(Prior post on Painting’s Edge at Idyllwild, Calif.)
Sunday, 29 June 2008
5:45 a.m. Wide awake for at least an hour. Desperately hungry. Cafeteria doesn’t open for breakfast until 7:15 a.m.
7:15 a.m. First in the cafeteria line. Sheepishly smile at server standing behind scrambled eggs. Experiencing Hans Castorp’s ravenous appetite — is it really the altitude? Greedily stuff in a breakfast twice the size I normally eat.
9:00 a.m. Hubby begins the first of his ten critiques for the day. His lecture will be in the evening. My critiques don’t start til Tuesday, but since I give my lecture (it’s supposed to be about my paintings) tomorrow night, I plan on writing it today. (Problem: I selected the paintings I want to show during the lecture a long time ago, and they’re ready to project on a screen; but the lecture itself is only roughly formed in my mind.) Say goodbye to hubby and set off in already hot morning sun, through scrubby pine trees, to write lecture in cool of campus library.
11:00 a.m. Stare at my notes for two hours while chomping my way through one complete pack of gum. Realize I’ve been transformed into a David Lodge character — the one who’s always breaking out in a sweat whenever he remembers the rapidly approaching lecture he’s supposed to give — the one he’s had months to write, but for which he hasn’t yet penned a word.
Noon. Gratefully leave off working on lecture (now up to three sentences) to rush to cafeteria to meet with Painting’s Edge residents and fellow visiting artists for lunch. Inhale lunch. Talk about painting and painters. Somehow still vaguely hungry. Swig down cup of coffee.
1:00-4:00 p.m. Sit fixated at computer screen in library, having deleted the only three sentences already written. Unable to come up with even one new word. Decide to cut and paste a bunch of stuff from old essays and lectures. Feel better.
4:00-6:00 p.m. Go back to house to rest. Observe the woodpeckers, jays, squirrels and lizards just beyond the screened-in porch and see a couple of quail with their babies scurry across the ground. Animals know what to do. Humans are the ones who procrastinate.
6:30 p.m. Wine and cheese reception for hubby, just before lecture. Lots of people milling about, talking about painting.
7:00-8:00 p.m. Hubby gives terrific, smart lecture on state of art world. Enthusiastic applause. Sweet and generous side of me happy for him. Competitive side rises up — how can I top this? Sense of impending doom.
9:30 p.m. After dinner (wine and fresh trout), go home to sleep. Oddly, sleep like a baby.
Monday, 30 June 2008
5:00 a.m. Uh oh. It’s going to take a miracle to whip up a lecture in one day.
7:00-9:00 a.m. Calm myself with yet another huge breakfast and cup of Starbucks coffee. Muster the determination to get myself to the library.
9:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m. Begin by staring at laptop. Delete the pasted-in passages lifted from old lectures and essays. Take a good, hard look at the images of my paintings — selected from work accomplished during the past two decades. Breathe deeply. Tell it like you think it happened. Admit that painters don’t figure things out until after the fact. Talk about what you believe a good painting must be. Abject fear of possibility of arriving at podium with no lecture to read prompts me to come up with the necessary words.
6:30 p.m. Wine and cheese reception for my lecture. Lots of people talking about painting. Lecture printed out, safely tucked in with laptop holding images. Gorge on cheese and crackers and permit myself one glass of white wine.
7:00-7:45 p.m. Roland Reiss, the head of it all, introduces me. Introduction is sheer poetry; this is going to be hard to live up to. Give lecture. Believing in painting, having devoted my whole life to it, I realize that’s what my lecture is really all about. Talk ends up being not half bad. More applause than I’m used to. (I’m not used to applause at all.)
9:30 p.m. Crash early. Critiques are looming for me tomorrow.
