MacDowell Colony

Well, there’s a din at home, because of a bustling household, family of five. So I used to retreat to the bedroom and put on my power-tool headgear, and sit in a chair with my laptop, and tell my family, "I'm in here writing, please don’t disturb."

It’s completely the opposite at MacDowell. There’s almost a sort of din with the silence. I’d get up around 5:30 and try to write for an hour or two, and then I’d wander to the main building and actually converge with all the other artists and writers for breakfast. Then I’d wander back down the road and write for two or three more hours. Then all of a sudden the daily pickup truck would come with your little picnic basket and you’d devour that, of course. And put the basket aside, and keep writing.

I had been assembling these fragments of a longer poem about music and having a week, working on the same poem for four or five days from the crack of dawn until moonlit night – it’s a gift, it’s a luxury.