Cliques

Welcome to the cafeteria.

At the Vermont Studio Center, we 50 artists eat three meals together everyday. At night, the Red Mill dining hall is also the place where we listen to readings, watch slides, attend craft talks, and make plans to build bonfires and hold dance parties. In other words, we are constantly here and we are constantly engaging in small talk.

Over the course of four weeks, the talk can't help but get bigger, if for no reason other than we've all run out of our best cocktail conversations. Friendships that normally take years to grow (or fester) in a work setting are fast-forwarded here at VSC. All we have is each other and the freedom of days, hikes and naps. On our compound, Mondays don't matter and neither do showers. At this point, we believe the rest of the world has stopped existing.

Though this solitary solidarity bonds us, there's a natural progression that happens within a large group: Cliques. And here, cliques form fast.

Nothing is a bigger metaphor for this social breakdown than a cafeteria. Enjoy the view.

Week 1 at Red Mill:

Shopping for friends. Most of us have been in large group settings enough times to know better than to sit next to one person on the first day and continue to eat every subsequent meal with that same person. There are 48 other people in the room who may not annoy you as much. Meals are approached like speed dating.

Names are hard to remember. People whisper to each other, "Who's that again?" Residents are referred to as San Fran, Houston and Brooklyn.

Week 2:

Cliques are solidified. Tables are marked. The staff has the corner table; the writers have the one near the window; the residency hoppers (or veterans) are spread out on smaller tables and the younger artists/MFA students are in the center. But because we're all adults and we're all aware that this whole clique thing is absurd, some of us will sit outside of our chosen group if we show up late for a meal. We act like this is where we wanted to sit anyway.

We stop referring to each other by hometowns and instead use each other's most striking characteristics or odd habits, i.e. Lanky Mike, The Nineteen Year Old, Regurgitation Karen.

The writers start bringing wine to every dinner.

By week's end, shit talking has begun. Everyone knows who they like. These are the people we can now tell who we don't like. But unlike a small town where you look over your shoulder before you say something nasty or catty, here, you continue smack talking in your regular speaking voice even if the subject's right next you because he/she is probably engrossed in the same.

Week 3:

Major disruption! About 8 to 10 people leave because they were only enrolled in a two-week session; another 10 or so arrive for the last two-week session. These people are abrasive. They storm already-established tables, hungry to make friends and fit in. No cute or polite stories, but in your face demands for attention. We old timers may've acted this way too when we arrived, but we were all doing it at the same time, so no one noticed.

The new people are all given the first name Abrasive, as in the Abrasive One With The Rhinestone Pinky Ring or the Abrasive Ukrainian Guy.

We stop sitting at tables with empty seats and instead scoot vacant chairs over to the corner of our clique's respective table.

Prediction for Week 4: Quirks and annoyances will become somewhat endearing. Nostalgia will set in because we'll know our time here in our studio bubble is ending and no one else in the outside world will understand us.

Prediction for Week 5: We will form a long distance support group for people going through withdrawls from disco naps, excessive putzing and being fed three square meals a day.