“What a remarkable time to be alive”, my friend Buck kept saying last night, “what a remarkable time to be alive”. I really began to think about it and he is right, this is turning in to remarkable era in the evolution of humanity. With the use of the Internet we can instantly look up anything that has ever happened, see what’s currently happening anywhere in the world and communicate globally to anyone in any language. I hadn’t really thought about it until that moment the significance and profound this time had become. Here I am a man with little wiring skills or training able to communicate with so many people on so many levels. I have a young 16-year-old painter friend in a small town in New York that I have grown fond of named Dakota who I talk to daily about his dreams of becoming an artist. I share my insight, look at, and evaluate his images, and give him direction to follow his passion. “Paint what you know and feel a connection to what you paint.” My friend Giorgio in LA is going to the Academy Awards tomorrow night and I am able to hear about the experience and his process of shopping for an elegant outfit for the event. A friend Michael in Palm Springs who is painting the most remarkable images of what I would call classic pop American homoerotic art, who suffers because he has recently lost his partner and is dealing with the anxiety of recovering from such sorrow. Ramon in Costa Rica is in the travel business and lives in the most beautiful little village and has such a spiritual connection with his images to people and place. I get a post that warms my day from my dearest friend Rus in Tuscan who is a brilliant writer and frustrated teacher and my past creative soul mate. I look at a painting of a flower emerging from the ground from my friend John in Australia and know and my heart aches for spring that is know is just around the corner. I also connect to Gianni a gallery owner in Italy that is interested in using my images in some of his upcoming shows. Language is no longer a barrier, thought and ideas are eternal. Every single day of my life I meet and connect with someone remarkable via Facebook, and you don’t just connect to them you enter their world: seeing pictures of who they are, learn what kinds of things they are interested in and best of all you send them a message and they respond back generally within a matter of hours. I am inspired every day by a new idea or concept, remember something about my life I loved but had forgotten, discover something new about myself through the mirror of how I interact with others. It’s remarkable how I am able to honestly talk about my fears, anxieties and desire and share this connection to so many others who have experienced the same. I now connect to so many artists from nearly every country around the world that shares my struggle. This Project is becoming a testament of that global community because as much as I gain from others it is paid forward to someone else. From this remote mountain city in Montana I feel like Leonardo DiCaprio when he stands on the bow of the Titanic, with his arms outstretched soaring thought the air as if in flight and yells “I AM KING OF THE WORLD”. I realize it is great to be this age, have the vast experience of life behind me, and share my dreams with a world that truly gets who I am. You are right Buck this truly is a remarkable time in which we live. We are lucky to have conquered the world in such a way. This weekend I am heading north, to connect with my brother and his family, have great food and share where we have been since last year. This is the brother I have written about as a point of contention in this project that I love and adore so dearly now and long to hang out and just be together again. I do not think my family is aware of this project and what I am doing, hardly anyone around me does, but that’s actually kind of the fun of it all.
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Travis #692
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