“That’s the whole point. We know the outcome, but we don’t know when, or where, or who will be there when it finally happens. It’s a suicide tour. I’m old, I’m sad – that’s on a good day. I want out of this mess. But I don’t want to fade away. I want to flame away – I want my death to be an attraction, a spectacle, a mystery. A work of art. Suicide is a weapon; that we all know. But what about an art?” – Jennifer Egan
Four years pass between ‘Bardo‘ and the next project, an indication that my artistic output was largely subsumed by what you’re seeing right here: this blog. Producing three posts per day for 364 days of the year (which was my schedule back then) was practically a full-time job, and as my day-job responsibilities took precedence during the day, my creative energy was finding its outlet here the rest of the time, making additional creative projects difficult to keep cranking out once a year. But 2015 marked a number of neat anniversaries that merited noting in a project – and it was time for my very last tour.
It also marked the first time I was touring while blogging, which meant that the actual tour book itself would be augmented by a series of posts that delved deeper into the themes at hand. (Those can be find in their entirety here. Bookmark it, because it’s a doozy.)
2015 was the year I turned 40, and the year I crafted my last tour because it was time to stop pretending. “Touring” had been a delusional dream of mine since Madonna became my muse in the 90’s. It had gone through a number of iterations, but retained the essence of travel and seeing old friends (all it ever really was). And so I embarked upon ‘The Delusional Grandeur Tour: Last Stand of a Rock Star‘ – my final tour, and my first new project in four years.
“For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.” – Albert Camus
It touched on some classic themes from my forty years of living: exhibitionism, artifice, Norma Desmond, glamour, fashion, fairy tales, flowers, self-destruction, image, Tom Ford and the Easter bunny. It also represented the complete and total separation between artist and work. The annihilation of the link between artist and subject could have gone in more disturbing directions; hints of Zen Buddhism and a flower/nature finale lay the groundwork for where my life was headed, though it would take several more years to make such strides.
“Even now… after we’ve learned about how bad it really and truly gets, there is the glamour of self-destruction, imperishable, gem-hard, like some cursed talisman that cannot be destroyed by any known means. Still, still, the ones who go down can seem as if they’re more complicatedly, more dangerously, attuned to sadness and yes, the impossible grandeur. They’re romantic, goddamn them; we just can’t get it up in quite the same way for the sober and sensible, the dogged achievers, for all the good they do. We don’t adore them with the exquisite disdain we can bring to the addicts and miscreants.” – Michael Cunningham
‘The Delusional Grandeur Tour‘ was compiled from photos that I had accumulated for about three years, with shoots spanning across the country – Albany, Boston, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, Dallas, Ogunquit, Provincetown and Washington – as well as my hometown of Amsterdam. The latter’s forest shoot – taken on a path my brother and I used to walk as kids – would provide the cover art for the project (a twist on Little Red Riding Hood). It became the centerpiece of the whole journey, which is kind of fitting, because it harkened to my first tour when Amsterdam was sort of the home-base for my travels.
Childhood also formed a subliminal thread that ran through the tour book, sowing the first seeds of an awareness that would take a few more years to find a full realization and fruition. Back then, however, there was just an inkling of how one’s past informed their present, and how our demons stayed with us as much as we tried to shed them. I couldn’t see how those demons still held sway and dominion over everything I did, even if the journey of this project was ultimately intended to be a hopeful one. There is a tension that carries through the entire work, something I didn’t realize until looking back on it, yet there is also a sense of completion and finality. I knew I would never travel again like I had in the past, and I celebrated and mourned that in equal measure. All in all, the trajectory of ‘The Delusional Grandeur Tour’ was an act of destruction followed by a rebirth of sorts, with a lingering sense of a slightly unfinished quest. That hunger, and the search for something more, would provide inspiration for this blog, which would carry me through any driving need for creative expression. This last stand of a rock star was the end of a certain way of living. No longer would I thrash out a dramatic lifestyle for the machinations of a show – not even if that show was only in my head. Delusions are not only by their nature grand, they are dangerous as well.
“When I am on my deathbed, I don’t think I will be thinking about a nice pair of shoes I had or my beautiful house. I am going to be thinking about an evening I spent with somebody when I was twenty where I felt that I was just absolutely connected to them.” – Tom Ford
{See ‘The Delusional Grandeur Tour: Last Stand of a Rock Star’ in its tour book form here. A full listing of its accompanying blog entries can be seen here. Also see ‘StoneLight‘, ‘The Circus Project‘, ‘A Night at the Hotel Chelsea‘ and ‘A 21stCentury Renaissance: The Resurrection Tour‘ and ‘Bardo ~ The Dream Surreal‘.}
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