My recent posts here, and on ‘social media’ accounts, have focused primarily on my Digital Gryphon Decks (“Boutique Decks for Unique Card Readers“) with a quick detour to my newly-revised and expanded poetry chapbook.
My creative roots are in film photography.
In the years since I moved down to Ohio the film cameras have been replaced with digital ones. At first a basic (fixed lens) Nikon, later upgraded to a mid-range DSLR Pentax. No time or space here for dissing, or discussing, camera brands. models, etc. “It’s a poor craftsman who blames his tools,” etc. There are many great advantages to shooting digital, along with drawbacks. Again, not the point of my post.
The point?
Well, as I pondered life (i.e. therapy) I realized that the reason most of my photography is “pretty things” is the same as why I have virtually no photos of life as a young gay man in Toronto. And pretty much the same reason why I don’t enjoy horror or slasher films.
My life contained so much human ugliness, I don’t want to remember, much less, celebrate it.
My galleries at Fine Art America have a lot of florals and quiet city scenes. Perhaps another time I’ll blog about city v. country.
Some of the less bucolic life shows up; my Black &White Triptych captures the aftermath of one devastating fire. Another image is a sheet of plastic in the window of a house that had burned; looking perhaps like a shroud?
And the Teddy Bear Tears series of kaleidoscopes created as I started the long road of recovery (mental health, not substance abuse in this case).
Oh and that chapbook- the last selection from the 1980s (Somewhere) was so truthful that I stopped writing for 30 years.
In the interest of ‘fair and balanced’ there were plenty of moments of happiness in those so-gay years in Toronto. Love, sex, community…. Also burying so many folks that I had to stop attending funerals. After that didn’t help enough I moved down to Ohio. I know- retreating. But facing all of that and the loss of my first BIG relationship and the inkling that, despite it all, I would outlive the 40 year lifespan that seemed my fate was just too f’ing much.
And now- well now life has some pretty sweet moments of pure, unadulterated JOY.
A man who loves me enough he put a ring on it, families (biological and chosen) that accept and love us both. This post is, I guess, a bit of “sometimes it does (eventually) get better” and “hashtag gratitude.” Don’t expect me to apologize for the amount of ‘pretty pictures’ I produce, or be surprised at the glimpses of the ugliness.
