Sometimes as an artist I feel a duality that brings on a lot of guilt. I like to travel, record my experiences through different mediums, spend time with strangers and take it all in. As a mother and a wife, when I find myself in a honky tonk killing the hours between the end of the shoot and the beginning of the trip home, I can’t help but feel like it’s wrong somehow. Like a mother shouldn’t do a job that cool, or think about things like cold fusion and films from the 1970s. So I return home armed with gifts for my husband and daughter, feeling like that excuses it somehow.
But, I have one of the most understanding families on the planet. (It wasn’t always that way– when I first announced I was going into film, my husband having been a TV veteran rolled his eyes and figured I’d get knocked on my butt, but go for it– and my daughter just knows I travel a lot, but I’m there when it counts– but I’d be crying in some motel out West missing everyone.) Mommy wants to make movies. And to make movies mommy takes a lot of luggage and people with her.
And then I think about the family I grew up with– a pilot and flight attendant couple that traveled together. They spent a lot of time away on holidays for their jobs. It was their trade, the bacon winning– what they did and I understood that. It’s the time at home that mattered. My stepmother, Sharon was a pro at balance, coming in from her red eye out of LA fully prepared to make me breakfast. Sharon was an artist too, and the hardest thing to watch growing up was how that left her. She was a studio illustrator, and then life happens. I knew it was over the day I found her drafting table in front of the house for pickup. Knowing her, she would maintain that she was ready to stop being an illustrator. But I’m bullheaded. 19 year old kids don’t get full on reporter jobs if they don’t have something going for them. So I cling to my early success as a story teller and photographer and hope the talent resurfaces after so many years of staying at home with my daughter.
I guess I feel flaky running around making documentaries. My whole life was stirred and provoked by the American journalists of the road, Steinbeck notably. I couldn’t imagine telling any kind of good story without traveling and being in the thick of it, cowboy boots and all. I’m full of wanderlust, but a few days away from home makes me treasure the kitchen, the SUV, the PTA meetings more.
‘Till then Nashville.