Notes After an Artist Residency

 

Summer Lake, February 2024

 

Over a week ago, I was lodging in a cabin that overlooked Summer Lake in remote southeastern Oregon. For ten full days, the only noises I typically heard outside was the howling wind over the high desert basin, a pair of Canadian geese squawking by day or night, the chirping of robins or other birds, muskrats splashing in the pond at the back of my cabin, coyotes yipping and barking, or an occasional vehicle zipping by along Highway 31. On the drive to PLAYA through the Oregon Outback, I may have passed more cows than humans.

During my time at this residency program, I attained a deep state of solitude. It felt like an altered state of consciousness. The marijuana helped; it made it easier to burrow further into my own mind. But a couple of other variables and decisions helped me to attain this level of solitude that I hope to replicate on a smaller scale in my everyday life. They include:

① I didn’t have Internet access while writing.
② I hardly checked my social media accounts during my residency.
③ I didn’t read or listen to anything about the NBA.
④ I barely checked my email.

Having no Internet access in my cabin was a bit annoying at times, but over the course of my time there, I came to appreciate it. Without the intoxicating power of such knowledge at my fingertips, I encountered less distractions, less potential rabbit holes that could pull me out of the writing spell I was trying to cast. As I wrote, I highlighted a number of words or passages in my manuscript to research or double-check later once I could access the Internet. Now when I have my designated writing times at home, I’m planning to turn off Wi-Fi on my laptop to excise one more distraction during the generative writing process.
 

Staying off of social media kept my mind and heart focused on my writing instead of the outside world. This was undoubtedly helpful. Our present-day world is teeming with atrocities and happenings that can easily consume my attention. I know myself all too well. On the day I have to myself to write, I am planning to not check my social media at all; and on the night before, I’m planning to stay away from social media so my mind can quiet.
 

In my everyday life I consume a bunch of podcasts, especially about the NBA and my beloved team, the Golden State Warriors. While I was at PLAYA, I thought of these podcasts as information and voices that I am willingly introducing into my brain from a pair of headphones. It’s more noise up there; more clutter; another distraction.
 

And I have a bad, bad habit of checking my email numerous times a day; I will check it on my computer or from an app on my smartphone. I don’t know why I do this. It’s an old habit. Most of the emails I receive are either junk mail or from newsletters I have or haven’t signed up for. None of them are urgent to read or respond to, so why do I check my inbox like I’m anxiously awaiting someone’s response? From now on, I’d like to limit how many times I check my email—like once in the morning, then once in the evening after my son is asleep.
 

While I’m writing this first draft of my novel-in-progress, I need to cut down the noise. That is the overarching takeaway from my residency. The solitude I enveloped myself in at PLAYA was invigorating. I know I won’t be able to find it in the midst of everyday life, but I like it when my mind feels more like a meandering stream than a ping-pong ball bouncing errantly from here to there and everywhere. It’s hard to expect myself to stick a landing and generate good work amidst such conditions.

where the magic happens