Today marks 13 years with my partner Glenn. It’s hard to believe that you can spend that much time with any one person. We met here in Missoula at the American Veterans bar in downtown Missoula. Neither of us are veterans of any sort of war but it was a place most of the gay people in Missoula began to hang out so it just became the gay bar. When you live in a small town you have to take what’s open. We are about the same age and we discovered early that we had the same core values. He was born and lived in Missoula all his life and I had grown up in the mountains west of Missoula. I had dated other people before and am a person that tends toward long-term relationships. I had always dated people that were similar to me in likes and interests. So Glenn was not the kind of guy I was looking for at all. He was and still is the complete opposite of me and always will respectfully remain so. He loves football, is analytically inclined and is addicted to Fox News. I love theater, anything artistic, creative thinking and very removed from current events or anything political. But at the core we fundamentally believe in the same thing. When I met him he was not open or out, and I was completely open. He is a rock of stability, stoic, strong, with a gentle personality that genuinely always seems content. When we first started dating he said I would have to learn to like football because he was a huge Montana Grizzly fan and buys season tickets to the games. I said that’s fine but you will also have to go to the theater because I buy season tickets to all the shows. I did go to the football games and loved it. And that first season he saw Miss Saigon, Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables, Annie and Showboat and was a bit awestruck by the magical world of theater. When we first began dating we bought one of those gay relationship guide books too that we read to out loud each night to discover where the other stood and what to expect. You see Glenn was always a bit short of words and never really talked about much or expressed much feeling. This made the beginning of the relationship difficult for me because I wanted to talk about everything. It took a long time for me to fully enter his world, but I somehow always knew what was in his heart. He worked at a service ryder for a car dealership and shortly after we met I sent him a beautiful bouquet of yellow roses with blue iris. In those days it was common to actually send flowers to someone you adored. That night he came home furious with me for having sent them to him at work, back before the days I was informed that his uniform was not an outfit. I think there was some appreciation at the bottom of all that humiliation. We have survived. One of the most beautiful moments was when I was on a trip to Seattle and we stopped in Spokane for a break and wandered though the Riverfront Park, he pulled a beautiful teal box from his pocket and gave me a ring. This was a moment I knew had sealed our relationship, the action was louder than words. Since then we have built an amazing life together, weathered each others hardships and found joy in the most unusual of places.

I really don’t know what he could have seen in me from the beginning and I still often wonder why he continues to put up with me after all these years. He has helped me to become who I am and allowed my dreams to soar. Though I don’t think he understands what I do all the time, he is most often there offering support it and he has helped me build this studio. He has adopted two stray cats who are our constant friends, Kitty, seemed pointless to name her because she was deaf and wouldn’t know her name anyhow, who came with the construction project. Then Bob a scared little critter filled with affection, who cannot speak and has a lopped off tail, hence his name. They look identical and with all the defects between them make up one whole. I guess Glenn just has a knack for rescuing strays and letting them into his heart. This week he is working out of town in North Dakota and I doubt even remembers today, so I think perhaps this will be a surprise. The keys I have learned to long term-relationships are: To be respectful of each other even if you don’t agree on something or care for their lack of fashion sense. Be open minded and listen to both sides of the issues without thinking yours is the only perspective. Nurture each other when one is down. Don’t think you can change something to suit your expectation. Give with your heart without expectation. In 13 years we have never fought. I love and miss you sweetie, Happy Anniversary.

Today’s title comes from a song in the musical SHOWBOAT music by Jerome Kern, and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. The lower image is of Glenn combing Kitty.

I think the becoming 50 blues are hitting me, with one week in counting. I am now overwhelmed with so much going on this week, compounded now by the mess from the storm last weekend, Glenn being in North Dakota for the next couple of weeks, me having to edit my own atrocious grammar and spelling mistakes, and now having to organize a party for Saturday. It all seems to be eating up and taking more of my time then I had originally planned. Tonight it’s all getting to me!!!!! There is a hard rain on the skylight windows as I look to the northern sky from my bed; it comforts me in some strange way giving me a sense of renewal. Tonight I am utterly exhausted, trying to put it all in to perspective. I saw some pictures from my friend Tony’s yard, just a block up and he had major trees completely uprooted, his extraordinary garden that he has spent years cultivating as been devastated. Yesterday I saw a tree being removed from a house with a crane, just a couple of blocks down. My damage was minor in comparison. My young nephew, Brendan, come over and together we cleaned a lot of the big debris. Sunday’s, I always try to make lighter, with minimal effort to recover my energy, but today I pushed a bit too hard. Glenn has planned this big party for my 50th Birthday next Saturday and then left town to work and will be gone. The studio needs to be cleaned and here I am scrambling trying to make everything else happen when I already have a full week of work planned. I do not feel like I am managing my energy wisely and need to find the balance to better taking care of myself. Does becoming 50 mean I have to give up the energy I once had? To night I feel angry, hostile and completely overwhelmed. Is it the impending birthday that’s causing such anxiety? Why does turning 50 have to be such a big deal? Why do we dread it so much? Am I at that point in my own play where things are in such motion that the outcome can only lead to the final climax, as they daftly sing about “Past the point of no return” in Phantom of the Opera. I definitely don’t feel 50 in my head and body most of the time. It feels like many people who are 50+ seem changed somehow. A buddy of mine at UPS, who turned 50 last year, actually seems like on old man. Is it a mental thing where we have to throw in the towel at a certain age and give up the things that once kept us youthful? Well I don’t feel it; and I know for a fact that many great photographers seem to hit their stride and best works in the later years of maturity. In many ways I feel like I am just hitting my own peak. I can see and now know what the vision actually is. I have the history of my entire existence to draw from and enrich that vision. It feels like I have spent a lifetime of gathering the tools, equipment and resources: filling my creative well with ideas and inspirations. I have lived so deeply thus far that it doesn’t feel like its time to begin the decline yet. I am in great health, reasonably content, mostly happy perhaps I just need to learn to manage my energy better and learn to take care of myself.

We have been having one of the worst windstorms I have every seen in Montana. The wind has blown for the past 48 hours solid. The power was out all night but finally came on this morning; now there is no Internet. The wind continues to blow. My two cats, Bob and Kitty, cowered at the door this morning afraid to go out and are stir-crazy from being inside for the last two days. They did follow me out when I went out to inspect the damage. As we circled the house, they headed for the door wanting back in. There is so much debris everywhere that the whole place looks like a disaster zone. Everything I have worked on the past couple of weeks, outside, is wiped out. There is a row of big old cottonwoods on a hillside by the ditch that I am honestly surprised are still standing. I could hear the limbs breaking off and hitting the house all night. I was sure one would come through the skylights. In Montana we don’t tend to have much for weather related encounters so this is very extreme for us. I marvel this morning on how all the things we rely on are actual luxuries we take for granted until they are actually taken away. I now realize how much I depend on my outside communication through all my cable and Internet resources. At first I was frustrated I could not connect to the world outside but I began to see that this was a morning I needed to channel my focus toward myself. It has been wonderful to catch up on things I have lost touch with so long ago. Things long neglected. It puts into perspective how much I have changed in the past 5 months since this project began. I have not been this charged with a project or vision in a very long time. Every day is becoming a routine of accomplishing all my tasks. I see how compartmentalized my life has become. It was a daunting task to decide to produce something new every day. I just hope I have not yet ground the away the edges that makes an endeavor like this really interesting. It is causing me to internalize and draw deeper within myself. Every once in a while I guess we just need to be humbled.

Sorry for the delayed post today, there seemed to be confusion about the logistics of posting? As I seem to have lost the person who has been helping me proof and edit. I hope I will be back on track tomorrow.

As a younger man, I did not have a very good self-image of myself. I was tall and skinny, clumsy and extremely awkward. I wasn’t really comfortable with my body and it seemed at the time the only thing really going for me was that I was young and had beautiful skin. My looks were average, nothing out of the ordinary. I have a brother Mark, a year and a day younger, who was stunning and everything I was not. I was never quite comfortable with my own self-image and didn’t take much pride in taking care of myself. My twenties were lived in a world of dark angst, not really sure where I belonged or what I should do. You see I was held back in the first grade to repeat the following year with my brother Mark. This put me a year ahead of everyone else physically, so when puberty hit I was awkwardly out of sync with my classmates. My father encouraged sports but I was so gangly, all legs and arms which I could not control. I think this became an embarrassment to him to see such a spastic uncoordinated kid only out there humiliating himself. I really did try! In many ways, this sort of embarrassment becomes a physiological hurdle I felt I was constantly trying to outgrow through my twenties and into my thirties. Being athletically challenged my body didn’t develop much muscle, but I had a very high metabolism and seemed to burned off everything I consumed and could not gain any bulk. My mind worked in quirky and unusual ways. I loved things that were absurd and silly, things like Mad Magazine and it’s quirky look at movies and the world that surrounded us. Then discovering that I was gay added another level to my discomfort and oddity. I was made fun of by others because I was so different. All I wanted was a normal life and it seemed the harder I tried to become normal the more absurd my life became and verged on down right discomfort. I think times have changed, because I still recognize the awkwardness in others but there is now more of an acceptance in our culture to celebrate uniqueness.

I have recently begun working with a young man, whom I see as the mirror of my youthful self. He came to me some time back and asked if I would work with him on some images. Looking at this Facebook profile, I was skeptical that he would become too quirky and not be able to pull off the style I have been exploring. As I met him, I began to see the awkward sadness in his eyes that I recognized within myself from that age. We began to shoot and an amazing sexy man began to emerge. Since we began shooting, his perceptions of how he views himself have changed. He has begun to work out and every shoot there is a noticeable transformation as he seems to become more comfortable with his body. Yesterday he came into the studio for a shoot and I could see this magnificent transformation from the awkwardness from which we first shot. It took me a decade to achieve what he has done in months. When I work with him, it’s like looking into the window of myself. It become like amazing dance of beauty and grace where all of my humanity is laid bare and I can only see the glimmer of all the marvelous things about to emerge. Thanks Corey for allowing me this voyage back into myself, for your honesty and fearless integrity to allow me to see within and share your world.

I watched a strange movie last night called Marwencol about a man who was severely beaten by 5 thugs because he was a cross dresser. He had such irreparable damage to his brain that he basically had to start his life over, once he recovered from the beating. His memory was completely lost and he had to relearn the rudimentary basics of walking and writing. Throughout the process of his recovery he looked at photographs of himself to try to reconnect to his past. But all was lost and he could not remember who the people were in the images including his own bride or wedding. The images were interesting and compelling and they comprised great stories locked within their frame, but there was no emotional connection what so ever to those still images. What became fascinating was the man created an alternate reality in which he could live based on impressions from the imagery from his previous life. He began to amass a large collection of male and female Barbie type dolls, dress them and completely work them into the replication of actual people he had a strong emotional connection. He began to create an elaborate alternate reality with these dolls and created this amazing little village he called Marwencol in which they could exist and literally come to life; one of the dolls being himself. He created this entire universe in the back yard of a mobile home. He would then tell the stories of these people/dolls in great detail often painting their expressions and emotions, costuming them and finally position them into staged scenarios and then photograph them. He creates an amazing relationship between himself and his alter ego, as he calls it that are more realistic than many peoples’ reality. These images are filled with emotions, feelings, and in many ways the attention to detail is so astonishing they seem completely alive. He doesn’t do it for the sake of creating art, but because this is the only way he can interact with his own reality. In fact, he does it for years in isolation until a neighborhood photographer discovers what he is doing and exposes his process for everyone to see the fragile world in which he exists.

By the end of the film I began to question my own reality. Do I create an alternate universe with my own images in telling the stories of my own youth and connection to desire? Has this Naked Man Project become something outside of myself where I can dwell in an ideal dream world? I began to see great parallels in this man’s self-created microcosm and my own. Then I really began to think about this Naked Man Project and began to ponder if this was my own delusional world I have created by my own alter ego to live and recreate my own emotional harmony. Suddenly I felt displaced. My world is scattered into so many different factions and many of them completely different from each other that I feel like I have multi-personality at times. I recognize the painstaking detail of imbuing my own images from the memories of my own feelings. Am I playing out my own life in a delusional dimension and is this my way of coming to terms of my own reality? What if my world was to suddenly be erased and all I had to remember were the images I have created what kind of story would I be able to cull from their lingering impressions?