It wasn’t my first choice to settle at Twin Oaks Intentional Community when I got divorced (yet again) and, leaving my two young children, departed Menlo Park (California) where my ex’s (dot.com) fortunes exceeded mine. Pushing 47 (after spending the previous 10 years essentially as a live-in nanny), I dreaded turning 50 behind a cash register. Indeed, as my meager ‘severance pay’ became perilously depleted without any tangible prospects for employment in America’s costliest city, it became imperative to find shelter and occupation with one quick stroke. I remembered the ‘socialist utopia’ I had visited, as a lark, back in the 90’s, when I was single. So, akin to enlisting in the U.S. Navy, I took a leap into a totalitarian unknown. (Indeed, the date of my ‘visitor period’ coincided with the exact date 30 years prior commencing my military service.) Although some of the hippies had their reservations about the eccentric, emotionally-weathered individual they received, I (barely) passed the membership poll and was granted an instant new life — a significant relief, as I had only a dollar remaining in my pocket.
As I have described extensively elsewhere, Twin Oaks operates as a constitutional monarchy, and its various eras have been characterized by the respective dominance of either those two dichotomous forms of governance. Although I successfully (and legally) passed and lived as a female the entire year I lived in California previously, Twin Oaks discouraged me doing so there, thus I was served up my first round of communitarian disenchantment. Many others would follow. Eventually, I settled into a nocturnal existence, weaving hammocks solitarily and silently in the middle of the night to make my 42 hours’ ‘quota’ and spending almost all community participation hours asleep in a tiny closet of a room (unheated) that I called The Hovel. Because of my dependable production and low-maintenance citizenship, I was permitted to sustain a marginal, invisible existence. ‘Selling points’ included, to my particular sensibilities, a social infrastructure devoid of phones, automobiles, alarm clocks — a very 18th century milieu. After a few years of such sensory isolation, I began composing poems again — the first in a decade. Shortly after, I found a mate and (even) got married.
The idea of Wortley Clutterbuck originated with playwright George Etherege’s comic fool Sir Fopling, a puffed-up poseur of a Restoration dandy. That character assumed corporeality as I observed one of Twin Oaks’ elders, a pompous ‘professor of polyamory’ who used his managerial authority as exclusive hammock instructor to pontificate his Ph.D of Love-making to each and every young female visitor and new member attempting to learn the ropes of hammock weaving, thus exploiting his major office as employment gatekeeper to make time with the ‘new girls.’ Not that this dude was ever inappropriate; he was simply inevitable. And, not surprisingly, the crashing old bore was punctiliously vain about his appearance —including his perversely petrified helmet of hair, which resembled a powdered perruque from the 1700s. All that remained was my making discovery of Bourbon-era court painter (and meme-era icon) Joseph Ducreux to finalize the inspiration that the rural primitivism, class divisions and court intrigues daily life at Twin Oaks wantonly proffered. Of course, as my opus (and critiques) grew, and proliferated in print and online, the aristocracy of Twin Oaks sent me (and my covertly reproving wife) packing. No regrets; the singularity of the inspiration was worth it.
There comes a point in every artist’s life (and, by artist, I mean poet, etc.) where they must acknowledge either ‘actual’ (professional and financial) success —or not. Here the ‘actually’ unsuccessful artist faces the momentous choice (a life is at stake) to now abandon their pursuit and, instead, start constructing a vocation with some obtainable promise — or to dash it all and follow their muse to smash, and beyond. Professionally and personally speaking, I had nothing to lose, since ‘it’— the kids in private school, a two-story house, the Lexus in the driveway, the respectably unloving marriage — was already lost.
In some respects, such a denouement is not as radical as it initially seems. Considering the economic consequences of child-raising (approx. $12,000 annually) and its ensuing absence of revenue, it can only be surmised that having children is not a livelihood, but an emotional investment. This comes close to the idea of a ‘having a hobby’ which, as, the mainstream concurs, is honorific and natural whereas, with the ‘unsuccessful’ artist, such perseverance is underesteemed as a caprice and a crotchet. Either way, it is perhaps something of a triumph that certain human endeavorings remain out of reach of capitalism’s rapacious bailiwick.
As heartbreaking as it often is, I believe I’ve had more merriment than most.
“This Tragic Cabaret” — The Bohemian Nights: Craig Kurtz (text, narration & production), Jen Willey (harp & musical arrangement). Recorded at Twin Oaks. © 2013 Kurtz & Willey.