A Common Global Community

Wow we are into May already. I feel like my life has been a whirlwind of activity for the past month and this morning I am finally getting to stop for a moment and catch up with myself. I have now managed to post this blog and images for 1/3 of the year. And hopefully it has been interesting to all those still following. This mean I still have 2/3 of the year to go. I have hit over 20,000 visitors to the site at this point, and to me that is still a bit mind-boggling. I see my self changing a great deal since this project began and still have no idea where it will end up by year’s end. In many ways I am discovering a peaceful center to myself and over all feel more confident and comfortable inside my own skin. Thanks to all the fascinating people who have responded to me along this voyage. I am sorry that I have lost track with some and am not great at keeping up the communication. I wish I had a year off just to get out and meet all the remarkable people I have been getting to know. In many ways I feel like I have developed some very strong friendships and created relationships with people I have never met. Some of them, more so, than the people that I have met. There is something about being online that you can be more open or candid. You are able to quickly get to the core of who they are? It is an odd era we live in to have such lighting fast communication across the globe. As a child I remember thinking how distant everything was. There was a certain amount of distrust of the world and fear of the unknown prevailed. War seemed inevitable and there was a threat of global inhalation. I remember thinking as a child that the world we knew could end anytime then. Growing up in the 60’s was filled with turmoil and doubt. Leaders were being assassinated, horrific crimes committed. The Charles Manson rampage made me cower with fear even in my small basement bedroom in Montana. Would I become the victim of random violence? It seems that my dream as a child were always of horrific acts of violence or mass nuclear decimation. It’s so weird to think back to what entered the psyche of a pre-pubescent boy of that age. I somehow never dreamed I’d survive to this age so many years later. Since I have been out in the world and have been witness to its evolution, I now feel harmony and security without bodily threat. Now our insecurities lie in global economic threat. The infrastructure growing so large that it seems we are losing or quickly will lose our way to sustain it. The fears that now inhabit our psyches is that we will lose all we have worked for, because we can no longer afford it and end up in a tent city somewhere, homeless. I was watching a show last night “Inside Job” where that is the reality for many. The advent of television and internet has brought us such a long way in facing our fears and anxieties. It has allowed me to break the isolation I felt as a gay artist aspiring to find meaning in the context of my nude photography and be accepted for who and what I have become. This project day by day seems to bring me closer to the truth of who I have been and what I will become. I entered this project on the verge of despair and 4 months later feel elation. My fears, doubts, and anxieties dissipating because I know I am not alone on this journey. It is good to find a common community globally.