Flashbacks

I recently wrote in a members-only journal entry about the difficulty of updating the site because most of the remaining content I have is never before posted archival footage of me and James from webcam shows. I have had to watch these clips, make captures and post them. It is hard to watch us so happy and well, so sexual. It is worse than coming across our wedding photos and the like. That is bad enough and something most every divorced couple goes through. Seeing porn footage is something extra special. Not just one video but hundreds.

Watching us have blissful and entertaining sex, listening to our moans, giggles and sighs is very difficult. The experience is so visceral. It is so intense. I told some girlfriends about it and they have agreed that it sounds like more than they would be able to take especially given the length of my relationship (near 17 years). Its a reality I think most people don’t take into consideration - especially those who email me asking for more content and ‘when will you shoot some more?’. Its not a typical divorce situation.

James spent 3 months updating the site and going through this ‘work’ right at the peak of the pain of our separation. I don’t know how he did it. I don’t know how I am doing it. I think I go into an emotional shut down mode and separate the work from my emotions. Well, I try to. Then I hear him say something hilarious. I catch an image of me genuinely smiling. I hear myself call him baby and give him a majorly turned-on look. Yes, it is all too much. I have to finish up fast and try not to dwell too much on it. However, for my emotional health and healing I do need to face these feelings. It absolutely sucks and draws me back to the insanity I felt. It opens a wound that has been healing and pours salt right into it. So I weep and I mourn. It is what I need to do.

I was listening to OK Go's latest album (Of the Blue Color of the Sky) which has interviews on it (the extra nice edition). The lead singer is asked how he finds it to sing songs that were written during (and about) his divorce from his wife. My ears perked up as he described sometimes focusing on the syllables of what he is singing and other times he flashes back to all the feelings he experienced during that difficult time. It made me realize that when it comes to artists * the flashbacks to a loss can be a whole other thing than someone who doesn't have an artistic reminder for that person, that relationship. When you perform a piece about it over and over again (or in my case re-watch it) you relive it fresh and new. I have had a major loss before and it is painful even 15 years later, but this experience has another level to it. Such a reminder. However, I think mixing art with pain and re-living it over and over again has transformative properties and I am intrigued to how it will play out for me.

* In terms of porn I consider myself to be an entertainer more than an artist, but I  also consider myself a creator and performer in a visual medium that overlaps into art.