How does it feel?
To be on your own, with no direction home, like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone?
By the time I hit 71 West, rolling out of Louisiana’s Mardi Gras haze and heading back to Austin, I had three trip ghosts whispering in my ear—Donald Trump, the Apostle Paul, and Bob Dylan. Quite the unholy trinity. One shouting about walls and witch hunts, another waxing poetic on redemption and justification, and the last crooning in that sneering, sacred voice about lost illusions and falling from grace.
NPR. Audible. Spotify.
And me? I was somewhere in between, straddling the past and the present, the sacred and profane, the analog and the digital, the known and the unknown. That’s where I live. That’s where I shoot.
Mardi Gras was a wild ride—street portraits that felt like stolen moments, eyes meeting mine through a lens, beads flying, music blaring. Faces painted in neon and sweat, laughter rising above the brass bands. A carnival of human emotion, a feast for a photographer like me. But now, it was over.
And as I sped westward, watching the world smear past my window in golden-hour light, I thought about it all. About the journey. About how I got here.
Once upon a time, I had no direction home. Drifting, shooting, searching. From Cape Cod summers to distant continents, from film to digital to iPhones, from knowing everything to knowing nothing at all. Photography wasn’t just a career—it was a way of surviving, a way of seeing, a way of saying, I was here.
Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re tryin’ to be so quiet?
I’ve had nights like that, lost on foreign streets with a camera slung over my shoulder, chasing ghosts in streetlights, waiting for the right shadow, the right look, the right feeling. I’ve chased moments across time zones, across decades. I’ve shot for others, for clients, for fame, for money. And now, I shoot for myself. For something deeper.
People’d call, say, “Beware doll, you’re bound to fall.”
Let them call. Let them say what they want. I’ve been falling my whole life, and I always find a way to land on my feet. Maybe that’s the point—to never stop falling. To never settle. To never have a direction home.
By the time I crossed into Texas, I was ready for a fat doobie and a cigarette chaser. Of course, I do neither—but still, I was ready. Ready for what? Who knows. The next shot. The next buzz. The next chapter. The next relationship. The next photograph that might just break my heart wide open.
How does it feel?
It feels like movement. Like freedom. Like looking through the viewfinder and seeing the world exactly as it is, but also how it could be. It feels like driving west with Dylan on the speakers and nothing but the road ahead.
No direction home.
And that’s exactly where I want to be.
Jack
