HALF PAST

What we miss once it's gone.

I am at a point in life where I think about loss. This is not to say there hasn’t been any in my life—although, thankfully, it has been rare. Loss has been the exception.

Margaret’s Grocery, Vicksburg, Mississippi (Polaroid SX-70) (all photos from 2020)

During the heavy winter storm we just endured¹ there was suddenly ample time to think about loss. There were moments of beauty: walking down a perfectly white Riverside Drive underneath a canopy of live oaks while it snowed; taking a Polaroid of the still-flowering camellia bush in Ms. Welty’s yard as it was 17 degrees; seeing a group of kids skid down the hill by Belhaven on makeshift sleds made from garbage can lids and Amazon boxes.

Onward Store, Onward, Mississippi (Polaroid SX-70)

While snowed in and trying to stay warm I read an article about how the lifespan of Americans had decreased during the last year. There were several things that struck me from the article—not the least of which was just that this was real, and incredibly awful—but one was that the life expectancy didn’t seem that far off from where I was right now. For the first time ever, the end seemed closer than the beginning.

Bonnie & Clyde Death Car (kinda²), Gibsland, Louisiana (Polaroid 600)

So then: how to celebrate in the time remaining? Or the paramount question for an artist at this time, what subject will you elevate with your work? Who and what will you preserve through focus and repetition and memory?

Turkey Scratch, Arkansas (Polaroid 600)

I went over to Arkansas in August to try to find where Levon Helm was born, and on the drive to Turkey Scratch I saw this funny wavy sign, not far from the country store. I thought maybe it was some relic of a church or maybe the farm. But when I got up close, I could see that it had been a marker celebrating the musician’s birth there. It had been bleached blank by the Southern sun.

The ruins of Windsor, Mississippi (Polaroid SX-70)

I cannot pretend to know what the future holds, although I know what I hope it holds. I hope I can see my family more, now that suddenly seeing them seems desperately important to me. I hope I can go to new places and see what remains. I hope I can hear new music and be filled with energy and excitement and want to hear all of it and find out about who made it and what’s left of their world. Above all else, I hope that I can be kind and love other people.

Resting place of Neil and Dot McCarty, my grandparents, Birmingham, Alabama (Polaroid SX-70)

And I hope there’s ridiculous things, things that make me laugh and just stop and stare, and there’s handpainted signs selling watermelon and kids throwing water balloons and football games playing “Thunderstruck” too loud and a wide variety of Little Debbies at the gas station I stop at in a town where I’ve never been.

Shreveport, Louisiana (Polaroid SX-70)

I hope there is peace, and a calmness to the world, and safety. That going into a store doesn’t take a series of calculations or reconnaissance before entering. I hope there is more good than bad in the time we have left. And I hope the sun is shining where you are today.

THE OTHER DAY I caught a glimpse into this beautiful world—one I had never seen before, up north in Como, from 1974. A fellow traveler named Tav Falco opened up the window. If you look inside you can see R.L. Burnside playing “Goin’ Down South,” his endless trance powering joy.

In deepest thanks here is a frame in return—from Panther Burn, of course—on good old black and white Polaroid 600.

THANK-YOU for listening, and as always I remain gorjusjxn on Instagram (still on a break but lots of Polaroids there) and you can see more of my photography at McCartyPolaroids.

1. I wrote “Hibernation” at the outset of the storm—trying to accept it, not knowing the intensity and difficulty it would bring.

2. The “Death Car” at the Bonnie & Clyde Ambush Museum is one of a few replicas of the 1938 Ford V8 in which the duo were killed. The original and the replicas were huge business at the time, as hundreds would turn out to see the attraction. Of course all it took to make you a replica was a Ford, a tommy gun, and an afternoon.

This place in Gibsland is one of the creepiest I’ve ever been, and even though I knew in my head that the car wasn’t “real,” it felt real.