In Ulysses, the protagonist, Leopold Bloom, makes the often-quoted comment "In the midst of death we are in life. Both ends meet." One of my closest friends and I had fallen out of touch with each other, primarily because of my interferon regimen and overall mental wellness. When he saw the announcement that I was one of the 12 artists chosen to have my work shown at a local studio, that news catalyzed his getting back in touch with me and reestablishing a very powerful and important relationship in my life.
My friend was a brilliant photographer. Full stop. His work was collected. His work was exquisite. His portrait of me hangs in my hallway. Like many of my friends and family, he found the fact that I was actually devoting time and energy to my art very discombobulating.
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In Ulysses, the protagonist, Leopold Bloom, makes the often-quoted comment "In the midst of death we are in life. Both ends meet." One of my closest friends and I had fallen out of touch with each other, primarily because of my interferon regimen and overall mental wellness. When he saw the announcement that I was one of the 12 artists chosen to have my work shown, that news catalyzed his getting back in touch with me and reestablishing a very powerful and important relationship in my life.
My friend was a brilliant photographer. Full stop. His work was collected. His work was exquisite. His portrait of me hangs in my hallway. Like many of my friends and family, he found the fact that I was actually devoting time and energy to my art very discombobulating. As the middle child in a family of five (very Irish Catholic, 4 boys and a baby sister) I showed no innate predisposition to any left brain activities at all. I was as right-brain as one could be. Nearly flunking a 5th grade art class, we all joked that my left brain had just taken over both sides.
I was both a very smart kid and a very terrified kid – the product of a very traumatic and violent childhood and the product of several seriously unhealthy coping mechanisms. Luckily, I managed to break away from my family and come out and come to San Francisco. The one exception to my thoroughly non-right-brain life was my poetry. But even that was a private event, not shared too widely and never risked in being seen by a large audience that I was not in control over or with whom I could censor the content.
So, while my friend and I met in 1988 it wasn’t until 1993 that he finally opened up his art to me and let me see him work. And marvel. We had a standing dinner every Friday that I was in San Francisco for over four years – like clockwork, I knew he would be there. Every Friday.
I have a great photo of him at the little celebration my friends threw for me when I was appointed to some commission or other – he hated having his photo taken and there he is, in a corner, napkin obliterating his face – a typical reaction and a typical picture.
After my two year, ten month and 30-day lay-over in Washington DC I came back home, but the next several years were marked by bad luck and particularly by bad health (for both of us). This time period of course culminated with my very lengthy and debilitating interferon regimens (2002 through 2006). My friend also had to do interferon but it nearly killed him the first time round.
It was, of course when I was sick from the interferon that I began to un-cover this love of making art. One thing lead to another until 2006’s call from a local art studio for portfolios and then the letter informing me of my being accepted for a solo 2007 show. Having been estranged while we were both not doing well, his call and walking back into my life was so, so, so welcome. We began where we left off, as if time had neither passed nor mattered.
He really loved my paintings but – by his own particular focus - was more drawn to my photographs. He saw that I was using s digital camera (he was a film person, period). That amazed him; the quality of the pictures he would say exceeds the capability of a digital camera. He goaded me into being a bit wild and radical and get a film camera. So I did. He convinced me to not buy just an ordinary 35mm camera but instead a medium format camera.
So while I have continued to paint and glissee and morph digital images and my poems, the past several months have been really focused on my photography. With his counsel and advice and encouragement, I really came to feel much more confident about my art and my photography. Plus, I had my best friend back in my life and was seeing a host of great movies and regaining something that I once had and then lost.
I have always loved the triptych as a vehicle for art. The way that the three images so succinctly tell a story is powerful and awesome. Each of the three images alone tells one story or highlights a discreet, unique point or dissonant perspective. But when put together, the whole tells a story greater than the sum of its parts.
Mid-September, my friend committed suicide. This has left a hole in my soul that is infinite. The first real roll of film I took with my new camera I took with him. After I found out about his death I was at the lab where I was picking up this very roll when I nearly had the wind knocked out of me by a simple photograph.
The same man who never let anyone take his portrait was there, on my roll of negatives, right there, three times. Twice he actually allowed me to take the picture ("there’s a chance these will not ever come out so I am not that worried" he said) and then a third photo, one that I do not ever remember taking. Not at all. While difficult to see the two photos that he granted me permission to shoot, I have not recovered from the shock of the third picture.
Out of this chaos and sadness and anger and love, I know that I have to somehow come to terms with why I felt (and still do feel) that these pictures had far more depth and resolution (and meaning) in them than I was willing to believe. I see them as overwhelming, I see them as powerful.
I miss him terribly. He never got to see the film that I had developed.