In My Room 3

“the kind of girl you'd get a pack of cigarettes with
she can read, she's bad”

This is the description for a blog on line I’ve following of late, Velvet Cigarette. One of my guiding principles in life has always been, “book your own life, and make it as fucking surreal as possible.” So, yes, I most definitely approve when someone puts themselves out there with a degree of wit and style. I’m sitting here perusing the photos and text early on a Saturday morning while listening to Skindive.

“Close my eyes tight,
Hurt with this light,
Your devious mind comes shining through to me,
Shining clear to me.

Head for home as the daylight grows,
Crashing to the floor,
As a bitter sound rings clear,
Your tragic song I hear.

Happy thoughts and empty minds can justify my reasons.

No joy for me till the day I can hold my head up.
King in my head, hung in shame, swallow me.

King in my head, hung in shame, I'm the original”
- Skindive, “Swallow”

Daniella Harrison’s voice is pure sex. She’s the girl with the brown lipstick (if you’ve read Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities – movie doesn’t count as it was a disgrace). Her voice is the unattainable, that apex of sensuality and desire that the sensitive artist lists as the “be all, end all.” I would think that I’ve moved away from such a maddening sensitivity, but yesterday comes to mind. I was busy writing and waiting for my copy of my latest coffee table book to arrive in the mail. My friend BeeBs popped in and told she was shooting in a studio downstairs. She invited me down later after borrowing a few bondage toys and there’s this vision of “the girl with the brown lipstick” she’s shooting with. I think I stuttered. Yes, I was a wee bit sheepish. I shoot all kinds of models and all kinds of body types, but there is such a thing as the tyranny of beauty, and the model she was shooting with had beauty in spades. It is what it is.
Beauty to me starts with the eyes. It’s intimacy and knowledge in a lovely package. My newest artistic project, “In My Room,” is born of this. In the bedroom, or in my case my entire living space, the eyes have it. Bullshit and pretense take a hike. Now, this isn’t for everyone. For far too many folks, honesty makes them uncomfortable. That macro shot at the edge of the bed is just too invasive. We turn away when confronted with “the Real.” When you’re shooting what one would consider “erotica,” knowing the sensibility of what it actually is helps. After all, it’s just one skip away from being labeled an amateur pornographer. I am an explorer who honestly wants to know why we feel, act and respond in the ways that we do. Maybe it’s because I think such insight could help me with my interpersonal relations. Who knows? Maybe I’m a voyeur and am living vicariously through you. My model the other day told me that I’m just shooting stuff in the bedroom I’d like to have done to me.
A talented local photographer challenged me recently saying that my work needs to reflect my soul more. I’ve thought about this a lot of late. From my subject matter to how I run a shoot, my work is a deep expression of myself. As another photographer stated once, “photography is my mistress.” My editorial vision is for you to be relaxed and comfortable enough to show me what’s on the inside, not for me to pose your every movement and force my vision on you. I’m not denigrating the other approach. It’s just not mine.

In My Room 2

And sometimes I model. :)

Palimpsest, again

Messianic

English

Adjective

messianic (not comparable)

Positive messianic

Comparative not comparable
Superlative none (absolute)

1. Of, relating to, or resembling a messiah.


The new world we live in demands we believe in something, anything. It’s not that I believe in nothing, it’s that I don’t believe in your prescription. One hegemony begets another.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
- W.B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”

Here I sit on a warm August Tuesday in Los Angeles, wondering what above all else comes next. I want the space to create, and I have it. As for so many folks everywhere, though, making enough money to stay afloat is the primal urge.
Juxtaposition.
Take a 300 and some odd feet square efficiency apartment, a mini-kitchen and a walk-in closet that leads to a smallish bathroom and what do you have? You have a limited play space to make an editorial statement. Noted, it might seem difficult to convey anything when you’re wearing a hood with an enclosed blindfold and attachable penis gag making it impossible to speak. Still, if you ask the model, she would prefer not to be released from her “disgrace.” “Disgrace” is in quotes, because words have meaning, often multiple meanings for me. “Disgrace” in this case doesn’t carry its usual negative connotation. In our world, to be in control is the epitome of success. A lack of control is unsavory. Flip it. Understanding that one has little to no control is the key to understanding one’s self. I am reminded of this from a play session I participated in at Bondage Ball in Hollywood July 4. Being restrained with a hood on my head while being flogged by a beautiful woman is Boyd at his happiest. Well, insomuch as when I want to suspend the pretense of control. I’m quite sure I could tick off a list of motivations for this and still come up lacking. For instance, each and every one of us wants to feel desirable. We all need to be loved in a way that validates us. We all need to be heard, and sometimes we wish we all could be silenced because of personal shortcomings. We all need to feel. Pain is so relative, and when we can experience it without becoming unhinged, we rejoice.
When I first started as a photographer, a world-renowned fetish photographer explained how I should treat each modeling session as a scene. In the process of explaining this to a model I shot with recently, she was actually concerned. My point to her was not that I desired to create an actual scene, but that power exchange play that isn’t editorial in nature or that doesn’t seek to capture the real finds itself lacking. These indoor games played out wherever I may be will always endeavor to achieve this.

“Messianic.” This is one of the words used to describe the age we live in post-911. It’s a word to describe the United States in how it relates to the rest of the world. We’ll save you from the evils of Islam, communism or whatever else that isn’t amenable to unbridled capitalism. Swap in terms like utilitarianism or humanism if you like. They are all modes of how we engage the world. It’s all about control, the taking or surrendering of. The election of President Obama was said to represent a change from this paradigm. He was going to save us from all of this. There’s irony here. We need a savior to save us from saviors? No matter what your politics may be, someone is convinced they need to save you from some ill. Post-911, we were told we were now living in the post-postmodern era. We were being saved from a worldview that suggested we might try to find some solace or joy in the process rather than in a solution that relies on the same failed methods and runs us in circles. My worldview isn’t cynical. My worldview pretty much says “let’s play.” From a faith-based perspective, it would be the equivalent of “make a joyful noise.” Do what thou will and enjoy it, because life is too damned short to be bound to societal prescriptions. The political is personal, and if a little pony play will set you free, have at it.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

I have little taglines I like to use on web sites like Model Mayhem, Facebook, and MySpace. “I can’t be good. They won’t let me.” “Gags for pretty gals.” “I tie your girlfriends up. They like it!” Being cheeky is where it’s at for me. I take myself seriously sometimes. I take the creative process seriously. I want to capture a moment in time with my art that is memorable, no matter what my editorial vision is. If I’m slapping tape on your mouth or am fitting it with a ball gag or tying you up in knots, how serious do you want me to be? I’ll be serious enough to gauge what your limits are and if kink is something you are remotely interested in. I’ll be serious enough to pay strict attention to your safety. But damn it, this should be fun, or why are we doing it? Being an adult is overrated, and I do prescribe to the Freudian convention that all art is play, a return to childhood. It’s just that our games are a lot more elaborate. Where does this put me in respect to everyone else in society? Mainstream folk get on their soapboxes and contextually abuse the DSM to marginalize those who play at BDSM. If we’re not mentally defective, we’re perverts with a capital “P”. One philosophical persuasion will say the one while one will say the other. There’s your “audacity of hope.” There is none. Make your life a surrealistic expression. Create a world of your own and go there.

Miyuki

Miyuki became a friend when I lived in L.A. A Japanese model with an Australian accent who'd show up wanting only to create art. She's back in Tokyo . . . one awesome lady.

In My Room

I call this writing by graft. To quote Wilkipedia: “A palimpsest is a manuscript page from a scroll or book from which the text has been scraped off and which can be used again. The word "palimpsest" comes through Latin from Greek παλιν + ψαω = (palin "again" + psao "I scrape"), and meant "scraped (clean and used) again." Romans wrote on wax-coated tablets that could be smoothed and reused, and a passing use of the term "palimpsest" by Cicero seems to refer to this practice.” So here I am with one foot in the past, looking toward the future and pissing on the present. I have a specific project in mind, a specific place where I want to take my photography. But first I have to take a detour to my 36th birthday, July 30, 2001. I’m thinking it sheds some insight on how I relate to women or something like that.
••••••
It’s my birthday. I turned 36 at the stroke of midnight.

DiSAPpEAR
HEre

My apologies to Bret Easton Ellis. I just finished reading Glamorama for the umpteenth time, and I’m feeling quite situational. I just wish I could namedrop like he does. It might serve to make the mundane a little more epic. This is, after all, about the difference between depth and shallowness, the ever grasping “I” that wants more than he probably deserves. It’s about doing that next right thing, living in the real world, and so on and so forth . . .

Oh, yeah, I’m so deep. The founder of the on line poetry club I’m a member of thinks I have such a grasp of the unspoken communication between men and women. Are you kidding me? Women completely confuse me. I live in the world described by Ellis in Glamorama where he writes: “At first I was confused by what passed for love in this world: people were discarded because they were too old or too fat or too poor or they too much hair or not enough, they were wrinkled, they had no muscles, no definition, no tone, they weren’t hip, they weren’t remotely famous. This was how you chose lovers. This was what decided friends. And I had to accept this if I wanted to get anywhere.” There is no lie here. There is a difference between recognizing something and accepting it. I guess you can say I don’t accept it, because it still hurts too much. I fall short in so many areas.
You live in a world where everyone is trying to carve out their own niche, achieve their own fame, and establish their own legacy. Relationships have a way of getting in the way of these things. In other words, if adding my name to the ledger of a young woman doesn’t offer her something of a boost, I’m just another interesting acquaintance she can talk with. The fact that I don’t press the issue and make a nuisance of myself makes me an acceptable acquaintance. This is all there is to it. Since I don’t have the wherewithal to make improvements to remove me from the “discarded” list, I’ll have to content myself with this.
“We’ll slide down the surface of things.”
You, Mr. Media, tell me what is sexy . . . what is desirable. I’ll listen. I always do.
Life is a script. I’m thinking back on Ellis’ Glamorama again. I’m so fond of telling people to “make their lives art.” Could I do this myself? Or, why can’t I do this? I think about the director telling the character Victor Ward in Glamorama: “You need, I think, to find a more fruitful and harmonious way to live.” Really. I don’t have a clue. How does one make their life fruitful and harmonious? Never mind. I’m sure it has something to do with God and conformity. Anyway, the devil reads Guy Debord.

And the devil is telling me: “We like you because you don’t have an agenda. We like you because you don’t have any answers. What if one day you became whatever you’re not?”

And I think this is what eventually happens. Become vacant enough and someone will step in to make your decisions for you. Or you leave a suicide note with a smiley face on it.

DiSAppEar
HERe
•••••
So much has changed since I wrote this, and so much has remained the same. My views on relations with women have changed a lot, but my mind remains unsettled. Where once I thought the sum value of my existence was to be desired by a beautiful woman, I know better now. My main problem now is the wherewithal to walk through that door and give someone my heart. Life is not about epiphanies, absolutes and transcendence, but rather about working through and the slow growth that comes with it.
A beautiful bartender at my favorite bar downtown helped to provide a yardstick on the progress I’ve made the past ten years this past week. A guy sits next to her at the bar on her off night and proceeds to tell her what I would have said ten years ago. He tells her how socially awkward he is, and then proceeds to say how women are only interested in status and money and whatnot. Obviously, my friend couldn’t wait to get away from the guy. I would have been that guy not so terribly long ago. I’m reminded of Molly Bloom’s moment of affirmation in Ulysses:

"...I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. "

Have I reached the point where I can offer such an affirmation after working through the angst of frustrated desire for so long? Maybe. As a friend said, “Sooner or later, you get tired of being alone.”

In the meantime, the present as it were, I explore. I am a voyeur as it were. I witness how others interact and that’s enough for now. “In my room” is metaphor for how deeply personal my photography is. I’m working it out in my own way . . .

Go Fish

Model: Mizz Amanda Marie

Room 5A

A wig, an installation - a fond memory from June.

Breakfast With Derrida

Sitting at my favorite table at the Coffee Table in Silver Lake, eyes fixed on the single palm tree atop Griffith Park. My “angsty” thoughts were interrupted by a noted Los Angeles poet/actor/legend inviting me to his table of like-minded folk talking about the craft of writing and the endless parade of naked models coming in and out of my apartment. These were the moments I lived for out there. Much like having lunch with models that yielded memorable conversations. I had shot with her only two days before on a Tuesday, and it came up how she was involved in Model U.N. in high school. The model I shot with the next day was a debate coach with a PhD. We ended up talking about how much more we appreciated the humanist thought of Jacques Derrida late in life than in his younger, earlier incarnation. The model from Tuesday came back and gave me a haircut. The conversation ran the gamut of forced orgasms, CBT and a myriad of other S&M terminology. Another incredible model in May of 2009 had her PhD in Philosophy from a university in the Netherlands. Our shoot started at 8AM and as we were moving in between bondage sessions, the conversation roamed from philosopher Gilles Deleuze to Derrida to her desire to pose for more erotic photography . . . particularly with women.
Ah, women! That’s what this is about, always been about.

“La femme sera mon sujet/ . . . and woman will be my subject." - Jacques Derrida

I’m a strange one. The good girls, the ones who dote on everything you say and do, make me recoil in horror and run away. Be beautiful for me, but please be flawed. Have bad habits. Be the hooker with a heart of gold, the librarian who is kinkier than imaginable. But then, again, think about the Derrida references above. As he would say, “there is no such thing as the unified self.” Life is dualities, multiplicities. We are all dualities, multiplicities.
I put you on a pedestal so you’ll go down on it.

Hot Times in Dirty Detroit 3

:)

Hot Times in Dirty Detroit 2

Oh, yup, there was more. :)

Hot Times in Dirty Detroit

On the day after the blizzard, with wind chills at 15 below, I thought this might cheer me up.

Oh, haii

I am of the temperament of coffee, double cheeseburgers, and cigarettes.
When I’ve drank too much, I’m fond of saying “yay for me” a bit too much.
I was not; I have been; I am not; I do not care.
What do we do while we’re waiting for whatever happens next? It’s in these intervals, spaces, where my photography resides. We’re all so damn linear, and the thing to do seems to be to prop a model against a wall and call her beautiful. Have fun with that.
Tenants of the house,
Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.
And nobody will care.