Entry #13, 27th August - Spiritwalker

Floyd, aka Spiritwalker, in Leicester, NY.

I realised today that i have yet to really speak about my photography - how i am approaching everything that i have been talking about. There's a reason for this though, and the reason is that i still don't really have a clue what i'm looking for. Now, don't get me wrong, i have been photographing; albeit probably too much. My friend Thomas Brannigan advised me before we left that i should not get too trigger happy. He advised to think about what i'm looking for before wildly pointing my camera at something. This has proved difficult though. Partially due to my uncertainty with what i'm after, and also because i'm still enveloped by America's cliches - a motel sign here, a gas station there. I'm hoping that by obsessively shooting these, i will tire quickly and move on to more interesting subject matter, but this hasn't happened as quickly as i had hoped. Hitting New York brought on a whole new world of visual motifs that i recognise through cinema and television; the yellow cabs, the towering buildings and the steaming manholes. It's hard to move past as it's these symbols that i have clutched onto closely all of my life; having never been to America previously, my identity has been formed on experiences i have appropriated from the media.

So, what have i been photographing? I guess most of it falls under the vague genre of street photography, although this can be a misleading term. Often, it suggests playful compositions, humour and is frequently more about the single image rather than a larger narrative. The images i've been taking tread a line between this and social documentary. I've also been forcing myself to speak to people. My previous work has always had a certain distance between myself and the people in the frame. In City Stories this was because of social anxieties and an interest in telling untruths about the people in the frame. When i went to Russia, i was distant to the people in Four Hours East because of cultural and language barriers, but i didn't push myself too much to try and overcome these. I enrolled myself on the MA at LCC partially in an attempt to push myself forward with this, to overcome my anxieties and find out more about people. As i've heard many a photographer say, the camera is a passport into people's lives, a sentiment i had always been sceptical of but soon believed after meeting people in the USA. Although Americans are so friendly that i'm not sure the presence of the camera actually mattered.

Tonight (and i'm skipping ahead a bit with the story here, but i will catch up) we pulled over in the small American town of Leicester, NY. Bekky had been driving us through the evening whilst i scanned the horizon for things to photograph. We coasted past a trailer park - one unlike i had ever seen portrayed on television. This one was pristine, well maintained and attractive. In front of the trailers was a group of people cutting down a tree; brimming with the excitement of being out of America's cities for the first time, i shouted to pull over.

Susie, Leicester, NY.

'Fancy helping?' said one of the ladies as we walked closer.
'Sure!' i replied, although i was quickly assured that she was joking, laying down her tools to come and chat.
'I'm Susie, this is Margaret and Floyd'.

The three of them were sad to be cutting the tree down, it sat outside Margaret's trailer and had provided shelter through many year's of burning summer sun. Unfortunately, it had died and began rotting - one of the branches fell off a couple of weeks back, damaging the her roof. The risk of a larger branch falling meant that it had to come down.

The conversation changed away from the tree when Floyd began telling us about a festival going on near them at the weekend, The Stone Tool Technology Show at Letchworth Park. Floyd would be involved in leading a workshop on carving tools out of bone, a hobby of his that he has turned into an art form. He cared a lot about spiritual means of living and had a lot of respect for the native Indians that lived there before himself. He once found a peace pipe churned up by the farmer's plough which he donated to the Indian Heritage Museum. The smaller of the sisters, Margaret, ran off into her trailer, coming back with three unusually shaped rocks.

'These are real, Indian arrowheads.' She told us how they were likely made in the 1700s. Her and her husband had found these again in the churned up, ploughed farmers fields. 'Whatever is on the surface is meant to be found'.

She passed them to us to inspect. There was no doubting that they were arrowheads, they had suffered a bit of damage but their shapes were intact. It then dawned on me that i could be holding something that once killed a man.

'You can have them!' she told us, to our amazement. We couldn't believe the generosity of someone we had met thirty minutes previous. 'We have loads, don't worry.' Margaret quickly disappeared again, this time returning with her husband. He told us some more details about their hobby before noticing Bekky's jumper - a deep blue holding the US Navy crest, he had been in the Navy when he was younger. Having known little about Joey's experience of the navy, i asked him a few questions about his time - he served on an aircraft carrier, much like my grandfather. This was the first of many weird little coincidences; i allowed myself to believe that these were a sign that we were on the right track.

Susie and Margaret, Leicester, NY.

Just before setting off on the road again, Floyd brought the topic of conversation back around to the festival. He suggested that we come along, persisting in trying to convince us by telling us about the home-grown marajuana and moonshine that would be available there. All you need is one cup of watermelon brew and you'll be on the floor. As amazing as this offer was, we didn't have enough time in our schedule to hang around for the festival. We made promises of keeping in contact via email/Facebook and suggested we would try to attend next year - i really meant it as well. As we walked to the car, Margaret stopped us for one last question - 'Have you met the Queen?'.

This was the first encounter that we had with amazing people from a completely different walk of life to our own. Cities are cities at the end of the day - as different as it was to be in Boston, an all-American metropolis, it echoed a similar pace of life and values as Manchester or London. To be out in rural America was amazing. I couldn't believe how welcoming these guys had been, this experience gave me a hunger to speak to everyone i saw.

Entry #12, 25th August - The blinding light of a big apple.

Street performers at Times Square, New York City, NY.

Our time was up in Boston. Despite working ourselves to the bone, it felt like a holiday – time to check our luggage in and prepare ourselves for the normal world once again. Amazingly though, this wasn't the case at all, this was only the beginning.

I think I could have slept through anything on Sunday morning. Looking at my phone, my vision still hazy and my mind half in a dream, I had missed twelve alarms. Generally, I set about five alarms, one every minute in order to annoy me out of bed. My tolerance for annoying default apple ringtones must have been pretty high on this morning. We were unsurprisingly running pretty late for our car collection so much as back in London, we reached out for the emergency services – Uber. We were exhausted. I prepared myself for the inevitable faff of the car rental, these things never-ever go as smoothly as they should. However this time it couldn't have been smoother, everything was as planned, the car was waiting for us and the manager even waived a HUGE fee on our account. Seriously, I am in love with Alamo. We jumped into the elevator, keys in hand, the doors opened and in front of us was our friend for the next month – a brand new, shiny-grey Toyota Camry that we nicknamed Jackie (friend's have to have names, right?). The dashboard was overwhelming, a bit different to my T reg Volkswagen Polo, but I figured out how to turn it on (you turn the key) and headed out onto the wrong side of the road.

Our first stop wasn't a distant one. Straight back to Deborah's, we picked up our luggage, promised each other the most positive reviews Airbnb had ever seen and beamed huge smiles as we coasted down Oak Square Avenue. Exiting Boston through Brighton, we sailed past beautiful wood panelled houses decorated with hanging baskets and American flags. We wondered how much they retailed for and whether we would one day live in something similar.

'We'll check out whatever the American version of Rightmove is when we get home'. These rows of homes quickly morphed into fields of vivid green trees and fields, muddy brown rock faces occasionally peeping out from the steep slopes flanking the road. We were on the interstate, on the road to New York City, and it felt incredible.

Before long, we crossed the invisible border that placed us from Massachusetts into Connecticut. For four hours we moved through the New England landscape, stopping only to stuff ourselves with an excessive amount of McDonalds fries and burgers. The houses started to appear again, only this time they were a bit rougher around the edges. Doors hung off the hinges, paint jobs were often unfinished and none of them were baby blue. We had entered The Bronx, sweeping around the back to reach Brooklyn where we were staying. At one point, we soared high up over a bridge that I wish I knew the name of. Manhattan appeared to our right, sitting in front of a canvas of deep oranges and reds that bled into each other – a glimpse of the sun could be seen disappearing between the skyscrapers. Bekky reached for the camcorder whilst I cranked up the volume of the jazz radio dancing through the car's speakers. Rising above the city, the only sounds were the 'bipp-bopp-bippadee-bee' of the saxophone against the hiss of the wheels racing across tarmac. Manhattan's building's pierced the sky. We were here, I could feel it. We were desirous of everything, anxious to see what New York had to say. The city that influenced my childhood; I felt I already knew it but of course I didn't.

We pulled up in Brooklyn – on Eldert Street, right outside our host's flat. A wave of humidity hit as we pushed the car doors open, sweat immediately pouring down my forehead. Ryan showed us to our room which consisted of a hand made bunk bed with a small, wooden desk space underneath it. After placing our luggage down, he invited us to join him and his girlfriend at a cinema screening of Big Hero 6 at his local park to which we thankfully obliged. It was awesome to be welcomed into a new city straight away, so we followed them there – spending the next few hours lay down on a blanket, gazing between the stars and the projection.We sipped on slurpees, kids ran around the park and street vendors tried to peddle their flashing glow sticks.

As the movie concluded, the magnetism of Manhattan grew. Desperate to be there, we ended up further away; jumping on the wrong subway all the way to it's last stop. A cute couple of train system colleagues helped guide us back in the right direction, waving us off as they embraced each other and exchanged 'I love you's. Finally, Bekky and I stepped out onto Union Square, complex arrangements of steel and glass towered over us. The structures stretched so high that it pained our necks to spy the tops. I was exhausted, but the flux of New York City just about kept me going, my hands reached for my camera once again. The lights of Times Square seemed to filter down every street, drawing our almost-mindless bodies towards the ever-brighter source. We rounded a corner and felt like we had just woken up, we rubbed our eyes in an attempt to adjust to the blinding light. I am usually critical of tourist hotspots, especially ones so heavily based on consumerism, but there was something about Times Square that is mesmerising. Maybe it's how lively it is even at midnight, maybe it's the daylight that it creates, maybe it's the excitement on everyone's face as they wait for the camera to show them on the big screen. Maybe it was the zombie-state that our minds had entered, attracted like a moth to a flame. Either way, it was much more impressive than London's Piccadilly Circus. I allowed myself to be lost in the light, ignoring the mass waste of energy and falseness of it all. I was dazed, and it felt great.

We only arrived home at around three in the morning, so we slept in on the Monday. The car had to be moved to allow the streets to be cleaned – this sounds like a pretty boring detail now, but it becomes pretty significant later. Monday then took us for a very-warm-indeed walk along the Brooklyn Bridge. It's an impressive feat of human engineering as well as artistry, the symmetry of all the crossing wires is mind-blowing. They contort and shift as you walk down the central platform, made even more impressive by it's background of Manhattan's skyscrapers. Setting foot on the island, we headed for the Statue of Liberty – such an iconic emblem of America that I have respected all of my life. It was unfortunate that it was so far in the distance, we were expecting it to be more visible from the southern edge. Tickets were $28 and it would take too much time away from my photographing so we headed for Central Park. This was our tourist day, using the route between each landmark as a route for me to explore the city photographically. Each landmark also has such significance to the story as each has been so ingrained into me through western media and my romanticism of the states. We found a beautiful restaurant in the park that overlooked one of the lakes. Watching the sun go down, we spoke about the importance of being here and evaluated our experience so far. The sun fell behind the trees and left us sat in the cool blue light of the evening. 

Entry #11, 25th August - Extended family

Billboard outside of Fenway Park, Boston, MA.

We have left Boston. We're on the road.

Something significant happened that i left out of my last entry. I think because it needs more attention than just a quick sentence. So, as i said when i was with Jed, he told me of Donnie O'Duggan, whom i believe is my great, great uncle - aged eighty-five. Donnie would be the best person to speak to as he was old enough to remember what happened. Jed also said that he had been interested in our family's history and knew a lot about it. An added bonus is that his daughter, Kathy, has embarked on an extensive genealogy research project about the Duggan family history. It's not completely relevant to this project, but it would be interesting to hear what her research has turned up. I wouldn't be surprised if all of my family actually traces back to Ireland. With surnames like Duggan and O'Donnell, and the fact that Boston is so densely populated with the Irish, it seems pretty likely.

On Friday afternoon, i finally got hold of Donnie. After two days of ringing, and ringing, and leaving voicemails, i had almost given up. I told Jed that i hadn't been getting through, so he forwarded me his mobile number. After so many attempts on the other line, i was pretty shocked and unprepared as Donnie picked up immediately this time. I garbled my way through who i was, my reason for ringing and what i was doing. I was not tremendously clear, which seemed to set a tone of confusion for the rest of the call. He told me that he wasn't in Boston at that moment, he was in Cape Cod, in hospital. For what exactly, i'm unsure, i thought it would be too invasive to ask but made sure that he was okay. Donnie told me that he had been in for a while but was to be released tomorrow.

The confusion continues when i asked him if i could visit.
'No'. '
No?', i thought, panicked. Is he not interested in meeting me? I want so much to meet my American relatives and he seemingly doesn't want to. Donnie then explained that he couldn't drive back due to his condition, so he was unsure when he would be back in Boston. I never clarified, but i think this was his reason for saying we couldn't meet. I hope it is. I said my goodbyes and told him i would ring him another time when he was home.

A few days later, when we had arrived in New York City (don't worry, quick diary catch up to follow!) i received an email out of the blue from Anne Marie (Duggan? I still don't know), the sister of Jed. He had told her about me and she was excited to get in touch. The email was headed 'Joey O'Donnell', she said they had been pretty close. Unfortunately though, we had already left Boston where she lived. We didn't have time to go back and she wasn't available for when we stop over on the way home. Instead, we organised a time to speak on the phone later in the week. I'm pretty nervous for this, as i was about Jed. First impressions are stressful. But i'm also anxious to find out more about Joey's life from someone who knew him better. Hopefully she can fill in some of the gaps in my knowledge about his later life. She had also spoken to Donnie, whom had said he was interested to speak to me. Phew, that seemed to confirm my thoughts about our conversation.

I guess in leaving Boston, i should speak a little about my experience there. It wasn't quite the city i had pictured, i'd built it up to be this happening, lively city. I imagined it to be a city that never stopped moving, to be edgy and possibly a little cold. Instead, it welcomed me with a warm hug and a toothy smile. The pace of life seemed slow, easy to get into the rhythm of. It's people had manners like none other - strangers on train platforms rescued us from our transport confusion, people stopped in the street to chat with us. Everything seemed wholesome, almost child-friendly, even the bars. The streets were completely clean, almost sterile. I felt bad smoking in the city, as though i was smoking in a stranger's house. In no way is this a negative comment, it's just that i couldn't imagine Joey ever living there. Perhaps that's why he left for Reno. It is quite possible that the city was much different many years ago, but it seems hard to imagine. I felt at home there, in a strange way. I bought myself a Boston Red Sox t-shirt before we left.

Entry #10, 22nd August - A bit of bippity-bopp.

A girl sits at a bar in Wally's Jazz Bar, Boston MA.

I don't want this journal to play out as a simple tour diary – cataloguing the minutiae of each day, but I fear that if I don't write it down then I will completely lose huge chunks of what we have done due to my crappy memory. Just in the simple act of trying to bullet point the past few day's activities, I completely forgot about Thursday.

Photography has been utterly relentless. I have been putting myself under an awful amount of stress, this trip is a hugely loaded one. I know that I really need to deliver on this as it's the opportunity i've been dreaming of. We've yet to really relax, using every available minute to either photograph, video or write in my journal. I've also been tearing my brain apart with constant evaluation of whether I am tackling this in the best way that I possibly can. It's been pretty tough, but i'm fairly confident that i'm ticking the right boxes.

Due to this stress, myself and Bekky decided that we should have our first alcoholic beverage in the continent; this still wasn't an opportunity to set my camera down though. We found ourselves at Kenmore Square in the midst of Red Sox fans (Boston baseball team) – pushing agains the flow, our attention was directed to a cheap looking bar/restaurant on the side of the road. The beer was cold and so was the food, but it was still enjoyable. Following this we went with the flow, sitting down at the bar of The Cask & Flaggon, a sports bar heavily biased to Red Sox fans. I've rarely been as confused as I was in here. I always thought that I 'got' baseball, I knew that you hit the ball and ran around the bases. Turns out I 'get' rounders, the scoring system made no sense to me. Also with that, no one had explained to us about the American system of tipping at bars, so we spent a good fifteen minutes trying to figure out what to sign and how much to tip. We settled on 10% and hoped that would be enough.

Thursday came and with it was the desire to explore downtown. The suburbia of yesterday had been great but we needed the hum of the city. 'Boston is an incredibly clean city' I thought as we stepped off the 57 bus; there was literally no litter anywhere, not even a cigarette dimp in sight. It's buildings glinted in the sun, stretching up into the clouds – I craned my neck to see the top of them. I had never really seen so many tall buldings in such a dense area. This sparked excitement about how tall the buildings in NYC would be. Hunger eventually took us to The Barking Crab, a waterside seafood restaurant under a huge gazebo. We both ordered a platter of fried fish each – containing the most beautifully fresh tasting scallops, haddock and shrimp.

So far on our trip, we had walked to most of our destinations, figuring that we're most likely to see America as it is if we leave well trodden routes. Only, on this occasion this may not have been the best idea. Our next destination was a flat my Gran used to live in, the one Joey burst into, singing 'I am the Duke of Earl'. However, as romantic as this little story is, the area is far from it. Getting there, we had entered Boston's 'edgelands', going through empty industrial estate after empty industrial estate and also stepping out of our comfort zone. Nothing untoward happened to us at any point, but it wasn't what we had prepared for – both of us looking incredibly english, cameras hanging around our necks. We arrived at the front door, I took the photos I needed and we bailed on an Uber back to downtown. In hindsight, we were overly paranoid but if heading to somewhere different it's always better to blend in than stick out. I though it bizarre to imagine my Gran in such an area though, it's always strange to think of your family as being a young, care free person at one time. I struggle to picture her living anywhere outside of Cheshire.

After last night's experience of Red Sox fans, we decided we would try and catch a game to see if we could understand the sport any further. This plan was temporarily scuppered when we found out that it was $37 dollars for a ticket in the bleachers, but was later saved when we stumbled into The Bleacher Bar. One of it's walls was a floor to ceiling meshed window that looked straight out onto the field. You don't get that in premier league football. All of our ticket money was instead spent on beer & rum, a very nice trade off indeed. We made friends with an American who shared my name as well as my views on western politics; men in pubs solving the worlds problems once again.

With Friday came a small hangover and Boston's Freedom Trail – a pre-destined route around Boston's landmarks. I figured this would be a good way of navigating the city for some street photography whilst also seeing some culturally significant spots. The trail took us to vast parts of Boston that we previously hadn't seen, crossing over cobbled streets, through farmers markets and eventually to the Bunker Hill monument that concluded the route.

Before our trip, I decided to book myself and Bekky in for a tattoo by an artist I like at Boston Tattoo Convention. This was Bekky's first tattoo, so she was pretty nervous. Both of them are themed on commemorating our trip: mine a cartoon landscape of the kind of land we will find in western America and Bekky's a simple mountain horizon.

The night then took us to Wally's jazz bar, a small dive not far from Newbury Street. Climbing up onto the bar stools, we opened a tab and swivelled around to watch the musicians. The band was made up of four young artists, a trumpet, a saxophone, a double bass, a guitarist and a drummer all played along to the beat – taking turns to indulge themselves in a solo. The double bass took us down, swaying between slow notes and deep beats before the trumpet player rose us up through the ceiling; singing a song through his instrument. I had checked out the clubs' website previously and loved their ethos, they run a programme of educating kids about music, hoping to get them to pick up instruments instead of guns.

Part of my mission in America is to visit as many Jazz bars as I can. I had only ever visited one previously when I was in the UK so I was anxious to get into the scene, to allow myself to be consumed by the music and understand what is so romantic about jazz. After all, jazz had played such a huge part of my fabrication of Joey, I wanted to discover what it was all about. I tried photographing the musicians in here, but I wasn't really sure how to deal with this in order to show anything about the scene more than 'here is the musician playing, here is a live music shot'. Some of the shots are okay but I found that turning the camera on the customers was more fruitful in portraying the environment. As I progress, I will carry on shooting both but I feel that the significant images will be the people watching on, lost in the music.

Anyway, that brings us to today. We kicked it all off with a visit to some local thrift stores – one, a pop up shop in a church and the other, an impeccably organised, colour co-ordinated-superstore of a thrift shop. Bargains were had: discount tshirts, brand new shirts and a scruffy, stuffed dog that we've named Frank.

We spent the day hitting up a few of my Gran's favourite spots in Boston – the Public Gardens, Boston Common and Beacon Hill. Here, we encountered the swan boats she had described to me, they float so delicately through the water. We mingled within a cosplay convention and watched a newly married couple have their photographs taken. We walked narrow streets, holding hands the same way that Joey & Grace would have done all those years ago.

The night ended with a trip over to The Beehive, the other jazz bar I had my eye on. Earlier in the day I had been granted permission to photograph the evening's show. The Beehive is a bit more upmarket than Wally's, and as such my photographs from it are a little more stale. If I had let myself be carried away with photographing it's patrons i'm sure I would have been thrown out as my permission was to shoot the band. However, due to better lighting I managed to steal a few frames of the guitarist that seemed to express my idea of the jazz scene. As of yet i'm unsure how this will be incorporated into the rest of my work, but I believe it's important that I find a way.

Entry #9, 19th August - Meeting Jed

My great uncle, Jed, in his office. Carlisle Engineering, Jamaica Plane, Boston MA.

So, i guess i will pick up straight after my last entry. We landed with quite a thud, but i didn't care too much as i was too excited about the prospect of being on American soil. It felt pretty surreal. We waddled slowly down the aisles of the plane, snaked through clinical airport corridors and eventually reached passport control. Due to travelling on different books, myself and Bekky had to split up at this point - meeting again at baggage reclaim. Unfortunately, i didn't get the 'welcome home' i had been hoping for as i stepped into the country. Boohoo. 

We were greeted with a bast of humidity and heat however, as we squeezed our luggage out through the electric doors of the airport. The shapes of everything we could see were so oddly familiar, having watched so many American films and TV it was easy to get a feeling of Deja Vu, to feel that we have been here before somehow. Everything felt like a film set, it didn't feel quite real. 

We consulted Citymapper for a hand with how to find our accommodation, navigating a few buses and trains to finally arrive in Boston, MA. The house was incredible, as were all the other houses on the avenue. However, this one had a different kind of character to the rest. The drive was taken over by two forgotten cars, one reminiscent of Robert Frank's image of the covered car (only with more leaves and bracken) and the other had been completely consumed in fallen foliage. The front porch contained an eclectic mix of bric-a-brac; we quickly discovered that the house was much the same. Deborah (our host) greeted us with open arms and a huge smile before escorting us on a tour of the house, talking about all of our careers and lives. Deborah writes plays, her current one is about an artist that draws male nudes, called 'Too many willies'.

Our evening was not productive. Having been up for nearly twenty-four hours (also bare in mind the five hour time difference), i don't think our heads were functioning properly. We headed into Downtown Boston to find food, but i stupidly lead us into the financial district. Everything was obviously closed at 9pm at night there. After a couple of hours of ambling around in search of a nice restaurant, we settled on a Five Guys and bailed.

Wait! I've forgotten an important part of the day!

So yeah, on my way to Deborah's i received an email from Jed (John) Duggan, my great uncle. I had emailed him previously about my project, with my Gran chasing it up by calling his office. The email simply contained the word 'cell' and his number. I called him on our way back into Boston, anxious about how he would receive my request to meet. Honestly, i can't remember much of how it went, but i knew that he seemed slightly suspicious - asking a few questions possibly to verify who i was. Apart from that though, he was welcoming and happy to arrange a meeting with us the next day at 9am.

The next day we woke up incredibly early to make sure that we were prepped to meet him. Arriving at his office i knocked on, awkwardly asking the man who answered the door 'I'm here to see Jed Duggan?' to which he replied 'that's me.' We walked through the building and sat down in his office, on an incredibly comfy corner sofa. We began by sharing a few stories and having a flick through the photos of Joey, my Gran and my Mum. Jed then helped me plot a family tree of the Duggan side of the family. One particular branch lead to Donnell/Donnie O'Duggan (the 'O' was added for reasons i can't completely remember, but was to do with his profession of fitting stained glass windows in churches). Jed told me that he had been very young at the time of Grace & Joey, so his memories were hazy - not even remembering Grace at all. He said for me to contact Donnie, he would know much more of the story. 

Jed could remember Joey's personality though, that he would come bursting into a room and completely take it over. He would explode into song at any given moment. Joey used to work at the company as an engineer, fitting sprinkler systems. One of the addresses i had for Joey & my Gran was in Jamaica Plane. I told Jed of this and he remembered the house - it was just a minute away from his office, it was likely that Joey moved here to be close to the company. Jed told me that it was a boarding house though - meaning that it was a pay-weekly affair with no contract. This kind of suggests that even at this time, Joey's finances may have not been in the best shape.

Then Jed began telling us about his life. He said that he had the 'Duggan gene' of the wandering eye and addictive lifestyle. He grew up revelling in excess through much of his younger years. The difference between him and Joey though was that he was able to control the rest of his life at the same time. He ran a successful company throughout this time as well as starting up a popular restaurant on Boylston Avenue. In his own words though, Jed described himself as being lucky to have ditched this lifestyle at the beginning of his 40s. Joey didn't have the same luck. 'Some people just make bad choices, and unfortunately Joey was unable to see that his choices were bad ones'. He went on to say that Joey was the kind of guy that had no enemies, his only enemy was the bottle. We spoke of how when Joey's parents had passed away, Joey inherited their house. This was not a cheap place, intact it was a beautiful house in Brighton, MA. Instead of moving in, he sold the house. Instead of investing the money, he picked up everyone's tab at the bar. 'Those were a fun two years' he would say to people after the money had dried up.

One of the last things we chatted about was Joey's dad, Joseph. Jed described him as a man in stark contrast to Joey. He would never be seen out of a suit, impeccably dressed, and would only ever speak in proverbs.

As we left, Jed pointed us towards the boarding house, shaking our hands firmly as we said our goodbyes. The house was actually really pretty, not what i had been expecting after hearing that it was a pay-weekly. I was gearing myself to knock on the door when an angry-looking lady appeared at the window, shaking her head aggressively. With this, we left and headed to the house in Allston. Here, we were again greeted with a beautiful, panelled house on a friendly looking road. I picked up the courage to knock, but received no reply. Then i noticed a sign, this was also a boarding house.

Entry #8, 18th August - Disasters with fine line pens

Photo by Bekky Lonsdale

Never before have i ever had such a disaster with a finalise pen. I think changes in the air pressure must force all of the ink out through the nib - creating an incredible mess across these pages (this blog is written up out of my hand written journal).

But oh yes, why the change in air pressure, i hear you all desperately asking? You just simply need to know.

Well, turns out that i am writing this whilst sat on an aeroplane with the lovely Bekky Lonsdale. We are currently 34,031 feet above the Atlantic Ocean, travelling at 547 mph and approximately three hours and fourteen minutes away from landing in the United States of America. It's yet to hit me, it seems all too sudden and surreal. The day so far has consisted of waking up on the living room sofa, just about maintaining consciousness on the tube and then plunging into sleep on the plane.

I guess i should recap on some of my thought of the past few days. I began to seriously consider the ethics of embarking on this project, whether it is fair to stir such memories and emotions within my Mum & Gran. There have been a few moments where i have been worried that i have been pushing too far. As i have spoken about before, it is much easier for me to tackle this story than it is them as i never met Joey. I'm distanced, they're not.

It is also a very different experience for my Mum than it is for my Gran. Since my Mum didn't know Joey as well as she would have liked, she can get wrapped up in the excitement of asking questions that she has wondered about for all of her life, to hopefully have them answered by my research. However, it also saddens her to read through his old letters to both herself and my Gran. They're hard letters to read as well, letters from a lonely man - a man full of regret. My Mum often tells me that she blames herself, that she neglected her Father because she had a lot going on in her life at the time. She shouldn't blame herself though, it couldn't be further from her fault. She also raised a concern that really struck me, stunted me for a large period of time. The worry was about how public this project is, concerned that if Joey knew about this, would he be happy for me to be describing his flaws for the world to see? Probably not. This really threw me. In my past entries i have talked of how he cheated on my Gran, became dependent on alcohol, hung out with the wrong people and how i personally disagree with his love of guns. I now feel guilty for this as without more context, this appears like an attack on his character, which i don't think is what i had intended. I hope it wasn't. Yes, i had been quite disappointed in the fading of the Joseph O'Donnell that i thought i knew, but only i am to blame for this.

I appreciate that this is just as hard - if not harder, for my Gran to recall it all. From the way she talks about Joey, excusing his actions due to his youth, i don't think she ever fell out of love with him. Although, i believe that he hurt her too much to gain her forgiveness. There are huge portions of the story that i think Grace honestly managed to forget. On a few occasions we have discovered something that she must have known at one time, only to find out that she has no recollection of it. I don't like to push my Gran for the answers, i can see that the wounds still hurt.

This fear of exploitation, attack & defamation of character put me in an awkward place.
Could i carry on? Would it be fair to do so?

It was only when i visited Bekky's Auntie's a few days later that i had a small realisation. Jonte, a family friend, had come around to say hi. This was the first time i had met him - he was a tall, skinny guy with lengthy, messy hair. He was in his forties and bursting with energy, enthused about mine and Bekky's trip. I explained what we were doing there and why, mentioning nothing about my current dilemma. The conversation moved on, chatting away for thirty minutes more or so. As Jonte picked himself up to go, heading towards the door he turned over his shoulder - 'Make him look good!' 'Make him look good?' i thought. Such a simple sentence that when applied to this story, had such a complexity to it. 'Make him look good' i thought again. I kept playing it over in my head. I didn't want to portray Joey as a 2d, amazing man and dismiss the bedsides of his story and his personality. To do so would be offensive in itself and would pacify my need for some truth. To do so would be to give up and give in to my childhood fantasy. Then it dawned on me, i don't need to ignore the bad times to make him look good. Instead, i just need to show sincere compassion and understanding for Joey - for himself and for his life. I need to celebrate his successes, not just dwell on the failings. I want to celebrate the character traits that i identify myself with. After all, he is still my American hero - my connection to the nation. It just so happens that he was not an archetype, but a real human being.

Oh, and here is one other thing that i need to let go of. No longer am i going to use him as a metaphor for my cultural understanding of America. Previously, i had thought my fictional/factual stories could act as a metaphor for the fantastical vs the real. Thinking this through though, to do so would be to make him a symbol - forcing him to represent ideas, facts & everything else that he may or may not have had anything to do with. To do this would be to reduce him to less than a person, to remove all personality and human complexities in order to make him fit my argument. This is similar to a lecture we had at LCC. We analysed a picture by W Eugene Smith of a woman holding a disabled child in a bath. The image suggests ideas of the Christian Madonna and Child, signifying motherhood and religion whilst becoming a symbol for an issue. In becoming a symbol, the image is no longer about the specific problems of the individuals in the photograph, but about the connotations that we place on it - often leading to the viewer caring less about the individuals. This process is incredibly reductive. So, instead of Joey acting as a symbol of my America, i plan to negotiate my identity independently from him.

Photo by W Eugene Smith, Tomoko Uemura in her bath.

One hour and fifty minutes to go. Time to put on a crappy film and have snooze.

Entry #7, 13th August - Five days until we fly.

Joey

Five days until we fly.

A lot has happened since my last entry. The death certificate arrived. It came much quicker than expected and was quite the shock. I'm not sure i was ready for it.

Opening the package, the first thing i noticed was the age Joey died. Forty eight. This is no age to die. I hadn't realised previously that he was so young. It must be an incredibly sad feeling for my Mum to know she has already out-survived him.

The next thing my eyes flicked to was the address on the certificate. This confirmed that his last place of residence was in Clarkson with Francis Stone - she was also the informant. My eyes scanned the page nervously, knowing that i was about to discover what my family had not known for many years. Then i saw it, Cirrhosis, his cause of death. It was as we had expected, his lifetime abuse of alcohol was the cause. Cirrhosis is the long term scarring of the liver through consistent alcohol consumption. The truth hadn't been so far removed from my fantasy after all. The difference is important though - unlike my over-the-top, romanticised end, a portrait of a man who had control of his drinking habits and chose to consume his life away; the reality suggests a man who had lost control. Joey was battling his habits and lost. Maybe he found solace in the bottle, maybe he didn't. I don't want to suggest anything for definite as since i can't ask him, i would only be creating a second fantasy, a second fiction. But then again, to what extent could my view of him ever be truly objective and real? Perhaps every view that we form on anyone is to some extent fictitious. It's impossible to spend every minute with everyone and also impossible to get into their heads, so we fill the gaps. It's human to imagine, it's only natural to assume things.

I have began thinking about this new information practically. I can now visit the last place he lived/died. This information haunts me a little but i know it's something i need to do. Although, it will be a strange request to whoever is living there now.

The certificate also confirms where he was laid to rest, giving the trip it's logical conclusion. I was about to file away the paper, but giving it one last read through i noticed a box i hadn't noticed previously. 'Was the decedent ever in the military? Yes'. Military? Joey? I had never heard the slightest mention of this. At what point in his life could this have happened? I guess this explains his love of guns, but i hadn't pictured him as being the military type.

Ringing up my mum, i informed her of the arrival of the certificate. She echoed some of the thoughts i had, that he was far too young and that we had suspected alcohol to be the cause. She was also equally surprised about the discovery of his being in the military, telling me she would dig through her's and my gran's old letters to see what she could find.

A few days later, i found myself in Cheshire. My Mum had amassed a huge amount of new information on Joey's life. Firstly, was that he had been in the navy, although we still didn't know when. In the letters, he talks about how he sometimes wished that he could re-enlist. He served on the Kitty Hawk - a famous USS supercharger named after the site of the first powered aeroplane flight. He spoke of his friendship with some of the jump jet pilots.

Secondly, and i was incredibly excited to find this out - he did in fact play jazz music!!! When living in Reno, he played the saxophone and trumpet. There's no evidence that this was ever professional or even with a full band, but he did talk about how he used to jam with one of the drummers from Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons (he doesn't say which one and there were quite a few, so i'm unsure who exactly).