Berlin is having a surprising impact on my self-image or better yet the image of myself. I am still out of sync with the time zones and it makes me feel displaced. I tend to stay up half the night and sleep most of the morning. But yesterday was a day of rest and get back on track. I had one mission for the day and that was to meet the publishers for a 17:00 rendezvous. As I walked the distance in the morning to their book outlet center, I became keenly aware of myself. I entered the store and it is very big and filled with extraordinary things, the greater part of it being pornography. The books are filled with men of absolute perfection. There are rows and rows of books, as I carefully study each I begin to realize that I don’t really fit here. This has become contrary to everything I believe. Yes it represents beauty and has been the source of my inspiration for years. My heart races just to be in its presence. There is a sudden panic that I have entered a world that I do not know. I am a bit psyched out by the presence of what lies before me. I am both enthralled and captivated at the same time. I see a whole new collection of things I must get once I get home, but right now my suitcase can’t contain anything other than what I have brought, but things seem very cheap here. As I saunter back to my hotel I once again become aware of myself, I begin to look at myself from the outside. The heels of my cowboy boots clicking on the cobbled sidewalks and with each click I become aware of my differences and think what an oddity I must seem to people I pass by. Everyone here in this gay neighborhood is dressed exactly the same and they are all groomed exactly the same. Not to say they are all wearing the same thing, but the style is distinctive: tight well fitted exposing the upper torso, pants well fitted, a celebration of the under structure mostly in pretty good shape. Much of the community I meet is about my age or even older. I recognize the lines in their faces, but there is a harshness in their expression that is mostly filled with discontent and perhaps a hint of feigned attitude. They carry themselves pulled up and tight. As I follow a man I mimic his manner and I feel the difference within my own manner of movement. Now I am having fun with it and I somehow take comfort in my difference, but there is still a nagging question and desire to conform. My cloths are deliberately loose to try to hide the process of my aging. The style is all wrong. I see nothing of myself in the presence of this culture reflected in the displays of the windows of the shops I pass. It suddenly become aware of the irony of me being here, looking for acceptance in a culture I don’t even understand or identify with. What really does set me apart is my ability to recognize and express my unique qualities. And I realize I am not the everyman.

Later in the afternoon I don my comfortable wranglers, a t-shirt that does show off my arms and chest, boots, western belt and hat to head off to the interview. I meet my contact at the publishing house offices. I feel he is taken aback by the authentic honesty of my presence. Now I have created my own mystique. We review my images in his office and he likes what he sees, but he is also concerned buy such a variance in my style. He suggests that I pick one things and work on it. He is more drawn to the Caravaggioesqe images of tone and brilliance of color, but he is very frank that it does not really match their style. He gives me lots of positive feedback and constructive criticism, and then asking me if he is too harsh. I laugh and say hardly, this is why and I here, to learn something about myself and to grow from the experience. We talk about the trends of the market and tells me of their best selling photographer has positioned himself into advertising so he has access to what no one else does. Perfection of body, the most meticulous, and finest of men that are paid thousands of dollars by the hour to work with him. At the end as he walks me though the entire office of people huddled around their computers, magnificent images abundantly displayed. He asks that I keep in touch and they may be interested in publishing some of my images in one of the many anthologies of other artist they constantly produce. At the door we exchange a warm smile and I somehow feel satisfied that I have made the trip. Once on the street I make my way back to the hotel quite proud of what I have accomplished. I know this is not my market, I have something to offer that is much more profound and will find it. I love what I have become and am comfortable with the difference. I see myself in the reflection of the elevator mirrors from all sides and my form is good, clean, solid, I no longer see a middle aged man in the midst of a midlife crisis, but a reflection of my youthful vibrancy. I see the strength of my torso and power within my arms. I am quite startled by my own reflections. I now see those qualities I admire in others that I have been envious to possess for myself. It is quite a good look for me. I am proud of my heritage, it gives me strength and I suddenly realize that I am on the right path and that I have already become what I always wanted.

I meet Kubla again at the same pub for a drink. We had agreed to have dinner. He is startled by my presence as a cowboy. But tonight I must own the city as I am. We look for a restaurant to have dinner, now I hear the comfort of my cowboy boots as they click across the cobbles. He asks me what I want to achieve. “Fame?” I say “No, not really”. “Recognition then?” I say “No I already have that amongst others I adore.” Then I ponder for a moment and reply, “Just the ability to be able to express myself and be comfortable, to be true to who I am.” I drew back in a moment of wonder as I realized I have just taken Marklin’s advice and have indeed French kissed the very presence of my existence.

Berlin is proving to be quite a bit more difficult then I ever imagined. I am not sure why, but I am completely caught off guard. Before I came everyone said it was easy to navigate. I have been to many large cities with out much difficulty but this one seems more trying. I had set up a contact with a man I was to meet and he gave directions to his gallery space that I was quite interested in seeing. But try as I might I was unable to get there. It begins at the airport really. I have great difficulty getting a cab into the city, outside the airport all say no until I find one who is willing. He does not know English so I hand him a slip of paper that has the address for my hotel printed on it. It is quick to get around and I am there with no problems. The Axel Hotel is an extraordinary place in its design and comfort. Everything is black and mirrors with long narrow channels for windows to allow natural light. But the blackness and the mirrors throw off my perception of space and distance and I am lost again in a fun house type of atmosphere, as my mind begins to drift and I am reminded of sex clubs in the cities of my youth. It’s as if danger or attraction lurks behind its mysterious walls. The room is beautiful beyond expression, un-photographable, something only to be experienced in design form and function. There are transparent red walls that create an illusion of a dream. A bed made for a king, soft with the most exquisite linens. The walls complete black tile the fixtures of stark white porcelain of fascinating shape geometry and design. Oddly enough as inviting as it all seems I strangely feel out of place. “Where do I put my suitcase?” I think as my clutter explodes into a meticulous space.

I am a stranger in a strange new land now. I take the directions that my friend has given me and follow which I thought were pretty specific. The subway is couple blocks from the hotel and I get directions at the check in counter of the hotel to push me in the right direction. First I cannot figure out how to get my ticket. The sales windows are closed and do not know the city is divided into zones. Where am I and what do the zones represent? Someone helps me buy a ticket that does not speak English, as a crowd gathers behind me. The first train is wrong and I must get off and backtrack. The next train is correct and I get off and I find the bus exactly per instructions. Now I try to get on the bus, have money in hand and put it out to the driver for help. He does not speak English and I cannot understand what he is asking. I pull out more money, he does not want money, and he wants a pass. I pull out the subway ticket he begins to shout but allows me on the bus with a free ride. The stop is perfect as per instructions. But I cannot find the address. I ask several shop owners, showing them the address and they point me in the general direction. I walk up and down the street, but I cannot locate it or figure out its location. I finally wander into an old brick looking warehouse that has been converted into offices and locate building number 3, try each floor asking for my contact. Nobody knows. I try to call, but my phone is now not working in Germany, every combination I try seems abandoned. I am lost, and I stop and I wait. Perhaps my contact will be on the look out and find me. I wander the area and wait and hour. Lots of people pass, but none of them know my contact. I suddenly feel silly and defeated in my purpose. I began to walk back the path I have traced on the bus. I have blisters on my feet, and they are sore from so much walking since I have been here. I finally find a cab and get back to my hotel safe but discouraged. My contact is waiting on line and I begin to chat. He says we may meet up later, but I am unsure. I go for food, but cannot communicate to order and dinner becomes a disaster. I finally find a bar across the street and go in for a drink. Does anyone speak English? I soon find I am meeting others who do speak English and as night falls outside the open street, I meet a lively band of comrades who are fascinated by American culture, history, and economics. Suddenly how does this feel so easy to be here as I find comfort in our discussions. This seems to be a city of sex, but I have managed to get beyond the nominal chitchat to the heart of my normal self. This is a gay bar where there is constant traffic to a hidden room of dark desires, many years ago it would have been the path of my exploration. My eyes are drawn in its direction, but somehow, those parts of my life seem unimportant? Is it the work I am doing through my imagery that has somehow brought me to this new level. Alex and Kubla are engaging and a level of friendship delves deeper with our selves. There is a new understanding of ourselves seeing through each other’s eyes and culture. This is a level we rarely seem to achieve as gay men in our gay culture. For the most part our culture seems to thrive on the surface only and the transient desire to engage in sex or pick up or be picked up generally plays out. We are a culture so easy to physically need and want each other, to conceal our desperation or loneliness that we for get to communicate or even are willing to expose ourselves other then to the flesh. This area of Berlin is a world filled with a strange mixture of darkness hidden in many doorways, which enter worlds of loss and offer escapism from the soul. It’s part of its mystery. Though I felt an assault of my senses though out the day, tonight I feel a seduction of my mind. We drink until the bar nearly closes and head our separate ways. My room is now inviting as I crawl into bed, feeling completely satisfied.

I met another photographer yesterday and spent the entire afternoon and into the evening talking with him. He has been in Paris for 5 years and his work seems to center around experimental black and white architecture. This city is so full of fascinating structure with a beautiful balance of form and function. It seems to be a city that continually renews itself, through either refurbish what is historic or complete destruction and rebuilding of something new and original. Christopher took me on a walking tour of the city and began to explain its process of reinvention. The thing that strikes me most is the extraordinary gardens everywhere you wander. Nothing seems happen chance here and is all very, very meticulously designed. They have put together some of the most extraordinary combinations of fauna and botanical. Things beyond imagination for us in the USA. Beautiful ivy fences that were a simple chain link over grown and manicured. In the US we only think of our gardens as a lawn, while here is it a total garden culture of amazing grandeur with precise symmetry and balance. The gardens are very historic and an integral part of the city structure. It somehow makes the entire place feel mystical and enchanted.

Christopher also says that I will become exotic to the Europeans that they will become both captivated by my work as well as being from Montana. This is one place perhaps it will work to my advantage. He also notices the American obsessions with porn and how dull it seems to have become to everyone but the Americans. It is a one-note style that is oversaturated and, though it is constantly changing, has no room for growth but functions as a cash cow without a soul. In Europe it seems that people are more drawn to my style and here it is referred to as erotica.

After Christopher left I wandered the streets of the Marias area, very narrow streets filled with people. It is a lonely place to be alone here. It is alarming how being from Montana where I am used to such open space to be caught in the meandering streets of this area. There are many photographic artists that have their images taped to the walls of the windows of a closed shop, poor, destitute. Smoking hoping someone will stop and notice their work. I do not know if they are trying to sell it or just seeming to want some sort of recognition. I recognize their desperation within myself. Do I exist on their plane of existence? In the same area I pass a shop of original photographic prints, it is filled with patrons browsing the bins of fine art photography, most of it nature and structural design. The clerks attired with pristine white gloves as they show these works of art. I wonder and ponder where do I belong and where my images will actually end up. I feel that I have put so much of myself in the images, the men with white gloves is where I belong in my heart, but it is the latter where I may end up. I then pass a bookstore, in the gay area, filled with many books on erotica, the windows are lined with people gazing into its mystery and allure and I somehow know I have found my home.

Today I am in the airport heading to Berlin.

Ok, so I made it and I’m sitting this morning in the garden of my hotel drinking wonderful French coffee with a beautiful basket of breads. I have survived the time warp of travel, yesterday feeling completely misplaced throughout the day. I meet my first contacts this afternoon. The publisher in Berlin in will meet with me while I’m there. They have been asking questions about my work. This somehow makes the trip already worth the while. I feel like I have so much support behind me going into this with everyone sending me messages that I am filled with courage and a graceful contentment.

My room here in Paris is filled with mirrors, in fact the whole hotel is filled with mirrors, perhaps to make the small cramped spaces appear to be larger than they really are. I keep capturing the reflection of myself in all those mirrors. I feel in so many ways to be a gay man at 50 I have lost perspective of my physical self and perhaps this hotel and my choice to stay here is not by chance but by some mysterious design to force me to look at myself. At first, it’s almost too confrontational. To visit other countries, where you are a complete stranger, even to the very language that becomes your security, always forces one to become introspective and put you off guard. I see myself as an aging man obsessed with the beauty of youth, much like Aschenbach in Thomas Mann’s story Death In Venice. And Paris to be very much as I imagine Venice to be, everywhere I walk I catch a glimpse of beautiful men, speaking languages of so many different languages, many of them not recognizable. Yesterday I was caught in a rainstorm at the Opera and stepped under the lip of a ledge of a building on the corner for shelter. A young man stood beside me, beautiful skin, dressed simple, gazing out at the grandeur of the piazza, I took a sideward glance and admired the beauty of his skin, dark eyes, furrowed brow, magnificent gaze. He caught my glimpse and became aware I was watching him and gave me a warm smile. It is a youth I long to posses again, but has passed. As I was riding the train into the city yesterday morning we stopped at La Plaine Stade de France (soccer stadium) and a flood of beautiful men filled the platform, heading into the stadium to begin practice. Many years ago on a trip to NYC, I was staying with some friends who had a calendar done in this stadium with beautiful athletes, Dieux du Stade. I so admired that work and those images that I someday desired to create such works of beauty, naked men the vitality of youth. Here I am now in it’s presence, feel its magnificent seduction as my heart races with excitement. But now to see the reflection, of what I have become in all those damn mirrors. I began the year in excellent shape, firm, toned and defined, but this year has made me soft. The obsession with this project to fulfill my desire and search for meaning in art and taken a further commitment of sitting and working, instead of the focus of the physical. In many ways this year I have lived more in my head than in my body, that vitality now exists in my work, in a seemingly virtual world outside of my own existence. Yet, like the mirrors in my room, it’s a reflection of myself. Both so different, so distant. A light misty rain fills the air as I crouch under an umbrella at my breakfast table. It feels good to feel the cleansing air, perhaps this too becomes a metaphor for what this trip will bring. My gaze into the mirror is beginning to soften. I am what I have become and nothing can change the process and path of that part of my life. Other men my age seem comfortable to be where they are. Are they? Or does it just become the façade of their manner? I wish to posses this on my own terms? Perhaps I have never been quite comfortable in my own skin. My youth was also filled with angst as well. But sex and desire filled the voids of that uncertainty. Perhaps this is just the nature of myself to not find contentment. And perhaps it’s what makes me have an insatiable need to create. Is my creation then out of a need of desperation? I don’t think so but becomes an introspection into what I have experienced. That reflection now reveals a man who has never quite been satisfied with himself. I think this is why I am drawn to reveal the extraordinary in other who cannot see it within them selves.

Somehow the best parts of me are the west and I have got to somehow bring the west with me on this trip. Traveling with a cowboy hat on modern planes is near impossible. But when I look back at the seemingly impossible task of actually going to France and Germany to show my goods this seemingly impossible task of getting my hat to Paris should become an easier feat, I know I must somehow figure it out. With this Kickstarter program I am reminded of another Montanan a century or so back who also gave out his sketches and paintings in trade to pay for his keep. He didn’t have any money and was always quick to exchange art for food or lodging. He also painted beautiful men in beautiful light with their cloths on and become a legend of the west known as Charlie Russell. He actually spent a great deal of his time just a couple of hours north of where I currently reside. Well here I am another Montanan trading his artwork in exchange for a trip across the ocean. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for making this possible. I am still uncertain as to where it will go or the outcome, but I have a very strong gut feeling about all this. Moments after getting André’s link to his blog about my project, I got a second e-mail from Bruno Gmuender Publishing asking me to send them low resolution files of the images in the portfolio I had submitted. So I know some kind of interest must be sparked, right? I had used a picture that is actually on my Facebook profile of me with my cowboy hat. Who knows, at least I will be to the doorstep of a dream come true. But today really isn’t about me, because today is about all of you who have supported me and made this dream of getting to that doorstep a reality. I am honored and humbled to be in the presence of such greatness. Creating art is really about a community and it takes a community to make it a success. We all see it from a different perspective and it touches a different place in our souls, yet collectively we celebrate it as a common unity. Artists do not survive on the process of creation alone. They must be able to engage their audience. I learned in this in the theater and now feel its abundance growing from all of you. So today is about all of you that click on me everyday and see, as my friend Justin describes it, “Whatever will fall of Terry’s head?” Thank you, thank you, thank you for believing in me and helping me make this happen. (Cue music)

I am off on my grand adventure. I will try to keep the blog going, but with time difference and unknown internet capabilities, not sure what to expect, be patient. I still have a flip phone.

Last week I was packing my cowboy gear to head off the fair and rodeo in my small home town of Superior, today I am packing up my gear to head to another Rodeo in another part of the world, where I am sure the bulls will be just a unnerving. Au revoir et merci beaucoup!! Rendez-vous à Paris …