Withdrawl and the shakes

OK.

I'm addicted. I'm hooked. I haven't indulged in two weeks by the time you read this. I should be well on the way to kicking the habit but I'm not. It's in my veins. I want to shoot. I want to depress that shutter release button and feel the slap of that miniature mirror inside the body of the camera. Fourteen days. Fourteen days ago I was shooting perhaps my most consistent set ever. Fourteen days ago I was working one hellacious set with a lovely, young model and we came away with something like 1400 frames. That's about 100 frames for each day since.

I'm jonesing hard (who the hell knows where that term came from . . . unless it's a William Gibson reference to Jones the heroin addicted dolphin inside the steallar but woefully mis-screenplayed Johnny Mnemonic). Back to the current topic: I gotta shoot. I had performance anxiety for a few days after the shoot 'cause the more I edited photos the more I felt like I really couldn't attain that level of consistency without shooting in a properly lit studio ever again. Of couse, being the cool, hip, take-charge kind of dude I am I knew that it didn't matter and the photography is sadly my artistic venue for expression so I had to persevere; I had to shout out even if I'm off key and yelling about the wrong thing. I tried setting up sessions with other models and (no animosity on my part; crap happens) but every session fell through for one reason or another. And -PRESTO- -BLAMMO- it's today and I haven't shot anything artistically meaningful in 2 weeks. I photographed some kids at my nephews birthday party. They were sliding down a slide that you could use as a damned escape ramp for a 747 jet but they were still meaningless artistically. Parents might want them but zippo for doing me any artistic good.

I guess its like writers block. I mean I was home today. I have been sick since last night but I could have hauled my nasty self out into the back yard and shot some flowers or bugs or something; naw, I slept and ran to the bathroom and went to pickup some medicine for my daughter who either (God help her) gave this bug to me or (Lord bless the little angel) got this crap from me. Either way, I ended up not shooting something that I didn't want to shoot. Perhaps this is something that I need to do to break this cycle. I don't see myself as very creative artistically. My natural desire is to take a model who isn't already full of herself and photograph her so as to show just how lovely she can be. I'm not great at it and there are glaring technical faults in my work but its the only voice that I have where I truly feel like I connect with the patrons/clients/viewers and they can see some measure of success wherein I actually get close to my goal.

Ahhh, hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow and stop being such a wimpy asswipe and just rip off a couple hundred frames of something. I'm not going in to work as I still have to make the occasional journey under high levels of duress (not to mention I have the days so what's one more?). Maybe you can see a photo of the inside of my mailbox in my photoblog tomorrow.

Now on to something infinitely less whiny; Wm Gibson kicks total righteous ass!! He's the man. Speaking of someone who has a vision and a voice he had it; he used it and the world is a better place because he chose to speak out. He's the author of Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Virtual Light, All Tomorrow's Parties and Burning Chrome (which in itself gave rise to almost every 'Net story or movie and even many of the common phrases we use today). Burning Chrome is a giant ass-whipping bear that you don't see when you're setting up your tent but once you camp out thinking "Aww, nothing's gonna get me." then Burning Chrome comes out and rips you a new one and eats your peanut butter that you left open 'cause your an idiot and didn't realize that bears have noses and a keen sense of smell. Try on Johnny Mnemonic 'cause as a short story its really much, much better (and for those who know me I just used two empty words to describe something; that should demonstrate how strongly I feel about this). I love Fragments of a Hologram Rose or The Belonging Kind, New Rose Hotel, The Winter Market (absofuckinglutely a fandamtastic story) or the ultimate midget-tossin', beer on the boobies pourin', flap-jack eatin', wide leather belt ass-whippin', howlin' at the moon story of all time: Burning Chrome (yes its the title of the compilation and the last short story included in the book). Now this story is like a 10 minute installment of every exciting scene out of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jaws, The Matrix and Reloaded with a couple of references to some pretty piece of tail thrown in for good measure. It's just a fun little story but it has colorful characters, backplot, character development, hell, from a writer's standpoint I can't imagine why someone wouldn't want to teach this as a lesson in what to put in a SHORT STORY as most feature length movies don't even have all these elements to help keep the interest of the average viewer.

Okay, Okay. I'm a little stir crazy from all the fluid loss and just sitting around home all day today the invigorating jaunt to the local mart to pickup the medicine for my daughter's diaper rash not withstanding. I'm not sure how to pigeon-hole those people who would find Gibson interesting and definitely not sure how to pick out those that, like me, think he's the nearest thing to a prophet for the terminally sci-fi'ed sect of us who like to see the techno of tomorrow. He tells stories that include the homey Americana type culture points that you might have soaked up from "Leave It To Beaver" but the culture into which he projects his readers is a fucked up entropic dynasty of multi-national corporations, of intrigue shrouding every 5th or 10th person and you don't know where to start counting. His universe is a future in which things have declined for most world citizens while others have found their star is on the metaphoric rise so that the gap between the haves and the have nots becomes techno-ized. People can exchange body parts for vat grown versions that are less flawed. By way of illustration (pun intended) for those readers who are heavy photography amatuers or more, he was writing back in the 80's about people replacing their eyes for Zeiss-Ikon lenses (some of the best glass ever made for imaging).

Anyway, you've now gotten a dose of sick Kevin (pun again intended). Sit back, take your medicine and when the doctor comes in to give you your exam, just lean over, take a deep breath and try to forget that the pretty, young nurse is standing there watching him get paid to probe you for polyps. You'll be over the disease soon enough. ;)

Thanks for reading,

Kev