Why is that so many of us don’t feel that we can live up to our potential or achieve what we often feel in our hearts? Though I feel appreciative that I have lived a fairly creative life and had the opportunity to follow my desire, I still feel I have lived in the shadows of self-doubt for large portion of it. I always think so much of it had to do with my sexuality and going against the norm. But the more I talk to others, the more I begin to see it’s really a universal issue that everyone seems to struggle through. The older I get the more I regret how much of my youth was fraught with angst and lack of self-esteem. While I was cocky and defiant, it always felt that something held me back. I always thought it was a lack of hustle and not being self-motivated, but when I look back, my achievements were vast and I have experienced a life time of wondrous experiences.
As this project begins to wind down, I am looking back at the journey of what I have felt through its course. I guess trying to find perspective and get to the core of what brought me here in the first place. But in a sense, everything I have learned was something I already knew it has always been here. I liken it to Dorothy’s proverbial return to home after visiting the wondrous Land of Oz only to discover, with the click of her heels, she was always where she wanted to be. As a kid, her journey always had a profound impact on me emotionally. I would cry so hard every year that my mother would threaten to not let me watch it and I would beg and plead with her until she consented and once again I would be utterly moved to the point of tears. I now recognize Dorothy’s desperate plight to find herself is universal and see it in everyone else around me. What a strange world we enter, with sometimes even stranger friends. In their mythic land they accept their differences, a man of straw who is easily destroyed by fire, a hollow man who can’t move without the help of others, and the embodiment of ferociousness, intimidated by others. Their real journey is that of self-acceptance and in the end finding their sense of security. Being a gay man growing up in a strange land like Montana, I have always been keenly aware of the differences of others, feeling myself never really quite understood. But have been greatly appreciative of “men who can dress in women’s cloths and mouth the words to other people’s songs”, others infected with a deadly virus that still creates fear and anxiety and is still greatly misunderstood, the straight acting and not so straight acting personalities, whatever that meant, and the imperfections in others. It has always been my desire to be a part of a community of understanding and acceptance and of course appreciation. Yet it feels like as similar as we all are, we push each other away, with these labels and still ostracize others for their differences.
Yesterday I wrote about a young boy who killed himself because he could not find acceptance and my heart aches deeply as I morn not only the loss of a kid not able to live a miraculous existence, but the ignorance with others that fed his doubt. I still see the internalized homophobia within our own communities that becomes judgmental, condescending, and harmful. I think THIS IS perhaps is the real limitation from us feeling what’s in our hearts and recognizing our potential. Perhaps this is my gift as a photographer because I am willing to look beyond the difference with compassion and empathy and search for that truth within myself and my subjects and the culture that surrounds me. After all, we are not made of stone.
As an artist, I have always avoided politics. The daily yammering of it on new stations like Fox News, bores the living death out of me. It’s not that I don’t want to stay informed; I just don’t want to know all the details of everything going on. It feels like politics and arts rarely mix and it seems the people who are quite interested in politics are not the slightest bit interested in the creation of art, unless it becomes public, and contains something they deem immoral. Our economy still does not seem to be rebounding at all, everyone around seems to have been hit very hard by this recession as the impact still lingers in the standard working class, yet the people working for the government rarely are impacted by what happens in the economy. I find this rather disturbing, as I am a tax payer, whose taxes keep increasing at a consistent rate, the values of property in my neighborhood has dropped considerably, meaning the fair market value has still bottomed out, yet the property taxes only increase. In Montana we don’t have a sales tax and the bulk of the taxes that fund the state are put on the property owners creating a hefty property tax on top of a state income tax. Yes, America seems to go deeper and deeper into debt, yet the government seems to continually grow. It feels like it’s becoming very disproportionate and does not reflect what’s actually happening in our economy. It scares the heck out of me because it feels like I am living on the edge and what I once produced and made a good living on photographically seems to have lost all is value when the economy tanked a few years back. I see more and more people giving up and going on welfare, young kids in their twenties, completely capable of working, but giving up because the struggle has become meaningless and it’s an easier way out. You can work all day for a living and have nothing, or you can go on welfare, do nothing and still have something, though it’s very little you have to live on.
I feel like I am utterly spent today!!!! I have been working all morning on shows for the University and on so many other things. I have shut myself so deep inside the studio trying to catch up. I am beginning to feel the effects of not taking enough breaks as I am becoming very tired. We have hit the full stride of UPS peak season, meaning longer hours, more distractions, and about triple the workload. I am swamped from the moment I walk through the door to the moment I leave and though it is only a part time job, those five and a half hours feel like an eternity. Glenn has become a driver working all day as I work all evening, just passing each other in my office at work and maybe get to spend an hour in the evening when I am off. I feel a bit unbalanced. Just trying to survive and regain my self. I am planning to take the first week of January off. It will be the first real vacation I has had in years, since the trip to Europe last summer seemed to be all about work. I need to find a remote place, where I can think about nothing and enjoy a separation from my environment. This blog project, the website have taken a toll that I am beginning to feel. Perhaps I just need a walk in the warm sunlight. It beautiful today, I think I will get out.
Last night I watched an old western called Red River directed by Howard Hawk originally released in 1948. It was a John Wayne classic featuring one of the most beautiful men to ever be photographed, Montgomery Cliff. This was his first major feature film and made him an overnight sensation. He was 26 years old at the time of shooting and is just stunning to watch in this old black and white epic. Part of what makes the film so brilliant is the lighting is fantastic though out the film and though I have seen this film a dozen times it still mesmerizes me. After watching it last night I began to see how much of an influence it has had on my style of photography and the development of my approach to lighting. Of course growing up in the west, I identify with the sexual allure of the cowboy, particularly Montgomery Cliff. In this film he embodies it all, handsome, strong yet sensitive, compassionate, and secure in his masculinity. He was my role model and became the one icon I could always look up to because he stirred such strong feelings of desire within me for this sort of male figure and I began to recognize my sexual attraction was definably toward men. There is a very wonderful scene in the film in which he and another wrangler named Cherry admire each other’s guns in a very homoerotic flirtatious manner that is quite suggestive of something other than shooting. He was one of the first movie stars that I found out was gay which deepened my desire. Though he often play emotionally tortured men, his characters seemed to become a mirror of his personal life and struggles which seem to somehow personify everything I felt. Every time I saw him on the screen I become absorbed by the depth and pain he brought to each character. He was a man who was able to tap into this own pain and reveal his very soul for others to see. Few movie stars have brought this much honesty to the screen, except maybe James Dean. This is a quality I strive for in my own imagery, a moment of bearing the humanity of ourselves and exposing who we are in our existence. Cliff is one of the few actors to consistently maintain this intensity making almost every film an instant classic: A Place in the Sun, From Here to Eternity, The Heiress, Raintree Country, Suddenly Last Summer and even the Alfred Hitchcock classic I Confess.
The Griz football team won their first round playoff game and advanced to the next round leading toward the championship game in January. Glenn roused me from my slumber early yesterday to join him for the daylong festivities that have become his game day ritual. I typically love going to the game portion of the day, but rarely like to spend the entire day devoted to the process. Hence no blog for yesterday, sorry. It was a bitter cold day that didn’t rise out of the twenties, but I was dressed appropriately for the conditions and was actually quite comfortable throughout the day. Most of my life has been lived completely oblivious of sporting events. But when I met Glenn, I knew it was one of his greatest passions and was willing to enter his world. Conversely he has also entered areas of my world that I know he was not necessarily comfortable with either. I think it is one of the things that has made our relationship so truly remarkable. I have to say a pride swells within me to hear the National Anthem sung in a crowd of 22,005 people and the players emerge from their tunnel into a cloud of smoke onto the field. The opening process for a football game is such a theatrical event, carefully planned, coordinated and executed down to the second to emotionally charge such a mass of people and you can feel that swell through out the stadium. It’s often intoxicating and over-whelming to the point that I am often moved to tears by the pride I feel from the experience. We have amazing seats, that we have had since the beginning of our relationship, a couple of rows up right behind the team and become the target of their stampede into the stadium and feel the full effect of that blaze of glory.
