this point the average number of followers has grown to about 400 per day and on good days 700. This morning we are at 38,000 visitors since it all began, six months ago. I had no idea so many of you out there would be interested in the ranting of an artist from the mountains of western Montana. This has certainly taken me down a path I never thought I would travel. I felt like I was in such a funk when the project began, unsure of my abilities to express what was in my heart and had no clue even where I was going with all this. I guess, in a sense, I am still not quite sure where I am going with all this. The support and talent I have tapped into and all who have shared with me, is astonishing. It’s given me a completely different perspective on art and our gay culture in general. I seem to have come to a better understanding and appreciation of all the various facets of my life and it all seems to merge into a greater view of myself as a whole. My life used to feel so compartmentalized, each part of it isolated from the other. I felt a certain shame and apprehension from exhibiting images of nude men. I now see myself; the process, the telling of my history, and the passing of my knowledge as part of the artist that I have become. It’s not merely the images I project, but an overall, unified, inclusive self that becomes the portrait of us as artists. Wow! What a journey this first half has been. I never really thought of myself as a writer, and I am often amazed that this is what many comment on as the better part of my expression. Thanks for all your continued support of this project and my images.

I got a call yesterday morning at 6:00 am that my father was in the hospital out in Superior, with an irregular heart. I was on the road in about 20 minutes and spent most of the day out there with him, without Internet. Sorry no posting yesterday. My father is about to reach his 75 Birthday in about two weeks and over all has been in pretty good health. When I arrived, after the hour drive; he was alone, drifting in and out of sleep. He was glad to see me, a look of worry filled in his eyes, trying to get comfortable in his bed, hooked up to all kinds of equipment. My father really hasn’t been in the hospital other then a surgery he had for prostrate cancer about 7 or 8 years back, from which he has made a full recovery. I am very much like him, restless, unable to sit still very long. I could see he was in a lot of discomfort, complaining of a headache, and his heart rate all over the place. After a day of waiting and many tests they came to no real conclusion as to what was wrong. By the end of the day they were keeping him for an overnight observation.

My father is still a very active man, this week he has been building the most beautiful table in his shop. It’s a designed for an outside patio with a pop out piece in the center to put a planter. He has used the most extraordinary wood, that has such beautiful grain, that no one will not want to use it as an outside table. He has no place for it, and didn’t build it for anyone in particular, but loved the design and was intrigued by the possibility of the planter in the center that he just had to build it. This is my dad and I guess this is really the source of my creative process really springs. I create beautiful pictures of beautiful things, well crafted, with no specific target in mind. I just have to do it because I am passionate about the process and love the exploration of it. I never saw my father in such a creative light, yet he has always built or modified the houses we have lived. He too likes his yard and has spent years building great terrace walls with planters on their hillside property-overlooking river. My father has always been in harmony with nature and has spent the greater part of his life outside, mostly in the mountains around their small hamlet of a village. He loves to fish and can spend days on the river and knows every fishing hole in the mountain streams through out the county like the back of his hand.

Why did I waste so much of my youth in angst, dread and fear of this man? It seems he has always accepted me for just who I am, no matter what I did, even though he really didn’t understand it. Somehow I had set a bar in my head and had created presumed expectations that I don’t know were ever really there. I was so different, creative, gay, and introspective. Looking back I think I was the one who was judgmental and isolated myself. Being gay during the 80’s was a time of turmoil, especially in a remote place like Montana. We are taught core values, yet when we are drawn to something, in our souls that is contrary to the belief it create self exile of the soul. Our lives empty into a meandering river of torrent rapids that push us further from the shore. Perspective is lost and sometimes we are swept away my it’s surging forces. Did I spend years drowning in something I couldn’t understand myself, becoming bitter, cynical and judgmental? Was it easier to find comfort in isolation, create the walls of defiance to protect the new core value that I could not deny? I have seen life become so much easier for the newer generations, acceptance and the new core of tolerance are now healthy and as a community makes us stronger. Coming out of a time of darkness and misunderstanding, sacrifices had to be made, but sometimes the sacrifice of ourselves just becomes to great and many are lost along that journey.

Yesterday with my father I recognized the beauty of my heritage and am proud the have made my way back to where I belong. That moment when Dorothy clicks the heels of her ruby slippers together and repeats “There’s no place like home” always made me cry. My heart broke and ached for that sort of realization and I now see the strangeness of my own journey has brought me to Dorothy’s realization and a recognition of not having to wander any further then her own back yard.

The ending of first season of “The Big C” television series packed such an emotional wallop, it stirred in my head most of the night. For those of you just coming into this discussion it’s a Showtime series about Cathy (Laura Linney) who is diagnosed with stage 4 terminal cancer and how she deals with coming to terms with how it’s impacting her life. Several years ago I was faced with all these same anxieties when I was diagnosed with stage 1 Lymphoma and spent a summer undergoing chemotherapy. Laura Linney and the cast and crew give such amazing life, dignity and honesty to this story and bring such realism to the process of learning the value of simple life and how precious each moment needs to become.

It’s got my mind racing and questioning am I really doing the things I adore? My days are filled with a flurry of activity and no two days are alike. I have big dreams and big aspirations and am constantly consumed with passion. Yes, I do wear myself out and become weary, but at night that exhaustion becomes a calming satisfaction that settles into my body and heart. I don’t really allow negative energy into my day, there is no time for it. In the beginning I felt that this need to overachieve was based on fear, and I think a great deal of it was, but as I begin to write and work on this project I now know I am the farthest from fear a person can get. For I have known my greatest fears, faced them and they no longer impact me. It gives me a certain amount of freedom and flexibility. There are no longer any limitations as to what I can achieve.

I see so many people around me not really enjoying their lives, desperate, discontent and filled with despair, not passionate about anything. Waiting their time out, they grumble about this and about that, but never doing what they want, never exploring anything new within themselves. Unfortunately, we live in a time of great mental escapism, to sit and only watch television hour after hour, day after day. To take drugs and become carefree and oblivious of time and spend hours and days addicted to the internet, woven into other people’s lives, desperately trying to escape our own, wishing we had something better or we were someone else.

I recently photographed a kid who was so filled with negative energy toward himself that he could not see the beauty of what he was standing there in front of me naked, and was not willing to explore where it could possibly take him. I know, I too have been there as well. I have recently met a brilliant young artist and film maker, who also dwells in the misery of a broken relationship that seems to drain all his creative ambition. And I have tried to befriend a 25 year old (a recent seroconversion to HIV positive) who thinks his life has ended and only wants to smoke dope and send harmful venomous energy toward others. Though he proclaims to live in a state of Namaste, he doesn’t really know what the full concept of the thought means. I want to reach out and say, “Don’t waste your lives!” Every experience is of value and worth having. I know I cannot change others and bring them to any kind of realization and perhaps it is my fatal flaw to want to want to help others living in desperation. I certainly don’t know the answers to it all, and don’t want to. I can only impact my corner of my world and lead by my example.

YOUR LIFE IS YOUR OWN, in the end it’s all you really have, don’t put it in the control of others, because they are probably having a hard time just maintaining themselves, much less someone else. You are the only one who is in control of it, MAKE IT WHAT YOU WANT!

Within a week of meeting my first partner, he just sort of moved in with me. I was working as a manager, running two different movie theater complexes for a single chain operation out of California. I loved movies, and feel I have somehow always been connected to them. I was making a decent living, for my age, had a great apartment, nice clothes, the whole status thing. The University didn’t quite work out so I was just resigned to work. It turns out this whole first relationship thing wasn’t quite working out so well either. He was here going to the University, was a smoker, and turns out to be very inconsiderate of everyone who was around him, including me. The sexual attraction was still pretty hot and it felt like those spring nights were spent wrapped in each other, but the days became turmoil. A couple of weeks after we met we were in bed one morning when I heard a knock at the door. I slipped on my shorts and went to answer it. Peering around from behind the closed door I saw it was my parents. They were in from out of town and stopped by out the blue, which they never did. Panic rushed through my mind as I told them to give me a moment to get dressed and closed the door. I frantically went back into the bedroom and as I shuffled to put my clothes, told Mark it was my parents and asked him to please stay in the bedroom and I would get rid of them as quickly as possible. I shut the bedroom door, and invited my parents in. We began to chat and after a few minutes, Mark came wandering out of the bedroom, naked, only wrapped in a sheet and said “I left my cigarettes in the bathroom, do you mind if I get them?” My heart sank as my parents faces turned white as a ghost and they B-lined for the door, all of us aghast, except Mark of course, unable to speak. What can you say? It’s one hell of a way to come out to your family. I spent the rest of the morning agonizing over what had happened, trying to comprehend what they must be thinking, wanting to talk to them, back when there were no cell phones and I could not reach them, my stomach churning in knots the entire day. When I finally did reach my parents later that evening we began to talk. They said they were a bit more uncomfortable than anything else. They said they had always thought I was that way, but didn’t really know how to approach it.

Mark and I where together for a year, and when we broke up, my parents finally admitted they never really cared for him. But sometimes love puts a blinder on us that blurs the truth and looking back I realize it was one of the most awkward and probably not the best years of coming to terms with what I was becoming.

I’ve been reading Allison’s (Elizabeth Lister) new book EXPOSURE and it is really awakening thoughts and memories of years back. I feel a tinge of the old sexual self wanting to emerge as I examine where I am in my current relationship. It’s like the past, the present and the future are all colliding into one time, now. Alison has done a remarkable job of capturing some great characters and those feelings of a new romance and utterly falling for another person, which I had forgotten and missed from my life. I guess this is why this genre is so popular. I certainly see why people could get addicted to it. I know Alison has written this story from her heart and she has captured the spirit of a gay romance very beautifully. Her writing is simple and natural. It stirs my own passion. I feel fortunate to have collected so many talented people around me through the course of this year. Though many of them I have not actually physically met, I feel like I have grown close. It’s like I am surrounding myself with this most amazing collective of talented people, we all feeding and inspiring each other. It’s becoming very powerful, stronger than anything I have ever known. We are globally connected and united; all filled with vision and passion, feeding our frenzy to express our creative selves. I have read about the artist collectives that gathered in Paris over a century ago who inspired each other to greater heights, from which some of the most remarkable art and writing has emerged. It is here, present, now. Collectively we grow with each other. We challenge each other. I guess my fantasy would be to meet up somewhere with all my remarkable friends and all hang out together, drink, eat, get a little high and feel the pulse of that creative wave washing over us. Something inside of me yearns for a physical social interaction. There are now so many people I want to visit and meet, I don’t even know where to begin. Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, England, France, Argentina and various points in the USA. Perhaps we are all just ordinary people who have these extraordinary talents and persona only on line and this collective can only work in cyberspace. What a strange phenomenon for me to live in such a remote place like Montana, to have reached out and found such a sublime caliber of creative soul mates.