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Post-Branson: A Love Letter
June 2024
Branson, Missouri
Branson has alternating faces to those who know it. An Evangelical altar for the late-living and god-fearing, constructed from Vegas imported rhinestones, sun-bleached billboards, and the indomitable spirit of nostalgia. Where kind retired folk are rendered eternal tourists of the Branson strip—the open mouth of town that stifles and summons their memories in the same breath. Where one is free to forget, so as to remember. A locus of morality and decency to the middle-aged, who orbit in the lingering gravity of McMansion-Pinterest creature comforts. Who sustain an economic pulse that circulates high-fructose family fun through lush, tick-ridden mountains. Where those mountains forgive the unforgiven who get lost within them. It is also, to its young, a home. Home to myself, and home Cydney.
Graduating from Branson High seven years ago and coming to college in St. Louis, I wasn’t prepared for the double takes I’d get when I told people my dad was an Elvis impersonator. Many of my childhood memories are filtered through this epicenter of boomer nostalgia, a town whose economics conflate hillbilly Hollywood aesthetics with bible-belt morality. There is also, of course, the earth. Vibrant, alive, teeming with a healthy lake-to-mountain ecosystem, a constant and quiet arbiter of truth that supports the carnival of man erected upon it.
Cydney left town a few years after I did, I believe. It might have been sooner. But she and her family found themselves in Real Vegas, where the carnival persists in its most manifest and opportune state. She and I had wanted to shoot together for some time, until the stars finally aligned. In early June, we returned for the 20th anniversary of our home dance studio, camped out at an Applebee’s high-top on a Friday night, and quickly realized the spiritual gravity of this project would be healing for both of us.
On the day of, Cydney and I came prepared with nothing but a few choice garments and accessories, and a vague idea of locations that got switched last minute. At no point did this feel like an obstacle. They were staying at Ronda’s condo, where we started pulling a few shirts and dresses from their luggage and taking stabs at playing stylist. I asked Ronda if she’d had a belt we could use for one look, and she emerged from her closet with 4 in her hands to choose from. Serendipitously and perfectly, this process repeated until Ronda’s closet became the epicenter of 70% of our looks. In a magical and inexplicable hour, every Bransonian piece we could have imagined had been sourced. God bless you, Ronda.
It made sense to have Cydney in a half-assembled ensemble of decades: a 60’s dress, 20’s accessories and makeup, a glitzy 00’s shoe and a pack of my American Spirits. When we got in my car to drive down Fall Creek, I asked, “Tell me about this character. What’s her name?”
Myrtle was her immediate response. A woman who’d come to this town with half-empty aspirations and perhaps misleading indicators of potential. It was Myrtle who took her smoke break between shows outside the boat storage unit on Fall Creek. Myrtle who would await an unfulfilling rendezvous in the tractor lot with the “agent” passing through town. Myrtle, who would gather a bouquet of Branson brochures in a final desperate attempt to reclaim herself from perpetual caricature-hood, before running to the chapel and fainting before the equivocal powers of the cross. Myrtle, who—moved to remove her stage lashes before the chicken statue on the strip—would find regulation at the All You Can Eat Buffet parking lot. But would she ever find her way? Would it be an emotional illusion to re-bypass after the next installment of existential reckoning?
Cydney found herself deeply connected to the role by the end of the shoot, tearing up when my flash began to die and the night hour pressed on our momentum. On the way to grab food after with her mom and our mentors, it was clear that whatever story we created was beyond our individual foresight and was waiting to be told. No aspect of posing or staging felt posed or staged. It was as if a gate opened up above us, and Branson provided every detail of the narrative for Cydney to access and translate. We both just had to be present for it.
I wonder if that is the best way to create, which is a lofty and idealistic intention in many ways and ignores the endless gifts present in the spirits of pure, genuine planners. Yet I can only see this project possible after surrendering control—not by choice, but because there was really no other way to do it. I often find myself in experiences where I can only remark, “I guess I’ll do this now!” This character-study was another of these infinite variations, which tend to feel overwhelmingly neutral. Where I always know in my heart that whatever is happening should be happening, but know nothing much beyond that.
I look at these images care less about their quality than the sincerity and patience that went into creating them. I have Cydney and AJ to thank for that, people who have trusted me for a long time and people who I’ve always deeply respected. Witnessing this character come so natural to Cydney, with nuances surfacing so effortlessly, was an honor in itself. From retrieving a necessary pickle chip in a whimsical cursive koozie, to having Myrtle ponder her reality in front of an actual group of crows gathered around a carcass, there was nothing cerebral in telling her story.