Creation within a Fragile Existence

Someone sent me a text late the other night saying they had read one of my blog posts and wanted to tell me how much they liked what I was doing. Somehow the project seems in the distant past, almost forgotten. I realize how much I miss it. How is it that something that seems so vital in our lives seems to slip so far away? I begin to look back at the last couple of weeks and see how busy my life has become. My target and goal is still aligned toward this project, but it seems plagued by a host of technical difficulties that, in many ways, I have allowed to derail me. Since the migration to the new server it seems most time working on this project have been resolving issues and of course the lack of time to commit to it. I have also begun to focus my energies back to shooting and working on getting back to the core of what brought me here in the first place. The new images have a greater depth than I have ever worked before. The connection is stronger more focused to and with the subjects. It’s not so much an experiment anymore because my technique has been sharpened and honed. This project has given me a deeper sense of myself and a greater appreciation of the moments I am living.

Yesterday I learned of a friend who was recently diagnosed with cancer and passed away. I see how fragile our lives become. He was younger than me and it’s been haunting my thoughts the past couple of days as I begin to make sense of where I currently am in my own existence. My own life is so vast, that I am lucky to have such woven such a richness in most everything I undertake, the biggest question is am I really taking the time to appreciate it to it’s fullest. It is now five years since I was also diagnosed with cancer, underwent treatment, and was lucky to survive this long. I see how survival has put my need to accomplishment into a sort of hyper drive that now consumes me. In a way making me fearless. But the real question is why did it take me so long to get this motivated. Why is it that it takes facing annihilation to awaken our lives to what is really important and essential to what we need to become? There really isn’t time to tread water anymore. Many years ago my dearest friend Gilbert was diagnosed with a brain tumor the week he decided to retire and was gone within 6 months. He was a man of great means to accomplish whatever he could possibly desire but spent too much of his time consumed in unhappiness. I have really begun to question myself. Am I really happy? Am I too consumed by my need for my own accomplishment to see what I have become? The process of becoming an artist means we must dwell in what we have created. To us as artists, the fresh vibrancy of what we create becomes dulled because it is rooted in a deeper connection of continually living within it. Someone sending me a text in the middle of the night sees a freshness and vitality that I can no longer recognize. But it does reawaken ourselves to see some thing we have created from a new perspective and reawaken our own bewilderment to what we have become. Though I may have been derailed from my original intent I still become aware of the extraordinary of my ordinary self. This is my process of discovery and creation.

VIEW FULL IMAGE: Colton #452