Fulfillment on an empty stomach with a broken heart...

What is fulfillment? What does it mean to be fulfilled? Is it only something that comes from within or can you be fulfilled from the outside? I find that I am most creative when I am the least fulfilled. When my heart is hurting the only thing I can do is express it. Sometimes I can channel it into my art, sometimes I endlessly post on Facebook about my loss as though the emojis and comments can build a wall of protection around my soul until I am able to protect it myself. My far away army of foot soldiers manning the bastions while my tears fill the moat, my bereftness the alligators swimming in endless circles on guard against further attack. She was just gone, in a second, a breath. I held her as she passed and told her we would be together again someday that it was ok to leave me but it was a lie. It wasn't ok to leave me. I begged you every damn night "don't leave me, please don't leave me I love you so". But she did and I am left with all this. We were together for nearly fourteen years, that's a really long time, geez ha! most marriages these days don't even last that long and yet there you were, my best friend, by my side every day. We spent only a few days apart during those years, long thousand hour days. When I had a creative block she was there, the good the bad, when I was in demand and everyone thought I was the next big thing...and then when everyone realized that I wasn't. It didn't matter I had her by my side and they all could just piss off. I love ferociously, if you don't personally know me then you would never guess. I believe in loving openly, fiercely, without hiding or excuse, people, things, etc. That love is love! If I love you or anything really and you are close to me, you are going to hear about it. You are also going to hear a lot of I love you's, big hugs, I miss you's, and that sort of stuff. I didn't get any of that as a child from my mom and my dad died in a car crash when I was fourteen so I suppose I figured out at an early age that everyone leaves. Some leave of their own volition, some we have to take our own leave from to save them or ourselves, some are taken from us in a puff of smoke...and some, some are gone in one single breath. Through every loss I have been able to channel at least a portion of the fallout into some sort of artistic space dust. This time is no different except that I am allowing myself to hurt...deeply. Its a fine line I am walking and I know that, putting salt in my own wound just to feel the sting. It validates our bond somehow, as though the more I hurt the more valuable the relationship is...was. I threw myself into my abandon and decay project. I reveled in the decay, the peeling paint, the crumbling, the discarded, the "left behindness". Because it is me, I AM the "leftbehindness".  Working the "Abandonment Issues" project has helped me fulfill myself, made me realize that her last breath is still inside me and will remain so. Made me realize that this beloved companion of mine lives on, she patters beside me as I walk the ruins, she sits at my knee as I edit, she sleeps beside me as I dream of colors and light filled rain. She reminds me to love ferociously, to love, and hug, and laugh because someday we will all draw our last breath to live on in someone else. We want that breath to breed fulfillment, fulfillment from the inside out which then in turn fulfills us from the outside. But first, we as humans, we grieve and we cry and lament, we feel...and then we let them go. I will see her again one day, my love, I will see her. I believe the pain from her leaving me is imposed over my work like a satiny patina, like maybe my viewers see something just outside my focal area. That's not dust on my sensor, it's Bella's last breath. It's time to let you go now, baby, I love you.

"But dreams come slow and they go so fast
You see her when you close your eyes
Maybe one day you'll understand why
Everything you touch surely dies
Only know you love her when you let her go
And you let her go..."
~Passenger~

Bella 2003-2018

"Abandonment Issues"

"Abandonment Issues"

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Same fish, different pond

So a move...a big move... a move across the country in fact, from Illinois to Way DownEast Maine almost to the Canadian Border. I can actually see Canada from my house.  When I sold my house I also sold my studio, my refuge, my prison. I saw moving as an escape from all that anyone knew of my present...laying the groundwork for a blank canvas for my future. I sold ninety-nine-point-99 of my gear, props, backdrops, “schtuff”, even my lights (the lights were hard to give up kind of like a crutch). But give it up I did. I had grand ideas of stripping back my process like peeling back the layers of a decaying onion with the hopes that the layer lying just below was still fresh and useable. I was going to go back to the basics. I felt like photographing people for so long had exsanguinated my lifeblood from my creative veins. I was a shell, with with a huge creative block. The fear that my spark was out or at least almost out never far from my thoughts. Photographing people was always a high for me, trying to get the client to open up bit by bit until their vulnerable ”ish” was laid out bare for the square piece of glass I resided behind to capture it away. When that little bit of their ”ish” was read and wrote onto the memory card it breathed a bit more life into me. Many cultures do not allow their photographs to be taken as they believe it fractures off some of their soul to be lost forever within the camera. I believe this to be true except I believe that piece, that glow or glint in an eye, the crooked smile, that whistful set of a jaw, reminiscent of prior generations that set their jaw in just that same way, that fraction of a soul I believe goes through the camera and into the soul of the photographer. An “ish” zombie if you will. So I digress...this big, grand move would free me, free me from the self imposed constraints of my artistic perspective. I would no longer be photographing portraiture I exclaimed excitedly only bear, moose, loons, whales, ships, and sunsets. I have FREED myself!  And for about a month that was the case. Until the portraitess in me whispered against the inside of my skull ”soooo whatchadoin”?.
I live in an artistic community. The arts are embraced at every turn here which is amazing. Coming from a self-fueled and highly competitive environment it was as comforting as a warm bath at the
end of a long, cold day. People are supportive, they are friendly and noncompetitive. They are enthusiastic about culture and how it impacts and enhances life. It also is very much an environment of self promotion as far as getting your name out there. “Ain’t nobody gonna do it fer ye here”. I have been encouraged by the overwhelmingly positive feedback on my work but I find it so very hard to shove my proverbial foot in anyone’s pretty, brightly-colored, gallery door asking (née demanding) for wall space. How can I sell my work if I find myself holding back when I should be breaking down the doors saying “everyone says there’s nothing like mine around you simply MUST hang me” ha! Hang my work!?!?! But what if my exsanguination was too complete? What if my artistic life blood is now anemic? What if those lights I so cavalierly got rid of were the magic fairy dust over my previous work? There I was someone, a fish with a name...whether that name was artist, bitch, amazing, bullheaded, inspiring, too far out, too loud, too quiet, not enough too much...at least my gear bag was full of adjectives, full of names, words, descriptions-it was full. Here I am the same fish but in a different pond... and my gear bag is decidedly empty...

For Now!


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Feedback

Good Day. So for the first blogpost here at PhotoFugue let's talk about sex...no not really but now that I have your attention, let's talk about feedback. When I mentioned the word sex I would imagine that you, the reader, would have a visceral response based on your belief system...good, bad, interested, taboo, some sort of response was garnered to the sight of the word. To an artist, that immediate, visceral response to the work that is produced out of the heart and veins and their very soul is the lifeblood that sustains. Money is awesome don't get me wrong, notoriety, fame, exclusivity, oh yeah those are all the things we chase after and desire, but the nucleus of our passion is fueled by feedback from those that take witness to what we render. As a photographer, I often say if I didn't self-feed my ego, I would starve...ok maybe it isn't THAT bad, but we all ache to have that atta boy(girl), to be sought after, to be liked, shared, recommended. Social media has impacted this theory in a huge way. We base our success or failure on views and algorithms and on thumbs and hearts. How many of you have posted something really epic on your Facebook or Instagram Account expecting tons of likes or emojis...to have it go completely and utterly without acknowledgement. Kinda disheartening huh? Now imagine that those likes and emojis are what you pay your bills with, or at the very least, they are a means for further exposure to clients that provide you with that money to pay your bills with. Hmmmm, never thought about it like that right? Conversely, as a poetess, the silence and the lack of comprehension of the words that drip out of my pores cause my words to flow forth with more emotion, rawness. So why does one fire of my art need stoking while the other fans it's own flames? I think it is because the photographer side needs a subject, no matter if it is human, landscape, even self portrait, they all require a recordable facade. How much of the photography is influenced by and reflected from my own psyche, my own fugue state if you will...how much of what's in front of my lens actually portrays myself in the end product? When I take a photo and have a mentor or someone's whose opinion I greatly value make the statement "I knew that was your work as soon as I laid eyes on it" or I can recognize your work anywhere" is that a good thing? Is that belying just how much of myself is ingrained in my works? Does it make the rendering more easily relatable or does it shut off a portion of the viewer populace? In my poetry I can't help but think I really don't give a rat's behind if a piece is well received or not. I flow and if the audience gets it fabulous, if they don't then its easy to say its above their mindset, its not relatable to this culture, this area, these folks just can't grasp it. When one half of your soul is a self fertilizing tree and the other half isn't...well what then...they are not congruous they are not compatible. Will one half overtake the other if it wilts and dies? Will they grow straight and strong together the roots of the one sufficient to sustain the other. When you give an artist feedback, you nurture them giving them courage and strength to build upon any cracks in their weakened foundation. When it is critical but heartfelt, it teaches them to be free to adapt and grow into their strengths. When feedback is positive, it has the power to enhance the creative process, to encourage to press further into self expression. Being an artist is a lonely place of reflection, of feeling the process, and birthing the result into existence. Have you fed your artist today???