Surrounded on three sides by uncultivated fields and a simple, red clay road , the house wasn’t much to look at. I felt like Wyeth’s Christina silhouetted before a dusty, aged American dream. Wrapped by a tattered porch and reclining bicycles, the house swelled with music as I slowly took the stairs. Megan followed, weighed down by pounds of fresh vegetables. Timidly, I clutched my sketchbook and opened the door.
An artist colony can take many shapes, from circled silver wagons to large ceramic complexes. In Athens, GA, normally they tend to grow in secluded houses with people crowding in every corner like stray cats. My invitation to the ‘pen house’ came from my new roommate over cereal. Megan, one of the six girls I lived with that summer, offered to introduce me into their fold and potlucks. We originally bonded over Army brat stories while handing out hot chocolate to the homeless, but we built a friendship on our communal passion for ceramics. She taught in her spare time at the Canopy Studios, where she learned to float from room to room. She loved hotdogs and carving coconuts.
Her it’s complicated significant other, Kevin, who worshiped Van Halen, always wore a sweatband around his forearm, and studied classical guitar at the university, sat on the sofa when we entered the room. Two kittens curiously inspected his guitar strings as he rose to greet us. The other roommates, Scott and Todd, were brothers. As students of philosophy, they’d carefully constructed a haze of smoke with their conversations, and literally, at that moment, to further the room’s cliches, were filling out their Peace Corp applications and reflecting cavilirly on the state of Africa. Chris painted to their left, and warned me if I didn’t come in and shut the door, he’d be forced to throw a cat in my face. I complied.
I made kale soup and biscuits. Over the course of an hour, visitors brought as many dishes as there were plates to hold them, while the wine loosened the windows and drove us outside to a bonfire. Kevin played an old Georgian mountain hymn, singing softly, ”We go to mountains when all we have are questions and we go to the valley when all we have are answers…” I drew blind portraits of their faces in the balmy firelight.
Suddenly, a twig of a girl began to thrash around the fire, possessed by the wine and homemade drugs. The conversations quieted. She crawled over to me, whispering frantically, “I am stoned and no one seems to know that I’m afraid. Can you help me come down? We are all our own masters, and I want my share of it now.” Stunned, I envisioned soothsayers, congregations passing snakes and fears around circles, bewitching dreams and reading runes as her chalky hands released their grip on my skirt. She turned to face the fire. Babbling incoherently about her ‘candle,’ her body curved down towards the flames. Kevin, callous to the spell, grabbed her torso and wrestled her to safety. He pressed his body on top of her as she thrashed about, pleading pleading pleading for him to release her. She kept talking about her candle. Unfortunately Kevin, a former victim of anorexia, had trouble restraining her from the flames, and the other boys quickly gathered around to lift her to her feet. The grass had crafted paintings on her shoulders, which heaved in the darkness as she vomited out the demons.
They called it the ‘pen house’ because of the faint smell of chicken farms and the pads of paper strew over the floor. Todd told me he once dreamt the house was sitting on his chest while he gazed helplessly into the milky blue heavens. Chris, interpreting the experience very literally, painted stars on the ceilings of each room, imitating an Italian grotto. Meghan and Kevin intertwined their legs every time they sat on the sofa, which always reminded me of roots fastening down the entire strange stage.
Scott, around 9am at the conclusion of my first evening, told me that sometimes we all need to just fuck and fall and loose our heads, and sometimes, those scars of the flesh are our only reminders we were all not just born a year ago.