Robert Volkerts

How could I think that I can be home to this?

I harbor flaming pyres inside of me in the name of gods I don’t believe in.

Sometimes I feel that this vessel is navigating under the command of a madman.

I feel like I’m crashing into eternity and my eyes have seen nothing but everything.

I feel like I’m too old. I feel like I’m too tired.

Sometimes, something stirs inside, like a crow in its nest high up in her perch.

Untouchable, black and loud.

Like the dark sound coming from the vents that were my lungs.

Like the oscillating white noise inside my head.

A lightbulb at the end of the hall. A moth at the end of its rope.

The long, lingering walk to the beginning of the end.

The sigh left of a crescendo.

Caterpillar made a mockery of my eyes.

I know what I saw.

Now you have wings and you pretend like you know me.

You know my name and you want to be the ambassador of my love.

You’re nothing but a mutiny disguised as hope.

You’re hope dressed as a sailor and you’ve weighed anchor on my shores.

I’ll be the bitch you fuck tonight. In the morning you’ll be gone.

Burnt cigarettes and a leftover glass of chardonnay to remind me of a trespassing.

Your skin felt like forever stretched over my bones, my muscles, my veins and you held sway over my affection. Your eyes; intruders.

You washed over me like a river of sin. And I sank. Like a stone I descended. Into the abyss.

I have lost hope in words and phrases. I have lost hope in the promise.

All I have left is a canvas. On that canvas you draw me virginity. You draw me sanctity.

I built a cape of that canvas and I wore it on the day I was born.

I was a spot light coming on. I was a whirring and a buzzing. I was a dank, dark, room. I was jazz.

I was that stone you skipped across the lake. The one that you held in your eager hands and that you deemed perfect for the task at hand. You thought I would skip right into the future and save you from yourself.

I am the ripple. Echo.

The string is broken in the grand piano.

You’re 2 minutes too late.

Your shoes are untied.

Your mouth is out of luck.

Your face is strange.

Your voice is weary.

Your tempo’s off.

Your shoes don’t tap.

Your love falls like a house of cards.

You are whisked away on the Jack of Trades.

You dance away while the music fades.

Tiny dancer in my hand now a tumbleweed.

A slow poison, a suffering, mourning, waning, waiting, savoring, whimpering.

Your love is quicksand and I’m dying a slow death.

Posted at 1:38pm and tagged with: one column, poetry,.

November 9th 2011

Stumbles, fumbles & Fingers crossed for ascension.

Hi planet Earth,

Now I know some of you might have prepared a really strong, very moving piece for me. A eulogy like no other. But I’m still here. Just been ‘under construction’ for way longer than I thought I would. I’ve been out of commission and I have alibis.

I’ll try and make this not too arduous a read (though I am notoriously known for doing just that).

This is what’s going on with me.

So in our last episode you saw me get a job as the sales manager and photographer for the brave new magazine named ‘Curacao Journal’. There were setbacks with that, and suffice it to say that that didn’t pan out. So, in other words I am now unemployed and just doing freelance photography. That’s a tough racket, I know. Oh, I know.

But I’m going to tough this one out. I’m going to keep hammering away and tinkering away at my new toys, which include my new camera, lenses and lights. I’ll be ordering up odds and ends to complete and round up my toolbox and toughing it out.

My work.

Right now I’m in the process of practicing with lights. Which is a long winding road, but I traverse it bravely armed with hope and a fistful of boomsticks. But it’s coming along steadily. For now I should have a series of little shoots with a high influence by yours truly. Nothing too complicated. Just practice.

Injecting creativity into the aesthetics tight now before I even dare to throw in some symbolism or easter egg or anything else. And therein lies a dilemma.

I have to get a team together to be able to do the kind of work I want to do, and now that my toolbox has gotten a big upgrade, it’s time to stop doing the whole Wolverine act for a bit, and setup the X-Men.

So right now I have a makeup artist that I’m trying out, with a potential second. A hair person waiting in the wings so we can have our first test together. And I am currently hard at work at hooking up with a designer or someone who is skillful in that area to be my wardrobe person, and I’m dialoguing back and forth with them as we speak.

My next shoot is lined up, all we still need is wardrobe, but the concept is complete and it should be a hoot. :)

I intend on doing plenty of little shoots in the coming months, trying out my lights and showing all of you the bold and beautiful new face of my craft. So here’s to succeeding with flying colors. Cheers!

I also intend to make my triumphant return to Aruba after about 2 years of not shooting there, I would like to make it down in the next couple of months, and from there on to make frequent returns to the happy island. So all of you Arubans out there, keep your radars on ‘scan’ for when I announce that.

And last but not least, this may be old news to some, but I did my first shoot with lights a few weeks back, which was a collaboration with “the makeup artist Beth” on a little something she cooked up in honor of the ‘Breast cancer awareness’ month. She had this concept where she wanted to create a pink warrior to represent the strength inherent in all these women going through the tragedy and travesty that is breast cancer. So she went and found herself a model, painted her in, and I took some pictures. The results of which you can see in the last couple of posts I made here in my blog. Enjoy!

I’ll try not to leave you guys hanging so much in the future.

Posted at 1:32pm and tagged with: one column, photography,.

June 3rd 2011

The Weight.

Heavy.

My eyelids are heavy. Rolling over my eyeballs like the tide.

My arms are heavy. I couldn’t lift the light off a candle.

My feet are heavy. I shuffle like a deck of cards in a basement filled with sin.

My stomach is heavy. Like a bag filled with stones sinking steadily into the abyss.

My heart is heavy. Like a snowball down a hill; Growing bigger as it grows heavier.

My mind is heavy. Like heavy metal it’s all a white noise with occasional pangs of grief.

My back is heavy. Subsequently the pack rat became encumbered, as he would pile all of the woes, all of the tears, all of the trouble, all of the midnight escapes, all of the first impressions, vicious smiles, sneering remarks, punches to the face, knife to the throats, bullet to the hearts, tyrants, genocide, history, disregard, vanity, ignorance, bliss, grace, helping hands, smiling faces, lost moments, broken hearts, lost souls, empty homes, broken homes, empty tombs, garden gnomes, americana, la cabana, racial slurs, slaughterhouse reveries, hungry mouths, cancer, big sky country, Jack Kerouac, thick forests, empty plains, schoolyard banter, suicide notes, hatred, mercy, empathy, cardiac arrests, sudden deaths, violent crime, drug abuse, socialism, departures, hellos, favors, backstabbers, greed, currency, economies, decadence, providence, coincidence, fate, tiki huts and estates on to his back.

All of this and more. So so heavy.

Like Atlas, I need a shift change. I need a break.

I need to be stronger. I need to be brave.

My mouth is heavy. From holding back so many words.

My chest is heavy from the smog.

I’m heavy. I sink into my ascension.

Posted at 1:40pm and tagged with: one column, poetry,.

May 12th 2011

Darkness On The Edge Of Town.

Welcome to a world full of Hansels and Gretels.

Where are your crumbs? Eaten by crows.

Who will lead us home? Silence.

The more I see, the more mileage under my heels, the more I realize, we are lost.

The hope sweats out of me as I tread with calloused heels through the mire.

The hope, replaced by hopelessness. The hope, replaced by repulsion.

The woods are dank and dark. The gloom consumes the sun.

We are but children desperately clinging to innocence, like a rope to save us from the void.

Out of hunger we eat poisonous berries and mushrooms.

Out of thirst we drink mud.

Out of lust we commit incest.

The sounds this place makes reminds me of sighs my mother makes, when she’s exhausted. When she is spent.

We’re walking in circles. We’re talking in circles.

We’re ridiculous pawns on a merry go round.

We feast on ego. We are fat with an inflated sense of self importance. We are Gods in Goldfish bowls. We are a self righteous punch in the wall.

We are the fattest fly on our own individual turds.

I feel like I’m peeling an onion. The more I reveal, the more I realize how far I am from revealing anything at all.

Posted at 3:45pm and tagged with: poetry, one column,.

May 11th 2011

The Future Is Now.

So I suppose one could say this is the update many of you have been waiting for. An update where things have shifted, rocks have been kicked over and the fat lady appears to be going for the crescendo.

I won’t bore you with apologies as to why things have been quiet on my front, I have explained this numerous times before, besides reading this you’re likely to figure out the reason on your own anyhow.

So let’s get into the nitty gritty.

I lost my job.

My day..job that is. I did customer service for online casinos for close to three years now, but due to some laws recently passed in the United States and France we lost 80% of all clients and so the company threw in the towel.

Now for those of you who know my story, I’m sure you can imagine that this is great reason for concern as I have my share of responsibilities and the things I hold dear in life constantly hang by a very thin thread.

For those who don’t..well you can imagine that it sucks to say the very least, to lose your job.

To make matters worse, my camera was not working as it should and it had been for a while now. With no money to replace, I had been in a rut.

I had known for a little bit now that the office might be closing down as things have been stirring for a while now and many of us saw dark clouds on the horizon in there.

So I’ve been banging my head against a wall for a while now due to the fact that I was in between a rock and a hard place. With my job hanging by the ever present, ever-fucked thread and my equipment dying on me, I felt backed into a corner.

Realizing that change had to come in the form of a unicorn or in the form of a raging bull frightened me. But one thing was certain; Change had to come.

Now as many of you may or may not know I have been wanting to replace my equipment for a while now, replace them and add a little extra and take my work to the level where I desperately feel it should be. This has been something I have wanted desperately. I strongly feel that the only thing that has always kept me behind the herd was my financial situation. Everyone else was carrying bigger guns due to deeper pockets. It was that one factor that kept me rubbing shoulders with many others, and what kept me from feeding them stir fried dust with a side of rocks and mud.

Backed into the corner, desperate, I did what any responsible man would;

I took out a loan.

Let’s just say I’ll be spending a fair amount of time returning it.

But let’s also say that that ‘wall’ that separated the men from the boys has now crumbled.

I won’t bore you with the details, but I will say it’s a brave new world for Robert Volkerts Photography. More will be revealed in due time.

Now that we have covered the photography in my life, let’s get back to my day job.

Shortly after I lost my job, which was last week Wednesday to be precise, I received a rather interesting job offer. One that was quite unexpected.

See..there’s this really impressive magazine looming over the horizon. A magazine based here on the island and has a definite edge over anything out there.

This magazine is named Curacao Journal.

I am now officially its Advertisement Sales Manager and Photographer.

Which means I will be visiting a whole many businesses and establishments on the island to offer them ad space in this new magazine I’m raving about.

And I will also be the photographer for this magazine, so for those of you who like my work you may now look forward to checking it out on a regular basis. And I can promise you it will be refreshing.

Now it’s a little soon to give away too much but I can say that this will be a lifestyle magazine and that we have assembled a very exciting mix of young talents to contribute to it.

We have a demo website which has been out for a year, along with a demo magazine, which you can find in PDF format on the website. But, a year is a long time and as with most things that have the opportunity to sit and simmer, they change, they evolve.

The magazine has gone through some significant changes and some very exciting ones if I do say so myself. So whatever you see on that site, take it at face value as the magazine has undergone changes, but as you can see there, even what’s there already looks very nice.

Also as I’m the Ad Sales Manager and the Photographer, I will be able to have a very informed discussion with these business owners about Ad ideas and be completely free of the burden of having subtle and sensitive creative information get lost in translation. No middle man, no hassle. I will also of course be available to shoot ads for any of these businesses.

This coupled with my new equipment, well..I think it’s safe to say we have a recipe for something sweet on our hands.

The magazine is slated to launch in January of 2012 but I start work tomorrow.

If you’re a business owner, expect to see me real soon and prepare to be intrigued.

So without giving too much away too soon, let me say that the future is wide open and I dare say holds a fist full of promise for Robert Volkerts Photography.

Posted at 2:30pm and tagged with: photography, one column,.

March 29th 2011

Back To School.

It’s been a while.

Oh, I know it’s been a while. But my inspiration has run rather dry, so forgive me. I will write an all around article of what I’ve been up to lately sometime soon. In the meantime, let me tell you what I have been doing with photography…

Not very much.

Unfortunately, this is the truth. I have not been doing much. You see, the lens that got busted last year, has gotten busted again and this time, I don’t intend to pay an arm and a leg to get it fixed somewhere off in the States, which will surely keep me out of action for a few months. No more of that Kool-Aid! The camera itself appears to be acting up some, and I have no cash for a replacement, and I am in no position to walk the usual route of finances to acquire the money to do something about it. So I am in between a rock and a hard place. Does this mean I am dropping the mantel and throwing in the towel? Well if it were up to me, no. But it’s not, so we’ll see what happens with Le Photography.

There were some bad juju projects in between, that left me with a bad taste in my mouth as always. I won’t bore you with the technicalities of these projects but let’s just say it’s been a bad combination of unprofessionalism, misinformation and my failure to meet the ‘industry standards’ nowadays.

You guessed it, I’m back in my cave. Chillin’ like a villain.

All the wonderful photography projects have been put on hold until further notice, and for now, I’m sort of biding my time, and picking my battles when it comes to assignments I take.

I took two recently.

One of which was a lovely little engagement shoot with a couple, whom I will be doing their wedding as well as some additional photos in between now and then to give them a lovely little book filled with memories of youth, fire and angst. Oh, the days of thunder. And also of course, the big day itself.

The other one, which I received a bit more fanfare and attention for, was the Radulphus College yearbook for 2011.

It was funny going back to school, eventhough I never attended RC, I attended PSC, or as it’s now called “Vruminganan Brabu di den Dijn” College…errr whateverrr..

So they contacted me with a simple enough assignment, to shoot roughly 90 kids, one portrait each. A normal everyday “hey how are ya” face, and a funny face. As you can guess, the funny face got all the attention.

All in all I think I headed out to the school about 3 or 4 times in total to shoot the kids and also some of the teachers at the school.

I had me a jolly good time, and I’d like to thank them again for their hospitality and I wish them all the best in their individual little lives. Trust me, if I could document your lives from behind my little box, always, I would.

Going back to school felt funny enough though, I must say. Being 26 now and having dropped out of highschool at the age of 19, it’s been a while.

Believe it or not, my first time out, I felt anxiety and all. Got knots in my gut. God knows how many thoughts went through my head. I guess it was a combination of nostalgia, bad memories and also I guess like my experience there would be sort of a measuring tool to see how much I’d grown up and if I’d still fit in in an atmosphere like that, or whether I’d be looked upon as “the ol’ guy” now.

I mean I don’t have much of a social life as is, and the little I do have is seldom spent with people the age of highschoolers. And I guess as you get older, time whizzes by and you just don’t realize how much of it has gone by until I guess…well..you get an assignment to go to a highschool and just sort of be smack dab in the middle of all this..teen angst..this anger..lust..curiosity..culture clash..ego zoo..this rebellion..this “fuck you”..that “baby, i love you..the romance..the heartbreak..the friendships made and lost..the list goes on. I mean this is a period in my life where I did much brainstorming, and in which I grew allot as an individual.

So to go back to that after my life has changed so much in so little time, I just wasn’t sure what level of contrast we would be dealing with.

But I must say that shortly after arriving at the school, and being greeted by the yearbook committee which consisted of old faces I had known for a while, and new knew ones which I would see for the first time, I felt right at home.

Though right away I was faced with the fact that I had grown older. I didn’t think I had outgrown my highschool shell so much. I mean I didn’t think I’d jump right in and it would be like getting on an old bike, but I guess I forgot how much a jungle highschool can be, and let me assure you, I mean that in such a good way. I really missed it. Though I highly doubt I have the sheer untapped ore, that super energy it takes to be a teen anymore, but I suppose I can spar a little. It brought back good and bad memories of my time spent in highschools both here and in Aruba. But all in all it was a well lived nostalgia. And I’m glad I did it.

Thanks, again, to all of you at Radulphus, for making a teen past his prime feel at home again. You guys were fine hosts.

You guys were great.

As for what’s next for Robert Volkerts Photography…

I don’t know. I’m waiting on a few things to pan out so I know where I go from here. The big projects are on hold. A few weddings on the way, and some individual shoots for now.

The rest is a mystery.

This has been a random, strange and ,dare I say, a little awkward update from your friendly neighborhood photographer. Sorry about that guys, I’ll try to have better news next time.

Posted at 2:31pm and tagged with: Photography, one column,.

February 21st 2011

Do you ever see yourself breaking out of the boundaries of Curaçao? With or without your family. So has the need to explore accelerated from itching to hurting?

I do. I’m 26, if all goes according to nature, I should have my share of time left to grow in what I do and eventually move. I definitely see myself getting out of here, at the very least for a matter of years and come back.

My need to explore has always hurt. But I try to prioritize and with my financial issues, I travel when I can, and the rest of time I don’t pay it much mind because I would only be setting myself up for disappointment.

I was planning on going back to Europe again this year, but it’s the end of Feb and I already know that financially I cannot do this, so I’m not thinking about it.

As far as moving away, in due time. I’m still learning and growing here.

Posted at 7:51pm and tagged with: Questions, one column,.

January 25th 2011

I think you’re absolutely amazing. But how come you seem to be so out of touch w/ the world? Your wisdom needs to be heard and your inspiration spread over to another generation. Don’t just hog your views on life, lieverd. Share the wealth.

Why thank you. I really appreciate the compliment. Well…Why am I so out of touch with the world? Tough cookie..Well there are various reasons, and none of them are premeditated. I mean that’s sort of the way my mind works. I never think about stuff, but I’m thinking about everything all the time, I just don’t know it until it’s summoned upon or triggered. Oh well..ranting. One of the reasons is definitely because I feel very misunderstood. And I know this is going to sound very narcissistic of me but I feel like my thoughts and my opinions are privileged. I like to share things but only when I have a really heavy feeling that whoever I’m interacting with can empathize or understand where I’m coming from. My priorities are all over the place. Completely fucked. So I feel like the more I share with the world about how I really feel, the more people are going to shy away from me, and I don’t need more of that in my life. Another is that I have no privacy. Due to the conditions in which I live in my personal life, I have zero privacy. So I think that subconsciously I try to build this sort of artificial privacy where I could hide and gather my thoughts, and be my weird self without people having to intervene.

And another things might be my mother’s side of the family. They’re hermits. They have little to no friends, and they keep to themselves, so I might have a little of that in my gene pool.

To summarize my answer; I don’t do it on purpose. Most of the time I don’t realize that I’m M.I.A until alarms sound off. But by then I have to deal with the drama of being misunderstood and judged. And I have to justify and explain my absence, which I’m not a big fan of.

I’m complicated, and I mean well. But I suppose everyone needs a vent. A place to go. And to me, that is to burn bridges with a purging fire and then to bask in film, music and literature.

I secretly like falling off the grid. It makes me feel…untouchable. It makes me feel safe.

I’m sorry. I’ll try to share. Ask me stuff. I’ll do my best to answer. It’s okay to yank me out of my shell sometimes.

-Rob.

Posted at 2:49am and tagged with: Questions, one column,.

January 25th 2011

Where in the WORLD did you get this skill of being able to go so deep into something (a thought or concept or theory) that it can totally morph into this great tale of wisdom?

I don’t know. I honestly don’t. But the closest thing to an answer I can think of is a saying that resonated greatly with me. It goes; “Crawling on the floor, one can see under the door.” And with that I’m saying that, I have had numerous shocks to my emotions and my mind that I have often found myself in the position of being down and out, with, to me, nothing to lose.

And it is in this frame of mind that creativity is born. It’s a reaction. Almost a reflex. Same as some people find escape in sport. These are people building up tension inside, and they need a release before they implode. I suppose with some people it’s creativity and art.

At a young age, I was cast out and sort of the odd man out for a very long time. In this time I had to learn to entertain myself, and to fend for myself. And I suppose in this time, in response to the things happening around me, I started watching allot of movies, comic books, music, books, sketch. I was alone most of the time, just sort of, living in my head. And I suppose I’m a little conditioned to be this way.

Though sometimes it’s more a curse than a blessing.

So..in short. I suppose it’s because of circumstances, and the way I processed my life, and the things I was exposed to. I was always interested in more because the world I was living in was not satisfying me. It left me satiated. So I looked for wisdom and solace elsewhere. And I found it in art.

So uhm..I guess instead of writing all that I could have just said “Oops, it was an accident!”

Thank you for the question, don’t be a stranger.

-Rob

Posted at 2:48am and tagged with: Questions, one column,.

January 25th 2011

What are your future plans when it comes body art? More tattoos and maybe even some piercings on the way?

Body art. The secret passion of mine that seemingly isn’t secret anymore. Well My right sleeve is done. The left one still needs work. After that I might go hands & Chest. And then we’ll see. But eventually I want to cover up everything but my face and genitals.

As for piercings, I’m not a big fan. I love my gauges, but the rest of it isn’t all that great.

I pierced my right nostril in London last summer, but I went to change the jewelry and was unsuccessful, not it’s all healed up and I’m not doing that again.

I’m at 7/8 of an inch right now witht he gauges, going for an inch and then I am done with the lobes. And that would conclude my adventures with piercings.

Thought my ink adventures…have just begun!

Thanks for the question :)

-Rob

Posted at 2:47am and tagged with: Questions, one column,.