Au Revoir à Paris

Well here it is my last night in Paris. Wow what an awesome day. I leave tomorrow for 20 hours of travel to return to my mountain home in Montana. Today I just wandered around my favorite parts of the city and photographed all day. I felt at peace today, though I was a bit unnerved by my lack of communication the past couple of days. It is so odd to be isolated from all the things we know that make us thrive. Yet I am in the heart of a very big city, with millions of people and I cannot seem to communicate very well. The Internet was out most of the day at my hotel again, and I had to find an Internet café where they could hardwire my laptop into a line to make it work. I guess these are just the things we take for granted and when we hit a stumbling black it becomes a major obstacle that seems to take an insurmountable effort to actually over come. My biggest question why was I so technologically challenged. In many ways I am old fashioned and have not embraced some of the modern technology that would have made this easier, yet a damn I-phone, I see everyone using them, but the need in Montana seems to little. I did have a phone specifically set up for international use from my provider; it was too simple to work. The language is also somewhat of a barrier. I did not have any problems getting around, buying tickets, ordering coffee, food or groceries, but I was not able to have conversations. This is the city of many people with many languages, and you can tell by others expressions that many are the same as me, strangers in a city on the verge of barely comprehending just trying to survive. I find the people here extremely kind, going out of their way to be hospitable and welcoming and overall warm and kind. Most of them I met who I could communicate with were very curious about us as Americans in the US, our culture, our economics, and our sense of livelihood. Being here I have seen my own life through a new perspective now and have somehow become more self-aware.

It was a very sleepless night, of tossing and turning, on the verge of sleeping but not really sleeping at all. I am a terrible flight traveler and do not like to be in the air; besides that I had an espresso at dinner, which I knew I should not so late. This trip has been very good for what I came to achieve. Though I was not able to meet with everyone I had arranged from the beginning, I have made other contacts and seen first hand how the art world here operates. It just takes time to make it all happen, many of the galleries are booked for years in advance, but overall there seems to be great enthusiasm toward what I am working on. In many ways I think some of it is too simplistic, it does not have the complexity of work that make images survive in a world of this sort of art. I think in many ways my greatest asset is my ability to design and control the light and create an over all beauty in the images, but it time now to bump it up a notch or level in it’s emotional content to tell more of a story through the imagery. I can now see emptiness in some of the images. Though up to this point I recognize it has been a process of learning and discovery. I now see where it needs to go and others I have seen here that have given me better examples and a new point of view. Creation is an on going process, yet it is still a process of telling your own story from your own perspective. I think when shows open up where I able to display my work, I will have moved to a more interesting level with more consistency. I am finding right now that it is the journal of life and how l live that has become more of a fascination for most following this project, though for foreign cultures, the text is a bit too much to read and follow and often does not translate well for something like Google Translate. The basic concepts and ideas are there, but the nuance is lost in translation. I have never seen myself as a writer, and as I look back at some of what I have written I see that it is strong. Someone here suggested that an exhibit here would be well to also have a recording to the text also playing with the displayed images, perhaps even read the models. There is a host of possibilities and yet I still have four more months to complete what I have begun. I am almost 2/3 of the way though the process. Wow to think how far it has come to this point is remarkable. There is too little time to accomplish and I am sorry I was not able to meet everyone I intended on such a short trip as this, but I have taken a bite out of a very large elephant. I now must head for my plane, three flights, and twenty hours travel not including getting here this morning. And perhaps a few days of recovery. Thank you to all who have helped me in France and Germany and help guide and inform my process. The next post will be from the comfortable sofa in my beautiful studio unless of course I sleep the following twenty-four hours after beyond that.

VIEW FULL IMAGE: Brian #155