Category Archives: Cinema, film & movies

Cinema, film and movie references

Defying Gravity

Last night at work one of the young kids with whom I co-manage at the UPS center, bought me one of those energy drinks, which he seems to be addicted to because he seems to consume them like water. Much to my surprise it was a greater boost than I imagined and I was wide awake working into the wee hours of the morning feeling like I had somehow defied gravity and was floating along into the night on a miraculous high. When I finally did go to bed, completely exhausted, I crashed and had a hard time getting up this morning. I had a family portrait scheduled fairly early, so I knew I had to get up and get things cleaned up and set up for the shoot, hence the tardiness of today’s posting. The wonder of it all was that somehow, I am not sure if it was the drink or just something kicked in, but I was having a blast last night back to working on photography. There was something utterly peaceful and productive working into the middle of the night, completely undisturbed.

Sometimes when I work on the same thing constantly I become immune to the process and often just push to get through it. But, last night I began to see things from a different perspective. The images I have been muddling through for the past year, seem to have a new meaning. I began to look at the process with a new fascination and became caught up in what I was working on with such detail. Obtaining perfection became the focus. I loved this feeling and was satisfied with my re-connection to the work. As I crawled into bed I realized what I had not felt it in a long time. Yesterday I was utterly frustrated and I beginning to see how hard I am pushing, and how that push is causing a separation from myself and my ideas, no longer able to recognize what brought me to this process from the beginning. I fear losing the organic nature that makes what I do interesting in the first place.

There is a wondrous moment at the end of the first act in the musical “Wicked”, where Elphaba (the Wicked Witch of the West) finally comes to terms with her difference and begins to recognize her given talents and turns against all reason to do what she feels is right in her heart. She musters all the powers within herself to take to a broom and suddenly fly into the air hovering above the stage singing about Defying Gravity.

“Something has changed within me
Something is not the same
I’m through with playing by the rules
Of someone else’s game
Too late for second-guessing
Too late to go back to sleep
It’s time to trust my instincts
Close my eyes: and leap! “

Those lyrics echo through my mind today as they seemed more poignant than ever, for I realize I have shared the same dream and passion with my views of the world and need to create what I am creating, especially here in a place like Montana.

“I’m through accepting limits
‘Cuz someone says they’re so
Some things I cannot change
But till I try, I’ll never know!
Too long I’ve been afraid of
Losing love I guess I’ve lost
Well, if that’s love
It comes at much too high a cost!
I’d sooner buy
Defying gravity
Kiss me goodbye
I’m defying gravity
And you can’t pull me down”

I can now see why those drinks can become so damn addictive.

Music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz from the musical WICKED

Did I miss the streetcar named Desire?

Last night I crossed over into a strange delirium of geekdom as I had visions of naked men dancing in my head and my sexual desire crossed into a strange cyber lala land that wasn’t of men with huge penises and small tight butts, but where people were ordinary and a beauty was recognized from within. I have a kid I work with at UPS, who is a total cyber geek, whom I completely adore and I now feel like I have crossed into his dimension of existence, and I have a greater understanding of where he’s coming from. Some friends had invited me out to a drag show and when I got off work last night, I sat at my computer and was suddenly sucked in. But, it all began to click last night, instead of fighting technology I was suddenly a part of it and things where suddenly happening. Oddly enough I didn’t work too late, but had added some major elements to the project that seemed effortless. I looked up and it was only 11:00 pm and I was shocked. Normally it has been 2 or 3 in the morning. I realized the web site had past the tipping point and had crossed to the other side as I shut it down and walked away.

I took the kitties for a nice long walk under the beautiful starry sky, feeling the warmth from the day still in the air as my mind and body become overwhelmed with a great sense of satisfaction. I went to bed early and as I lay there, I laughed at how much I have changed this year and how far I have come and how I have crossed over into a side of myself that I have not felt in a decade. Sex used to make me feel this great. It seems when I hit my forties, the sexual side of myself had begun to shut down. I know guys my age who are still totally engaging in sex, all the time. Why has it all shut off for me? Mostly I think because I had the most ruckus youth and lived that prime to its fullest. I was mostly ruled by my dick from the mid twenties to those forties. I stayed in a long unhealthy relationship for almost eight years because the sex was so extraordinary, and then it took two years to get away from it because we were still having sex even after we separated. Everything became about sex and having sex, so I definitely get it.

Mapplethorpe photographed the people he had sex with and you can often see that personal connection to those subjects and their trust to allow him into places that would otherwise be forbidden. I somehow wished I had found Mapplethorpe earlier and gotten into photography during the prime of my sexual desire and could have recorded all I have experienced. Now as an older man I can only vicariously live that through my imagery and the experiences I write about. It’s like now I am on a different kind of ride, equally as exciting and intoxicating. But it feels like the last 10 years I somehow got off the streetcar at the wrong stop and ended up in a different and strange new place. The past ten years, psychologically, felt as if I had been spiraling into an unknown oblivion finally reaching the bottom at the beginning of this year as I hit the pit of despair witnessing the passing of my prime moving into middle age, rapidly approaching fifty.

Today I stand on the rampart of something extraordinary. Yet it’s an extraordinariness that I have always known and somehow felt was present. Perhaps it is all the sex, fear, anxiety, insecurities and anger that masks and keeps the true nature of our selves hidden so we can’t see it. And I have to question this morning where would I be today if perhaps I had not made this leap and come on the journey of this year. My desire has changed and so have I. I take delight in that thought and that maybe that streetcar, though still functional, just transports us to new neighborhoods, perhaps we just need to get off and explore.

Idealistic Explosion of Talents

It’s like suddenly The Naked Man Project is kicking into overdrive and I am in heaven. Everyone in Europe and patrons I have been meeting through my social networks had all advised me that I needed to create a presence for myself, to begin to define and refine what it is I want to do. This is the most essential step of my process before anything else can happen and before I make the next step. In less than one month that presence is beginning to emerge and I am seeing a remarkable wonder and extraordinary beauty I have not recognized in myself in a long time. And yes I did get outside yesterday and worked in my garden for a couple of hours; as I transplanted delphinium and cleaned beds, suddenly, all that I have been doing came into sharp focus.

Now that Stephen has done all the housekeeping on most of the image files, I have begun working through each shoot, subject by subject. Wow, what an incredible group of people I had the privilege to work with and explore my creative process with over the years. And they are all here, from Montana. I am now skimming the cream of the crop of each series and extraordinary things are beginning to reveal themselves. I now am beginning to see more what others have been saying about the images for some time. I am often reluctant sometimes and find compliments hard to receive. It’s part of my backstage personality of those years in the theater where I remained hidden, but was the controlling force that kept the show and companies running each night. I tend to also be a fairly humble guy, who believes in keeping everything low key and simple, not the case anymore. This is becoming one of the greatest adventures of my life, every day now is filled with excitement, joy and wonder. My time in the garden yesterday also taught me that this does not have to happen at breakneck speed and to actually savor and enjoy the process as it unfolds. I am so jacked for when I will get to reveal this creation, but know I do not want to rush it or get sloppy.

I met with a new intern yesterday that I am actually jacked about having him join us. His name is Stopher, another gay kid that is funny, witty, smart and cute. He is going to take on the blog element of the site. We have found a module that will import this existing blog into the new site without much loss, and minimal adjustment. The new blog will become easier to archive and search for things. It still amazes me how massive my thoughts have exploded into this format. To be honest I thought we were going to have to start over, or somehow painstakingly transfer it one posting at a time, so I am much relieved to know it will be quite simple.

The Naked Man Project is now becoming a team collaboration of local talents and distant advisors. It feels much like creating a show in the theater where all of us function at our most brilliant capacity and are having a blast pulling it together. We challenge and push ourselves each day to see such huge progress. A show in the theater takes months of planning, preparation, rehearsal and tech before the curtain rises. I need to remind myself each day of this process and take a deep breath as I step into the beauty of this extraordinary work I have created, with which I have now surrounded myself.

At the Core of a Creative Existence

I watched an interesting movie yesterday while I was moping about, called Séraphine. It was a French movie about an average woman, leading a life of hardships, doing whatever jobs possible in 1927 France and who had a passion for painting. She thought she was given a blessing by god that pushed her to follow her gifts. She did not really understand why or where the divine inspiration actually came from, but was compelled to paint at whatever the cost. She was a middle-aged woman, older than myself, living in a place and time of poverty. Yet she found the greatest joy in nature and collected items from her environment to temper and color her paint, blood from a cow liver, mud from a creek, flowering plants by the roadside. She brought these elements into her small one room living space and spent the nights grinding these items into her paints, then created amazing images of that nature in vivid almost childlike impressions. The woman who played Séraphine Louis (Yolande Moreau) was mesmerizing at bringing such honesty and truth to the character. In the end she is discovered as an old lady. The success drove her mad, and she spends her last 10 years in an asylum, disconnected from nature and painting as her imagery becomes legendary.

I saw so many parallels between Séraphine and myself. For many years I have worked in a world of seclusion, being compelled to create something that I never quite understood. I have worked many jobs, just trying to make a living in order to survive. I know my desire is for the naked male, it is my divine inspiration. My connection to my own desires is so strong it often becomes intoxicating. Yes, I know gay men are supposed to become obsessed by sex and the flesh, but somehow it’s not the sex that I am drawn to, it the emotional feelings and what is stirred within those moments before or after sex that I am most fascinated with. It almost seems, to physically touch someone dispels the allure and the touch often leads where I have been so many times before, becoming lost or blinded by its emotional entanglement. I caress my subjects not with my hands, but with the light. I adore their beauty, idolize their skin for its soft silky textures and the way the light glistens on the nape of their neck. Sex is actually the furthest thing from my mind when I am shooting. Sure there are those moments when I become aroused by the process, and it is those moments when I know my images will gain their greatest potency, because I am truly in touch with the erotic core of my process. As Séraphine brought her connection to nature into her vision, I bring that world of sensuality and seduction I have known and longed for into my vision. I realize now it has been the core of my life. I am romantic at heart, I have always been romantic. I spend my nights grinding all the elements of my existence into the tools of my pallet. I have yet to make any money on this process and live my life on the edge of finical struggle. I have the skills, talents and tools to create something that is more viable and commercial, but then it’s really not my vision anymore and becomes something created for others. Though my style and approaches have changed, I am still true to myself and it still remains the journey into myself. I do fear the influence success could have on what I do and I think in many ways it sort of holds me in this place struggling to survive. I am the most content when I am creating. Though my focus is shifting toward self promotion, I still can step back into my world of beautiful light and find the security of those remarkable highly intimate moments with my subjects when the ordinary is allowed to become extraordinary.

Soul Seeker

This morning when I looked on Manhunt, as I do every morning to peruse the personals in quest of new subjects for my photo experiments, I saw a name that actually intrigued me: Soul seeker. Of course I had to respond: “Soul Seeker – Interesting thought, that might make you either a god or a devil, searching for lost souls in a sometimes seemingly soulless environment; like a decent into a modern Dante’s Inferno. It’s really a brilliant concept.” He is a 32 year old, Top/Versatile Male that is 6”0 with a swimmers body, light brown wavy hair and a devilish glean in his blue eyes that has been taken in a multi impression mirror, so we can see the duality of his expression. My mind began spinning amazing thoughts about the possibility of the concept of a devil/angle searching for our lost souls in a man hunting site that has become a dream like world mostly plastered with impressionistic images of cocks, ass and mostly naked bodies seeking sex and quick hookups and an occasional long term relationship. WOW! What a perfect place for such a person to dwell where they can easily claim those souls, many seemingly lost; drifting, waiting, anticipating, on the edge of a dark desire that will either fulfill or consume them. For the most part they are looking to be consumed. This is beginning to sound a lot like a Tennessee Williams play or a short movie, or a study for a new photographic series. “All hope abandon, ye who enter in!” Why does this world of cruising men seem to always have such a dark edge? It is a delicious reverie of the flesh, a mysterious glimpse of a shadow in the darkness, most of them blurred, just a little beyond focus where we get a vague impression, but not sharp enough to contain any hints of reality. Abs are hyper extended, bodies contorted into complex unnatural poses, taken sometime from even more unusual positions. I am captivated and often envious that what I work so hard to create, can become genius at the hands of a skillful cell phone. Light setting in the wrong position creating equally as interesting color casts, that add a garish tone to the overall feel of the image. A skillfully placed strobe to obscure the face, adds to the soulless nature of the headless bodies. It’s like we are all trying to hide something, perhaps our insecurities and yet reveal something someone else might see in us and desire. I sometimes gaze in awe of the brilliance of these images, reading the brief snippets they project out to us and often ponder, who is this person, really. It fascinated me to no end. And I wonder if perhaps if I am not the soul seeker, that devil also trying to steal some of these lost souls. But often the subjects I have culled from these depths and brought into my studio to illuminate redeemed that self respect and dignity they often can’t see within themselves. This is where my imagery becomes it’s most powerful and provocative, restoring all these sorted bits into a distinguishable whole that is pure, healthy and vital. I have often thought it would be interesting to show a collection of these internet images. Printed, matted, framed and hung in a gallery where we could admiringly peer into the depths of these wondrous visions. The art of self selling one’s own sex is often for more interesting then what we give it credit for on the surface.