September 10, 2008
Location: Frisco, Nevada (Ghost Town)

I’ve been on the road trying to get my head back into my film, back into isolation, back into silence, back onto the endless road. Yesterday and today I spent the days wandering around the ghost towns of Hamilton and Frisco. These were originally mining towns the former 10,000 people strong, and the later 4,000. Being towns in the middle of the Nevada desert they brought in most of the food and water. These places were prosperous and alive until the U.S. economy shifted and other places became better suited to living. It makes you realize how throughout history populations have moved and much of these movements were the result of external forces. No people or place lives in isolation, and it’s all tied together inextricably.

As I float through these abandoned ruins taking photographs, I can’t help feel like a ghost town, broken down, left alone, abandoned… I used to be vibrant a place that people went to. Now the wind brushes against me taking with it layers of skin, the rain batters me down into the soil, and there are no people… only the occasional passerby on their way to somewhere else.

Wait, I’m the passerby, it’s important not to mistake myself for a ghost town. It’s important not to empathize with archaic ruins when having a difficult time with newly created isolation and solitude.

I was asked recently if I get lonely… Of course I get lonely, I think to be human is to be lonely. But loneliness and I have an arrangement, I let it in, and it keeps me company.

In this time of transition as I move back into isolation and silence, loneliness and a seemingly endless open road, it’s important to remember what brought me here.

Myself… And an original project proposal for a film that was to be more than just a film. This project was designed to assist me in completing a pilgrimage of the North American Continent. And central to the project framework and the pilgrimage was the notion of solitude.

It’s important for me to take a moment and reread the quote that was inscribed on my project proposals title page,

“ALL PATHS LEAD TO THE SAME GOAL: TO CONVEY TO OTHERS WHAT WE ARE. AND WE MUST PASS THROUGH SOLITUDE AND DIFFICULTY, ISOLATION AND SILENCE, IN ORDER TO REACH FORTH TO THE ENCHANTED PLACE WHERE WE CAN DANCE OUR CLUMSY DANCE AND SING OUR SORROWFUL SONG -- BUT IN THIS DANCE OR IN THIS SONG THERE ARE FULFILLED THE MOST ANCIENT RITES OF OUR CONSCIENCE IN THE AWARENESS OF BEING HUMAN AND OF BELIEVING IN A COMMON DESTINY.”
-- Pablo Neruda, 1971

Solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence… although it IS difficult, it’s nice to see you again my old friends. For it is you who have helped me understand myself most completely, for it is you who have taught me that there is nothing like doing you own work, in your own time.

I just wish I would have understood that in relation to everyone else. I do now…

Let it be. – The Beatles :-)

peace,
d