In Search of America, Part 2

North Side of Public Square, Boonville, IN, Postcard

I am still at the Motel Manor, just out of town. Last night I forced myself out into the world. Previously I had been locked in my room, struggling to start another journey. Creating art, and putting yourself and your ideas to work can be painful. Lately I've asked myself what this is for, I've doubted myself, and art in general. This may be my normal cycle, but it doesn't get any easier.

I'm committed to this journey and process, not because I like it, but because I'm drawn to it, and I cannot look away. I'm driven to explore a moment and to engage with people. I am fascinated by time, the way these towns live, the scene, the environment, their secrets and my memories. Photography grabs that, and allows me to form it into my own personal philosophy. But, as I have said many times before, starting this process over every month is painful and often depressing; And each time I leave a place and start again, I feel as if a piece of myself and my soul has been taken from me, but I believe that is art, and the creation of art.

"So, dear Sir, I can't give you any advice but this: to go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to the question of whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it. Perhaps you will discover that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself, and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from the outside. For the creator must be a world for himself and must find everything in himself and in Nature, to whom his whole life is devoted." Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters To A Young Poet, February 17, 1903

"I pulled Rocinate into a small picnic area maintained by the state of Connecticut and got out my book of Maps. And suddenly the United States became huge beyond belief and impossible ever to cross. I wondered how in the hell I'd got myself mixed up in a project that couldn't be carried out. It was like starting to write a novel. When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages a sick sense of failure falls on me and I know I can never do it. This happens every time. Then gradually I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate and I eliminate the possibility of ever finishing. So it was now, as I looked at the bright colored projection of monster America." John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley: In Search of America, 1962