Summering in Millay

I can't imagine a better way to return to America after 6 years of jaunting than spending one summer month at the Millay Colony for the Arts. Austerlitz, New York is 2.5 hours north of NYC by train+taxi. The day I arrived (June 2, 2011) (yes, this blog post is way overdue) was brilliantly sunny and just a little bit nippy. White clouds, blue sky, private studio, cave like bedroom. Could I ask for more? Apparently so.

Donna was our chef extraordinaire. She cooked three course gourmet dinners for the seven of us, five nights a week, and for our other meals, did all our grocery shopping, paid and delivered. Dark chocolate? Check. Blueberries and oranges and grapefruit and strawberries? Check. Bacon? Check. Quinoa? Check. Avocados? Check. Pretty much anything our hungry hearts desired.

Then there was my studio - small, warm, flooded with sunlight, filled with books (it used to be the library), windows on two walls, one big fat desk and swivel chair, a super long bench seat with comfy pillows, and enough floor space to do yoga, pilates, or dance around like mad.

Then there were my six arty companions.

Amanda is a writer and performer, eloquent and precise and hilarious, as thoughtful as they come, killer Bananagrams player, and in the midst of her transition from a lifetime in California to a running start in Brooklyn.

Jesse is a dry humoured and self deprecating painter of layered mythical scenes, up for a stroll or a dance or a rousing discussion about farms or religion or art or really anything.
  Casey is a playwright, irrepressible and charming, romantic and idealistic (and she follows through in deed), Twin Peaks fan, and champion of our artistic patron, Edna St. Vincent Millay (whose house and grounds were all around).

Dustin is a sweet and smart visual artist (and fellow Penn alumni), who was about to start on a Western odyssey of art residencies. During his time at Millay, he covered and recovered the walls of his studio in the barn with sculpture/drawings so contained and subtle and careful I had to look and look again.

Lydia is a writer from Arizona, tall and lanky and sun blonde, with an addiction to baked beans and bacon and beer, an excellent music collection, and a jewelry making business on the side. She and Dustin soon discovered their mutual dream to start their own art colonies.

Liz is a painter of colourful geometric work, former punk girl rocker (and dances like she means it), open hearted and playful and dedicated, and my yoga and bathroom mate.

Our crew grew really close, playing Bananagrams and watching Twin Peaks after dinner, bbqing on the weekends, going for long drives, shopping at thrift stores, jumping in Lake Queechee every chance we got, and even making a movie together (starring a hapless Monster in the woods).

The Hudson River Valley is an escape for many city folk. Country and weekend homes abound, and there's a reason the cutie main streets in many towns feature fusion restaurants, hipster thrift stores, and movie theatres catering to Big Apple tastes, from indie flicks to the smarter blockbusters (we watched Bridesmaids and Win-Win - both were excellent).

One of the joys of Millay is your phone doesn't work. For four of the residents, the ones who slept and worked in the barn, the internet didn't either, unless they came up to the main house where there was wifi. Even though I elected to live/work in the main house, I'm quite sure I would have been about a million times more productive if I had been in the barn. But I'm addicted to the internet, you see. It's not just facebook (I swear). Six years of gypsying, not always having a phone, or a phone no one will call because it costs a bomb to call a Dhaka mobile, has inured me to web-enabled communication. Chat, email, facebook, twitter, G+, blogs - I get my friends+family fix through the ether. I think I'd die without it. Or be a great deal unhappier anyway.

But there was at least one way to make a call (other than Skype-out): if you walked across the gravel road, past Vincent's lovely house, into the garden where she held her debaucherous naked parties, up the hill and past her little writing cabin, through the tree line and the first meadow, you get to what the June Millay residents called "the cell phone hill."

Up there, Vincent had built a clay tennis court (now overgrown), on a plateau on the hill. You can still see the posts for the net, and to the side, a wooden table and metal chair for sitting and writing and drawing. Or staring at the distant hills where you could just make out the cell phone tower, ie you got bars and got your call on.

I know it was a terrible shame to walk through all that beautiful landscape just to make a phone call, but maybe you know what a hermit I can be. At Millay, I tried to venture out at least once a day - there were poetry trails, hidden meadows, lush woods, overgrown cemeteries - GREEN! SUN! WIND! SKY! THE WILD OUTSIDE! - but there were some days I only went out to call you. Yes you.

Of course, the whole point of art colonies is so you have time and space to work. So I worked: 25 new pages of my novel, and 10 submissions to grants, lit mags, photography contests, prizes, agents, and publishers (and the grind goes on).

I ended my residency at Millay with an art workshop led by the ambitious and accomplished (and hottie) Nina Katchadourian (pictured on the right; Caroline, Executive Director of Millay to the left). One of the many things we talked about was a creative tribe or artistic family: who teaches you, who you look up, who looks to you, who you work with.

I loved the way Nina approached her artistic life, everything geared towards making art, to recording her ideas in some musical or artistic or literary way. If she didn't know how to do something or couldn't learn something fast enough, she found people to collaborate with. And her brilliant and hilarious "Seat Assignment" project proves that sometimes you don't need anything but imagination and time.

Perhaps Nina has felt unsure in the past, but the overwhelming feeling I got from her in those three hot shiny July days was the sheer joy and power and rightness of art making. It poured off of her. There didn't have to be any other point to the making than the making. It was a given, a pursuit as worthy and unchallengeable as anything else.

There are writers I admire, writers I know, writers I want to be (oh, David Mitchell). I'd never thought of them (us) as a tribe. In my head, as untrue as I knew this to be, I had been working on my ownsome. And though I've had a great advisor or two (ah, Stephen Beachy) and many amazing editors and readers, I had never thought of what it meant to have an artistic mentor (hello Nina). Chalk up yet another reason to heart my time at Millay. And thank you Calliope and Caroline for the chance to return in the winter. A sensate artful treat.