Emily Rena Williams
Emily is a Baton Rouge based artist interested in investigating memory and place through photography, writing, and audio. She holds a BA in fine arts and history from Haverford College and is a current MFA candidate in photography at Louisiana State University.
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This work is about a road trip. It’s about freedom and fear, and the fragility of traveling alone for a long time. It is about being far away, but unsure of who or what exactly you are far away from. It’s about spending weeks and weeks on the outside looking in, but mostly standing on the outside looking out. It is an ode to the snarls in your hair, the salt on your skin, and the hard packed dirt underneath your fingernails after camping for what feels like forever. It is about the in-between times, and the vast stretches of empty land punctuated every so often by tiny towns that are so small that if you blink as you stop at their only stop light, you’ll miss them as they fade into the rearview and spit you back out into the great wide world. It’s about being quietly swallowed up whole by the black velvet night, and waking up with the sunrise alone in the back of your car, tangled in your sleeping bag with your jaw sore from unconsciously grinding your teeth, and your heart pounding inexplicably, telling you to run.
the in between
When I get to Baytown I show up to your house as a stranger in the pouring rain and you take me in like you’ve known me my entire life and ask if I’m going home at all, and I tell you no, and wonder what that question even means because I’m pretty sure I’ve never been home in my entire life but I am sure that
I’m untethered but in the best way. I'm entirely free and I can finally breathe again for the first time in seven months and I won't stay in one place because we have too much to lose and not enough time to save it but me and these thin plastic sheets full of silver halides have to try because it’s so precious and holy and true and I don’t want to know what happens if we forget it and it tortures me that all I can keep is a fraction of a second.
And after a night in Matagorda County you offer me your couch but I demure and tell you no thanks, I’ve already paid for my campsite but really it’s because I’m afraid of the flock of taxidermy ducks on your wall watching me sleep all night and anyways I have to get an early start tomorrow because
I’m on a mission to see all the light in the world and I won’t stop until I’ve done it and I’m only passing through your hometown for a few hours or at most a few days and when I get there I’ll stand on the outside looking in and that’s exactly where I want to be.
But when a thunderstorm chases me indoors in Victoria you tell me not to be stupid but maybe I am
Because I'm only 5’4 and a buck twenty five and a girl and I sleep alone in the back of my car every night and I haven’t showered in five days.
The next day I cut my hair for the first time in 8 years over the trashcan in the bathroom of the state park because I guess I don’t have anything better to do
And when I get to the Barrier island I stand there at the edge of the world while everyone else is inside because it’s only 15 degrees out and I let the waves soak through my sneakers even though I know the hour drive back to Rockport will be far less pleasant when my toes are numb but I want to feel the water because
I’ve never been more lucid in my life and I have to take it all in while I still can and I am desperate to remember every spec of dirt underneath my fingernails and every snarl in my hair and the pattern of the salt that accumulates on my skin when I’ve sweat so much that there’s no water left in my body to sweat out any more.
And when we meet for the first time in Brownsville I feel relieved because even though you’re a stranger you’re the most familiar face I’ve seen in a long time. You tease me and ask what I'm running from and I ask you what you’re afraid to run towards and even though I knew you were joking I wish you hadn’t asked me that question because I hadn’t thought about that before and that was on purpose.
And as soon as I get to Laredo I drop my backpack on the ground and the millions of hairline fractures that have been forming this whole time finally give way and I shatter and sob to you over FaceTime and ask you what to do but really I don't want your advice I want to see you but you live 14 hours away in Montgomery, Alabama so instead I drive west
And try to memorize every single contour of those empty highways that I’ll probably never drive again because it is all so exquisite and beautiful that it can’t possibly be an accident and I relish the twinge of fear in the back of my skull when my cell service cuts out because now I’m doing 85 through the desert and there’s no one around for miles and miles and not even google maps can tell me what to do now.And when I get to the RV park in Marathon you call me and ask what happens if I break my leg when I’m out there alone and I assure you that it won’t happen and if it does a someone will find me and I'll be ok but I carry the guilt of scaring you with me up and down the mountains the next day.
And I realize later on that I haven’t said a word to anyone in 48 hours and I can feel that these last few weeks my ribs have start to press up against my skin more and more just like they used to and I know you’ll be angry about it if you find out and I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I didn’t mean for that to happen again and I try as hard as I can to fix it before you see me
And I stay at your apartment in Richland Hills for two and a half days and for two and a half days we laugh so hard that our cheeks hurt and we pretend to be cowboys and photographers and tourists and art critics but that was two days too long because you notice the things I'm trying to hide and it makes me feel cornered and afraid but I guess that’s what I get for holding still for so long.
But I'm happier now than I’ve ever been because daylight and I are on the same schedule now and that’s exactly how it should be but it’s not as romantic as you think it is and I wake up every morning with my heart pounding and my jaw sore from grinding my teeth in my sleep.
And in Dallas you ask me if I ever get scared and I feel the taser my classmate lent me in my pocket pressed up against my thigh and I lie to us both and say no, never.
Any space there once was between anxiety and excitement has now entirely collapsed but I'm pretty sure it feels good and I don’t want it to ever stop because my cheap black coffee and ramen noodles that I cook on my rickety little camp stove every day are best thing I’ve ever had and maybe I’m half feral but who cares because I love this and I’m never going back to sleeping inside
But I know it can’t last forever at least not this time and the drive back scares me the most because I know as soon as I cross the state line the world will start to shrink and cave in around me and I'll start to suffocate again
