Hermits and living here year round

Looking at these houses every day makes me want one, but I'm not sure if I could live in this exact community.

It's quaint, it's scenic, and there ain't nobody here to bother you 40 weeks a year. It's the perfect place to hole yourself up in your attic writing-lair and bang out the next great American novel.

Unfortunately, I am a theater nut, and my visual art inspiration comes from other people- art is the point at which two bodies meet in space and define, change, shape one another. Also, the houses are all shoved up against one another, which is fun for a few weeks in the summer, but probably a little tedious after a while. No yard? Where does one throw the ball with the dog? Where do we put the grill and the hammock? It's not all going to fit on the porch.

I'm glad the season has started. I like to watch the crowds as they stroll past me & my evening beer on the porch. There are other excited people around (maybe sometimes too excited). We run and we fetch and we swim at night, and there is a nonstop stream of inspiration coming at me.

Wha-bam!

A Sunday Morning in Jewett

I awake, 8 AM, like a dog expecting breakfast. But today is Sunday, and I am on a shop schedule.

Consciousness returns at 11, the house stirring around me. Laughter bubbles up from the porch. I know Kelly is showering, because the hallway smells of Pert. Keri will shower next, and the smell will be lavender. Brandon blows his nose through my thin wall. Ryan will not return until eventide.

It is muggy here on the second floor. It is always, always muggy, and I don't have enough money to pay off the heat.

The kitchen is the cool morning dark, and the coffee pot still drips, although nobody comes to the kitchen until I have whistled the kettle and set up on this couch.

Today is a day for preparation, for crossing things off the to-do list. A day like any other, really.

A Sunday in Jewett.

A Brief Update

I know, I know. I have been gone for a month. It's not because I don't love you: it's because there is only one internet in this whole town. As a result, I use my iPhone for the daily email/facebook/news check, and only get on the computer every great once in a while. This has kept me sociable and busy, but also far from my thoughts and you.

A brief update, then, as I sit in the plaza and type to the sounds of children playing, trying desperately to finish before the battery on my six-year-old laptop runs out (seriously, somebody stop me from throwing this thing in the lake).

The costume shop here is relatively small: as a result, we rent, borrow, or buy many of our costumes. We made most of the dresses for Three Sisters, if only because the director and designer had a very specific, gauzy vision for this play. It opened last week, and so we are hard at work on the mock-ups for Love's Labors Lost and the New Play Projects.

I am learning a ton: turns out I didn't do very much costume building in Binghamton, and one forgets an awful lot when one does not work for a year. I enjoy my work, and I enjoy the schedule, but I am looking forward to when they put me backstage for LLL. The hustle and crush and being helpful of wardrobe work is what I find most rewarding. And besides, it took me most of the afternoon today to make a bowtie. I am, indeed, the intern, and not a stitcher.

Life in the theater is dynamic: there are five of us in each of the shops (Costume, Props, Set, Electrics, Admin and Stage Management), as well as the actors. Sometimes we have enforced fun, and some nights all 50 of us winds up drunk on the front porch. This is variably amusing.

Chautauqua itself is of course lovely. I don't really have time to go to the classes or lectures during the day, but we jump in the lake at night (unless you, dear reader, work for the institution, in which case we definitely don't do that), and we saw Steve Martin play his banjo the other night. We took advantage of the day off yesterday to Kayak and Lawn Bowl- the old folks seemed especially pleased that we were joining them at their game.

Mostly I am building connections, drawing pictures, and trying to find some time to asses my life and what I think should come next- I haven't. I promise I shall make more of an effort to write in future, but for now the sun is in my eyes and it is time to eat.

ciao!

Theater People

Several people I have met here so far say they love summer theater because of the people. Not only because they're so great, but because there are so many of them and they're all around you, all the time.

I am a people person- I liked how easy it was in college to find people to hang out and chat with, how there were always people around when you felt a little lonely. And I like the people here, too- I like my beer in the scene shop after work, I like the walks we take for food, and I like shoveling cream cheese based dip into my mouth while sitting at the kitchen table.

I also like the free & easy conversation while I'm in the shop, which so far hasn't felt like work once. I like that everybody is good at their job and enthusiastic about doing it, and willing to share ideas. I like the super-intense drunk conversations about Shakespeare at Murder Bar that make me rejoice that this is my life.

I'm a little sad we haven't gotten to hang out with the actors yet. They seem to be on a very whimsical schedule, so we are usually leaving work as they are taking their half-time break, but hopefully a few rounds of beer pong in our basement will change that. Unsurprisingly, I like actors. It turns out tech people are just as peppy and hilarious, at least around here. It takes a little weirdness in your soul to commit to this kind of thing.

Porch Sitting

While wandering today, I became enamored of the idea of sitting on the porch and watching the world go by, sipping an iced tea and reading a book in bucolic comfort. The Chautauqua porch sitting culture reminds me of what I saw in New Orleans: possibly because in both places, the most prominent architecture is from the 1880s. Robert told me today that if you stop to chat, sometimes people will even invite you up to have a sit.

Obviously there are many different kinds of porches in Chautauqua- some are screened in, some are just patios, and most are rather traditional wrap-arounds. Some have enough space for a dining room table, hammock, and desk, and some are just wide enough to put a chair on & hang your legs off the side.

In Mahopac, I loved to sit on the back deck in the summer & enjoy the weather while reading a book, so the thought of actually interacting with a large number of people going by my house is a wonderment. True, I may not want to chat with everybody on the street (or the porch) who wants to chat with me, but we take what we get.

And besides, I'm at summer camp for ten weeks. There is nothing bad about my life right now.

Shopping with the Grouch

I went into H&M the other day to look for the orange dress which my friend KTS wore while celebrating Queensday in the Dam. Orange is my favorite color, & I figured it would be cheap. I found & tried on several things that I liked (orange is apparently in this season) but left empty-handed as I didn't want to spend $60 on something that wasn't my groceries for 1.5 weeks.


I did pick up the complementary magazine, and therein found a somewhat appalling quote from their head designer, Ann-Sofie Johansson:


"it’s great to reinvent your wardrobe at the beginning of a new season. Fashion doesn’t change as drastically as it used to so you could easily get last season’s favorites to work with smart updates. Safe buys for spring are cool classics in beige or white, and the longer skirts and dresses feel new and very feminine” (Found here)


Look, I realize that if people don't buy clothing, this lady is out of a job. I also realize that she is saturated in an industry where if something isn't new, it isn't wanted. 

But really? I was unaware that real people actually paid attention to what's trendy. Most of my friends have a style which they stick to, adding new additions when their clothing wears out/gets ruined, not when H & M tells them that maxi dresses are in.

The past few years have seen a kind of fashion drought for me: I have too much self respect for leggings as pants, and I'm too tall to wear skirts shorter than the tips of my fingers without it looking like my butt is about to fall out the bottom.

So I've been wearing long skirts for a long time (I'm pants-averse). Unlike in Middle School, when I would be grumpy if something I liked got popular, the fact that they are trendy excites me since I'll be able to cheaply stock my wardrobe with things I enjoy wearing. 

Will I perhaps look out-of-date in a few years? Who cares? This leggings/jeggings thing has been refusing to die, so I'll wear whatever I want, thank you very much. That's the difference between fashion and style.

Besides, I live in New York City. I am so far from the strangest thing anybody will see all day I couldn't even hit it with a machine gun. 

Televisions

I am one of these Americans who does not own a TV set.

Allow me to rephrase: I don't have a cable box.

Housemate & I use our TV in the living room as a black panel to look at during conversations when it's not being used for Netflix & Mad Men DVDs.

I was raised in a house where we didn't get past channel 13 until I was in Middle School, so the TV watching habit is not ingrained in me. However, to most of you who are my age I'm sure the lack of cable is not groundbreaking. Our computers & smartphones are our windows on the world: I read multiple newspapers through Twitter, and watch TV shows and amusing videos on Hulu & YouTube.

Why pay $80 for a cable box when I can get all of that information for a far lower price? I live in the most exciting city in the country, I'm not going to sit in my house & watch the world through a box. I have only very occasionally wanted a TV: during the Egyptian Revolution (I watched it on Al Jazeera online) & to watch SToriBook Wedding (I got over it). Other than that, I don't really think about it.

What about the rest of you? Do you have cable? Do you think it's worth it? Anybody want to make any wild predictions about the future of television?