This brought to my mind my hapless Mets. And that brought to my mind Johan Santana.

Have you ever seen Santana strut out to the mound? Have you ever seen him circle the mound after striking out a batter? Something about his demeanor reminds me of watching tigers on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. I have a feeling the morning he wakes up on a day he’s scheduled to pitch, he believes, no, KNOWS, that he’s going to win the game. And not just win, but totally dominate the hitters. I get a feeling that he’s out there sending a psychic message to everyone in the opposing dugout: I own you. I wouldn’t say its arrogance, or confidence even. It’s something else.

I don’t know Mr. Santana. This is just my impression. Maybe it’s all a façade. Maybe, but I doubt it.

I wish to god there was a way to bottle that quality, whatever it is. There are times, when I am revising, for example, that I’d like to glug down a long drink of that stuff, to be able to say to that story, “I own you.”

KG

Dear KG,

Thanks for the question. My life is really quite boring when I’m at a residency. The days are all pretty much the same. I lose track of the date and what day of the week it is. It hardly matters.

Here at Playa I’ve been writing — working on a short story collection that’s been a part of my life for a long time. Here’s my regimen:

• Wake up around dawn.
• Stretch.
• Breakfast (a mix of cereals, raisins, a banana with milk, coffee with milk).
• Free write three pages in a notebook.
• Work — write 1,000 focused words at the computer. (This is well above the norm for me when I’m wearing my writer hat at home.)
• Revise older writing.
• Lunchtime.
• Afternoons here have been spent working on a grant proposal, adapting a play for a possible film project, playing guitar.
• Maybe go for a walk.
• Dinner.
• Check email, Facebook, upload stuff to the blog etc.
• A movie or read some, maybe write a blog post. Possibly ping-pong if I can talk someone into it.
• Go to sleep around 11pm.
• Wake up the next morning and do the same thing.

It’s a quiet life, but I like it.

And KG, your question has me thinking about what I do here that I don’t do in my real life and vice-a-versa. I see another post…

It’s a fair article that is a retread of what has been written about Arcosanti and Soleri for the last 30 years. There is one shining paragraph. The last one.

For decades now, visitors have asked what it would take to finish Arcosanti. Maybe it’s time for a different question. Why doesn’t everyone choose to live this way?

“This way” is described in the previous paragraph or two, but basically “this way” is an existence where the important thing is frugal living and community building and not conspicuous consumption. After reading this article, I was reminded of one of my first interactions with anyone at the Arcosanti.

I had exchanged a couple of emails with Stefan, the PR person at the time, and we scheduled a phone meeting. I called and went to voice mail. I was slightly miffed.

Stefan emailed me back a few hours later and apologized. He was having a crazy day in the Arcosanti office, he told me, and needed to get out and do something with his hand so he went to work in the garden.

I was no longer miffed. I was, instead, very envious. I was at the time spending three days a week working in an office in Tribeca, sitting at a desk under a bank of fluorescent lights. To be able to leave for a couple of hours during my 9 to 5 office routine to work in the community garden seemed like not only would it do me a world of good, but would do my employers, the garden, and the community a world of good, too.

Why doesn’t everyone choose to live that way?

I know, it’s a naïve question. Still, it would be nice, wouldn’t it?

And then, there is this…

And yes, I am reading it. How could I resist “a frank and freaky speak-in”?

Look, we all need a break now and then, right?

The Poet stopped making his lunch and gazed out the window. “Look at it though,” he said, “it hasn’t done that before.”

The Filmmaker went outside and took more photographs.

Here then, 18 views of Summer Lake. Which do you like the most?

They are heading to their homes. To their wives, husbands, girlfriends, boyfriends, parents, friends, to their real worlds. I will miss them all, but I will savor the moments we shared. Sitting around the table at snack time, listening to everyone answer one of Terry’s incisive questions; discussing the Beatles, Led Zepplin, and Villa Lobos with Keane; exchanging books with Mary (Sam Shepard for Denis Johnson); talking about Werner Herzog, Walter De Maria, and owls with Jamie; getting cosmic with Kumani while waiting for the sole wired computer; eating John’s just-baked bread; watching films–from the sublime to the stupid–with Scot.

Reading, hearing, and seeing all of their work has been an inspiration and nourishing. 100% certified organic.

I started photographing the birdhouses on the grounds of Playa. Looping through my head, Homesick by the Kings of Convenience.

Travel safely and be well, friends. See you on Facebook.

Residencies come in all shapes and sizes. Some limit whom they accept (Hedgebrook is for women writers, for example) but most welcome all artists, at all stages of their careers, and several are open to academics and scientists as well. Some are more like vacation spots and require that you pay to attend, others politely suggest you make a nominal contribution, many are a free ride and some may offer grant you a travel or hardship stipend. Some residencies are designed so that you’re roughing it in the great outdoors and some pamper you to no end. Most are somewhere in between.

At some places you have to cook and shop for yourself, at others you have a master chef making every meal for you and staff serving it to you. And again, some places are somewhere in between. I’m writing this at Playa Summer Lake Artist Residency, where they cook one dinner a week for the residents and offer an often filling snack-meal at 5pm Tuesday through Friday, and the rest of the meals you make yourself. However, Playa maintains an impressively stocked pantry that invites pillaging by hungry artists. It’s full of organic goodies, local produce, some healthy already prepared food, and fresh eggs laid by their own chickens. (I had some of these for lunch the other day and boy were they delicious.) You don’t have to leave the compound to shop for food.

“David,” I can hear you saying, “food, I get it. Give me another good reason to apply to one of these places?”

Jeez, you’re impatient! Okay, here are ten reasons.

My studio at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, 2009

You need to focus on your work.
These places offer distractionless time. It’s not like my life is ordinarily that complicated, but even so, it is full of mundane stuff that causes stress and sucks up time I’d rather use making stuff. At a residency, you just need to think about whatever project you’re working on. Sometimes you have to think about what to make for dinner, but that’s not so bad.

You need to get off the Internet.
Most residencies have limited Internet access, and though this sometimes seems inconvenient while you’re there, it’s a godsend. Honestly, there’s no reason for me to be on the Internet for more than an hour a day. But at home, I squander a lot of time online doing who knows what.

You need to stop watching cable/Hulu/YouTube/Netflix streaming, etc.
Take a break from all that visual and aural stimulation. I find I read more at these places. I will also just sit in a chair and think, something I rarely seem to do in my real life. Curiously, at this residency, I’m not listening to much music.

You need to meet some interesting and exciting people.
If you like having artists as friends, then go, go, go. Oh sure, there will probably be someone there you’d like to punch in the head, and sometimes there are pissing contests, but mostly the people are generous, accepting, and supportive.

My studio at the MacDowell Colony, 2010.

You need to get into nature.
Most residencies are nestled in a spectacular natural setting. Do your thing, have some lunch, go for hike, go back to doing your thing. Sounds like a great day, right? I find I fall into a circadian rhythm at these places, going to sleep earlier and waking up earlier. This morning I watched the sunrise. At one point I was becoming impatient: it was pretty and all, but I was ready for the big guy to come up from behind the mountain. “Come on, already!” I thought. And then I laughed at how absurd that was. I can’t rush the sun, I relearned. I think when we’re in our hyperhectic real lives, we forget how to laugh at our absurdities. Being in nature has a way of putting us in place.

You need some new stimulating reading, viewing, listening material.
Sitting around with your fellow residents, discussions will arise that reference books, films, paintings, music, etc., that are unfamiliar to you. You will come away with a nice list of art to explore.

You need to be in a safe place where you can do something out of your comfort zone.
Before I went to a residency, I never played guitar for anyone. Encouraged by my people, I took part in a music salon night, and there’s been no turning back. Here at Playa, I may write a poem. I’m also growing a beard. (Actually, it’s more like I’m not shaving.)

You need to shake your groove thing.
Big art studios + night time = dance parties. Though this is also largely dependent on the group you’re with, should they occur be prepared to work it on out doing the twist, the funky chicken, the robot and whatever else your body tells you to do.

You need some romance in your life.
I’ve heard this happens sometimes.

You need to add a line on your CV.
Some residencies look better on your resume than others, and I’m not sure how impressive even those look, but it doesn’t hurt when you’re applying for grants or other residencies.

You need to step up your table tennis game.
Ping pong is a staple at artist residencies. I find after a game or ten I’m re-focused and ready to go back to work.

And what if you’re not an artist? Well then makes some stuff and apply. What are you waiting for?

Questions? Comments?

Some places to find out about artist residencies:

artisres

miraslist

[Cross posted on Extracriticum.com]

I had spent the previous days working on a grant proposal, and now that that was done and out, I was ready to sit down and think about editing A Life’s Work again. But I was having one of those days. I slept later than I wanted, dawdled a bit more than usual, and so by the time I sat down in front of the monitor my head wasn’t in it. I was frustrated. I started to employ my usual procrastination techniques: more coffee, perusing notebooks, guitar playing, but somewhere in the middle of my rendition of Prince’s “When You Were Mine,” I put the guitar down and decided I needed to plow ahead.

This chair belongs in the Observer Room at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory. Please don't remove it.

So I started looking at the SETI sequence I had been struggling with the week before, re-watched related footage, reread the transcript, and started shuffling things around. Then I re-watched more footage, stuff seemingly unrelated to the sequence I was working on and then the a-ha moment: a solution to a problem was found, and joy upon joy, one that visually reinforced a major theme. (There’s really no point in writing about it in detail; perhaps I’ll put up the sequence and explicate it as I did with the recent Soleri clip.)

And after that rush, it re-occurred to me: if I want to get something done, I need to keep my eyes on the screen and my ass in the chair.

That’s obvious, right? But sometimes I need reminding of the obvious.

Hope you enjoy them.

A fire destroyed most of the trees on this mountain several years ago.

The weather is variable.

Diablo, the point, not the studio.

On a trail.

Lake, drying.

Hiking.

Who doesn't like a reflection shot?

Snowy dock.

Snowy flower.

On the trail.

I feel like this plant should be underwater.

My muddy boot.

When Sole notified me they were taking it, I decided to look back at how this piece transformed draft by draft. And since I’m wearing my writer hat at this residency, I thought I might share some writerly process stuff.

The Wolf Is in the Kitchen is based on an experience I had as a child. This event happened at the age when I was realizing that I was an individual. As an adult I recognize it as a key moment in my awareness of my identity as an Italian hyphen American.

How many drafts?

Twelve.

Drafts one (May 2, 2010) through five were written from the point of view of an adult remembering an event in his childhood. The narrator then recounts the different paths the two main characters traveled after the event. I worked on these drafts for 10 days that May. I thought I had completed it with draft five and sent it to a few places. No takers. I put it aside.

October 2010 I was visiting a friend in North Carolina and something about the change of scenery inspired me to revisit the story. After reading it, I decided to make a big change. I kept the first person narrator, but now the event is being told from the point of view of the nine-year-old boy. The story shifted its focus; it had become about knowledge gained and innocence lost. I sent it to a couple of places November 2010. No takers. I put it away. Honestly, at that time, I lost faith in it as a story.

I opened it again one day in October 2011. I liked the story this time. I recast a sentence and decided to send it out. On November 11, 2011 I sent it to Sole.

The first draft is 678 words, the final draft is 576 words. The longest draft was 859 words.
The first sentence changed seven times.
The last sentence changed eight times.
The two most significant edits: changing the narrator from adult to child and adding a semicolon in the final paragraph (draft 12).

When you get down to it, it’s all about making decisions, from start (is this event something I want to transform into a work of fiction) to finish (semicolon or no semicolon).

Directing a film is all about making decisions, too.

I suspect so too are writing and directing one’s life.