I wanted to call this post "Letter from L.A. the MacDowell Colony," a small joke, since when I signed on to blog for Lighthouse I decided that would be my regular schtick — Letter from L.A. Only WordPress won't allow strike-throughs in the title. I showed them. The moral being, never thwart a writer unless you want them to spend an entire paragraph justifying what was undoubtedly a lame idea in the first place.
I used to make fun of these high-end artist retreats and their presumably snooty residents. Suck it up, baby, and just do your work at home. But over the last few years I've been increasingly overwhelmed by my editing job at a weekly newspaper. Every minute there's another deadline. Every week I herd writers whose dogs ate their homework and who have multiple grandmothers' funerals to attend. I haven't had a non-working vacation in 6 1/2 years, including while I was at Grand Lake in July, where I edited a cover piece and several inside features and two restaurant reviews. Not that I'm complaining (heh). And so. Here I am in New Hampshire for the month of November, with nothing to do but work on the memoir. What an unbelievable luxury.
That's my workspace in the photograph, my cottage in the woods. It's one room, with three large tables, bookshelves, a fireplace, and a bed. It's a 7-minute walk to the dorm, another three minutes to Colony Hall. That's where breakfast and dinner are served. The food here is incredibly good, three squares, plus all the coffee you can drink. Lunch is delivered to your studio in a picnic basket. The other residents are lovely people (so much for my prejudices), creatively diverse, novelists, short story writers, playwrights, poets, and journalists. I've met two architects, three composers, a large-scale sculptor (in concrete!), a filmmaker, and a collaborating couple who work in mixed media. There are presentations and the conversation at meals is always lively. Again, what a luxury.
The other night a group of us went into town. MacArthur genius grant recipient and former MacDowell fellow, Anna Schuleit, gave a presentation at the Peterborough Historical Society about her most recent commission for UMass at Amherst. In 3 1/2 weeks she painted a large abstract on the side of the Fine Arts building. Except that it isn't really an abstract. If you sit on a bench on the other side of a pond, the reflection reveals a face.
Instead of catching a ride back to the Colony afterward, I walked. I climbed the hill, passed pretty Colonial houses and Peterborough Elementary and the Monadnock Country Club. Then came a stretch of road where darkness closed in, tall evergreens on either side. Stars glittered among the treetops. The road was dead black. I had the sense that at any second I might fall into a ditch or step off into space, and it was thrilling, being unable to see where I was going or where I had been.
