iO Tillett Wright       Volume 3      www.darlingdays.com                          ---> go HOME                                               iO Tillett Wright HOMESICK

iO Tillett Wright 

           Homesick for Loneliness

        “For a sudden period of four years, in my teens, I lived in Europe. Exiled from my life at home, and discovering the meaning of freedom, I took advantage of the cheapest student Eurail train program, and went wild, exploring every country I could get to on a meager dime. An awkward kid in foreign places, I did this alone, with headphones, a notebook, and little else. The motion of the trains, the process of escaping, perpetually, the solitude - it became like a drug. I went to every country in Western Europe that I had time to get to, scribbling in my 99 cent composition books, the music in my headphones a soundtrack to a real life movie of motion.

        Seven years after returning home, I was comfortable; domesticated, in love, I owned a car and a dog, I had a beautiful house, and I didn’t recognize myself. I was homesick for the loneliness of my youth. It was as if everything good I had ever created came from solitude, distress, restless boredom... and the blurred windows of a train. Taking nothing but fifty rolls of film and an empty notebook, I embarked on my personal Great Escape. Chasing nothing in particular, save that solitude, I drifted through six countries by rail, writing and photographing whatever compelled me, for six weeks.

        In the end, I found my loneliness, I kissed it, and I let it go - a rare instance of finding exactly what you’re looking for. These are the images I created on my vision quest, 2009.”