Letters from the Homestead: January 2023
Wintering with the company of silence, books, and ghosts.
Emily Dickinson called her Amherst home “The Homestead.” I lovingly call my apartment in St. Louis the same thing (although I definitely get out more than Dickinson). This monthly newsletter is my attempt to work through what it feels like to put down roots as a writer in my own Homestead.
A bit of silence.
This past weekend, I finished a production of The Golden Record with Prison Performing Arts. This is a play I built from the writing of PPA Artists, both returning citizens and artists who remain incarcerated. It was joyful and weird—and a tight one-hour. It was a wild journey through space, but I’m glad to come home.
In the aftermath, I’m experimenting with silence. Now that the buzz of the spaceship is gone, I’m settling into the silence of my apartment. I’m resisting playing music or podcasts. I want total quiet right now. I’m even trying to silence the inner sounds of social media and email notifications. You scroll through Instagram silently, but you still hear the words and images in your head, you know?
I need real silence. I feel like I’m trying to access something these days: understanding, a new idea, some inner stillness. I’m scratching for something, and I know that silence is one of the tools I can use to find it.
Without some intentional silence, I’m not sure I’ll be able to finish the play I’m working on that has a grant deadline…or the novel I’ve been trying to write for the past year. The silence is an instrument of creativity. If I don’t have silence, then I cannot access the mind-scape that gets me to the finish line.
I get like this sometimes.
It’s not quite depression and it’s not writer’s block. It’s a recognition of how my writing-related executive functioning is obstructed. Right now, the obstruction is noise. There is so much noise around me.
This month, I have some big writing projects I want to finish, but I’m realizing that I need silence to carry me through to the end. Some practical things I’m trying:
A strict app blocker on my phone to keep me off of Instagram
Not listening to music as “background sound”
Taking a shower in silence—instead of playing a podcast in the bathroom
Listening to the birds
I’m hoping that silence helps me write this February. In January, I struggled. I had a few good writing days, but I mostly hovered in a brain fog. There was a play to rehearse and a long recovery from the holidays. I haven’t quite come back to myself post-Christmas. It’s taking time for me to land—I’m fatigued and unfocused, my enthusiasm low.
Wintering is happening. I’m in the thick of it. I need the silence to carry me out.
A haunting.
Since October, there’s been a strange energy in my apartment. Odd things have happened, and, in the back of my mind, I’ve felt the eerie sensation of being watched.
At heart, I’m a skeptic who would like more magical things to happen to her. But even my skepticism has fluttered in the face of some of these happenings.
The first strange sign happened around Halloween. One evening, I walked down my hallway past my dining room table and suddenly saw a plume of smoke rising from an unlit candle. I shook my head to recalibrate and it was gone.
I dismissed it as a trick of the light.
A few days later, I was cooking soup in the kitchen while waiting for Adam to come over for dinner. While in the kitchen, I heard someone come up the stairs to my apartment, open the door, and walk across the living room to put down their things in an armchair. I was sure it was Adam, so I called out to him that I was in the kitchen.
No answer.
I went looking for him. But there was no one in my living room. I checked my phone to see a message from Adam saying he was on his way. I went cold.
These two happenings were followed by a string of nightmares and strange sounds in the night. I did all the “magickal” things you’re supposed to do: salt, cinnamon, rosemary, crystals, etc. The whole shebang. This helped a little. (Also helpful: a door alarm and checking my carbon monoxide monitor.)
But the odd things have been happening again. Things seem to move to different places when I’m not looking—tiny things like pens or knick-knacks. (Maybe it’s the cat?) The weird feelings have returned, like there’s an extra energy occupying my space. And the dreams… heavy and burdensome, like a curse.
This is usually my favorite time of year, but things have been different this time around. The “ghost” (I call her Virginia) doesn’t seem malevolent, but she’s not quite benign either. She’s just… here.
Stay tuned for more ghost updates. 👻
What I’m reading this month…
The Witch’s Shield: Protection Magick and Psychic Self Defense by Christopher Pencazk. Yep, see above. This book is pretty fascinating. If anything, it’s a great introduction to the ways our energy can be manipulated, whether “magickal” or not. (Yes, I have tried the banishing rituals. No, I’m not sure they’ve worked.)
Cahokia: Ancient America’s Great City on the Mississippi by Timothy R. Pauketat. I’m fascinated by the Cahokia mounds, located just across the river from St. Louis. It’s the largest remnant of an ancient civilization north of Mexico, and it’s less that 20 minutes from my front door. I’m loving this book for its comprehensive introduction to the archeological history of these mounds.
How the Light Gets In: Writing as a Spiritual Practice by Pat Schneider. If you are a writer, go out and get this book immediately. Pat Schneider is one of my writing-teacher idols, and this book is giving me life right now.
How I made money this month $$$
I believe freelance artists should be more upfront about how they support themselves financially, rather than maintaining the illusion that they are fully supported by their art (they usually aren’t). This is me attempting to live out that principle. So, here are all the ways I brought in money to the Homestead for the month of January.
Facilitating online graduate courses. Grading papers, etc. ;)
Play commission. Prison Performing Arts commissioned a new work based on writing from artists incarcerated at Northeast Correctional Center. I titled it The Caverns of Wingwood and it includes dragons. 🐉
Performing in The Golden Record. This was so fun! I played the ukulele with mediocre musicianship and puppeteered a satellite.
Teaching with Prison Performing Arts. I’m leading a weekly writing workshop over zoom—it’s been a real gift to spend time each week with other writers, and it’s slowly helping me maintain my own practice.
Paid Substack subscriptions! Thank you to all the paid subscribers of this newsletter. It means the world to me.
Stay warm out there.
I really am wintering over here at The Homestead. Midge and I are having slow mornings on the couch with plenty of reading and coffee-drinking. The work always gets done, even if I’m slow to start.
It’s 19 degrees here in St. Louis as I write this letter. I hope you’re warm and safe, wherever you are.
Tonight starts a new month.
Yours & etc., etc.,
Courtney, Mistress of the Homestead (and a cozy Midge 🐈⬛ )
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