Author Archives: TerryCyr

Our Perceived Remembrance of Things Past

Glenn and Forest didn’t arrive back in Missoula until about 11:00 last night. It was so good to have him home again. It’s amazing the things we for get about each other after such an absence. I think in may ways we always think of the people we love by the way we remember meeting them, thinner, younger, so filled with passion and energy. We remember that look in their eye and the way they first look at us those first couple of weeks when we fall in love. Perhaps this is just life in general. A remembrance of our mothers, fathers, brothers, and other people who become important in our lives. I think sometimes we don’t really see the people who what they actually are and just project the impression we want to believe or remember about them. My mother passed away about 6 years ago from a prolonged illness of self-abuse and smoking. She died fairly young, and when she passed she looked like a very old woman, most people would have guessed twenty years beyond her actual age. I ran across a file of images of her in those later years and I barely recognized her. It’s not what I remember. I feel fortunate because my mother was wonderful in my youth and gave us so much love, and yes often to the point of suffocation as a teen. I always thought my mother looked so much like Ingrid Bergman, with such a lovely warm personality and my father like a very young Charles Heston. So we are the offspring that what those two’s love children would have looked like if they had gotten together. I digress. Needless to say I had a strange night and tossing and turning getting used to new stranger in my bed. He was so tired he fell asleep instantly and snoring commenced, I don’t ever really remember snoring before. But this morning was bliss as I had the warmth of his soft body snuggled against me and all those old feelings came flooding back and I realized this was really what I missed the most. His smile as he looked over at me and said “Good Morning Sunshine” as he has done for the past fourteen years and I knew he was finally home. Today’s image is of Glenn, I searched all day to use for yesterday and finally found it this morning.

I love this quote from the opening of Tennessee Williams play The Glass Menagerie:
“The scene is memory and therefore nonrealistic. Memory takes a lot of poetic license. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart. The interior is therefore rather dim and poetic”

I guess you could say most of my imagery is therefore rather dim and poetic for I know it is seated predominantly in my heart.

The Long Road Home

Glenn returns home tonight after working in North Dakota for the past six weeks. I am very excited to see him. It has been a terrible month of barely being able to communicate because there seems to be a lack of cell towers and he has had very poor internet service if any. This has been an annual job for him for the past couple of years to go and test the soil where the seed potatoes are grown to certify them for export to Canada. But it is good to have him home. I think sometimes it’s healthy for relationships to have long breaks from each other and always seems to realign where we are and how strong our relationship has grown on the past 14 years we have been together. It seems when you have been in a relationship with someone this long, some of the spark begins to fray around the edges and you begin to take each other for granted. He always does so much to keep me on target and focused. Taking care of a lot of the detail stuff like shopping and making sure we are fed. I am a person that is very project driven and have always got to have something I am working on at every moment of the day. I got a lot done while he was gone, though the website is not up yet it is nearing completion and I feel like I have created something extraordinary in his absence that he hasn’t even seen it yet. So I am totally jacked to see his reaction to the project. I was my goal to have the site up and running upon his return, but after about 3 weeks of technical difficulties we are in good shape.

Glenn is an adorable man, who is kind, quirky funny, like myself, and seems to be solid at the core. I have not written about him much because I had promised that I would not bring him into the process except on rare occasion, and out of respect wanted to protect his privacy, though he has been a huge component in my success and allowing me freedom and flexibility to get this dream up and out there this year. In all the years we have been together I cannot remember a single fight, barely an argument. We are the exact opposite of each other, and I think all the opposition somehow brings up together as a more stable whole. We are both of the same era and the same at our cores. We recognized this early and it’s what brought us together so closely in the beginning. I would say I used to think Glenn was the perfect Taoist. All knowing, all accepting, all giving, and all caring, a balance of all the great things in the world, yet completely unaware of it, not naming or even knowing the essence and harmony of his existence. He is somehow the embodiment of the Tao Te Ching without even knowing and possibly never even hearing of it. There is always harmony and balance that surrounds him all the time.

I have been through many relationships in my life, most of them quite tumultuous and often ending in a bitter sadness. It somehow feels to me with Glenn, he allows me to become my best and brings out the best I have to offer. I believe relationships are basically about ourselves and how we find balance with others whom we choose to share our lives. If we are not content with ourselves first, all becomes chaos and confusion and doubt. How we can become the best without fear, anxiety, or pressure? As a creative soul I learned this early. Thank you Glenn for allowing me to become the best I can possibly be and welcome home, the kitties and I have missed you.

Drawn Into the Darkness

In younger days I was drawn into darkness and often found myself lurking in shadows that were unsavory to others and probably not always safe for myself. Being a boy from Montana we do not always perceive dangers that others may be aware of within their surroundings, making us fearless. Being a stranger we may not always be aware of what the rules are and what is normal. Everything in Montana seems safe, unless you have a run away tractor barreling toward you because the diver has passed out at the wheel. I have spent a great deal of time in large cities and have only felt a threat a couple of times in my life. I spent a year in Washington DC working as a bartender for a club in the Dupont Circle area, had a roommate who was a porn actor, we did a lot of drugs and become party animals, some times to the point where I was not even sure how I even got home. In fact waking up one morning, my ankles sore and swollen to discover I had somehow ended up with a pair of pumps at the foot of my bed, I must have traded shoes, the previous night either with a drag queen or a woman with very large feet. I had always heard Washington was a somewhat dangerous town and had known people that were bashed, some of them quite severely, which in those days was quite often. As a bartender with a porno housemate, we become a privileged sort of celebrities who were recognized and often given a certain amount of advantage, in the form of little packets of treats slipped into our pockets. We were creatures of the nights, going to bed as the sun rose, sleeping all day. But I never felt a threat when I was out, even when I got stupid silly messed up. I had a good group of friends and we all kind of watched each other’s backs.

Yet I was always drawn to the darkness. There is beauty at night that becomes extraordinary; that most people do not always see. In photography it becomes very vibrant when it rains or is wet. That’s why you often see wet streets in movies shot at night, yes, even in Los Angels when it doesn’t rain, or not very often, because it makes the details in the lights pop. That beauty seems to become more pronounced in bad neighborhoods with a lot of structurally interesting textures, like alleys and areas of old abandon warehouses at night, like the meat-packing district in NYC. I am always a person who is keenly aware of my surroundings; I think this is another Montana thing that we develop a fascination with everything around us. So at night these areas awaken a feeling that I always love to explore. It becomes about who I am in the space or even possibly channeling past lives, who knows. But in cities these are typically the areas one always tries to avoid, yet these are the areas I like to linger. I tend to think I have a strong masculine presence that most people don’t really want to mess around with. I am very confrontational when I meet others and think I have a focus that sends a clear signal that I can hold my own if you come up against me. My observation skill keep me aware of what is happening around me so I don’t become an open target and can divert things before they can happen. But it is these areas that most excite and attract me.

In looking at my catalog for the website I see this feeling of lurking in darkness present in most of my images. It’s what makes it theatrical and heightens our wonder and curiosity about the subjects. I love the shadows and seeing things emerging from those shadows.

Gorgeous Montana Fall

I feel like I am becoming a bit tapped out and have talked about everything possible. Have been working on this website so much that I actually can’t seem to think or function anymore. It’s a time for a diversion! The site is coming along beautifully, but it has grown beyond what I thought it would become. With some minor set backs shutting the process down most of last week, things are back to normal again and it’s almost finished. I don’t think I have ever worked on anything as hard and long as I have this. The rain seems to have passed and the last couple of days have been totally Montana gorgeous as the leaves are now starting to change and vibrant color fills the air. The warm sun feels great after all that cold rain. I have begun my fencing project on the other side of the house so I am going to get out and work on that today. I really need to work with my body and hands, instead of so much with my brain. I am going to put on my work clothes, play some jazz music and head outside.

Giovanni’s Room

The first novel I ever remember reading that had anything to do with male relationships was called Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin. I am not exactly sure how I stumbled upon it or exactly when I first read it, but I remember being very young and it left a lasting visual impression in my mind. It’s the story of an American who recognizes his sexual impulse for men. Goes to Europe is about to get married to a woman, but torn by this unspoken desire that seems to hold him back. He can’t quite make the commitment and they separate in order to give him time to think about it. He is in Paris and falls in lust with a young Italian bartender named Giovanni; they have passionate sex in the grungy dark recess of Giovanni’s room for a chapter or so before doubt and self-reasoning set in. I won’t spoil the ending. It was written in 1956 and Baldwin does a fantastic job of vividly bringing you to this era in Paris. In fact I am quite surprised this has never been adapted into a movie, because the story totally lends itself to that sort of format. There are certain images that have haunted my memory for so many years about this book and perhaps it time to pull it back off the shelf for another reread.

When I was a student in theater at the University, I was quite interested in film, and though we didn’t have a media arts program in the department we did have a radio/television department mostly dealing with learning broadcast news. I took the television classes just to gain access to the equipment and editing suite. Back then it was all very large clunky equipment on very large videotapes. I began a project that was about adapting the story of Giovanni’s room into a short film. I used my apartment, which I completely lit with stage light, some of them hanging outside the windows shining in on a cold winter night. I had some actor from the department who acted and we had a blast shooting this crazy story I had adapted we called “The Cry”, partly based on the Munch painting. My concept was that a man screams out from within but no one can actually hear the scream because it only becomes deafening to the one caught in their own internal struggle of memory and choices they are haunted by. Yes, I was in my early 20’s and it seemed sensible at the time. But, I would have to go in late at night to edit this crazy project, and people would come in, doing their news projects and catch glimpses of the my project and it soon become known as the “surrealist soap opera”.

A couple of years ago the story came up again in a series of images I was shooting. The space, the light, and my model Jeremy Voisine whom I love doing all these experimental pieces with began to transform the studio into the feel, desire and isolation of Giovanni’s Room. Again we were working into the late night, using stage hot light to create the beautiful light streaming into this haunting room.

The other day I ran across these images as we were working on a gallery for the new website and I paused a marveled at how fun a concept like this can take you to an extraordinary place. The only thing missing was the second man Giovanni. I now want to go back and recreate and explore this concept with two men. So if anyone is up for it a new creative process is about to begin. I am going to have to have a party and show all my old video’s one of these nights.