La Muse

Happy New Year!

2011-12-31T11:48:00.000-08:00

Wonderful Video of French "Time for Outrage" Author

2011-12-18T12:22:00.000-08:00

We're ordering his book today as we just stumbled upon it on the Twelve website. Here's a snippet of what they say about him:

Rejecting the dictatorship of world financial markets and defending the social values of modern democracy, 93-old Stéphane Hessel -- Resistance leader, concentration camp survivor, and former UN speechwriter -- reminds us that life and liberty must still be fought for, and urges us to reclaim those essential rights we have permitted our governments to erode since the end of World War II.

Wow, now this is climbing...

2011-12-08T10:07:00.000-08:00

Ueli Steck speed solo Eiger record par lemarswayer

Awesome Videos on LGBT rights

2011-12-07T10:07:00.000-08:00

First Hilary Clinton at the United Nations:

and here's the son of a gay couple in Iowa:

Tanya Byrne

2011-12-06T02:15:00.000-08:00

Tanya Byrne

Well done to the lovely Londoner Tania Byrne!

Her debut novel Heart-Shaped Bruise is going to be published next May by Headline.

Tanya started the novel at La Muse and is now really excited about writing the next one. (Headline also bought up the rights to that one too.)

The story is about Emily Koll, the most notorious inmate of Archway Young Offenders Institution. Through her journals, she relates the story of how far she went to get revenge on the girl whose testimony sent her father to prison.

This is what the commisioning editor had to say about Tanya's novel:

Her writing is stunning and we’re convinced she’s got a fabulous career ahead of her.

We're so excited for Tanya. Again, well done!

Jill Satterfield - Winter Yoga Retreats

2011-10-20T09:34:00.000-07:00

New Year’s Yoga Retreat:

December 27-January 3

Winter Yoga Retreat:

February 2-9

200 hr. Yoga Teacher Training Retreat:

February 27-March 15

About Jill:

Jill Satterfield was named one of the "four leading Buddhist and Yoga teachers in the country" by the Shambhala Sun Magazine and is a pioneer in the field of mind body awareness. She has been teaching and consulting for over 20 years.

Jill is the founder of Vajra Yoga & Meditation, a synthesis of yoga and Buddhism that combines meditation, yoga postures, visualization and contemplation practices.

She is also the founder and Director of the School for Compassionate Action: Meditation, Yoga and Education for Communities in Need and Those Who Serve Them, a not for profit that trains teachers and offers classes to at-risk youth, people suffering with chronic pain and illnesses, PTSD, and addictions.

Jill turned to meditation and yoga 30 years ago to successfully heal from a debilitating physical condition coupled with acute chronic pain while in art school. In 1992, she extended her exploration of the integral relationship of the mind and body through the study of Buddhism. Jill is on the founding faculty of Spirit Rock Meditation Center’s Mindfulness for Yoga Training and the Kripalu Institute’s Integral Leadership Program for young adults. Jill was scholar and teacher in residence at the Kripalu Center in 2004. She has been featured in the New York Times, Crains, NY Post, MORE, Self, Marie Claire, Tricycle and Yoga Journal amongst others.

In Her Words:

Sometimes we leave home, forget about our body, and neglect our hearts. Our mind gets scattered to the winds as we become consumed by life’s details, looking outwardly, not inwardly.

During this 7-day yoga and meditation retreat our yoga practice will bring us back to the earth through the vehicle of the body, re-discovering alignment, remembering space, sweeping the body physically and energetically clean.

We will practice meditation on its own as well as through each yoga asana and in general mindfulness for awareness, re-centering, renewed intention, and re-kindling focus.

Most importantly, we’ll see our way back home through the eyes of our heart, opening windows of kindness so that we might take care, accept and embrace ourselves and others.

Please bring journals and a camera to record your thoughts and the practices that we will cover. You will leave with wonderful memories, a refreshed and invigorated practice, and many prescriptions for a home practice of meditation, mindful asana and pranayama.

Fees:

Yoga Workshop:

500.00 Euros.

Accommodation:

Calliope: 870 Euros (queen-size double, private salon, ensuite toilet, spa-style bath, shower)

Erato: 625 Euros (double with ensuite toilet, bath and shower)

Clio: 670 Euros (double with ensuite toilet, bath and shower)

Euterpe: 625 Euros (double with ensuite shower)

Thalia: 625 Euros (double with ensuite shower)

Melpomene: 570 Euros (double with shared toilet and shower)

Terpsichore: 570 Euros (double with shared toilet, bath and shower)

Polyhymnia: 570 Euros (double with shared toilet, bath and shower)

Urania: 570 Euros (double with shared toilet, bath and shower)

Chapelle Cottage: 1070 Euros (two double bedrooms that share a shower and toilet)

Check out the rooms here.

Accommodation fee includes:

evening meals
local transportation (airport pickup, a trip to the grocery store on the way up to La Muse, and departure drop off).
Couples Welcome. There is a 25% double occupancy fee for couples.
Participants shop for and prepare their own breakfasts and lunches.

We look forward to meeting you.

Email us now for availability!

Irish TV Show

2011-10-06T10:39:00.000-07:00

So, the lovely Julianne Mooney talked us up on her slot on Ireland's TV3 show Ireland AM.

You can watch the interview here.

Photos of La Muse by Lowell Brower

2011-09-14T10:57:00.000-07:00

Just uploaded a load more photos like this onto Facebook, all taken by the lovely writer Lowell Brower here.

Video and Photos of "Scenes from a Village" Expo

2011-08-23T04:48:00.000-07:00

Hey,

So here's the video of Deborah's Expo that we promised:

You can find out more about Deborah here.

Deborah, just before people came to see her paintings...

Deborah talking to Kerry and the American playwright Nora Seilheimer

John having fun talking to the locals about the paintings of their dogs an houses...

Filou waiting patiently for some food from the annual village Aperitif

It was a lot of fun...

"Scenes from a Village" - Deborah Clarke - Expo

2011-08-06T06:01:00.000-07:00

Above is the poster for Deborah Clarke's "Scenes From a Village" which is showing here today and tomorrow!

Deborah lives in Grenoble and has been to La Muse three time now. You can check out more of her great watercolors here.

Going fast: Reduced Rates for August/September Retreat!

2011-08-03T11:47:00.000-07:00

We still have rooms available for the August/September retreat.

So, a call to all former Musers: we are reducing the high season retreat rate to 600 Euros for the three weeks, on a first come first serve basis!

That's nearly 400 Euros off on Clio and 335 Euros off on Euterpe!

And for all of you out there who have not been to La Muse before: we are reducing the high season retreat rate to 750 Euros for the three weeks retreat, again on a first come first serve basis!

That means nearly 200 Euros off Euterpe and 245 Euros off Clio!

Email us now to book your room or please spread the news!

Colline de l'hirondelle

2011-06-06T01:34:00.000-07:00

Been a while since we posted anything as we've been renovating and full at La Muse...

Anyway, just wanted to let you all know about our friends' Didier and Jenn's great wine at the Colline de l'hirondelle.

It's in Douzens, not that far from here.

At left is their latest wine ad. Classic!

More adventures in wild food

2011-04-17T13:44:00.000-07:00

Oh, look, Kerry brought home a big box of grass to cook for dinner...

Wait! It's a little leek! A wild little leek...

Clean 'em up, throw 'em in a pan with some butter and lemon or olive oil, and you've got ...

Dinner! Savory, slightly bitter, a meaty dish. Wild food is so nourishing, it's filling. To fill it out into frittata: Pour in four eggs beaten with a grated chunk of Parmesan, and bake it for 20 minutes. So good you'll scurry out for more.

Life in Labastide, cont'd

2011-03-16T15:06:00.000-07:00

Oh, it's spring and I just can't get enough wild asparagus. See that sweet slender thing offering itself up?

Last Sunday we had lunch with our friends the Darnells (Tom's a painter) at their home in the Minervois. We took their truck (the two dogs Betty and Gladys sat in the front and the people piled in the back) to a green oak forest nearby and hunted like wild things, running bent at 90 degrees through the underbrush eyes peeled to the forest floor.

We ate well that night: risotto

The Honey Badger Doesn't Give a...

2011-03-15T15:18:00.000-07:00

Cross Dressing Moutaineer Dies...

2011-02-26T06:43:00.000-08:00

The world is an amazing place...

Check out this article in the Telegraph.

Granny with Handbag Scares Robbers...

2011-02-26T06:09:00.000-08:00

Classic. Watch her as she RUNS across the street to hit them :

Muser art to be featured on online gallery...

2011-02-15T12:41:00.000-08:00

Send us your art! La Muse is looking for art created at La Muse for an online gallery to be featured on our new website. It's still a work-in-progress, created by John our resident e-marketing and Internet optimization guru.

John's gives workshops to attendees about creating one's own website and blog, and how to use social networking tools to get their stuff out there, up there, and seen. Our new site is a good example of how to use those tools... Type in "writer retreat France" and we come up first out of more than 6 million websites!

Please email your images to getaway@lamuseinn.com by April 1, if possible. We'd like to have the gallery completed in time for our TENTH ANNIVERSARY in May.

We love this work by Marilyn Gaffney, an Irish artist at La Muse in November...

Marilyn Gaffney created several other amazing works during her stay here.

Life in Labastide

2011-02-12T13:10:00.000-08:00

The beautiful thing about winter is that all that chimney smoke makes everything soft. I plan to do a pencil drawing of the above landscape, and maybe a painting of the village in late afternoon sunlight. Someday, when I have the time...

For the first time in our ten years of doing La Muse (yes, it'll be ten years in May) we decided to close for the month of February. Now, that doesn't mean we're sleeping until 11 and reading books by the fire all day. It doesn't really mean we're on vacation. But it does mean we do have more time together and we do have our weekends free. And so this afternoon, we went for a long and lazy walk to the rocks.

Life in Labastide

2011-02-10T03:10:00.000-08:00

Umbilicus rupestris (navelwort, penny-pies, wall pennywort). A yummy succulent for winter salads

After getting Seamus and Fionn from the mini school bus the other evening we relished the warm winter sun (temps well into the 60s) on a walk with Gloria to the spring for some fresh source water. It was Seamus's idea to stop on the way to pick some fresh nombrils de Venus (which translates beautifully to "Venus bellybuttons") for that night's salad.

Seamus and Fionn pick greens.


Still-life Bounty: someone's gotta paint these

Fionn and Seamus love to gather wild food

Penny-pies (as they are called in English) grow all over our village in late autumn and winter on the walls, stone steps, and along the base of houses (avoid if within reach of dog wee). They taste like sprouts, great with a garlicky lemon mustard seed dressing.
They also have a medicinal use -- applied topically, their juice is used by locals to banish warts.


Gloria learning young to live off the land

A fresh finish to split pea fritters, red pepper relish and tahini dressing

Stay tuned for more "Life in Labastide" entries... the reasons we love living where we do, and part of what makes La Muse an amazing experience.

Madrid shops hire graffiti artists

2011-02-09T00:27:00.000-08:00

How cool is Madrid...

On Sunday they got a load of graffiti artists - over 130 from all over Europe, from Bristol to Milan - to paint their shop shutters. They did 140 shop shutters. Classic...

Here's the article in AFP.

Google Doodle

2011-02-08T01:30:00.000-08:00

Love the animation Google put up today.

It's inspired by the French science fiction writer Jules Verne (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea).

He would have been 183 today...

Michael Cunningham: A life trying to "burrow into these little bastards' minds and hearts..."

2011-02-07T01:19:00.000-08:00

There's a good article in The Guardian: Michael Cunningham: A life in writing...

Here's what he has to say about the novel. Particularly like the bolded bit below:

"Never more so than in 2011, I feel like a certain interiority is what the novel can offer that no other medium can. I love movies, I love television, I love narratives of all kinds. The novel remains the most effective means of telling a reader what it's like to be somebody else. You can burrow into these little bastards' minds and hearts. And I often find novels that don't do that to be a little unsatisfying. Why would I read a book that doesn't take me some place that otherwise I couldn't go? Watch The Wire. Watch The Sopranos."

And here's another nice line on Madame Bovary:

"Flaubert took this shitty, shallow little person, and looked at her so intently that he made her a great figure of literature."

Or this one:

"One of the great things about the novel – and one of the terrible things about writing a novel – is that it takes so long. It's so much about going sentence, by sentence, by sentence."

Inspirational Indian writer and the death of the book?

2011-02-04T02:03:00.000-08:00

Just read this short article on Main street.

Here's a bit of the second paragraph:

Consumers will purchase 381 million e-books by 2013 – quadruple the total purchases made in 2010 – and bring total revenue to $2.7 billion that year, according to the report. Calling this “the next big gold rush,” researchers project that e-book sales will grow at an even faster rate than mobile apps over the same period.

And in another story an Indian doctor and writer has donated his award money to encouraging other writers.

Dhruba Jyoti Borah, who lives in the North Eastern state of Assam in India, has donated his entire Sahitya Akademi Award money and the royalties received from his award-winning book Katha Rantnakar for instituting awards to encourage young Assamese writers.

Fair play to him!

Apple making more money from Books...

2011-02-03T01:12:00.000-08:00

The opening paragraph of an article in the LA Times about Apple's Apps:

The New York Times set off a flurry of stories over the past couple of days when it reported that Apple had stopped Sony from selling e-books in the Sony Reader iPhone app. Apple instructed Sony and other app developers to stop steering users to their websites to buy products. Instead, they were told to make sales directly through the apps -- where Apple would be entitled to a 30% cut.

So, there's an uproar about this? I understand but don't we have to first ask the questions like one of the commentators left at the end of the article:

Can you buy from anyone but Amazon on a Kindle? No. Can you buy from anyone other than Sony on a Reader? No. From anyone but B&N with a Nook? Negative. And the FTC is going to come down on Apple? I don't think so...

American artists wins at Angouleme

2011-02-02T01:29:00.000-08:00

Comic book artist Art Spiegelman just won the top prize for his work at France's Angouleme world comic strip festival.

He's best known as the creator of "Maus," left, a fable of his Jewish father Vladek's experiences in the Holocaust. Hitler and the Germans are drawn as cats and the Holocaust victims as mice. It's the only comic book to ever win a Pulitzer Prize.

R. Crumb is the only other American to win the French prize.

The grand jury prize also went to another American, David Mazzucchelli, for his graphic novel "Asterios Polyp".

Mazzucchelli is best known for his Daredevil and Batman illustrations, working with writer Frank Miller.

StreetView for Art!

2011-02-01T10:05:00.000-08:00

Ok, Google gave us StreetView, but now they're doing the same for art?:

Explore museums from around the world, discover and view hundreds of artworks at incredible zoom levels, and even create and share your own collection of masterpieces.

Here's their promo:

Isn't that cool. To see just how amazing it is you can check out their website Art Project or play the video below to see what we mean:

Here are the galleries/places they've done it with... how fun...

Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin - Germany
Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian, Washington DC - USA
The Frick Collection, NYC - USA
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin - Germany
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC - USA
MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art, NYC - USA
Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid - Spain
Museo Thyssen - Bornemisza, Madrid - Spain
Museum Kampa, Prague - Czech Republic
The National Gallery, London - UK
Palace of Versailles - France
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam - The Netherlands
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg - Russia
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow - Russia
Tate Britain, London - UK
Uffizi Gallery, Florence - Italy
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam - The Netherlands

Silent Witnesses

2011-01-31T12:37:00.000-08:00

We posted about Daniel Brown's new site here the other day, but we just wanted to let you guys know what he's working on right now as it's directly relevant to La Muse and the village - a new series of work called "Silent Witnesses."

It's the first set of nine drawings in the series called "Pathways and Passages” and how:

"seemingly ordinary or unseen architectural elements return them to the consciousness of a community, acknowledging them as living “members” of that community. The selected architectural elements define the persona of each village, and have acted as silent witnesses to its history."

You can check out a slideshow of his beautiful new images here.

Philosophers...

2011-01-28T02:09:00.000-08:00

There's a good short article here in The Economist book section about the book Examined Lives: From Socrates to Nietzsche, by James Miller (FSG).

It contains:

11 biographical sketches of thinkers who tried to tread in Socrates’s footsteps, plus one on Socrates himself

and here's what it says about the French ones.

Rousseau:

preached on education, abandoned his five children by his long-term mistress, and made pathetic excuses for doing so (he was too ill and poor to be a good father, and a foundlings’ home is not such a bad place to grow up, anyway)... at the end of his life, Rousseau acknowledged that it was not nearly so easy as he had assumed to follow the Delphic oracle’s injunction to “Know thyself.” He concluded ruefully that it was “arrogant and rash” to profess virtues that you cannot live up to, and retreated into indolent seclusion.

and of course Montaigne is a:

master of the suggestive non sequitur and the self-contradiction.

Manifestation against France Telecom...

2011-01-26T01:14:00.000-08:00

Forgot to post about the manifestation we attended the other day at the top of the village against France Telecom's refusal to listen to the locals of our village, but more importantly the villagers of Pradelles-Cabardes, over dropped calls and lack of service.

For over a year angry letters have been flying their way to no avail, so the locals, local mayors and the powers that be decided to block the road.

You've got to love the one below that says, "Le Telephone ne Passe Pas Vous Non Plus," which basically means, get lost, or, the telephone doesn't work so the road doesn't either, the verb "passe" meaning pass like in English but also not working in French:

Of course, as soon as the Midi Libre article and the L'Independant one came out, France Telecom promised 70,000 Euros in repair work and immediate solutions... the power of the press, and the people!!!

Artist Daniel Brown

2011-01-25T11:50:00.000-08:00

Congrats to Daniel, a great artist who was here at the end of last year, on building a really cool site for himself on his own.

If you haven't seen any of Daniel's art before then you've got to check out his site. Beautiful stuff.

This is a video of one of his pieces from 2007 called "Luminalia," a serpentine line of fire floating upon the Tiber river’s surface in Rome, illuminating the length of the river with one thousand flames throughout the night and into the morning hours:

2007 Luminalia: Tiber River Rome from Daniel K. Brown on Vimeo.

"The half-kilometer long serpent of fire celebrated the Tiber River, which is known also as the ‘blond serpent’. The serpent symbolizes Aesculapius, Roman god of medicine, whose mythological island home Isola Tiberina lies in the centre of the river site. One thousand candles lined each bank, while the serpent was formed from another thousand candles floated in the centre of the Tiber, taking life from the currents and carrying light into the darkness to prolong the longest day of the year."

Below is the cool drawing Daniel donated to La Muse before he left:

The Future of Books...

2011-01-24T10:06:00.000-08:00

Just came across this great video of Richard Nash talking about the future of books at BookNet Canada's Technology Forum 2010 in a session entitled "Publishing 3.0: Moving from Gatekeeping to Partnerships."

Richard got married at La Muse years ago and since then has started up Cursor.

Tired of Having No Time to Write?

2011-01-23T10:54:00.000-08:00

Come to La Muse and get away from it all!!!

Winnie the Pooh a la Francaise...

2011-01-21T01:33:00.000-08:00

Dwight, a former barter fellow here, just sent us this classic video he found on a Huffington Post article of a little french girl recounting the story of Winnie the Pooh, her way:

"The Melancholic Prophet"

2011-01-20T02:40:00.000-08:00

There's a pretty good article about De Gaulle in the Literary Review here by Sudhir Hazareesingh.

The man with the 'Joan of Arc complex' is still keeping the biographers busy, especially since:

In June, President Sarkozy will pay a special visit to London to mark the seventieth anniversary of the General's BBC appeal of 18 June 1940, which launched the Gaullian rebellion. The commemorative flurry in France has already begun, and it includes a raft of new publications on de Gaulle - of which the most amusing (but also revealing) is Benoît Duteurtre's novel Le Retour du Général, in which de Gaulle rises from the dead to save France from the ravages of globalisation.

Don't you love his hat? Classic.

House for Sale across the street...

2011-01-18T15:09:00.000-08:00

We're selling our little house across the street for only 24,500 Euros. It needs everything done to it but has some lovely features and loads of potential...

We bought it a few years ago to renovate but we just don't have the time to work on it because La Muse is doing so well!

Here's a link to the listing on www.greenacres.com, a great site if any of you out there are ever looking to buy or sell a house. We've had our listing up there only 9 days and we've already had 10 people from 10 different countries contact us! The power of the Internet...

Art in the Air

2011-01-17T00:42:00.000-08:00

It might be just for business class and the fancypants fliers but it's still cool to see that Air France are showing art from galleries on their flights. Cool idea and great to see art in the air!

This month, the gallery will be showing a video by Benoît Broisat, called “Bonneville” (2004), from the Museum of Modern Art in Paris.

You can see a clip of the video on his site here or read about it here.

PRISM's Short Fiction and Poetry Contest

2011-01-12T09:17:00.000-08:00

We were just sent this info on the deadline for PRISM international's Short Fiction and Poetry Contests by a Muser.

The Short Fiction Contest deadline is January 29, 2011. A $2000 grand prize is awarded for the best original, unpublished story and the winner also receives publication payment in the Fiction and Poetry Contest Issue. Three runner-up prizes of $200 are also conferred. Works of translation are eligible.

The Poetry Contest also has a deadline of January 29, 2011. A $1000 grand prize is awarded for the best original, unpublished poem and the winner also receives publication payment in the Fiction and Poetry Contest Issue. $300 and $200 are awarded to the runners-up. One entry may include up to three, single-spaced poems, and works of translation are eligible.

Contest entries must be sent to PRISM through snail mail, accompanied by an entry form and cheque or receipt of credit card payment. For entry forms and the option to pay fees by credit card, visit Prism's contest page.

Entries can be sent to:

Prism International, [Contest Category]
Creative Writing Program
The University of British Columbia
BUCH E462-1866 Main Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1
CANADA

Never Fry Gnocchi

2011-01-07T13:59:00.000-08:00

Classic...

Healing Arts Workshop

2010-12-06T14:10:00.000-08:00

Retreat 6: May 28 - June 4, next year, will be a Healing Arts Workshop with Nandi Szabo.

Nandi's been to La Muse twice before so we're delighted to have her back with her second workshop, as it was so much fun having her here last year!

Creative Art Therapies, CAT (also called Expressive Arts Therapy), which includes dance movement, art, music, poetry, photo and psychodrama therapy is Nandi's field. She got her masters from the Expressive Arts Therapy graduate program at Lesley College in Cambridge Massachusetts and combines clinical training in psychology and firsthand knowledge of the arts and their potential for holistic healing of the mind, body and spirit.

Nandi has worked with cancer patients at Sutter Hospital in Sacramento CA for the last 14 years and has also taught the courses “Psychology of Creativity” and the “Therapeutic use of the Arts” at Sacramento City College. She believes creativity plays an important role in living a meaningful life as well as moving consciously into the end of life transition, and is inspired by the CAT relationship between other healing arts such as yoga, meditation, spirituality and arts in healthcare.

You can find out more specific information about the workshop on Nandi's site The Art of Living and Dying.

Email us or email Nandi now for more info about availability!

Scotland!!!!

2010-11-30T06:48:00.000-08:00

This builds up beautifully...

Federal Reserve's Quantitative Easing Policy

2010-11-21T07:29:00.000-08:00

Senior Prejudice...

2010-11-20T22:08:00.000-08:00

Rachel Ephraim Short Story

2010-11-11T08:10:00.000-08:00

One of our former barter fellows, Rachel Ephraim, just got the short story she was working on while she was here, "Presents," published in The Barcelona Review. Well done, Rachel!

You can read the story here.

Rachel is a writing instructor for Writopia Lab, a non-profit organization that teaches creative writing workshops for kids ages 8-18. She is also founder and director of FreeBird Workshops, a grassroots writing workshop that meets at FreeBird Books and Goods Bookstore, an independent bookstore in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

Her fiction has appeared in The Apple Valley Review and Word Riot, and her non-fiction has appeared in the Park Slope Reader and the New York Spirit. She is currently an M.F.A. Candidate at Columbia University.

Drink...

2010-11-01T08:27:00.000-07:00

Book Swap - October

2010-10-31T05:40:00.000-07:00

After the crepes, first up was the artist Dawn Csutorus from Melbourne, Australia.

Dawn loves color and space (hence her choice of The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelord) citing Monet and Van Gogh as influences earlier on, and now Rothko, as well as Taoism, saying her paintings are "meditations."

Dawn also donated Bill Bryson's Down Under to represent where she's from.

Next up was the writer and TV producer Barrie Brett from New York.

Barrie brought her inspirational book Moments of Being, which is about finding your own moment, "a pivotal moment that transformed a life."

With the same idea in mind Barrie also brought along Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey, a book she has loved since she was a child, about five people on a bridge at the same moment.

Barrie also donated Rupert Wright's Notes from the Languedoc.

The Australian artist, also from Melbourne, Mia Rappel, was next.

Goatperson and other Tales by Michael Leunig was Mia's first book. She calls Leunig an "Australian treasure, a cartoonist who's really a poet, gentle and tender."

The book about where she's from is Mirka Mora's My life: Wicked But Virtuous. Mia's family came from Europe to Australia, as did Mora's, a Romanian Jew from France, or as Mia puts it "she brought Europe to Australia, the old country to a young land."

Then came Irish writer and calligrapher Karen Powell.

Karen gave us the book about where she's from first, Arthur's Round, by Patrick Guinness, a descendant of Arthur Guinness, the founder of Guinness breweries. Guinness "was first brewed in my village in 1755 and we're still hoping for a tap!"

The book that inspires Karen is Brendan Behan's The Complete Plays, "The Hostage" being her favorite. Karen loves Behan not only because he "made human choices" but because "he gets people."

The American poet Nancy Collins-Warner donated her books next.

Finding Chief Kamiaki: The Life and Legacy of a Northwest Patriot is "about the place I was raised in the Palouse, an Indian word for 'the place', a very feminine, fertile land."

The book Nancy donated that inspires her was W.S. Merwin's The Shadow of Sirius. She calls Merwin "a master of the essential."

Next up was the English writer Maxine Backus from Zurich.

Maxine donated The Metaphysical Poets edited by Helen Gardner as she loves the "switch of register of the poems." Maxine also donated two of her own collections of poems "Zurich Observed" and "To Learn to Pleasure Yourself."

Last up was the New York writer Sarah Deming.

The "transgressive" book about where she's from is by New York writer Jonathan Ames: What's Not to Love: The Adventures of a Mildly Perverted Young Writer.

The book that inspires Sarah is Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel in 100,000 Words by the Serbian writer Milorad Pavić who just died last year. Sarah says the book is "magical" and probably "the favorite book I've ever read."

Thanks again to everyone for all the great books!

National Association of Writers in Education link...

2010-10-25T07:21:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the National Association of Writers in Education in England for putting a nice write up about La Muse and a link to our site on the Retreat's section of their website!

The NAWE also has its own retreat in 2011 at Ty Newydd, once the home of Lloyd George.

Located in North Wales, about twenty-five miles from Bangor, it lives in landscaped gardens with fine views over Cardigan Bay (you've got to love that name - see map, right) and the mountains of Meirionydd.

Also, Ty Newydd is the National Writers' Centre for Wales, which is supported by the Arts Council of Wales and run by the Taliesin Trust Ltd, a registered charity. It operates in close collaboration with Arvon.

You can check out more about their retreat here.

Irish Independent Article

2010-10-23T09:16:00.000-07:00

So, for whatever reason, it has taken The Irish Independent a long time to send this article to us, as you can't access their content online? Also, it was sent to us as a pdf so I'm uploading it as a jpeg.

We are very grateful to Jo for writing the article and for the paper for running it. Just double click on the image below twice and you'll be able to read it:

French Retirement

2010-10-23T04:11:00.000-07:00

Homemade Spacecraft by Father and Son

2010-10-21T05:30:00.000-07:00

So, this is what they say on the About part of their site:

The Brooklyn Space Program is a organization formed by a group of friends in New York City interested in scientific experiments, engineering, design and education.

The cool part of the project though is that 7 year-old Max Geissbuhler and his dad had the idea of seeing space and then made it happen with a video camera, a weather balloon and an iPhone...

And here's the video from the Homemade Spacecraft - it got nearly 19 miles up!:

Homemade Spacecraft from Luke Geissbuhler on Vimeo.

Album Covers

2010-10-19T06:25:00.000-07:00

The covers say it all:

Hipster Song

2010-10-18T00:36:00.000-07:00

Our friend Yuval just sent us the Hipster Song:

Motherhood and Women's Status in France.

2010-10-15T01:03:00.000-07:00

Here's a good New York Times article: Where Having It All Doesn’t Mean Having Equality on motherhood and women's status in France.

Here's how it starts:

Weeks after giving birth, French women are offered a state-paid, extended course of vaginal gymnastics, complete with personal trainer, electric stimulation devices and computer games that reward particularly nimble squeezing. The aim, said Agnes de Marsac, a physiotherapist who runs such sessions: “Making love again soon and making more babies.”

Funny Tipex Video

2010-10-13T01:03:00.000-07:00

Funny Tipex video:

Just go to their channel here and you'll see what we mean.

Mike Sacks - Photos of the TV

2010-10-11T05:39:00.000-07:00

Been meaning to tell you all about this link for a long time, but only remembered to post it when we were showing some friends the photos on the weekend.

An example of one of Mike's many magnificent mug shots:

Grotte de Limousis

2010-10-11T04:12:00.000-07:00

The Grotte de Limousis is only 20 minutes from the house, right beside the village of Limousis.

Dug out over the years by an underground river, known as the Green Lake, the cave was first electrified in 1935.

The last room of the cave has a really unique mineralogical piece, a chandelier of aragonite, 4 meters high and 10 meters in circumference.

Here's the driving directions from google:

View Larger Map

200th post - Gouffre de Cabrespine

2010-10-09T05:42:00.000-07:00

This is our 200th post!

The Gouffre de Cabrespine is one of the largest caves in the world that is open to tourists and is only a quarter of an hour from here. It was discovered not so long ago by one of our next door neighbor's uncles. Here's a map of where it is in relation to us from google:

View Larger Map

The gorge inside the mountain is deep enough to hold the Eiffel tower.

Here's a more general map of where it is:

Penguins

2010-10-08T13:03:00.000-07:00

You've gotta love this photo:

Our Cooliris Wall

2010-10-07T12:38:00.001-07:00

Ads you will NEVER see again...

2010-10-05T23:51:00.000-07:00

A friend just emailed us these ads. Some of them are very funny and some of them just plain wrong:

Land Art

2010-10-04T03:18:00.000-07:00

Inspired by the work of British sculptor, photographer and environmentalist Andy Goldsworthy, the local French artist, Christophe Eppe from St. Julien suggested doing a Land Art day with our residents and other locals. It was a lot of fun!

The photos were taken by Kerry and one of our residents Lynne Hollander . First up a slideshow:

And now a little explanation:

Lynne Hollander (in blue) and Kristal McMillan from Roquefere, puzzle over what should become a stone sphere.

The rest of the team are busy foraging for flat stones with round edges of all sizes.

La Muse residents Lynne Hollander and Jaclynn Gereluk (right) join neighbors Kristal McMillan (from Roquefere) and local artist Christophe Eppe (from St. Julien) in finding the perfect stone for each spot.

Meditative work, indeed!

Great work can't be rushed.

After realizing the sphere was starting to look like an egg, Kristal, Christophe and local French artist and sculptor Virginie Campagnie (from Miraval) undo the sphere in order to give it a rounder, more stable base.

Christophe's advice, "Don't rush!"

A new beginning.

La Muse co-owner/director Kerry Eielson lends a hand to Jaclynn, Katharine Whitcomb, Kerrie Maynes, Kristal and Virginie to make a broader base for a rounder form.

You can see what Katharine has about the getogether here and what Kerrie had to say about it here.

Essential for a sound structure: each layer has to be flat and solid.

Kerry, Jaclynn, Katharine and Virginie aim for a surface worthy of a meal.

Avalanche!

Our stone sphere "rolled" off its perch. No one was squashed.

We decided this would be a good time to break for our picnic, which was fortunately sustaining (chicken with prunes and olives, carrots, toasts, cheese, apples, oranges, chocolate, and coffee).

Turns out Land Art is pretty hard work!

We decided to let the stones lead the way, and build an egg after all.

"How about a really small egg?" said Katharine after lunch, in French to boot!

This is Kerrie and Katharine adding another layer.

Layers later, after working through sun, mist, rain and wind, Christophe and Katharine near the summit!

An egg with a view...

Thanks for the great idea Christophe!

Dean Fleischer-Camp videos

2010-10-01T00:14:00.000-07:00

While reading the blog of one of our previous barter fellows I came across a video of this man: Dean Fleischer-Camp. Very funny stuff:

Or this one, "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On":

Or click here to see the ad for Jim Beam.

Greenpoint Open Studios - Kelly Ann Monaghan

2010-09-30T01:44:00.000-07:00

If any of you out there are in Brooklyn on Sunday, specifically, the Greenpoint area, you should go check out one our artists' work: Kelly Ann Monaghan. Her art is really great.

It's part of the Greenpoint Open Studios.

Kelly's studio is open on Sunday from 2-6pm and it's at 255 Calyer Street, 2nd Floor, Between Newel and Diamond: Cell 718-930-5320.

Take the G to Nassau or Greenpoint Avenue.

"Fastidious French Get Free Sparkling Water Fountain"

2010-09-28T23:54:00.000-07:00

One of the great barters we've had the luck to have here, Elizabeth Ames Staudt - she has a great blog here on the Kenyon Review, just sent us this funny/French thing from The Daily GOOD : Fastidious French Get Free Sparkling Water.

Yes, they're making free sparkling water for public drinking fountains

Seemingly the Italians are at it too!

The Medieval Cité in Carcassonne

2010-09-28T12:40:00.000-07:00

For those who haven't been here on retreat before: the medieval Cité in Carcassonne is only 30 minutes from here.

The fortress, which was completely restored in 1853 by the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, was added to the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites in 1997.

About 3500 BC the hill site of Carsac (a Celtic place-name that has been kept at other sites in the south) became an important trading place in the 6th century BC. The town became identified when the Romans fortified the hilltop around 100 BC. The main part of the lower parts of the northern ramparts date from Gallo-Roman times. Skipping on a fair few centuries of history we come to 1096 when Pope Urban II blessed the foundation stones of the new cathedral as a Catholic stronghold against the Cathars. Carcassonne became famous in its role in the Albigensian Crusades, when the city was a stronghold of Occitan Cathars, the people the Catholic Church decided to, to put it mildly, get rid of, premaently.

You can find out more information about Carassonne on the Office de Tourisme website.

Or check out their funny video:

Canal du Midi

2010-09-27T02:00:00.000-07:00

Residents have been asking me over the years about the Canal du Midi, so this should answer any questions on it.

Built in the 17th Century, this tranquil, tree-lined canal meanders through the French countryside from the Garonne River to the Étang de Thau on the Mediterranean, which means it goes from one sea to the other for 240 kms. It was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996.

You can find a lot more about the canal on Wikipedia.

Also, to answer a question I'm often asked- you can:

Here's a map of the Canal (Yes, the Canal de Garonne connects to the Canal du Midi at Toulouse, but down here everyone calls it the Canal du Midi):

The Canal du Midi

Withnail and I - Hamlet Soliloquy

2010-09-26T11:02:00.000-07:00

Yes, we know, it's not one of Shakespeare's most uplifting pieces but the way Richard E. Grant acts it...

It's a great film too, if you can understand the accents:

Why men should stand to pee...

2010-09-23T03:25:00.000-07:00

Will this thing to the left really become a thing of the past?

Seemingly the liberated women of France, Germany and Holland have:

vowed to put their men down – on the toilet. They carry placards showing a huge red X scrawled across a man standing to urinate. They shout: “Laissez tomber votre pantalon, et asseyez vous! (Drop your trousers and sit)!” “Behalte deine Tropfen fuer dich (Keep your drips to yourself)!” “Toch niet weer een vieze plas op MIJN badkamer vloer (Not another filthy puddle on MY bathroom floor)!”

John Gamel, Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Louisville in Kentucky writes more about it in his article: To Sit or not to Sit?

September Book Swap

2010-09-20T13:24:00.000-07:00

We had crepes with cherry and fig jams made from our garden and then got more great books for the library:

First up was Katharine Whitcomb a poet and Associate Professor at Central Washington University who brought along Valley Walking: Notes on the Land by Robert Schnelle "about taking walks around the valley" in the high plains desert of central Washington State where she's from, famous for its Timothy hay which is "mostly grown for Japanese racehorses."

Kathy's inspiration book was Anne Carson's The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos because as a book it is "a breakdown of boundaries between genres and the breakdown of a relationship."

Cathy also very generously donated two of her own collections of poetry: Saints of South Dakota and Lamp of Letters.

Kerrie Maynes talked next about how she started out in college as an art major and ended up working as an editor in publishing for the last 10 years, right now at the University of Washington Press. Kerrie is here working on her website, inspired by the idea of "quiet, beautiful spaces."

As her inspirational book Kerrie donated the "beautiful" Abstract Painting: Concepts and Techniques by Vicky Perry.

As opposed to a book about where she's from - she lives in Seattle - she donated a book that she says she's "more at home with": Owls and Other Fantasises: Poems and Essays by Mary Oliver.

Jaclynn Gereluk a non-fiction writer from Vancouver, British Columbia, was up next.

Jaclynn spoke about her love of graphic novels and the book she donated that inspires her, Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi.

For a book about where she's from Jaclynn was resolute about not giving a "drab, boring, prairie lit." novel in the vein of Alice Munro, a genre that "makes her crazy."

So, to represent the "new movement in Canadian literature" she gave the novel Stanley Park (which is a park in Vancouver) by Timothy Taylor "about the story of a foodie."

Lynne Hollander, a retired children's librarian from California, who is here "editing and weeding through discs of photos" she took 2 years ago when she was in Cuba for a month, was up last.

The Photographer's Eye by Michael Freeman is the book Lynne donated as the one that inspired her because of the fact that it "makes you aware of the artistic choices you're making or should be making."

The book she donated about where she's from was a "biography of my late husband" Mario Savio, by Robert Cohen: Freedom's Orator. As Lynne humbly put it herself, "I was a part of the free speech movement" of Berkeley in the mid 60s. Here's a clip of Lynne's husband on what are now called "Mario Savio Steps" in Berkeley:

Thanks again for all your great books!

Sweet land of... conformity and dumbness?

2010-09-18T03:11:00.000-07:00

We were just sent this article from the Boston Sunday Globe last June by Claude Fischer.

The subtitle of the article reads:

"Americans aren’t the rugged individuals we think we are"

It goes on to give research facts and figures that show a contemporary America contradicting directly the messages of Emerson, Thoreau and Martin Luther King (cf the 6th paragraph of the article).

This article in itself would not be so, well, intriguing to us if we hadn't received this article from one of our recent residents in the same week: The Dumbing of America: Call me a Snob, but Really, We're a Nation of Dunces by Susan Jacoby in the Washington Post of February 17, 2008.

The article's first sentence quotes Emerson:

"The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself."

Which leads me back to the subtitle of Jacoby's article:

"There is no quick cure for the epidemic of arrogant anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism that has infected America."

As an aside, when I looked up the dumbing down of America online I came across this website which says nothing about the "dumbing down" but does have lots of interviews with bands? I would hazard a guess that it's an American website but as there is no "About" page, simply invitations to join their social media links, I wouldn't know.

The Rise and Fall of French Cuisine?

2010-09-17T12:24:00.000-07:00

In a London Review of Books review this book (see left): Au Revoir to All That: The Rise and Fall of French Cuisine by Michael Steinberger supplies us with some interesting quotes:

"The quarter-pounded conquest of France was not the result of some fiendish American plot to subvert French food culture. It was an inside job, and not merely in the sense that the French public was lovin’ it – the architects of McDonald’s strategy in France were French."

And:

"Chefs need prosperous patrons. Notwithstanding their other effects, the Reagan and Thatcher eras made the rich richer and spawned vast new wealth, money that bankrolled gastronomic revolutions in the United States and Britain. The French economy stagnated and French cuisine did likewise."

And seemingly it was all forecasted by Mr. Paris to the Moon Adam Gopnik:

And so France has a unique power to let Americans down. One of the first and most influential of the disappointed was Adam Gopnik. Writing in the New Yorker in 1997, Gopnik asked whether there was ‘a crisis in French cooking’. The question was rhetorical. ‘The muse of cooking’ had abandoned France and, shockingly, ‘migrated across the ocean to a spot in Berkeley, with occasional trips to New York and, of all places, Great Britain’.

Don't know if the French would agree with Mr. Steinberger though...

The photo says it all...

2010-09-16T03:19:00.000-07:00

No Room for Science in French Wine Making

2010-09-15T04:58:00.000-07:00

Just found this interesting article in the Washington Post about French winemakers fighting genetically modified vines.

Particularly liked the description of the concept of terroir:

"Although hard to define, the term embraces the soil, weather, skills, art, authenticity, traditions and ultimately the "feel" that come together to fill a bottle with something good to drink."

The Post also has a very cool informational link about France on their site too.

Festivals - Limoux, Carcassonne, Mirepoix...

2010-09-14T10:50:00.000-07:00

Carcassonne, Summer Festival Fireworks...

Every village in the region has their own type of festival in Summer, but the Carcassonne Festival is one of the major cultural events in the South of France and is now one of France's largest festivals with nearly 110 shows each year and more than 75 of them are free!

Here's a synopsis/program of what they have going on and here's an overview:

Throughout July, in the Cité and the Bastide St. Louis. A lot of the events are on the Place Carnot. The program has opera, theatre, dance, jazz, salsa, street theatre, country and western as well as other concerts, comedy and folklore.

In August a re-enactment of the days of the troubadours happens. Knights on horses in full costume, along with jugglers, gymnasts, dancers, acrobats, mime artists and musicians entertain with jousting and mayhem.

From mid-June to mid-September there's an organ festival with concerts on the great organ at the Basilica of Saint-Nazaire in the Cite. Concerts are free and take place every Sunday and on all public holidays.

On Bastille Day -14th July- the merry madness reaches its climax with a truly amazing firework display - the Cité looks like it's about to explode.

Here's a look at the year-round events:

Carnaval de limoux sortie de toutes les troupes mars 09

January to March: Limoux Carnaval (see the video above)

March :
Beginning of March - Dame Carcas Pig Fair, Carcassonne
Storytelling Festival, Limoux
End of March, there are the antique fairs, Carcassonne
End of March or Early April - Wine festival Toques et Clochers

July: Carcassonne Festival (see above)

August:
Period costume spectacle, Medieval City of Carcassonne
Puppet Festival, Mirepoix, Contact 04 68 31 54 67
Weekend in the middle to end of August: Vigne et Terroir festival

September:
Around the 6th September. The flea market in September is in the streets of La Trivalle.

October:
Fete du Vin Primeur: A celebration of the wine harvest celebrated in the middle of the month

November:
St. Catherine' Fair on 25th November. Like all the fairs, there are arts and crafts and local produce on offer.

December, January and February:

Don't miss the eccentrically fun Truffle Festival in Villeneuve Minervois held one cold morning every year, with a pistol!
Sunday before Christmas: Foie Gras Fair
Christmas market: in the Place Carnot is great in an eccentrically magical kind of way with its stage, skating rink (3 Euro) with a big ice spectacular one of the evenings, fake icicles and snow on the fountain, Christmas trees and wooden stalls and a huge Ferris wheel with views of the town and Cite just outside the Bastide walls. There's sledging, the usual fireworks and many other things that make Christmas pretty memorable in Carcassonne, to say the least.

Please email us by clicking here if you know of any other festivals going on in the area and we'll update this post, or just leave a comment below the post. Thanks!

The Grape Lady

2010-09-11T01:01:00.000-07:00

One our residents just sent us the Grape Lady:

The Possibility of Everything

2010-08-31T12:47:00.000-07:00

Our friend Hope Edelman's memoir The Possibility of Everything just got released today in paperback.

We could try to review it but then Publisher's Weekly does such a good job of it. They gave it a starred review.

Edelman (Motherless Daughters) returns with a charming memoir full of self-deprecating honesty that defies easy categorization. Edelman is forced to seek a solution to the sudden appearance of her three-year-old daughter Maya's violent imaginary friend, Dodo. Edelman, who believes in the possibility of everything, but can't place her trust in anything without visible proof, clashes with her alternatively minded husband and the New Age modes of thinking in her new Los Angeles suburb when seeking an answer. She grieves that her own mother, who died when she was 16, is not there to advise her on matters of parenting. But when Maya's behavior becomes severe, Edelman surprisingly agrees to let her daughter see a shaman in Belize. The journey, which is full of remarkable events, cracks open the foundation of her skepticism just shy of a transformation. The largest stretch of the narrative—the Belize journey— is gripping and vividly detailed, and Edelman occasionally detours into Mayan culture and history. The book is equal parts a meditation on the trials of motherhood and marriage, a travelogue and an exploration of faith, which she braids together into a highly readable, insight-laden narrative.

Or better again, here's Hope talking about her book:

Industrial Scars

2010-08-28T12:18:00.000-07:00

Our friend the photographer and enviornmentalist J Henry Fair, whose new assignment is as an Art/Environment blogger with The Huffington Post, was recently interviewed on German television and podcast about Industrial Scars, coal and the Ruhr valley industrial region.

This is the WDR Interview about the Ruhr Industrial region and the power of the consumer and here is the NRDC Interview on the threat of coal ash.

And here is Henry and Celebrate Green on The Power of the Consumer .

More of his amazing series of photography can be seen here.

August Book Swap

2010-08-27T03:31:00.000-07:00

After the crepes came... the books:

The Belgian writer and doctor Alain Brichau brought Narrative Design by Madison Smartt Bell. Alain attended a workshop by Smartt Bell 11 years ago and says the book has "great ideas on the process of writing" and channeling what Smartt Bell calls "the creative black box."

Alain's second choice Le Chant de L'etre et du paraitre, by the Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom, is a novel about a "writer trying to write a new novel" and the "dialogue this writer has with another more cynical, successful writer" who tries to dissuade him from doing so.

Johanna Gohmann was up next. Jo, who is here on a barter fellowship, donated the memoir Are You Somebody? by Nuala O'Faolain because it gives a "sense of where I am now" (Jo is an American living in Ireland) and the fact that she is working on a collection of essays.

Jo also donated a collection of essays in which one of her essays, "The Vagina Dialogues," is included: Best Sex Writing, 2010.

Charles (left) and Lupin Pooter at from Chapter VI of The Diary of a Nobody.

The English writer and actor John Finnemore talked to us about Michael Frayn's "amazing play" Copenhagen and the book he donated Frayn's writings on theatre from 1970 to 2008: Stage Directions.

John's other book was The Diary of A Nobody, a novel set very near the part of London John lives in, about a character who is a "misrepresentation" of who he really is. It is a classic English comic novel written by George Grossmith and his brother Weedon Grossmith with illustrations by Weedon. It first appeared in the magazine Punch in 1888 to 89, and was first printed in book form in 1892.

Our University of Wisconsin Fellow, Sarah Johnson then told us about Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty. Sarah said the novel she's writing is along the same lines as Hollinghurst's book and Brideshead Revisited in the sense that it is the story "of an outsider who gets involved with a family."

Sarah also donated A Gate at the Stairs by Lorie Moore who taught her at Madison, the story of "a mid-western girl who becomes a nanny" in what Sarah called an Edith Whartonesque way "because of the way it draws a socio-political picture with such a gentle hand."

Thanks again for all the books!

Sheryl St. Germain

2010-08-26T13:29:00.000-07:00

Here's the video of Sheryl St. Germain reading (sorry about the bad audio) an hilarious poem, "A French Mosquito Defends Itself," from the new collection of poems she was working on in July while here at La Muse. It flips over after a few seconds... :

Here are the blood-thirsty lines:

A French Mosquito Defends Itself

Eet is not easy always to speak with your race,
you of zee mountainous body, you who do not
always pay attention to such small sings as us.
But you should, mon ami, you should. We have lived
millions and millions of years, we have been found
preserved in zee amber from a time unthinkably
before yours. And you will not find a way
to exterminate us anytime soon with your stupeed
fog blowing trucks and chemicals with zee Latin
names that hurt you more zan zey do us.

You speak of us as biting, attacking you.
Zeese are all zee wrong words, mon ami. Eet is only
the female of our species, such as myself, who drink
your blood. Like your vampire we must have a blood
meal every now and zen, but only to make zee eggs,
zee blood is necessary for zee protein of zee eggs, oui?

So we do not bite, first of all, we search out zee ones of you
zat smell best—we search for zee most intoxicating aroma,
we land, we enter, we sip, we drink, we swill
but we do not bite, mon ami.
                    Sink of us, if you will,
as connoisseurs, and your body, a terroir. We
are searching for zee right vintage, zee good structure
zee good nose, zee long finish, good color, a warm
taste, zee good texture in zee proboscis. Très elegant,
zee slight prickle going down, ooh la la, I must sit down.

So you should feel honored when I choose you above
others, it means your blood is like wine to me, with
zee beautiful aroma and bouquet and moi, I like
zee blood with a hint of berry and darkness,
zee blood with a taste of La France in it from the past,
and how shall I say, a little bit fat, the way we like
things preserved in zis country (zee confit du canard,
for example, you fat ones have zee good taste like
zee confit du human).

Your body ees like a vineyard with rows and rows of
grapes, your body ees zee raw material for our eggs,
so non, we do not attack, monsieurs et madames,
we harvest, we feed, we take what we need to
survive, only a tiny bit, not any more.    It eez true
that we spread zee word when you taste good,
that eez why, mon ami, you have 55 bites,
as you call them, 55 leetle mountains of objection

from your body, your slow body, I might add,
whose defenses do nothing to us, but
torture you after we are long gone. Where,
I ask, eez zee logic in zis torture? What
young and inexperienced god has formed you?
We mosquitoes would not have survived
one hundred years with such a system.

Maybe you can sink of me, too, as a bit
like Jean D’Arc, My proboscis eez my sword,
I rally the troops, I get us all on the same body,
but not to attack, only to take what eez rightfully ours,
zis blood our bodies have been built to harvest
for our children.
    Aren’t we a leetle like you Americans,
you want to take zee oil, zee minerals,
zee ideas etc. from zee ozer countries,

and if sometimes you carry by mistake
some hitchhiker, some parasite, somezing,
from your culture, say, that infects or kills,
it’s not your fault, like us, you were born for zis.

Sex: Our Bodies Our Junk

2010-08-25T07:43:00.000-07:00

As with the videos posted yesterday, you probably don't want to have this book cover (see left) open on your browser before reading a goodnight story.

Our friend Mike Sacks' new book Sex: Our Bodies, Our Junk out from Random House yesterday is perfect bedside reading, accompanied, that is.

We LOVE the title play on the reference classic Our Bodies, Ourselves from the Boston Women's Health Collective's.

As with Mike's other books it's bound (pardon the pun) to be hilarious and promises to be comprehensive, what with a load of other well-known comedy writers on board to write under the collective name of The Association for the Betterment of Sex.

Here's the publisher's blurb, but you're probably better off just buying this aesthetic informational tool today!

Onion News Stories

2010-08-24T04:51:00.000-07:00

Yes, this is not the kind of stuff you want to play when kids are around, but this is an hilarious Onion video we just found. Those of you who have a dislike for derogatory language ought not press play:

And here's the one a friend of ours sent us which allowed us to discover the one above:

Open Studio - Deborah Clarke

2010-08-17T02:16:00.000-07:00

Here's the South African artist Deborah Clarke's paintings from her open studio in July:

The paintings are all watercolors of our village. This was Deborah's second time as a resident here. She lives in Grenoble.

Space Jump!

2010-08-16T01:23:00.000-07:00

Can you jump from space? Just found out that Joe Kittinger did it 50 years ago! It was called Project Excelsior, or, how to abandon your space ship and not die:

Jumping From Space from Mark Gray on Vimeo.

Toni Freitas - Open Studio

2010-08-14T02:39:00.000-07:00

Here's one of the videos of the art that was shown at the open studio here in July by the American designer Toni Freitas.

As you can see, some of the necklace's are inspired by her surroundings such as the "Vive La France" piece and the beautiful local stone (schist) necklace. Toni, who is a writer too, was also inspired by the work of Virginia Woolf, specifically her novel Mrs Dalloway.

Toni lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, and was here at La Muse on her third retreat with her husband the writer and graphic designer David Trujilo-Farley.

One Apartment and Six Drummers

2010-08-13T03:04:00.000-07:00

Check out this song Music for One Apartment and Six Drummers inspired by the
film Sound of Noise (we love the bathroom scene one):

Book Swap

2010-07-29T07:54:00.000-07:00

Another retreat started yesterday and here are the great books people donated to our living library after crepes this morning:

Tracy Marchini from New York who is here working on her YA novel donated Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan as it reflects the genre she's working in.

Tracy also donated Gare Thompson's Who Was Eleanor Roosevelt? about her "home town" and the Roosevelt estate.

The Londoner Tanya Byrne was up next with her "desert island books," the first being the "first book I read for school that I really loved": To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. The novel expressed "racial tension" for the first time for Tanya as a child, as opposed to the "Pride and Prejudice genre of novels I read before it." She especially loves "the strong male role model of Atticus."

Tanya's other selection was Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughter House Five, quoting the first line as one of the best she's every came across.

Next up was Dennis Lewis who lives and teaches in Qatar and is here working on his first collection of poetry. Dennis donated The Triggering Town by the Montana poet Richard Hugo which he called "an honest and very helpful book on writing."

Dennis' other book was W.G. Sebald's The Emigrants, a book he said that repeats many of things from Sebald's other works, "all of his books being a combination of different forms and all of them dealing with memory and loss."

New Zealander Jenny Simpson, who is here working on short stories, gave the library Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones as her first contribution. She describes Jones as a very different writer from other writers in New Zealand as he writes about things set elsewhere.

Jenny's other book was the poet Bill Manhire's most recent work of stories and poems, Lifted. For the 25th anniversary of the Erebus air disaster, Manhire composed the poem "Erebus Voices", which Sir Edmund Hillary read at the commemorative service at Scott Base, Antarctica.

Writer Natalie Mera Ford spoke after Jenny about her book An American Story, a collection of Barack Obama's speeches, reflecting where she's originally from, the US.

Natalie's second choice was The Other Side of the Bridge by the Canadian writer Mary Lawson. Natalie chose Lawson's book because she is working on a novel herself away from her home country.

Last to speak was another London writer, Martha Close, who is here working on a novel much like the first book she donated, Grahame Greene's The Quiet American which she has "kept on her desk while writing my novel based in Cambodia" because of its' "meeting of East and West" but mainly because it is so beautifully written.

Martha's other book was How Not to Write a Novel by Sandra Newman and Howard Mittelmark. She cited specifically page 28's title: Why Your Job is Harder than God."

Thanks again to everyone who donated books!

Tiziana Stupia post

2010-07-18T00:34:00.000-07:00

Tiziana Stupia just wrote a lovely post about us on her TravelBlog about her experience here at La Muse and the surrounding region.

Tiziana, a pagan priestess and writer who was on a journey connecting with sacred sites, the land, shamans, tantrikas, and other like-minded people, was here for two consecutive retreats. She lives in Glastonbury.

Opening a Bottle of Wine with a Shoe?

2010-07-17T10:46:00.000-07:00

Don't know what it does to the wine bashing it against a wall like this, but here you have it, a bottle of wine being opened with a shoe:

Presuming one would need to hold said bottle pretty lightly and use a shoe with an ample sole!

Potluck pie...

2010-07-14T10:12:00.000-07:00

To the left (photo courtesy of Kathleen - thanks for all the onions et al.) is a delicious cheese pie Toni made this retreat for our Potluck last night to send off Mary.

Thanks also to Toni and David for the beautifully "wet drink" of sublime Scottish gin and tonic with cucumber, Sheryl's awesome ratatouille, Mary's succulent shrimp, Daphne's fresh fruit salad, Kerry's burgeoning blinis and Seamus and Fionn's filling zuichini fritters!

Thanks to all the chefs!

July Bookswap

2010-07-05T10:11:00.000-07:00

A new retreat started a few days ago, which means a new slew of books from new residents were donated today.

After we had crepes and homemade dandelion, apricot and fig jams (as well as Kerry's homemade cherry compote!) the writer Sheryl St. Germain donated some of her own books first, talking about the artists who designed the cool covers: Let It Be a Dark Roux (by artist Francis Pavy), The Journals of Scheherazade, and Swamp Songs (by Jacqueline Bishop).

Because she hails from New Orleans Sheryl also brought along Why New Orleans Matters by Tom Piazza, a book "about the world, not just New Orleans," as well as a recent collection of 108 sacred poems, Mala of the Heart, and Sherman Alexi's Face, a writer Sheryl said "writes with a lot of anger and interesting gusto." Sheryl also generously gave the library two books by Paul Guest, One More Theory About Happiness and Notes for My Body Double.

The artist Daphne Leighton talked next, about Israel, a book of photos by Annie Sacerdoti, Meir Shalev's novel The Blue Mountain, and a Sotheby catalogue featuring Israeli art going back to the beginning of the last century.

Daphne also donated two catalogues of her most recent art Images of Thought and unknown familiar land (that's one of her paintings to the left).

Camille Goodison then donated her grandmother's memoir From Harvey River, a book about where she's from, as well as a collection of stories, Creole Folktales, by a writer that inspires her a lot, Patrick Chamoiseau.

Deborah Clarke, an artist from South Africa, who lives in Grenoble and who was here last year too, donated Africa House by Christina Lamb about the Englishman Stewart Gore-Browne because it is "about a house as well as a man" who built it from scratch and helped people in the process even if "the dream turned sour."

On a different note Deborah donated Francis Mayes' Under the Tuscan Sun a book she loves because it emphasizes "a new life in a different country" but also because she "includes recipes" that give you a real feel for the place and the people.

Next up was the Australian Mary Delahunty who is here working on her memoir Public Life, Private Grief. Mary donated Colm Tóibín's Bad Blood because it is "another way of looking at the Troubles" starting in reportage that bleeds into "a beautiful story of a walk along the border." Mary's other book was Chloe Hooper's The Tall Man about her homeland as "an unreconciled country, but also a book about why justice can never be served."

Kathleen Smith, a filmmaker and producer, is also "drawn to the Troubles" as Mary put it, and so gave the library her friend Darren O'Donnell's Social Acupuncture, a book about confronting change, no matter where we are.

Then Kathleen donated "a book about where I grew up, but more because of the universal truths in it," Alice Munro's Dance of The Happy Shades.

The jewelry designer Toni Freitas came next donating The Vintner's Luck, (she compared it to Marquez's magic realism) a novel by Elizabeth Knox about a guy who meets an angel.

Toni also brought along 1000 Years of Annoying the French, a funny repackaging of history from the same man who wrote A Year in the Merde.

And finally came the writer and designer David Trujillo-Farley's cool children's book This Is Edinburgh by M. Sasek, about the city he and Toni live in.

David's second donation was Ilustrating Children's Books by Martin Salisbury, which "talks about structure, characterization and many other things" that David says are "a lot more useful than many of the pretty books on the subject."

Again, THANK YOU to everyone for the books!

New Poems

2010-06-29T15:05:00.000-07:00

Nicholas Wong, a great poet, who is here on a barter fellowship, just published a few new poems here on the cool blog Asia Writes. The poems were written during his Rimbun Dahan Artist Residency in Malaysia in August '08.

Nic was a recipient of the Academy of American Poets Award in 2008 and 2010 and is studying Comparative Literature & Society at Columbia University. He's working on his first poetry collection, Extinction Suite, his poems having appeared in The Rialto, Southeast Asian Review of English, and The Columbia Review, among others.

Sausage poem

2010-06-24T10:24:00.000-07:00

Here's a fun poem from the poet and translator Marilyn McCabe who was here this retreat from the US.

Marilyn was here working on a series of poems about Marie Curie, and starting a translation of some of Rilke's French poems.

Casing Beauty

The sausage self

is a marbled mold

of fancied fat and

mythic gristle in a

stretch of flesh

which in startled glance

of a sudden eye

might be rendered

incandescent.

Book Swap - June

2010-06-23T01:10:00.000-07:00

June has come and once again the artists-in-residence at La Muse share their artistic goals and inspiration over breakfast. While savoring the crepes prepared by John, and toasts of bread slapped with dandelion jam, we heard from our seven residents: -

Victoria Nechodomu writes fiction and hails from Kasigluk, a Yup’ik village in Alaska. She plans to work on short stories that feature her heartwarming and brilliant teaching experience in Kasigluk and travel stories in China, Mongolia and etc.. The books she brought for La Muse include Qayaqs & Canoes, Native Ways of Knowing presented by the Alaska Native Heritage Center, and Monica Wood’s The Pocket Muse, a picture book with writing prompts.

A daring New Yorker, Jennifer Murray quitted her daytime job as a lawyer to write fiction. She is currently working on the first few chapters of her novel, Mother of Exiles, set during the Nazi occupation of France. Her novel spans different historical periods under the thematic element of escape and exile. She is also working on a short story incorporating Dissociative Fugue, a type of amnesia in which the traveler forgets his/her journey. She brought in Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin and The Paris Review Interviews, Volume 1.

Nandi Szabo is a creative arts therapist from Sacramento, California and has been an artist resident at La Muse in the previous year. She dances, paints and writes and is interested in the healing potential of art and a multidisciplinary approach between performance and literature. She is a charming sweetheart, bringing to La Muse her youthful energy and generosity. The books she brought were Soiled Doves, Prostitution in the Early West by Anne Seagraves and The Art of Breathing by Nancy Zi.

Vicki Jean de Kay is also from Sacramento, California and has been a nurse and consultant for the state health department. She loves country dancing and is currently taking art therapy workshops with Nandi. True to her warm and racy sense of humor, she brought in Ladies’ Home Erotica by the Kensington Ladies’ Erotica Society as well as Where I was From by Joan Didion.

Tiziana Stupia left England for the Himalayas on an inner journey of healing and discovery. She has been a resident since May and is currently in the fourth draft of her book on travel in India and Pakistan. From her fire rituals to meditation practices, she refreshes our idea of an artistic retreat. Her books are Glastonbury, Avalon of the Heart by Dion Fortune and Tantrika, Travelling the Road of Divine Love by Asra Q. Nomani.

Nicholas Wong, a Malaysian poet based in New York City, is here on a barter fellowship to read and write about Cathar history, troubadour verse and Occitan culture. He brought Dialogues in Paradise, a short story collection by Can Xue, China’s heir to magical realism. The other book is Louis Couperus’s The Hidden Force, a novel with its own dose of Malay magic and the scary forces that threaten Dutch imperialism in the East Indies.

Nicole Mayhew, a sculptor and painter from New York City, has been here on barter fellowship since May. Her portraits show the hand of Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt, and she loves Southern France. The books she brought are Calvin Tomkin’s Off the Wall, a book featuring the New York arts scene in the 80s, significant for uniting the art of painting and sculpting, as well as Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins.

Amazing video

2010-06-21T04:07:00.000-07:00

You can't really beat this video from OK Go:

And here's their most recent one:

Robin Chandler

2010-06-11T03:42:00.000-07:00

So, one of our past attendees, Robin Chandler, has a book coming out on the 31st of August called Women, War, and Violence: Personal Perspectives and Global Activism from Palgrave Macmillan.

Robin edited it along with Lihua Wang, and Linda K. Fuller. To pre-order the book click here.

Besides her editorial role, Robin also wrote the Introduction, the chapter on Liberia, as well as designing the cool cover. She hopes the book will "advance the status of women and raise consciousness about the oneness of humanity."

Read a book...

2010-06-11T01:28:00.000-07:00

We were just introduced to this great video by one of our artists:

Kate McBride Expo

2010-06-06T11:27:00.000-07:00

Here's some video of the great work Australian artist Kate McBride created while here on a barter fellowship at La Muse.

Kate comes from Sydney and was off to Croatia to meet friends before heading back to Australia.

We also had readings after the show and a meal of Kerry's New England chowder. We'll try to upload video of all the readings soon!

Onion Videos

2010-06-04T01:55:00.000-07:00

Here's some video Robin Berson took of the traditional Occitan music that was played in St. Andre, the church at the entrance to the village, after the Onion Walk (Lo Camin de la Ceba) from Mazamet.

We dropped six of our attendees off up there at 7 in the morning and they arrived at the church to eat sausage and pate sandwiches to the melodic cacophony of the Occitan goatpipes many hours later!

This one takes a minute or so to start, but the song is lovely:

Book Swap - May

2010-05-31T00:31:00.000-07:00

A full house of writers and artists sat around the breakfast table over crepes and homemade dandelion jam to talk about where they were from, what they were doing at La Muse, and what they’d brought to contribute to the living library.

Rachel Ephraim, a fiction writer from Brooklyn, NY spoke about coming to southern France to gain patience in her writing while she tackles her first novel. She brought the books, “Don’t Sleep, There are Snakes,” by Daniel Everett—a book on travel, culture, and language, and “Easter Parade,” by Richard Yates, a book set in Rachel’s hometown of Westchester, NY. Rachel is here on a barter fellowship.

Next, Trevor Davison, a fiction writer from Vancouver who is also working on his first novel (a work of science fiction), brought the books “The Year of the Flood,” by Margaret Atwood and “Vancouver Wild,” photographed by Graham Osborne with text by Richard Cannings. Everyone at La Muse is jealous of Trevor’s high-powered productivity since he’s arrived. Each day he seems aglow after writing pages upon pages of his rapidly growing novel.

After Trevor, the Australian artist Kate McBride showed us her wonderfully diverse and original works and talked about how she's inspired by Shazia Sikander, the Pakistani artist. She showed us Sikander's work in the book she donated, edited by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. She also gave La Muse Markus Zusak's "The Book Thief." Kate is here on a barter fellowship creating some beautiful watercolor and oil paintings.

Kelly Scarff, a poet from Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, is inspired by poems about people which highlight the small, idiosyncratic characteristics that often go unnoticed by most. Currently she’s working on a collection of poems based on her travels to Russia with her mother. She brought the books, “Miss New York Has Everything,” written by her former teacher, Lori Jakiela and “Unreconstructed,” by Ed Ochester, a book of poems that she deems, “No bullshit.”

Colleen Hubbard, a fiction writer from San Francisco, is also working on a novel during her time at La Muse. She relayed to the group that the books she’d originally packed for the library were stolen in Turkey. Luckily, a stranger on a bus took pity on her and gave her “Robinson Crusoe,” by Daniel Defoe. Colleen also brought “Tony and Susan,” by Austin Wright—a book she describes as the only decent looking book at the airport terminal. A food writer and avid traveler, Colleen has impressed everyone thus far with her skills in the kitchen and her adventurous taste buds that have tried almost everything, (from bird’s nest soup to brain!), although she did mention that she refuses to eat “three squeaks,” a Chinese dish comprised of live baby mice, squeaking three times as you pick them up with chopsticks, dip them in sauce, and then put them in your mouth...yes, truth is stranger than fiction.

Robin Berson, ex-librarian and non-fiction writer, spoke about research for her fascinating new book, which she admits has been leading her down many tangential paths. When she told us about her project, it was easy to understand why: she is at La Muse writing a memoir on Benjamin Lay, an 18^th century hunchback, dwarf, abolitionist, and Quaker—amongst other things! She contributed her last book, “Jane Addams; A Biography,” and “The Island at the Center of the World,” a history of Dutch colonialism in Manhattan written by Russell Shorto.

Robin’s husband, David Greetham, is working on something that’s never been done—that is, he’s writing a book on the idea of incompletion and exploring great works that have ended abruptly, such as Bach’s The Art of Fugue. He donated his 2^nd book, “Textual Scholarship,” which is based on the history of textuality, and “The Lenox School of Jazz,” by Jeremy Yudkin, a book that explores the history of music in upstate New York where he and Robin enjoy a country house.

Tiziana Stupia, has been traveling the world for months. She brings to La Muse an inspiring spiritual energy and a wonderful sense of humor. Tiziana brought “Tantrika, Traveling the Road of Divine love,” by Asra Q. Nomani, and “Glastonbury: Avalon of the Heart,” by Dion Fortune, where Tiziana spent some time this year. She is currently revising a book on her previous personal journeys.

Nicole Mayhew, New York sculptor and painter, could not attend the book swap because of another volcano eruption. Although her flight was canceled, she eventually made it to La Muse and is working on a series of sketches and paintings. She brought the books “Jitterbug Perfume,” by Tom Robbins and “Off the Wall; A Portrait of Robert Rauschenberg,” by Calvin Tomkins. Nicole is also here on a barter fellowship.

And thanks to Rachel for writing all of the above far more eloquently than we have in the past!