The 2017 Brooklyn Bridge Community RC Workshop
As noted in yesterday's liveblog, this year's workshop was held locally and sleeping arrangements were split between at least two different private homes, Daniel Schafer's and Joe and Melanie's. The intention was to replicate the hermetic quality of "normal" workshops held in a nearby country inn or recreational center. To me, it was six of one or a half-dozen of the other. For all the wear and tear you save by not having to corral people into car pools for a trip outside the city, there is the additional stress of cleaning, vacuuming, and planning meals for twenty people over the space of three days.
And like most such strenuous journeys, I am in a near state of Nirvana merely because it is over for at least another year.
These thing are always billed as an opportunity to work on one's "chronic material" and I suppose that is true, if your chronic material involves sitting for long periods of time on little sleep, fighting indigestion, all the while knowing that you are under the most withering scrutiny by people who, in their own parochial way, can wield great power over the course of your life. This is the primary indictment against the RC: That it can command such obeisance from otherwise intelligent people.
I drew the line very early on when last year, it was proposed that the entire community decamp to the palatial home of a wealthy RCer somewhere in Connecticut for the weekend. I'm pretty sure I earned a pretty big target on my back for doing so. But, I was also the only member of my class who did not arrive back with a cold or totally exhausted from lack of sleep or the ability to take a shower whenever they wanted.
This year I only agreed to participate if I could spend the nights at home in my own bed - which was only a fifteen minute walk away. Not that I got away Scot-free: it did mean missing the St. Michael's vestry party at the Rectory which would have included Bing and Colette and a lot of other present and former members.
Poor Sumner had only the very thinnest grasp on his feelings for the first 24 hours. This was his first workshop of any kind in at least two years. On top of that, he has such tenuous relationships outside his own immediate family that all it took was a single text from someone he hadn't heard from in four years, to make him run screaming (not literally) from Daniel's house for an impromptu rendezvous.
This almost immediately made Sumner an object of derision from Daniel and he would continue to be the object of pointed remarks for the remainder of the weekend. In a strange bit of irony, the closest I came to having a powerful "session" came when I carefully allowed myself to display a bit of temper during a five minute mini-session - a result of defending Sumner.
And like most such strenuous journeys, I am in a near state of Nirvana merely because it is over for at least another year.
These thing are always billed as an opportunity to work on one's "chronic material" and I suppose that is true, if your chronic material involves sitting for long periods of time on little sleep, fighting indigestion, all the while knowing that you are under the most withering scrutiny by people who, in their own parochial way, can wield great power over the course of your life. This is the primary indictment against the RC: That it can command such obeisance from otherwise intelligent people.
I drew the line very early on when last year, it was proposed that the entire community decamp to the palatial home of a wealthy RCer somewhere in Connecticut for the weekend. I'm pretty sure I earned a pretty big target on my back for doing so. But, I was also the only member of my class who did not arrive back with a cold or totally exhausted from lack of sleep or the ability to take a shower whenever they wanted.
This year I only agreed to participate if I could spend the nights at home in my own bed - which was only a fifteen minute walk away. Not that I got away Scot-free: it did mean missing the St. Michael's vestry party at the Rectory which would have included Bing and Colette and a lot of other present and former members.
Poor Sumner had only the very thinnest grasp on his feelings for the first 24 hours. This was his first workshop of any kind in at least two years. On top of that, he has such tenuous relationships outside his own immediate family that all it took was a single text from someone he hadn't heard from in four years, to make him run screaming (not literally) from Daniel's house for an impromptu rendezvous.
This almost immediately made Sumner an object of derision from Daniel and he would continue to be the object of pointed remarks for the remainder of the weekend. In a strange bit of irony, the closest I came to having a powerful "session" came when I carefully allowed myself to display a bit of temper during a five minute mini-session - a result of defending Sumner.