The Show Goes On

It’s funny the things you forget about, when you shed them for long periods of time. This is the first week in a long while, that I woke up with stress headaches and stomachaches, and some of that good old-fashioned middle of the night chest heaviness. Not coincidentally, this is the first week in a long while, that I’ve had work up to my eyeballs – past them, in fact, and up over my head. Like a cloying, suffocating cloak. Or a heavy blanket on these hot nights. Sure, it could be sinus pressure and a little heat exhaustion, even in cool, dark rooms, but I think it’s work. I resent work sometimes, because it takes me away from the kids, at least mentally. On the other hand, I resent not work sometimes, because I like the rhythms and rhymes. The purpose and passion.

I started doing photography jobs again, last week. Truly, I thought I might be done for life. It was stagnant – and not just from the virus and the baby. Some old shoots left such bad tastes in my mouth. Maybe the weather was wrong, or the lighting, the chemistry, the color casts. Mostly, it’s the post-processing that gets me. It’s not the photo editing, but it’s the mental processing, the paycheck processing, or lack thereof. I was fried, through and through, and it took a pandemic and a pregnancy to take a much needed break. Then it took some prodding from a super eager client and I’m thankful she asked me. It all came back to me, tentatively and fluidly, and not just once, but twice. Two happy shoots, with happy kids and happy clients, and a happy me as well.

These days, I cling less tightly to this newer me – this newly discovered calmer, more patient, more loving, more communicative me. The me, born from the pandemic, and not what it drilled down into me, but what it dug out from ashes and embers. Truths and realizations and fights. Winds and storms of change. And it’s not a front, waiting to blow away. This is not a block of ice, ready to melt. Nor is it a fire, ready to cool, and reveal that what was always there, will always be.

No, I will truly never be who I was before the pandemic, the pregnancy, and all that rose above and beneath; within and without, in front of and behind. I find that I cling less tightly to it now, because I’m no longer afraid of its sudden departure. It’s like the photography, becoming a part of me, that was always there and maybe never discovered or utilized before. It’s overexposure, underexposure, sharp focus, and lack of focus. It blurs together with the tides, the moods, the color casts. The miscommunications and technical errors. The way you can put a bad photo into editing software and nothing can fix it. It’s warped, infected, doomed. Unless it was perfect.

It’s like that. In the darkroom, or in the digital world, slowly revealing the colors and the truths. Slowly, they twist and turn, this way and that; they come into focus. What do you see? How can you start it fresh; anew? What could you have done differently? Locked in time forever, or is it? What can be/should be altered, only to make it more comfortable and true? It’s the real thing.