Tiziana Stupia post

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?

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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



And here's their most recent one:

Robin Chandler

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...

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

Kate McBride Expo

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

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: