exiled and loveless...
a long time ago, maybe 16 years or so ago, a person with some sort of acclaimed psychic awareness told me that they thought pains i described in my back, that i said felt like i had been stabbed with swords were actually my (angelic) wings being pinned to me, and that if the pins were pulled out the pains would go away because i'd be able to spread my wings and fly. i asked her if she were able to pull out the pins for me...
i'm feeling those same symptomatic pains again now. a lot recently. and my first reaction again is to think that someone is stabbing me. that i'm laying facedown in a muddy field somewhere, trampled by enemies and swords are being thrust into my body.
i've frozen up a lot creatively in the last week. because of this pain. it's just a single building block in my overall construction. if i don't feel good physically i can't think freely. the flow gets clogged. it's partly the construct of my workflow. i predominately feel good when i'm out creating photographs, but when i come home and have to sit in front of the computer for endless hours editing the hunched over posture and glare of the monitor breaks my back and blinds my eyes. the pains get so bad that it bleeds into my emotions and i start to question why i do any of it at all. luckily i have not booked any new shoots after august 26th. maybe i will take that break in september that i meant to take in august.
and then there is the blight of my ability to socialize. a really wonderful woman friend invited me out for coffee yesterday and i told her i couldn't meet her at the time that she wanted to meet. i could have fought all the odds of gravity to be there but it was not until about 7:30pm that i felt like she must have been feeling at 1:30pm. thing is it's the first time that a lady has wanted to sit have a coffee with me, probably since i last saw Robin Thorn in february of 2010. she wanted me to take photographs of her yesterday too and i also denied her that. really though, on the misery scale i'm in the habanero region right now.
i wrote an email to someone just before sitting in to write this blog. a young woman that wants to be a muse to me. and i keep denying her the chance. its weird because she could really be a true muse, if she were closer to me. closer geographically, and closer as a person. i don't know what i mean though. because there is one young woman that lives close to me who practically begs me to photograph her and i like to photograph her, have many times, but there is something that is not totally fluid between us. i think what i'm hungering for is a muse that will be available to me at my beckoning call. someone that i can call on the phone on the morning and say, "let's go to Golden Gate Park today", and she'll say "Yes, let's do." and she'll understand what it is I want to do. what I need her for. she'll understand my vision. how to be with me. how to act for me... how to dress for me. is this a selfish, self-centered fantasy? there really are artists in the world that do this, experience this, aren't there? it's what i dream of being able to experience in having a lover. to wake up in the morning before she does, before the sun comes through the windows so that i can sit next to the bed, waiting with the camera to catch the first rays of light falling on her body. who else gets to do that but an artist and his true, genuine muse?
the young woman i wrote to before this blog is so far from being this sort of muse to me though. and she doesn't know that i want this kind of muse and that my desire is in part the reason for me denying her the opportunity to work with me at all right now. and there is no one else anywhere near me on the scene of being this muse. my cat was my muse for awhile, but i couldn't get him to cooperate with road trips or costumes. i dream of someone like my friend Vicki's teenage daughter Demi being like a muse, if i lived near them. that any time we'd get to visit, which i think would be frequently that she would want to be photographed by me, my point being that we'd become so familiar with the practice and art of photographing/being photographed together that we'd enter into a relationship where there was a symbiosis and transcendence beyond the material world into higher art. really what i'd dream of having most is my own teenage daughter to be able to obsess over photographing artistically...
contrarily, my cemetery girl models have been my "obsessive daughters"... not having just one to obsess over, i've obsessed over many as if they were one. huh.
what i said to this young woman in this letter though, is that i feel that there is a curse upon me based upon the place that i live. that i live, not in an artist's colony but in a place where i as an artist have been exiled to be separate from all other artists. i am in a place where no other creative spirited beings congregate. the only place worse than San Ramon would be Salt Lake City.
i'm feeling those same symptomatic pains again now. a lot recently. and my first reaction again is to think that someone is stabbing me. that i'm laying facedown in a muddy field somewhere, trampled by enemies and swords are being thrust into my body.
i've frozen up a lot creatively in the last week. because of this pain. it's just a single building block in my overall construction. if i don't feel good physically i can't think freely. the flow gets clogged. it's partly the construct of my workflow. i predominately feel good when i'm out creating photographs, but when i come home and have to sit in front of the computer for endless hours editing the hunched over posture and glare of the monitor breaks my back and blinds my eyes. the pains get so bad that it bleeds into my emotions and i start to question why i do any of it at all. luckily i have not booked any new shoots after august 26th. maybe i will take that break in september that i meant to take in august.
and then there is the blight of my ability to socialize. a really wonderful woman friend invited me out for coffee yesterday and i told her i couldn't meet her at the time that she wanted to meet. i could have fought all the odds of gravity to be there but it was not until about 7:30pm that i felt like she must have been feeling at 1:30pm. thing is it's the first time that a lady has wanted to sit have a coffee with me, probably since i last saw Robin Thorn in february of 2010. she wanted me to take photographs of her yesterday too and i also denied her that. really though, on the misery scale i'm in the habanero region right now.
i wrote an email to someone just before sitting in to write this blog. a young woman that wants to be a muse to me. and i keep denying her the chance. its weird because she could really be a true muse, if she were closer to me. closer geographically, and closer as a person. i don't know what i mean though. because there is one young woman that lives close to me who practically begs me to photograph her and i like to photograph her, have many times, but there is something that is not totally fluid between us. i think what i'm hungering for is a muse that will be available to me at my beckoning call. someone that i can call on the phone on the morning and say, "let's go to Golden Gate Park today", and she'll say "Yes, let's do." and she'll understand what it is I want to do. what I need her for. she'll understand my vision. how to be with me. how to act for me... how to dress for me. is this a selfish, self-centered fantasy? there really are artists in the world that do this, experience this, aren't there? it's what i dream of being able to experience in having a lover. to wake up in the morning before she does, before the sun comes through the windows so that i can sit next to the bed, waiting with the camera to catch the first rays of light falling on her body. who else gets to do that but an artist and his true, genuine muse?
the young woman i wrote to before this blog is so far from being this sort of muse to me though. and she doesn't know that i want this kind of muse and that my desire is in part the reason for me denying her the opportunity to work with me at all right now. and there is no one else anywhere near me on the scene of being this muse. my cat was my muse for awhile, but i couldn't get him to cooperate with road trips or costumes. i dream of someone like my friend Vicki's teenage daughter Demi being like a muse, if i lived near them. that any time we'd get to visit, which i think would be frequently that she would want to be photographed by me, my point being that we'd become so familiar with the practice and art of photographing/being photographed together that we'd enter into a relationship where there was a symbiosis and transcendence beyond the material world into higher art. really what i'd dream of having most is my own teenage daughter to be able to obsess over photographing artistically...
contrarily, my cemetery girl models have been my "obsessive daughters"... not having just one to obsess over, i've obsessed over many as if they were one. huh.
what i said to this young woman in this letter though, is that i feel that there is a curse upon me based upon the place that i live. that i live, not in an artist's colony but in a place where i as an artist have been exiled to be separate from all other artists. i am in a place where no other creative spirited beings congregate. the only place worse than San Ramon would be Salt Lake City.
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