Songs For The Struggling Artist

In the past, I’ve made my own residencies – with the assistance of my friends’ generosity of space. These self-styled residencies have always been highly focused and productive dives into a project. But this time, at my first official residency (i.e. not one I made up) I found something quite different than the ones I invented. Funnily enough, I found this group residency not nearly as productive as ones I’ve done on my own. What with so many activities and long leisurely meals and field trips and lectures and presentations, our days were so jam packed I could barely squeeze my daily writing practice in, much less dive deeper. There was so much stimulation, so many interesting people, so much to respond to, I found it difficult to drop into the kind of quiet I need to make words into something significant. You might think this trip, this residency, had been a failure if you were measuring by productivity but it occurs to me that residencies like this one may be for something else. To support this podcast: