Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid

Well, hmmmm.... what?  I'm back?  Ok, I never really left, but yeah, I really did.  The past year has been incredibly challenging to say the least.  My last few entries were met with an enormous amount of support and love, for which I'm truly grateful, but I decided to keep my life private while I was going through some major obstacles and changes.  I'm like that - you hear from me at the end of the tunnel, when the light is shining bright again and I'm able to look back and articulate the darkness.  I was going to write a long post, one explaining the absence, but when I tried to put it into words, I simply couldn't - some things are better left unsaid.  Not because they might hurt another person, but because articulating them might actually make them even more real and prolong the healing process.  I'm not one for words anyway, I prefer to show you with my photos where I am and what I'm doing.

I will say this.  The music industry has been so very good to me - all these years of touring and hotel living have not. After a forced break from it, I wasn't sure where my photography would take me, if anywhere.  Truthfully, without music I felt stagnant, unable to grow, bored, incredibly non creative and unhappy.  I wanted to quit, everything.  I wanted to find that passion that I felt inside when the venue lights dim and the first few notes start playing, that excitement that comes with knowing I'm in my zone, creating at the speed of the ever changing lights.  I missed the camaraderie that comes from spending weeks, months on a bus or in studio.  I missed my brothers and sisters.  I missed me.  Without music, I didn't know who I was anymore.  

I spent long weeks soul searching, healing, speaking only to a few selected close friends.  That's very me.  I slowly returned to photography, returned to happiness, but it was a long process.  I couldn't have done it without my brother, Luigi.  Patiently, he watched me go through hell and back, and extended a loving hand when I needed it most. From the other side of the world, and yet so very close.  I do hope you have friends and family that support you in your darkest hour, because just the knowledge of having him in my life made all the difference.  I won't turn all dramatic on you now, but when I say darkness, I mean darkness.  I identified with my role in music so much that when it was gone, I was gone.  This illness didn't help things either.  All of it sucked.  

So, I put the house up for sale, moved to a small town in Maryland and took my time to start over.  In the meantime, my other love, food photography, was sneaking up on me from every direction -  I had the time to read my beloved cookbooks at night, and feeling inspired for the first time in years.  I've always wanted to photograph a cookbook, but it's been almost like a dirty little secret of mine, one I never really shared with, you know, music labels and rockstars. Why?  Well, I don't know.  I guess I had an image I was trying to maintain.  But crumbling to pieces destroyed that image as well.  And now I don't care.  I just want to be happy and I know photography is always the way for me.  Always will be.  And having this quiet little studio on the bay makes me long for it again.  Makes me feel on purpose again.  Photography is my life and I return to it with a content heart and knowledge that one day, when and if music calls, I'll be ready, but if that doesn't happen, I'm ok with it, because I can always find something to photograph that will get me in the zone and bring me to the light.  

So I leave you with a couple of the new images and a simple wish - may you get to the end of the tunnel and bask in the Light.