“They travel through the heartland, past cold factories and drifty towns, to the old, old mountains slumbering east of Tennessee.” In Passing the Music Down, her lyrical children’s book about a little boy and a fiddle player journeying through Appalachia, Sarah Sullivan alludes to the lives of Melvin Wine and Jack Crack, two real-life musicians from West Virginia. Growing up in a small Pennsylvania town an hour from the West Virginia border, these stories were formative: They inspired my creativity–and my trust of wilderness ( not naïve trust, Nature is a bitch–but unlike many people, her indifference is predictable).  

Living in New Orleans, I am so immersed in the blues, jazz and zydeco traditions that I often forget about the rich music from the Allegheny blue ridge, my home. While it is difficult for me to create while living there–I am often bogged in sadness, as every trip home brings news of another friend struggling–or dead–from heroin–I’m obsessed with the region while I’m away.  Should I ever leave New Orleans–God forbid!–I could see myself settling down in Tennessee or Kentucky, some sweet state where the cultural signifiers are the same as in Western Pennsylvania (but a safe distance from the tragedy and nostalgia of home). 

My hometown is picturesque: Cobblestone streets, rolling hills, farm houses (abandoned).  The pub where I worked through college sells craft cocktails. Illuminating main street, the marquee of the old movie theater advertises an upcoming film festival. Amish peddlers, college students and tattooed workers drift half-asleep through the early morning.  Coffee steams from cups.  Exhaust puffs from pick-up trucks.  A venue plastered with black and white photographs of Elvis, Dylan and the Grateful Dead hosts shows most nights.   I have some expressive friends who work every day keeping the music, art and food traditions alive.  

And then I have some friends who are dead.  

This dialectic of emotions, half proud, half hurt, guides me, a tourist in my hometown.

One always returns from journeys with a slew of photographs. Driving through the Appalachian Mountains, I felt like I was on an image quest.  I would like to carry this adventurous spirit into my everyday life.  I want to see my city, my home and my friends with the same eyes I see autumn forests, wild horses, and dirt trails disappearing in slants of shadow and light. 

For me, there is nothing better than natural light, the gray and gold and red and yellow sky.  I like shadows. I don’t like images void of shadows.  They appear as advertisements, the people resembling products more than personalities. Like Edward Abbey said:  “You can’t study the darkness by flooding it with light.”