The Spores of Feÿtopia: How a Castle in France Rewired a New York Matchmaker

Details

Interviewee: Amy Van Doran
Role: Community Member
Community: Feÿtopia
Location: Château de Fey, Joigny, France
Date: 2026-05-01
Language: English

Summary

Amy Van Doran, a matchmaker based in New York, shares her experience as a returning seasonal resident at Feÿtopia over three years. She arrived after meeting a community member at a party, stayed for three months, and has returned each season since. Her reflections center on the contrast between capitalist life in New York and the culture of radical generosity she finds at Feÿtopia — where value is generated to give away rather than accumulate. She describes how the community helped her recover a sense of presence and ease she had lost to professional life. Amy observes the community's implicit governance: no explicit rules, but a powerful social culture that self-regulates through direct communication and shared norms. She also reflects on love and belonging through her lens as a matchmaker, noting how relationships here form through shared experience and presence rather than criteria-based selection. She describes Feÿtopia as creating a form of secure attachment that softens neediness and loneliness — and how the community's ethos continues to spread through her networks worldwide.

Key quotes

After living so intensely inside capitalism, at the belly of the beast in New York, the things that I had liked about myself, I had lost.

You do not have to earn anything. You can simply exist. My experience here is that you can just be loved without doing anything to earn it.

The spores of Feytopia spread even when you are not at Feytopia. Feytopia is always around.

My Feytopian friends help activate higher levels of pro-social behavior in my other communities. They optimize the collective experience instead of just consuming.

Here, the people who meet and fall in love connect through shared experiences. There is no algorithm. I see matches that would never happen in the digital dating world.

The community does not run on explicit rules. It runs on a culture that self-regulates. If someone is behaving in a way that is uncomfortable, you are expected to address it directly.

Transcript

**Sharon:** Okay. So let's start with your name and where we are sitting right now.

**Amy:** My name is Amy Van Doren. We are in Château de Fey, which is in Joigny, France. And the room that I am staying in is named Angelique.

**Sharon:** How did you first find out about this place?

**Amy:** I was at a party in New York. I was living in the Chelsea Hotel, which is a cool place to live. Everyone was being a little bit cheesy at this party, and I looked across the room and Ed was pretending to go down a ladder, being very silly. I looked over at this man who kind of resembled a muppet and thought, that guy is going to be my friend. I went over to him and asked what he was up to. He said he was making a sort of Buckminster Fuller inspired sonic sphere down the street from my house, really near where I lived. So I started hanging out with him at the sphere. On the way out of town, he started staying at my place as a cool place to stay. He casually mentioned that his wife had a castle. He did not mention any other information about it and said I should come by. So I came by without really expecting anything, but when you get an invite to a castle, you go. I did not know anything about the community. I came, and I stayed for three months.

**Sharon:** You had not heard of Feytopia, you just heard about the castle?

**Amy:** I just go wherever I am invited. That is a good system. I ask no questions. I am curious.

**Sharon:** Did you have any prior experience with community life? Co-living, residencies, things like that?

**Amy:** Yes. When I first moved to New York, I lived in various communal situations. None of it was functional. It was all more oriented around parties and a kind of countercultural extreme. I moved to New York in 2004. It was a real estate moment. I lived in places where nobody really ran it. We just lived there and did drugs.

**Sharon:** What did you find here when you arrived at Feytopia?

**Amy:** I had been living in New York and running my business for a very long time, and I was pretty burnt out. In 2020, I invited some friends to live in a house in the jungle in Mexico. I really loved living that way. It was kind of the happiest I had ever been. Then I went back to New York and went back to living alone. I realized that I did not feel good. When I got here, I found that after living so intensely inside capitalism, at the belly of the beast in New York, the things that I had liked about myself, I had lost. I was not present with people. When I first came here, I realized how maladjusted I had become. People around me were modeling patience, kindness, generosity with their emotions, energy, and knowledge. It made me want to work on myself and come back to being more in that state, which I think is more natural for me.

**Sharon:** Do you remember your first impression?

**Amy:** My first impression was that there was an incredible number of very helpful, enthusiastic, joyful, handsome young European men. I thought, wow, all these young men are so happy and nice and non-problematic. The first thing I noticed was that. I also noticed a surrealist feeling. That first year felt very playful. People were being very strange in a beautiful way, with a strong sense of imagination. It felt like the best version of a theater camp. Everyone was constantly playing, engaged, and curious. People also assumed the best. Usually in life you meet someone new and you try to figure out what is wrong with them. Here, my experience was that everyone assumed I was a kind and pleasant person. They let me into their hearts and lives without any particular reason to do that. So I felt a strong sense of optimism here.

**Sharon:** Are you noticing shifts in yourself between the first, second, and now third time you come?

**Amy:** Yes. I am also aging, so in general I am more mellow. The first year was about adding as many experiences as possible. I wanted every weekend to be an experience. We built parties, had projects. I was really fully engaged. The second year, I was here the whole season. It was not, I come here to have an experience. It was, I live here. I still did my job here. I worked remotely. This year, it has only been a week, so I do not know the full personality of the season yet, but I feel a little more grounded. It feels less like I go to Feytopia for a peak experience. It feels more like this is how I want my life to be. It feels like this should be the regular.

**Sharon:** What do you feel is cultivated in you when you are here, and what do you bring back home?

**Amy:** I run many different communities in New York. What is interesting is that the spores of Feytopia spread even when you are not at Feytopia. Feytopia is always around. If I go to a conference in San Francisco, I will send in the group chat, 'Is anyone from Feytopia here?' and the future Feytopians will come support me. You always have, in most places around the world, some quick access to a utopian village. What is interesting is watching the Feytopians interact with my older group of friends. They teach and train different forms of social engagement. They show how to make your own party instead of waiting for entertainment to arrive, how to be radically engaged, how to make doing the dishes fun, how to show up and be present and really generous. People in my New York communities will say, 'They are so generous,' and they notice how Feytopians try to optimize the collective experience instead of just consuming.

**Sharon:** And this changed you too?

**Amy:** Yes. When I first came here, I was so mentally unwell from ambition. Someone asked me to go on a walk to talk about their love life. I remember thinking on the walk, this perfectly nice person is walking with me and my brain is calculating how expensive this would be in New York. I had that thought immediately and then thought, oh my God, what has my life become? I am just counting money and numbers constantly. That is the opposite of my life's work. My work is to teach and model love. I had become this stressed out, neurotic counting person. Here I got back a sense of just being. You do not have to earn anything. You can simply exist. My experience here is that you can just be loved without doing anything to earn it. That feels like the starting point.

**Sharon:** I wonder how you perceive this place through the lens of a matchmaker.

**Amy:** Every week here the culture is different. There is a core utopian sustainable team that sets the tone, but the vibe shifts. Some weeks feel more sexually charged. Other weeks feel very intellectual. People definitely come because they feel lonely and do not want to be lonely anymore. The first thing a community can do is create a form of secure attachment that does not rely on one person. I formed a secure attachment with the building itself, with the castle. The castle has been here for a long time. It is not going anywhere. It will not leave me. Because I have that sense of calmness and security from the community and place, the neediness around romantic connection softens. In my industry as a matchmaker, love is treated in a very capitalist way. People treat love as something to consume. Here, the people who meet and fall in love connect through shared experiences. They meet washing dishes next to each other. They bond because they are planting trees together, building a dream, working on an art project. In a typical digital dating world, some of these people would ignore each other completely. But here relationships form around kindness and presence.

**Sharon:** Is there a value system that is implicit or explicit in this community?

**Amy:** I think the value system is implicit. I would call it radical generosity. It is about generating value to give away rather than generating value to acquire. It is almost anti-capitalist in that way, in that the point is not to accumulate but to be in a state of flow and generosity.

**Sharon:** How do you think about the relationship between governance and freedom here?

**Amy:** I think there is a governance structure that is mostly unseen but it is there. Jess is the founder and she sets the terms. The values are set by Jess and the core team. What I find interesting here is that there is very little explicit rule-setting but there is an implicit culture that is quite powerful. If you violate the culture, you are sort of naturally expelled. Not through explicit enforcement but through social pressure. The community self-regulates.

**Sharon:** Have you witnessed conflict here?

**Amy:** Yes. But conflict here tends to be processed differently than in the outside world. There is a culture of direct communication. If you have a problem with someone, you go and talk to them. There is a norm of not gossiping. I have seen conflicts get processed very quickly here because of that culture. Outside of here, I see conflicts fester for years. Here they tend to resolve faster.

**Sharon:** What would you say to someone who is curious about this place?

**Amy:** I would say come with no expectations and a willingness to be surprised. The most important thing is to come ready to contribute rather than to consume. If you come here to get something, you will be disappointed. If you come here to give something, you will find it is the most generous place you have ever been.