Tom Darnell: Artist

Tom Darnell is a contemporary American artist. Born in San Antonio, Texas in 1958, Tom received his painting degree from the University of Texas in Austin where he continued to live and work until 1992 when he moved to Europe. Along with his wife Nicole and their children Joseph and Ava, Darnell currently lives in southern France.

What is, for you, the height of misery?
Seeing someone you love suffering something horrible and not being able to do anything about it.

Where would you like to live?
Where I am living now in the south of France in a comfortable house with beautiful views.

Your ideal of earthly happiness?
Living a long, fun, experience-rich life in great health with loads of loving family and friends and having no regrets when you die.

For which faults do you have the greatest amount of indulgence?
I indulge a lot of faults, but drinking too much red wine and acting like a fool would easily top the list.

Who are the novelistic heroes whom you prefer?
From childhood: Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and from adulthood: Alyosha in The Brothers Karamozov.

Who is your favorite historical character?
Uhm..Mahatma Ghandi would be one.

Your favorite heroines in real life?
There are so many people who overcome so much I can't say...Rosa Parks comes to mind first.

Your favorite painter?
Caravaggio.

Your favorite musician?
That's like asking which red wine is my favorite...I like so many.

The virtue you most prefer in men?
Integrity.

The virtue you most prefer in women?
Compassion.

The virtue you prefer?
Argh...integrity I suppose.

Your preferred occupation?
Painting paintings as I do but I hate the business end and the phony baloney involved.

Whom would you have liked to be?
Pablo Picasso except without the asshole qualities.

The principal trait of my character?
Fun-loving or honest though my wife would probably say crotchety or liar.

The quality you most like in a man?
Inner strength and calm courage, the ''benevolent king'' thing...like the total opposite of Bush.

The quality you most like in a woman?
Tolerance/patience, nurturing, warmth.

What I appreciate the most in my friends?
A great sense of humor tops the list.

My principle fault?
Making snap judgments without knowing the whole story then getting needlessly angry (mostly around the kids).

What is your favorite occupation?
If by that you mean professional occupation, I think being a photographer for National Geographic or a food and wine critic (just the research not the writing part though) oh, movie critic too.

My dream of happiness?
Barring the occasional horrors, I think I am living it now. For me, happiness involves both focus and surrender...I try and guide my life's journey but am willing to take the occasional side road.

What might my greatest misfortune be?
My childhood and adolescence were often hellish but of the things I could have avoided and didn't, it would be working many years at a boring job (for security and comfort) instead of following my passion right from the start.

What would I like to be?
All forms have their ups and downs I guess, I'm happy being human.

In what country would you like to live?
France or Mexico or Italy.

The color I prefer?
I only like black and white. Just kidding, I like most colors found in nature ...bright yellowy green probably.

The flower I like?
White roses.

The bird I prefer?
Besides our parakeet of course, there exists an amazing bird in the rain forest which can mimic the sound of anything at all...including the sounds of car alarms, motor-driven cameras and sadly, chain saws and the crashing sounds of the trees they cut down..really incredible.

My favorite prose authors?
Marquez, Anne Michaels, anyone with a poetic style and also the hilarious ones like Augusten Burroughs and DBC Pierre

My preferred poets?
Naomi Shihab Nye is easily and consistently my favorite.

My favorite composers?
Old school: Chopin and contemporary: Arvo Part or Gorecki.

My favorite painters?
Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Picasso, Richter.

My heroes in real life?
Too many to name.

My favorite historical heroines?
Ditto.

My favorite names?
Ava, Nicole, Joseph.

What is it you most dislike?
Besides injustice and corruption, milk skin on my coffee.

Historical figures whom I scorn the most?
Are Bush and Cheney history yet?

The military feat that I admire the most?
Peace keeping...rebuilding.

The reform that I admire the most?
No response.

The gift of nature I would like to possess?
A really big ....

How I would like to die?
I want to die before my children do, at a late age, suddenly in my sleep ....without pain of course and with nothing left on my life's to do list.

The present state of my mind?
Good.

What is your slogan?
Make the most of every moment because that's what life is, this moment now.

November and December Reductions!

La Muse will offer a 50% reduction on retreat rates for November and December, to fill remaining available rooms.

Because it's last minute, we'll accept stays of less than one month (we usually require a one-month minimum). Interested parties should send in an application consisting of

1. a bio/CV
2. statement of intent
3. sample of work, and
4. two references both for personal and professional contacts.

Our email is: getaway@lamuseinn.com

Thanks!

Kerry & John

(Photo by Kara Lewis)

Monsieur "Cowboy" Garcia

This is a photo of Monsieur Garcia just down the road from us, taken by one of our attendees last month, Kara Lewis. She's a great photographer from southern Oregon.

M. Garcia's nearly ninety and still grows all his own fruits and vegetables, raises chickens (the eggs are amazing) and rabbits and never stops laughing. Our boys call him Cowboy because when they first saw him with that hat on - they were one - one of them shouted "Cowboy! Cowboy!" And it's stuck.

He's one of the reasons we live here.

All the best,

John & Kerry

La Muse Awards Residency to University of Iowa Alum

Tom Montgomery-Fate (MA.W, 1987) is the first winner of the La Muse Nonfiction Writing Fellowship, offered to an alum of the University of Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program.

Tom will be spending most of the month of January 2008 at La Muse working on a new book of nature essays. Tentatively titled A Box of Wind, the collection is also a kind of conversation with Henry David Thoreau's work and its startling relevance in the modern era. (The title essay is forthcoming in Riverteeth.)

Tom Montgomery-Fate is the author of Beyond the White Noise, a collection of essays, and Steady and Trembling, a memoir. His essays frequently air on National Public Radio and Chicago Public Radio, and have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, Fourth Genre, Manoa, Puerto del Sol, and other magazines, journals, and anthologies. He is a professor of English at College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn IL.

Congratulations to Tom, and many thanks to Robin Hemley, Director of the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa, and to Hope Edelman, Chair of the NWP Alumni Association, for all their help with the judging.

Stay tuned to this blog for other fellowship and residency updates!

All the best,

Kerry and John

La Muse Proust Questionnaire

Whether inspired by the feature film Little Miss Sunshine or Vanity Fair's “The Proust Questionnaire” - we can't remember where we came up with it - La Muse has decided to offer a slight spin on M. Proust's questionnaire. Perhaps Steve Carell's character Frank is the number one Proust scholar in the United States and perhaps Proust is the second greatest writer in history next to Shakespeare, but this does not interest us. What does interest us is what our previous attendees and those of you associated with La Muse think and feel when asked these questions.

So, every Friday, we will be uploading the answers of writers, artists, publishers, photographers etc. to BOTH Proust questionnaires, as Marcel was asked to fill out the questionnaires at two different social events in his life, not just one.

Here's his responses. The first were made when he was a sprightly 13 year old. (The questions came out of a party game at the birthday party of Antoinette Felix-Faure. They were put into Antoinette's birthday book):

What is, for you, the height of misery?
To be separated from Mama

Where would you like to live?
In the country of the Ideal, or, rather, of my ideal

Your ideal of earthly happiness?
To live in contact with those I love, with the beauties of nature, with a quantity of books and music, and to have, within easy distance, a French theater

For which faults do you have the greatest amount of indulgence?
To a life deprived of the works of genius

Who are the novelistic heroes whom you prefer?
Those of romance and poetry, those who are the expression of an ideal rather than an imitation of the real

Who is your favorite historical character?
A mixture of Socrates, Pericles, Mahomet, Pliny the Younger and Augustin Thierry

Your favorite heroines in real life?
A woman of genius leading an ordinary life

Your favorite heroines in real life?
Those who are more than women without ceasing to be womanly; everything that is tender, poetic, pure and in every way beautiful

Your favorite painter?
Meissonier

Your favorite musician?
Mozart

The virtue you most prefer in men?
Intelligence, moral sense

The virtue you most prefer in women?
Gentleness, naturalness, intelligence

The virtue you prefer?
All virtues that are not limited to a sect: the universal virtues

Your preferred occupation?
Reading, dreaming, and writing verse

Whom would you have liked to be?
Since the question does not arise, I prefer not to answer it. All the same, I should very much have liked to be Pliny the Younger.

Here are his responses at around the age of 20:

The principal trait of my character?
A craving to be loved, or, to be more precise, to be caressed and spoiled rather than to be admired

The quality you most like in a man?
Feminine charm

The quality you most like in a woman?
A man's virtues, and frankness in friendship

What I appreciate the most in my friends?
Tenderness - provided they possess a physical charm which makes their tenderness worth having

My principle fault?
Lack of understanding; weakness of will

What is your favorite occupation?
Loving

My dream of happiness?
Not, I fear, a very elevated one. I really haven't the courage to say what it is, and if I did I should probably destroy it by the mere fact of putting it into words.

What might my greatest misfortune be?
Never to have known my mother or my grandmother

What would I like to be?
Myself - as those whom I admire would like me to be

In what country would you like to live?
One where certain things that I want would be realized - and where feelings of tenderness would always be reciprocated.

The color I prefer?
Beauty lies not in colors but in thier harmony

The flower I like?
Hers - but apart from that, all

The bird I prefer?
The swallow

My favorite prose authors?
At the moment, Anatole France and Pierre Loti

My preferred poets?
Baudelaire and Alfred de Vigny

My favorite hero of fiction?
Hamlet

My favorite heroines of fiction?
Phedre (crossed out) Berenice

My favorite composers?
Beethoven, Wagner, Schumann

My favorite painters?
Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt

My heroes in real life?
Monsieur Darlu, Monsieur Boutroux (professors)

My favorite historical heroines?
Cleopatra

My favorite names?
I only have one at a time

What is it you most dislike?
My own worst qualities

Historical figures whom I scorn the most?
I am not sufficiently educated to say

The military feat that I admire the most?
My own enlistment as a volunteer!

The reform that I admire the most?
(no response)

The gift of nature I would like to possess?
Will power and irresistible charm

How I would like to die?
A better man than I am, and much beloved

The present state of my mind?
Annoyance at having to think about myself in order to answer these questions

To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
Those that I understand

What is your slogan?
I prefer not to say, for fear it might bring me bad luck.

Cepes Among the Chestnut Trees

I brought the boys to a waterfall nearby today to have a snack of walnuts and plums and on the road all the way we kept finding mushrooms...St. Michels, cepes, Rosiers des pres, and some standard fungi, which look pretty in the basket but I don't think we'll eat.

Of course, I checked with the locals to make sure I wasn't about to poison my family and got the greenlight. What a lunch we had!

One of my favorite things about living here is eating the stuff of the mountains...hunters bring us wildboar and chevreuil, we collect chestnuts, figs, plums, pears. Our neighbors make honey and grow rabbits and chickens and pigs! Gotta love it. We cook it all up in our bread oven, which we only this summer learned to use, thanks to a food writer who came in March and got it cleaned out and started up. Our next slated bread-oven feast is Thanksgiving!

Anyway, I really should be doing laundry.

Tell us any of your recipes if you know some!

All the best,

Kerry

This is the new attendee entrance!

It was a previous attendees' idea: Ramsey McPhilips. He's actually coming back to La Muse next month. You've got to check him out on TV; just type in Ramsey McPhilips - hilarious:

YouTube

The wisteria is only a couple of years old and it's already 10 feet off the ground, and the Vigne Verge ("Virgin Vine" - what a name) is flying up the wall and it was only planted last May!

Keep on creating!

La Muse

News

Hey,

Been too long.

We were snowed under with all the many, many renovations: new slate roof, new attendee entrance, new dining room, new professional kitchen, library, bread oven etc. etc....

We now have a new website too!

So, please post your comments and let us know where and what you are doing, or check us out on Facebook or at:

MySpace

Keep on creating!

La Muse

P.S.: The photo is of our new sign that our neighbor made for us as a gift!