Ten to five I woke up naturally somehow.
Twenty minutes later and the hotel alarm calls me. I’m in the foyer by half five. Too early.
It is a conference hotel, the Hyatt Regency Chicago, with an economy built around bamboozling people into running up charges on credit cards. We have had to be pretty careful. Nice views though. I refuse help from the bellhops and wait for the cars to the airport. I know nothing about Conway Arkansas. What I don’t realise at 5:30 in the morning is that, if we had just rolled into a car and started driving down the Interstate it would have taken the same amount of time as it did via the airport.
“Ice”. So we had to taxi for hours to defrost the plane before we took off. And Little Rock is southern states. They ain’t in a hurry there. The car hire was excruciating. Boiling hot airport, huge queue and they are working at a snails pace.
There’s ice on the ground here too, but allegedly it is the first time since 1918.
My whip is a great big Toyota SUV Hybrid of some sort. It runs quietly and jumps when you tell it to. We chewed up the road. But you can’t tell anything about a place from these highways. They all look the same. Billboards and tarmac, occasional cops.
Hotel is a Hampton, big rooms, I’ll be comfy. We immediately go to the university and look at where we will be performing. It’s a beautiful little wooden thrust:
You can see the whorls in the wood, the knots. It smells good in there, and feels like an intimate space. The Decio was much more performative. We can be lighter here.
The campus at Conway is beautiful – an ambitious Methodist build from the 1870’s. Lots of big open spaces to build things and learn by doing. It feels peaceful and there are loads of trees. “People always come here and take photos of themselves,” says our host. We do indeed see instafams snapping themselves and their kids with the rare snow in the background.
I think this will be a peaceful residency and a joyful one. Hopefully I’ll have time and inclination to explore tomorrow. Right now it is dark and I’m hungry. Gonna go grab something to eat and maybe take in the sights of the town. Then I’ll fall flat on my face and drool for 7 hours.
AlBarclay 