The Lights Somewhere Near Albany

It's 9 pm. The sun must have gone down at 5 today and I am on Route 87 South from Montreal to Philadelphia. I have never been on this stretch of highway before in upstate New York. It's dark and desolate. Mountains form a curvy line against the night sky. They stretch out in front of me and above them the sky becomes purplish. There are lights out there somewhere near Albany. I pull off into a side parking area for a quick break. It's starting to rain.

It's completely black on this shoulder, and while I'm stretching in preparation of the all night drive ahead, it occurs to me that this is one of the great road trips of my life. As I pull back on the road and wonder, "what are the others?" I identify them one by one. There are only a handful: long trips through sunny rolling fields, short trips across town that I've driven a hundred times, but somehow seemed new and fresh, trips to get lost, trips where the destination couldn't come soon enough, and trips where the destination would come much too soon. The trips I have categorized in my mind have one thing in common; I'm driving them all alone.

Usually, there's a woman on my thoughts and leaves on the trees are more colorful than I've noticed them before, the music on the radio is speaking to me, and the future is full of bright ambition. Or, just as common, things with the woman didn't work out, never for lack of trying, and the road is lonely and only leads away from a life I could have lead, a happiness that could have been – if I'd been someone else. During the hopeful ones, I reason, I was clearly being irrational, the hapless ones – clearly just as tragic as I identified them to be while driving them.

Today's trip is different. I am not leaving home or going home and behind me in the middle of the van, tucked between the two middle seats, is a tiny black metal box.

I drove to Montreal last night from Camden, Maine. I spent the night at the apartment of my production designer, and met up with my directors of photography the next afternoon. It was all for an hour with this colorist named Dan, whom the DP's informed me, had worked on several feature films. "This guy can do amazing things." I would only have an hour or so meeting with him, but he had already agreed with the DP's that he would help make my flat Super 16 image look like a movie. "This will be my oasis from this commercial drudgery," says Dan.

"I hope it can be your oasis," I reply. Dan, like so many others has volunteered his time and expertise to make a short little film called "The Nightingales Sing" into a real movie. It was so amazing to have worked with so many people passionate about this project. I am filled with gratitude and appreciation, and a new outlook on the possibility and plausibility of all my creative designs. It makes me excited about the future. Did it all really happen? It could have been a dream, but the little black box, a 1.5 terabyte mirrored RAID hard drive, serves as a testament to the sweat and faith of so many people.

I'll arrive in Philadelphia in the small hours of the morning. When I hit New Jersey, a light rain will come down and will pick up steadily as I near my destination. But for now the road is quiet and serene. Mountains form a curvy line against the night sky and beyond the mountains, there are lights.