ARTISTS
Whether its, “I need to redo my site” or “I need to see myself in my process” I provide step-by-step support for a, “This is eaasssssy” session feeling and useful images that tell a true and unfiltered story of you and your creativity.
Read MoreThe first time Didi made portraits of me in Sedona for the Memory Cult gathering last year she hummed a song- over and over it was our soundtrack.
A year later she was still humming the same tune with her lens in my face, finger poking my nose to arranging our gestures to get the perfect spin on the way she sees it. A scratchy melody over and over.
“What song is that?”
It’s the chorus and she’s humming the words,
“I wanna see you again”.
Of course.
So we summoned the song out of satellite air and sang blasted it on repeat. I got the lyric order wrong and she sang it right all that much louder and we took turns driving.
Cypress and foggy greens turned to sand and succulent and shore where I made these portraits with her.
Portraits of Didi Von Boch at Point Reyes
Camera: Rolleiflex 6001
Film: Kodak Gold 200, a medium format film shot at box speed (200 ISO) pushed 1 stop (+1) in developing.
Development: Dev and scan at The Find Lab
Thoughts on exile and the things we outgrew by Alex Caldiero. Clipped edit from, “The Sonosopher” by Torben Bernhard and Travis Low. Watch it on YouTube if it resonates.
A poets answer to “Do you miss the fellowship of Mormonism?” Any past things outgrown or excommunicated from by choice or force can take the place of the specifics here and the pain of your loss is justified.
I’m v into flash at night in the garden right now. I’d like to invite everyone out in the garden to see- that’s part of my nature. I like to hold microphones up to the thrills and pains in life.
I am so lucky! I know and meet the most interesting people, I feel loved by them, I feel safe to share.
What a thing to feel!
What fortune!
In these most recent years I’ve become a kind of a devotee to “how it feels”, more than “how it looks” or “what I should do”. When I engage should and look, I find it useful to notice which aspects of me are in the drivers seat and where it takes me.
Some of my experience in this process has been unorthodox and strange and I’ve been very worried at times I would hurt people by not being what I thought I was, or what I wanted you to think I was. It’s embarrassing to be a person! So cringy to change! Heavy is the head that crowns itself in hyper-vigilance.
When I look through a technical (stay safe) or pathological (you’re not good enough, yet) lens I am not aware of this other “feel” thing. Feel is a different vibe, so now I am practicing feeling, which is goodhard.
A few weeks ago I was processing a core memory of being hit as a child and you know what I remember most? I most remember feeling in absolute awe that after the first punch you don’t feel it anymore.
What skill!
What a perfect mechanism!
And I was right. On one side of the coin our nervous system does something protective and evolved, but this dissociative state of not-feeling as a way of life got real deep on lack and deep on numb as it worked its programming for the last 40 years.
Learning to paint has taught me that I’ve done technique (stay safe) long enough to be burned out so now I am raising the energy of expression (I am safe, I feel safe). Sometimes “feel” is good looking and smooth but often it ain’t. But then again what the fuck is “good”?
The things about us, the ways we are and were brave in what @lidiamiles calls, “the face of fuck” may be called wounds, but wounds can also be voids, voids can be filled with whatever we put there to be amplified and materialized as our lens and life.
“Now I a fourfold vision see
And a fourfold vision is given to me
Tis fourfold in my supreme delight
And three fold in soft Beulahs night
And twofold Always. May God us keep
From Single vision & Newtons sleep”
– William Blake
I’ve had some pretty cool experiences in my life but this one really stands out.
A group of close friends hired me, met me out at the Salt Flats and when we got there do you know what the Salt Flats looked like? Flooded. Water everywhere. One of our cars got stuck, we had to get towed. We pivoted together, making something out of the unexpected- beyond original vision.
I hold the ideas that initiate a creative work very lightly. Creative results aren’t beholden to the initiations that bring them into life, anymore than we live genuinely when beholden to what our parents think we should be.
We
steady the bow
and the arrow goes
where it will go.
And that’s good enough.
GENEALOGIES of BECOMING
My friend Alex is getting old. A slow grey spreads as he slides down the banister of being. Defiant and knowing, he defines his work for the sake of art and, though weary, it feeds him.
He once told me that he does what he does, in the singular way he does it, "as a bird flies and sings". His assurance of self helped me see myself as a bird of my own making, meant to do as I do, meant to become what I am. For like him I live a legacy of self and I, "I am not a metaphor."
