Go Into The Arts, The Arts Alone — Southern Belle Nomad

We run away from our roots for all kind of reasons. I know I had mine. I wanted more. Of everything. More knowledge. More friends. More experiences. I wanted to be more. More interesting. More cool. More beautiful. More thin. More likeable. More fun.

I finally bought a professional camera three months ago before I left for Paris. I know very little about photography. At some point in time I have been a writer, a musician, a singer, an actor, a dancer, and now I’ve added photographer to the list. I fluidly moved from one creative pursuit to the next trying to find answers to questions I didn’t even know I had. Let’s hope to god I don’t ever get to painting because I cannot draw and would like to keep one artistic space a grand mystery.

Photography, for me, is the least conscious artistic pursuit. Most likely because it is a hobby. The others were always presented to me as a means to an end. A record deal. A series role. A place on a Russian twerk team. Photography was just photography.

Walking around the Luxembourg Gardens today with my camera I kept following a trend I didn’t even notice was a trend. I always take pictures of trees. No matter where I am. The middle of rural America or standing by the Eiffel Tower, I look for the trees.

I never thought much about it until today.

My roots are rural. My roots are my nature. I was raised with a vegetable garden on acres of land with so many trees in sight. But I never paid much attention to them growing up. I was always coming and going and searching. If you haven’t noticed, I’m still coming and going. I run away from my roots towards something unknown on a daily basis. And I realized today that when I reach the unknown, the objects I see most. The objects I seek most. Are trees. Are roots.

At some point in time every other artistic pursuit has landed me on my roots. Writing lives in my bones. Music has lived in my soul since the first time I heard Patsy Cline on the radio. Acting lives in my heart as I try to understand and love every human story I come across. But somewhere along the way, they were all muddied by the more. I asked more of them. I asked them to make me more. They all looked me in the eyes and showed me my true colors. I asked them for more and they couldn’t give it to me. I asked them for more until I got fed up with rejection. I burned out. And I walked away from all of them.

I came to Paris and elsewhere and I started taking pictures. I’ve been taking pictures everywhere, every day. And today I have finally consciously seen a parallel path.

I keep looking for roots without even trying. And through that action, I can feel the other creative trees I had cut down sprouting roots again inside me. I have started to write again with pure love. Without asking more from it. I have started to go to the movie theatre again without feeling the pain of an industry I vehemently shut out of my life. I feel the desire to enter the mind of a character again. I had a heartbreak a few weeks ago and last night I sat down to write a song like I did when I was 12. Alone. On the floor with tears and asking no more from that piece of music than to help heal my soul. To help me live fully in my roots. Not more. Just me.

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