I once had a crush on a man who would die young.
He danced with me, sang to me, called me the Girl from the North Country.
But he was engaged then married to a woman who left, and then he went away. I never told him how I felt. I thought it would make things worse, and then it was too late.
He said some things to me I have always remembered. One was, when it comes to winter, you just have to embrace it, both the winter of the snow and ice outside and the winter of your emotions inside. The other thing he said, when I was sad about our time together coming to an end, was that you have to take good memories with you, and let them carry you through the year until you can be together again.
Art is a lonely business. Every year, for many years, I have returned to my college and taught high schoolers creative writing. Every year, for many years, most of the same faculty have come back too. We’ve become close friends, an artistic family. For one week in June, we pick up like no time has passed, although a whole year has. I am fully myself with these friends, and they understand me because I understand them.
We have the same drive, the same impulses, the same belief that art can make a difference in our lives, the lives of strangers, and the lives of the writers we teach.
Artists are weird. We’re lost in our heads. A lot of the time, we’re miles away. We would give up almost anything for art, including money, time, meals, and social lives. That’s why my summer week with my writing friends is so important. We have it all: making art, talking about art, talking in general, and spending time together. Our nights, during which we stay up way too late, always end in big story telling. Some new stories, some old tales retooled and told again for the newer or younger among us.
When I was young, I visited the home of Vanessa Bell (the visionary artist and Virginia Woolf’s sister), artist Duncan Grant, and their—as Wikipedia puts it— “unconventional household.” Charleston, as the home was called, became a gathering place for the Bloomsbury Group.
Many people lived there. More passed through. Many artists came to visit or stay. I thought at the time it was odd, to gather so many people together and have dress-up parties and bonfires and drinking games and storytelling contests.
Now that I’m older, I think that sounds about right.
We make art alone, most of us. The work gets done alone and we need that private time, essential for creating, but we need community too. We all do. And if that community only gathers together for one week every year, make the week count. Make the night long, and the stories hilarious, and let it carry you through the rest of the time until you can be together again.
Years ago I gave my writing students chalk. It was from some exercise I’ve since forgotten, but they held onto the chalk and the last night, they stayed up late, running around the campus and writing little sayings everywhere in the moonlight. The one I remember is from my student Michelle. She wrote:
She’s gone to carry on.