January 20, 2010 In case you’re wondering, this is pretty much how it is here in Vermont:
Cartoon courtesy of fabulous New Yorker artist Harry Bliss, with his permission. Thanks Harry!
Posted in Vermont Studio Center, art 
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January 19, 2010 Got four pieces of mail today! Four!
Sure beats the one piece of mail I got last Friday (which were my Allergy and Cholesterol Rx’s). Though I did get a lovely care package from Ted two weeks ago (almost done with the JB Ted… hint hint).
Thank you to Kelli for the two hilarious cards and the dry erase board. I use a ton of paper a day writing notes as i’m working on my book here at VSC; here’s a photo of one page.
and here’s a photo of the movie mags from 1954 (the year my book is set) on my desk; I always work better when I have a picture of petite, husky-voiced actresses like June Allyson staring at me.
and then Jess sent me a postcard with a cool collage on it–which reminds me, I think we’re having collage night tonight (or maybe tomorrow night–the days and nights blur here).
Tonight, however, I DO know that Bread & Puppet Theater founder Peter Schumann is here looking scruffy and jolly. I’m so envious of the artists who get to meet with him. Tonight he’s giving a talk about his work. Can’t wait.
Last night a few more of the writers here gave a reading: Kimberly Dark, Matt Clark, and Eric Markowsky (as well as the Writing Director here, Gary Clark). Another great night; Kimberly read a brilliant piece from her Daddy series, Matt read a profile of an alien abductee , Eric read about the dead, and one of Gary’s poems referenced (or eluded to) Death in Venice.
Ok, back to the book. Funny that when I posted yesterday on Facebook that I was working on a sex scene I got 13 comments. Sex is hard to write about. No pun intended. Really.
Posted in Vermont Studio Center, fiction, my writing, writers 1 Comment »
January 17, 2010 
Well, it’s now been officially 2 weeks since I got here to VSC. I’ve definitely settled in (you know you’re settled in when you sleep in and miss breakfast). Yesterday several people went home–the two-weekers we call them. It was a gloomy day; they were all such cool folks: Sarah G, Sarah C, Scott, Pedro, Nancy, Lois, Evelyn, Abby. And the artists Lauren (my dish-duty buddy) and Jeremy–really amazing print-maker. The place seems so quiet now. Well, also the number of people who arrived yesterday was less than the number of people who left.
However, I found much joy and comfort with the arrival of Kimberly Dark ! She and I read together last summer in San Diego. And, surprise surprise… I walk into the lobby of the dining hall and there is Anthony Hawley– a Columbia MFA friend of mine. I had no idea he was going to be here, let alone that he was here as an artist! Very cool.
Oh, and here’s a better picture of the collage I made last week with the artists in Firehouse Studios.
and here’s the back of the card (we were all given a sentence or two from this obscure book and we had to create a collage based on the sentence/s). You try to make the connection between the collage and the sentence…
I also made some broadsides for the writers who left on Saturday. I took ads from some vintage (1954) movie magazines that I brought from home and then printed on them– in old typewriter font– a line or two from the writers’ readings. I forgot to take pictures of them except for this one, which was for Sarah C.
If you click on it you can see it bigger but the line is from Sarah’s story and reads:
“Rebecca couldn’t sleep for fear of the wolf”
and the ad is for Lustre Creme shampoo and featuring actress Debra Paget.
My writing is going well here. But the more I write, the more I see what a BIG project my book is, and that it is something that is really going to take some time.Whenever I tell people here at VSC about they book they all say it sounds great but sounds like a lot of work.
Hmpf.
It is a lot of work, and I wonder if i’m in over my head writing about a time, place, people, world, I don’t really know (but isn’t that what writing is all about?). I think about writers like David Ebershoff, who wrote the exquisite The Danish Girl. I’m sure he wasn’t an expert on Transgenders or on 1920s Copenhagen and 1930s Dresden. Still, David Ebershoff is pretty brilliant, probably bordering on genius (I should know, I worked as his research assistant for another book while in NYC).
Part of me thinks I should work on something else–like stories, in addition to this book (not while i’m here, but when I get back), or maybe I should try to write essays about what i’m writing the book about; short pieces about the film i’m writing about– for journals and magazines. Something to ‘finish’ as it were–to allow myself the feeling of accomplishing something every once in a while. The scrap of satisfaction for a job well done. Because I just don’t see me finishing this for a long time. Anyway, getting a good draft of this out here at VSC, and really working on character development, and that’s what’s important.
And, thankfully, still have all of the other wonderful residents and faculty here at VSC– folks like Tracy, Rachel, Marin, Tatiana, Matt, Jonathan, Ariana, Jang Soon, JoAnna, Marcie, JT, Jason, Louisa, Eric, Bruce, Nick, Sang-hee, Steven, Lia, Giordanne, Kristie, Nicole, JC, Kim, etc etc (lots of names I still don’t know!). <–CLICK THE NAMES AND SEE THESE AMAZING ARTISTS AND WRITERS!!
So, 2 more weeks (well, really only about 11 days).
Posted in Vermont Studio Center, art, books, collage, cute photos of me, eduardo, my writing, writers No Comments »
January 14, 2010 Wrote ALL Day today, or at least several hours.
So for now, here’s some random pics from VSC–including a couple of collages from collage night and the boots outside the writers’ studios.
Posted in Vermont Studio Center, collage No Comments »
January 11, 2010 
<–Snow in a can makes a great beer cooler!*
Just a quick note.
An hour ago was in my studio trying to get the printer to work and then Sarah-smile from upstairs came down to help me and then Abby-pie came over too and we got to talking about love and dating and boys and girls and queer and straight and Vermont Studio Center and reality TV shows and Trans crushes and I’m oh so sad that they are leaving at the end of the week.
And then I went back to my work and I dunno but I had some sort of breakthrough with a chapter I’ve been struggling with here. A whole new start for the chapter. A whole new avenue into this character and some of his interior, his secrets, his world.Found a way to allude to both his past and to give some insight (or inciting incident?) for his future.
Wow. Sometimes just taking a step back or a step away, and then also taking some time to interact with others and hug and have someone lay across your knees and say real things with real people, smart, creative, loving, honest people can open you up a little more so that the clouds and rain (or snow, in this case) can seep out and the sunshine can warm you even if it’s just the top of your head or your shoulder blades or the tip of your tongue.
Thank you Sarah and Abby.
And last night 7 of the writers here at VSC read from their work: Sarah G, Jason Koo, Lois, Abby, Scott, Nancy, and Sarah C.
Poems and stories about Scepters and tadpoles and your Id and icicles and cats and holding on and square dancing and pianos and wolves on other mountains. Wonderful wonderful. Inspiring.
*Snow in a can was not my idea– it was my brilliant, supercool dish-duty partner, painter Lauren (another post).
I tried putting the beer out in the snow but if you forget about it you end up with Guinness slushy, which is actually kind of tasty, but very very cold.
Posted in Vermont Studio Center, books, fiction, my writing, poetry, writers 2 Comments »
January 9, 2010 
“Every death is violent.”
So began Amy Bloom’s reading of her story “By and By” from her new book (out this month) of stories: Where the God of Love Hangs Out.
The story was dark, haunting. About a missing/murdered girl–and those she left behind. About the body and what happens to it in death, after death, because of death. Very graphic, disturbing, somber, but beautiful. We were all pretty speechless after. When she asked if there were any questions the room was pretty much silent (rare for an audience of writers and artists of all types); our mouths slightly open. The story still resonating (and still resonating longer… after I went back to my room and sat in bed; whereupon I read another story of Amy’s “A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You” from the collection of the same name).
We (the writers here at VSC) had a round-table discussion with Amy where we asked her questions about writing– struggles, frustrations, ideas. She was direct, to the point, tough, funny, no bullshit.
I didn’t meet with Amy individually as some of the other writers did. I’m here for 3 more weeks and so I’ll be meeting with the next one in a couple of weeks. I’d like to give her, Leni Zumas, something new from my book that I’m working on now. We’ll see. I don’t know Leni, but from her website (and the praise from the Writing Director here) she sounds pretty cool; she’s working on a memoir incorporating experimental fiction… sort of what I’m doing with my book.
Well, about my writing here: it was slow going, I have to admit, the first couple of days. It still is, at times. I spent a lot of time the first day arranging my office, going through my books and research documents, going to the window in my writing studio, looking out at the snow, feeling a little strange, lost. Overwhelmed. Unsure. But I’ve seemed to settle in. And everyone here is so nice, smart, approachable. So interested and interesting. Thursday had a good long day of writing. Friday notsomuch. But today has been good, too. Even though the sun has finally come out and the sky is soft creamy blue like a 1950s cardigan.
Voice. It’s all about voice this week–specifically the voice of one of my main characters/narrators. I am moving closer to getting his voice down and getting inside his head and for that i’m really happy. It’s been a long time coming but I think spending time thinking about this character without any interruptions and trying out different words and phrasings on the page and in my mind and verbally has helped. I think about him–this character– all the time these days. Ideas come to me when I’m walking through the snow, across the bridge where the little river is slowly slowly closing up from the ice so that it looks kind of like a zipper–it’s teeth meshing, coming together, ideas come to me at night in my room, so much so that I jump out of bed to jot down notes on a little skinny pad, when i’m brushing my teeth in our cold bathroom. I want to be totally consumed with this character. I want to see everything through his eyes (as Amy told us)–so that every move, every gesture, every word of dialogue, every thought in his head is a true one.
Some photos of my writing studio.
And some new photos of VSC and Johnson VT– more are on my flickr page (the cemetary above is in Johnson VT too).
Posted in Vermont Studio Center, books, fiction, my writing, travel, writers 1 Comment »
January 7, 2010 Just a quickie:
Last night at VSC 6 artists/painters/visual artists showed slides and spoke briefly of their work. All of them were impressive and interesting and thought-provoking. I loved hearing about process and goals and intents, and seeing the varied forms of art– whether paint, wood, computer-generated, poured, poked.
One really moved me: Matt McConville and his paintings of nude men called “Figures in Landscape.” They were not all what I would expect from a title like which was his intention. These were nude men of a particular age and size– none of them perfect or buff or especially ‘handsome’–but in that honesty they were oddly beautiful. One article I found online explains that “McConville’s nudes aren’t the idealized youths of antiquity, but the pudgy guys next door, with all their rolls, holes, hair loss, and hairy guts.”
Some of the men are wrestling or on top of each other, but not sexual. Some are posed playfully– whimsically? [I'm not going to post photos of his paintings, as I don't have permission, but check them out on his website]
I was so taken by the humor and candor, and inspired because in a way, I felt the paintings speaking to me now that I’m a man of a certain age, with the little belly forming and the bits of hair sprouting from my ears (that I shave a couple of times a week).
Then, when I opened my [school] email this morning, this is what I found! How fitting.
Are they trying to tell me something?
Account: robert.williams
This is your quarantine summary from the Barracuda Spam Firewall.
You have 14 messages in your spam quarantine inbox.
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Posted in Vermont Studio Center, art, questions that plague me 1 Comment »
January 5, 2010 I was trying to come up with a good title, and was going to call this 2nd night, etc, but it’s really the 3rd night here of the 2nd full day. So, VSC 2. I think i’ll probably start just numbering the posts. I don’t think i’ll be able to do them every night once I really start getting into the swing of things.
Which I sort of am. But I’m imagining that by tomorrow or Thurs., i’m really going to feel more at ease.
Meeting so many wonderful people. So many names; I used to be so good with names. I mean, I could (and still can) tell you that Eve Arden played a small role as Patsy Dixon in the 1941 movie “Ziegfield Girl,” or that Gloria Grahame was the supporting actress Oscar winner in 1952 for “The Bad and the Beautiful,” or that the little boy in “The Poseidon Adventure” was played by Eric Shea so why is it i’m not able to remember the names of people I meet anymore?
Anyway, today met more– artists, photographers, writers, from all over. One woman, a painter from Korea, told me she had never been to the USA before this trip.
The woman who has the studio next to mine, Louisa, works with archival letters/documents (I believe she got her degree in this). We talked about Words in Air the book of letters from Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop, and she told me she brought with her the book, The Letters of Robert Lowell edited by Saskia Hamilton, then after dinner (Tuna steaks, brussell sprouts, potatoes) when we all returned to our studios she lent it to me. Dinner is lively but noisy and she was telling me about the first paragraph of the book but I couldn’t hear very well. So of course after she gave it to me I looked at the first paragraph.
It’s the first paragraph of a letter that was written in 1936 when Lowell was at Harvard “College” as it says. The letter is to Ezra Pound and here’s the first AND second paragraph:
A-12 Wigglesworth Hall
Harvard College
Cambridge, Mass.
May 2, [1936]
Dear Mr. Pound:
I have been wanting to write you for several months, but haven’t quite had the courage to until now. You will probably think that I am very impudent but I want to come to Italy and work under you and forge my way into reality. I have no right [to] ask this of you, yet let me try to describe myself and explain my desire.
I am 19, a freshman at Harvard, and some relation, I don’t know what, to Amy Lowell. All my life I have been eccentric according to normal standards. I had violent passions for various pursuits usually taking the form of collecting: tools; names of birds; marbles; catching butterflies, snakes, turtles etc; buying books on Napoleon. None of this led anywhere, I was more interested in collecting large numbers than in developing them. I caught over thirty turtles and put them in a well where they died of insufficient feeding. I won more agates and marbles than anyone in school, and gradually amassed hundreds of soldiers; finally leaving them to clutter up unreachable shelves. I could identify scores of birds, at first on charts, later it led me into nature. Sometime overcome by the collecting mania I would steal things I wanted. At 14 I went to St. Mark’s and never mixed well or really lived in the usual realities. At one point I became very strong but never got very far in athletics because I didn’t think in terms of the necessary technique. I was proud, somewhat sullen and violent.
Can you imagine? He wrote this to Ezra Pound! It’s like me, writing to, oh, I don’t know, Jeffrey Eugenides and saying, can I hang out with you?
I do love his descriptions of his violent passions for various pursuits. Rather endearing.
Ok, tonight I’m actually going to hang out with some of the writers and other artists at a local pub.
Today’s photo is of one of the Painting Studios here at VSC called The Church, because, well, it is a converted church.
Posted in Vermont Studio Center, books, my writing, poetry 2 Comments »
January 4, 2010 
I’ll skip all the stuff about my delayed bus, yadda yadda.
I’m fried from sitting at the computer for much of the day– so i’m just going to just say a few words and post some pictures. But i’m having an awesome time, meeting such cool people.
Every meal I meet someone new and usually the first question out of their or my mouth is: so what do you do/what kind of work are you doing here at VSC?
Great great food: salmon dinner last night, couscous, homemade pizza today for lunch, incredible salad bar for lunch and dinners, curried chicken tonight.
My office, er, they call them studios here, which is kind of fun, is in the Maverick building, and is spacious and full of light with a view of the Gihon river (nearly frozen so that it’s just a sliver of water running by–from my window it looks thin and cold as a knife blade). I’ve pretty much set up my office now (which, strangely smells of cedar: do they pipe it in here or what?).The snow is deep and dusts everything. It’s COLD, but i’m not complaining. It’s beautiful.
My house is called Bradley House and so far I haven’t seen anyone else in it! We all come and go at odd times and the only time we really interact is at meal time.
Cell phones (or at least mine) don’t work very often here so i’ve been free from text messages and vibrating phones–so quiet!
Took a quick walk into town (Johnson–just one street really) and picked up some beer and lotion (it gets very dry here).There’s a sweet coffee shop and bookstore and some thrift stores in town.
Going to go back to my room now and read unless I stumble across anyone having a party or anything. I actually missed the tour of the grounds because my bus was late last night and then I was working in the kitchen today (part of my fellowship) when the 2nd tour happened so I really don’t know my way around yet. Maybe everyone’s congregating somewhere and I don’t know it?
Ah well. There’s time.
More on my writing later… but i’m feeling good about it and this place does something to you… I don’t know
a. Energizes
b. Inspires
c. Motivates
d. All of the above?
There is so much creativity here– you can feel it in the air (the very COLD air).
Pictures below are:
1. My house– Bradley House
2. The street outside my house (the building on the right is the Mason Building–where the writers meet–this is where Amy Bloom and Howard Norman will speak/read)
3. The view from my studio window in the Maverick Studios
4. The Maverick Studios
5. The sign that says, Maverick Studios (ok, so not the most dynamic descriptions, sorry).
I promise more descriptive writeups after I get more settled in here.
Oh, and Happy New Year!
Posted in Vermont Studio Center 1 Comment »
January 2, 2010 
Lordy, I can’t believe tomorrow, 7:45 a.m., I leave for my January residency in Vermont at VSC.
Can’t believe the day is already (almost) here.
The photo on the left is one of the buildings but imagine it with snow and the river frozen. Fun!
I think i’m ready. Today we went out and bought these slippers for me from L.L.Bean (great sale going on). 
They are really really comfortable. As well as a neon lime-green fleece blanket, another pair of thermal bottoms, winter gloves, toe warmers. I don’t know how i’m getting all of this up there. I’ve already sent a box of books from San Diego and I have two rolling suitcases. Yes, I AM that person with the two rolling suitcases. I just didn’t know what to bring. I’m from California! Yes, I lived in NYC for years but it never got THAT cold. Well, one year we had a blizzard and a ton of snow but I had my duckboots.
So now i’ve got a bunch of mis-matched winter clothes: Ted’s blue down jacket that probably makes me look like a kid wearing his dad’s dinner jacket, my HUGE brown LL Bean duck boots that make me look like a Transformer, black gloves (on sale), a bright orange knit hat, long blue striped scarf that I got when I was at Columbia; I’m going to be that ragamuffin–there’s always one in the group.
Might have to send a box back to San Diego with stuff I don’t need– or make Ted take it back for me. Ted, by the way, fixed my blog–apparently it was all messed up; of course I didn’t notice it, Ted being the techie in the family.
Posted in Vermont Studio Center, shopping, travel 1 Comment »
 Fool For Love: New Gay Fiction. R.D. Cochrane and Timothy J. Lambert, editors. Read my story, "Party Planning." |
 From Boys To Men: Gay Men Write About Growing Up. Edited by Ted Gideonse and Rob Williams. |
 Pindeldyboz, Vol. 6. Read my essay, "Son of Kong." |
 I Remember When Dad... : Memories & Stories About Fathers, edited by Louise Egan. |
 Maisonneuve, Jan. 2005. Read my essay, "A Pirate Life For Me." |
 Fresh Men: New Voices in Gay Fiction, Edmund White and Don Weise, editors.Read my short story, "Taking Pictures." |
 I Do/I Don't: Queers on Marriage, Ian Phillps and Greg Warren, editors. Read my essay, "Hope Chest." |
 M2M: New Literary Fiction, Karl Woelz, editor. Read my story "Japanese For Blurred Image." |
Cleaker 2.1 Theme created by Adam Walker Cleaveland with Widget support added by Chris Webb and numerous edits by Ted Gideonse
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