Time Out

I'm not sure if when I get done writing this I'm going to actually go ahead and post it.

I woke up this morning and felt out of sorts. Not myself. Nothing seemed right. I usually look forward to Sunday mornings because I can usually fill them with relaxing things that make me feel very good.

For some reason this morning, none of it seemed to work. After a few hours of going through the motions I had to admit to myself that I was feeling restless and something that has been perculating in the back of my head for the last few weeks had finally escaped and was running around in my head without a leash.

Around noon I packed up my cameras and put them away. Lights, cables, stands, all in their cases.

The last time I went an extended period of time without picking up a camera was a very painful part of my life. My therapist Charlie used to call it most controlled nervous breakdown he'd ever seen. For about three years I went to talk to Charlie once a week, and like most anything that ends up being worth anything meaningful, you get into it and the further you go, you realize how much harder it's going to be than you thought. In fact it was probably good that I didn't know. I'm not sure I would have felt strong enough to start.

To make a long story short, I thought my issues were simply the usual things things that people feel aren't right in their lives, girlfriend problems and job frustrations. As the sessions with Charlie continued, I discovered it was just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. I'm not really interested in airing all of the details of that journey here. I just know I was exausted at the end of those three years and I'm a more whole human for having gone through it. Charlie was a great guide and has since moved on to other things in his life and is now a great friend.

But it's not really like you graduate from something like that and you're all done. In my case, I simply had a better understanding of who I was and what was really important to me in my life. I don't have any more control over things going on around me in my life, but I can see why I react the way I do to them and it allows me a little more freedom emotionally because I know why certain things affect me the way that they do. Life becomes less a series of extreme up and downs and more of a gentle hilly ride that is not perfect, but is much more stable and enjoyable.

During the journey with Charlie I began to dismantle who I was. I kept peeling away layers. It was sort of like I was a house. I began my time with him and walked through the front door and straightened up the foyer, the front closest and the living room. It took a few months do put the downstairs in order, and then the bedrooms upstairs. Then we went the basement. A little more murky down there, but we managed. I felt better and thought we were done. But then there was this little sub basement door. We opened it. More unpleasantness. But we got through that. Every time I thought I was at bottom, we'd find something else. We'd work through it. Then we'd find another secret hatch and have to go down into it.

By the time we were done there wasn't much left of me. I really didn't know who I was because I realized I wasn't at all who I thought I was or who others thought I was. The only thing that was left, and how I visualized it, was this large room that looked a bit like what I imagine the inside walls of an enormous mouth would look like. In in the center of this cavernous room was just this little nub. Sort of raw and vulnerable. It was all that was left.

It was my art.

Throughout everything going on in my life, that was the one thing that I could say I felt positive and good about. It was small and almost gone, but there it was.

There were times back then I didn't like who I was and was sure I didn't deserve to be on the planet, but then I thought of my art and I thought maybe that was something good and I could contribute to the good of the world though that. And then I could stay.

While I was going through all of that I wasn't really in any place emotionally that I could make photographs. My creativity was out there, somewhere, patiently waiting for my return. I actually went an entire year without picking up a camera. Truly amazing if you know me and know that photography is akin to breathing for me.

So during one of those sub-basement explorations, as Charlie later put it, "For a guy who could barely leave the house during that time, couldn't really be around people, he did the most insane thing he could have. He got on a plane. He went to a country where he didn't speak the language. Nothing would be familiar or easy. And he took his cameras."

Even though I didn't feel like doing anything, I realized that I needed to use that little bit of me that was left and make that my center and try to build on it. I packed the cameras that hadn't seen daylight in a long time. On that trip, I had decided to base myself out of Milan with a very generous friend of mine called Tonia who for some reason agreed to let this very damaged man sleep on her extra bed and leave most of my luggage there while I took trains to various cities in Northern Italy for a few weeks. At one point, I arrived in Venice, checked into my hotel, fell into the bed and slept for 13 hours.

When I woke up, I decided that I would take a camera with me on a walk around the city. I didn't even load it with film. I just decided to take it with me. It was my beautiful old Hasselblad from 1969.

Most people when they go to Venice spend time on the water, but I never did. Maybe it was because I was still really not ready to interact with too many people. It was easier at that point to simple walk through the maze of sidewalks a bit more anonymously. I found a lot of dead ends, which were comforting because I could sit there where the sidewalk ended and the water canal passed in front of me... and just think.

At one of those canal crossroads, I decided to take out my camera. I held it in my hands for a few minutes and then decided I would load some film into it. It is a medium format camera that takes what is called roll film, not like the little canister of film that you put in a 35mm camera. I realized that it had been so long since I had loaded it that I couldn't really remember how. It took a minute or two before I remembered how to unroll the outer paper and wind it around the reels.

I took a picture. I really couldn't tell whether it was a good picture or not. It had been so long. I didn't really try to think about it too much. I just looked through the viewfinder until something seemed right and I clicked. It felt so odd not to know what I was doing. My confidence was just not there. But I kept shooting. Hundreds of pictures in Venice, Milan, Bologna, Montova, Lake Como, Bellagio.

I returned home and the day the film was ready to be picked up from the lab was one of my Charlie days. It was the first time back to see him since my trip. He looked at me as I sat down and I told him that I took a lot of pictures but I wasn't sure how good they were. I really had no idea what I had done. I asked if he would look at the contact sheets with me for the first time.

We pulled out the first one and looked at the 12 photographs on it. To my surprise I saw pictures that were... well... good. We took out the next one. More good images. It was so strange looking at the tiny 2 inch square images on each page. It was as if someone else had taken them. I knew I was just on a sort of autopilot while I was shooting. Not even really trying to take a good picture because I didn't really know how. But somehow the photos were there. The composition was correct. The ideas were good. Captured moments. It was almost like looking at the work of another photographer. But somehow not, because it felt familiar. It was me. I wasn't as lost artistically as I thought I was.

But today I feel a little lost again. I'm going to keep the reasons a little to myself. I needed to pack my cameras away. I don't know when I'm going to shoot again. Maybe in a week. Maybe a month. Maybe longer. I know I'll pick them up again when I feel ready. But something is missing and I can't work again until I find it. Maybe it will find me.

Maybe I won't feel this way tomorrow, but I know I feel very strongly about it today. If I sound very confused, I am.

I need to go back into that enormous room and say hello to that little nub and remember what made me the artist I know I am. My friends are going to have a lot of things to say about this. They're going to try to find easy solutions for me to work through this, but I think deep down I know what I have to do. I'm just tired and it's not going to be easy.

I've put so much energy and effort into trying to make what is important to me... no... what is critical to me. And somewhere in the last few years, I've lost my way. I need to find it again. Packing everything away today, may simply be a symbolic gesture. But I think I had to physically do it and make it an act of admitting that something is wrong.

I need a little time out. Even if it's just for today to say, "Put the cameras down, Billy. Don't think about it today. Put them away and breathe. Take a walk."

And so I will.