Dear Filmmaker,
I’ve been reading your artist colony posts. What’s your average day like at an artist residency?
KG
Dear KG,
Thanks for the question. My life is really quite boring when I’m at an artist 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 Summer Lake 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…
Jane Deschner
Maybe this is your real life.
David Licata
It would be nice if it were. Unfortunately, I need an income, and being an artist-in-residence isn’t exactly a high-paying gig.
Jane Rashdan
Doesn’t sound boring, it sounds like you’re really getting a lot accomplished and making the most of the beauty and inspiration of Playa. I think losing track of time is a sign that your creative side is taking over and so it really doesn’t matter, for now, what day it is. Enjoy!
David Licata
Thanks, Jane. To me, it’s not boring. But when I describe my days to people, the sameness, well, I can see where it might bore a person or two.
And as always, thanks for the comment.
Johannes Martinovitch
Dear David,
I recently read that a group of scientists in Hoboken have proven that art can neither be created nor destroyed. Since you’re at an artist residency I wondered if you had anything to say about that.
Seriously,
Johannes
David Licata
Dear Johannes,
Hoboken! Birthplace of Frank Sinatra and my two brothers! Place where I lived for most of the 1990s. Right, so these scientists, I’m guess they are affiliated with that fine Hoboken institution, Stevens Tech (where Alexander [Sandy I like to call him] Calder studied)?
No matter, your question is an interesting one. I would say Art is continually re-created and cannot be destroyed. However, I would say individual works of art can be destroyed. I should qualify this by also saying that being at an artist residency does not qualify me to comment on matters of physics, or art, even.
Thanks for the awesome question, Mr. Martinovitch.
Yours in teasel,
David
Johannes Martinovitch
Dear Dr. David,
(I assume you are a doctor of some sort or another.) So, do you mean to imply that your two brothers are friends of Mr. Sinatra? That’s wonderful! But how does this Steven Calder person figure in the whole arrangement? And Sandy Alexander – is that something like a Brandy Alexander? I’m afraid I’m woefully uninformed on these things. But then, I’ve never seen the bright lights of New Jersey, having lived my entire life among the juniper stumps of the Oregon Territory. Certainly it is false modesty for one such as yourself to claim that you are unqualified to to comment on physic or art. It seems to me that no one has spent as many days as you contemplating the meanness of art. Cast a pearl or two before us, Dr. D! I’ve heard that you find one thousand a day (or more!!) there at your art aerie.
Since early,
Johannes
David Licata
Johannes,
Yes, everyone in NJ knew the Sinatras.
I love Brandy Alexanders. Rob Roys, too.
But alas, I am no doctor, nor have I ever played one on TV, though that was once an ambition. And it’s curious that you mention pearls and doctors in the same sentence, for here, in my little art womb, I am reading a book called “The World of Michelangelo” (yes, it’s the Time Life edition) and in it the author mentions that Lorenzo D’Medici’d doctors, in a last ditch effort to save the dying patron, served him crushed pearls and diamonds as medicine. Needless to day, this did not work.
Until the next time,
David
Jane Deschner
I never knew you to be such a hard drinker, David.
I tried listening to a book on CD about the day-to-day painting of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. It was too day-to-day and put me to sleep driving. Too many long Italian names (plus the way the narrator said them was too weird…he used too much gusto when he got to say one of them) and too many details not about art.) Oh, well…Time Life sounds better.
David Licata
Oh yeah, total lush. You remember from the Jentel days!
Some people can really go over the top with those Italian names. It actually makes me a little crazy.
The Time Life book isn’t bad. It’s actually more history than art history. And it has inspired me to learn more about the Medici when I get back to NYC. Fascinating people, fascinating time, fascinating place.
Apparently Michelangelo hated DaVinci. Professional jealously.
Johannes Martinovitch
And then what happened after you fell asleep driving??? (Quick, put in the next CD, the one marked “Crash”. I can’t stand the suspense.)
I’ll just call you “Dr.” David then. I still sense that you possess some arcane knowledge, knowledge that would have benefitted poor Lorenzo had you been around in the 15th century. Or even 200 years later with our dear Rob Roy, robbing the rich and gifting the poor, grinding diamonds and pearls up into bread for the hungry.
Well, we wait for your thousand words – or, of course, one picture – a day, to let us know the direction of your abstruse art, your dark design.
David Licata
Yes, “Dr” is good, for I surely would prescribe crushed diamonds and pearls to weak, tired, ailing, dying, etc.
There will be many photos coming next week, Mr. Martinovitch. Hope you stick around for them.
Long live the teasel!
(PS, would you ask your alter ego if he would send me that poem. I think of it often.)