At some point in our lives we all ask ourselves: “Where is home?” Many people that move to a new country find themselves adjusting to their new environments while, at the same time, being nostalgic for their home lands. Our memories of what “home” feels like tends to be tied to nostalgia and is connected only to the memories of the last time we were there. When we do visit our former home we often realize, to our shock, that the picture of “home” we held in our memory is no longer true. We discover that our sense of home is rooted in not only where we were before, but also tied to that period in time. What we think of as home may no longer exist and may have transformed into something even more unfamiliar than our since adopted land. 

I am lucky to have a close friend whose migrant’s journey was in the opposite direction of myself. As I moved to my friend’s homeland, he moved to mine and, as we both adjusted to our adopted lands, our views of ourselves, identity, and home have evolved.

We are both artists. Kerry a photographer and me a musician. As we share a lyrical approach to our crafts, I recognize in his images, what he hears in my music. As most artists, we appreciate the transformative qualities of our journeys. Over the years, the exchange of memories and stories my friend and I shared have somehow provided us with new insights into what “home” means.

For the passed twenty years, photographer and friend Kerry Reinking has provided me with a home away from home whenever I visited the Netherlands and stayed at his beautiful house on the Amsterdam canals that he shared with another brother in arms. Growing up in the flat country side of Iowa, the quaint Dutch landscapes filled Kerry’s dreams where as I, growing up in the low lands, always dreamt of far away lands.