Regrowth

“I love people as I meet them one by one. People are just wonderful as individuals. You see the whole universe in their eyes if you look carefully. As soon as they begin to group; as soon as they begin to clot; when there are five of them, or ten, or even groups as small as two, they begin to change. They sacrifice the beauty of the individual for the sake of the group.” ~ George Carlin

This has certainly been the year of model drama, not directly with me, but in general. I’ve worked with more models this year than any of the last eight years, by far, and only one of them could be described as a bad experience, but I still managed to get something decent out of it. I worked with more people last year, but most of them were locals, while this year only gave me one small group of locals. Now we hunker down and try to make it through another winter, while trying not to think about the amount of money I spent on said models... though I'm sure it will come up at some point. I can not even begin to describe how grateful I am to have a family and still be able to do what I love, within reason, but this recent divide that I have reached has left the futility of it all weighing heavy on me. My wife is still hot and cold with it all, while I've never really been focused on anything other than this, so we don't understand each other on a lot of levels. She is still doing this primarily because she thinks I need her to, and I keep telling her that she doesn't need to do it.

Such is the life of art, though. Creatives are generally left to resort to solitude because they are surrounded by souls who don't get the drive, hence the common story of misery and suffering, which, ironically, only pushes the passionate boundaries of the drive. I want to believe Elizabeth Gilbert's take on positivity in creativity, but when you have spent your entire life perpetuating the misery for the sake of story and art, that Daemon seems to nap in times of comfort. I've thrown the word 'art' around here a lot, but I still don't really consider myself an artist, aside from the philosophy that there is an art to everything. I still struggle with that. So many people say they love my work, but it's not really work by societal definition. I call it work because I am always in it, but I treat it less like work and more like life. Life isn't work. Life just happens, and even when you give up on it, it just keeps going. Regardless, very few of my few readers and followers refer to what I do as art. I suppose the fact that I continue to do it despite any sort of real spotlight, for the love of it, makes it art.

...and just like that, the tangents are back. This is what happens when you need to write, but didn't really plan anything out before you get to it. Repeat and fade... 

 More than the 'work' itself, which at this point seems to have even less purpose in terms of style and theme, spiraling off into wider, illegible lines from an over used organic medium that needs to be sharpened, I have always been more interested in hearing the stories from all these wandering works of art. Like maliciously living a life with an interesting plot line, these are stories and plot lines far more interesting than mine, staring into some glass that freezes their moments forever. Each city, each photographer, each frozen moment is a story, good or bad or both or neither. The sub plots of real life intertwine with art and create depth that no one can fake. Beautiful souls are traveled, and I have tried so desperately to become a beautiful soul by creating in my mind what I could never create in my reality. When I met this amazing woman, she was surprised that I never really left my little corner of the world. At the end of the day, no matter what the story, I will always be limited to this.

For years, the stories I got from models were of beautiful and terrifying personal journeys. In this year of drama, the stories have been more gossip related. 'He said, she said'... 'I heard...'.. 'this is what really happened'........... 'that's not what really happened'... blacklists and backstabbing. At first I appreciated it, really learning about the community, but I have heard so many different accounts of the same events, so many different perspectives, that I just have to slouch down in my corner and accept that we are all just painfully human. George Carlin nailed it: "I love people as I meet them one by one..." This creative community has certainly began to clot, and hearing all the stories about 'who did what to who', 'who doesn't like who and why', has made something I love even more depressing, especially the 'who is sleeping with who'. In my really getting into this on a professional level, I had to rewire my brain and stop pursuing relationships to get a photograph, which means taking the relationship out of the work, and most of what I see is still perpetuating that negative paradigm.

I realize that we are all human, we all have basic desires and needs, but I genuinely feel that when you demean the beauty by reducing it to base desires, you negate the work on some level, unless that's the level that your creativity exists on. I shoot my wife, sure, but she's my wife first, and I'm just lucky that she happens to be all amazing and shootable. When I work with souls who travel the world as works of art, I am incapable of seeing them as such basic creatures, especially within the conundrum of so many creatives complaining about how they are treated, sexually... then you hear some stories, tilt your head, and knot your brain trying to figure out why so many people want both... at their convenience.

Now that I do know more about the seedy underbelly of this potentially beautiful community, I feel even more distanced from it. The attitudes of most of the creatives who really get attention and are followed by the masses are not representative of how I see the world, but they get the work, they get the praise, they get the likes and shares, they sell the prints and the books, they're in galleries and magazines, they have models lined up to be demeaned by them, and I am left the fool for being proud of evolving past that life, my 20s. I use the word 'most' broadly, and try to keep those who I believe appreciate what I'm talking about in my news feed, but this is all so very very depressing. I am the charred remnants of hope, waiting patiently for this forest to replenish itself. The creative community that I always dreamed of, where everyone loves each other, and takes care of each other, as the beautiful works of art that we are, will exist for me some day, even if I have to fall completely into delusion to find it.

Tabula rasa armonioso con anima.