World-Weary, or Geologically Tired…
If you wake me at an hour too far ante-meridian,
I’m sorry, but my heart is dark and harder than obsidian—
But if you keep me up too late and sleepless in the night,
It’s just as likely I will have a heart of anthracite.
Nobody who knows I just spent two weeks in the northeastern states would have the slightest difficulty, if asked, figuring out what one of my main goals during the entirety of the visit would be: eat as much great lobster as I can find and afford. So yeah, that’s what I did. I don’t eat all-lobster-all-the-time, because it would be bordering on the criminal to ignore the great Italian food in north Boston or the regional favorites in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, or Pennsylvania (all of which we either spent time in or passed through on our road trip last week), never mind to skip all of the other fabulous fresh seafoods on offer. Fish and chips, sushi, New England clam chowder, grilled or roasted or sautéed or fried what-have-you. Fabulous, all, when beautifully made by experienced locals.
But lobster. Lobstah, as New Englanders tend to pronounce it. Heaven on earth, I say.
In the Northeast, perhaps the most signatory, elegantly simple, and delicious preparation of lobster is the lobster roll. It’s a sandwich. The standard definition of this is a split-top bun, hotdog style, filled with chunks of lobster meat. The commonest way to prepare and serve this is to either mix the meat with mayonnaise into a lobster “salad” to fill the bun or serve it otherwise entirely plain and put melted butter on it, either mixed in ahead or served on the side. Supremely uncomplicated, perfectly delectable.
Some restaurants and clam shacks serve this in any number of decorated and variably seasoned ways, the most familiar of which might involve some chopped celery and/or snipped fresh herbs, Old Bay Seasoning, minced onion, lettuce leaves, or some few other well-intended adulterations. Some vary the bread ever so slightly, toasting or butter-grilling its sides, or using something other than the typical soft white bread bun. But not many dare monkey substantially with the daringly exposed combination that is so beloved. One does not defy the gods of tradition with impunity, especially when the tradition involves something like lobster that in its pure form is so delicate and easily overwhelmed by fuss.
The height of northeastern innovation: serve a lobster roll on a *round* bun instead of the traditional split-top hotdog bun. Whoa! What’s *next*???
This year’s first lobster roll stop was at a venerable institution which shall remain nameless, where in times past I had revered the lobster roll as one of the area’s best, and a hidden gem at that, because the house is mainly known for and devoted to quite other culinary traditions. It used to be a butter-grilled roll that, albeit the standard split-top bun, was slathered somewhat liberally in salted butter before being put on the griddle, and then the lobster meat served with nothing more than a small amount of very simple mayo or a splash of melted butter, and if I recall, a nice wedge of lemon on the side. Absolutely ideal, in my view. But new ownership and a new lead cook always like to offer the New and Improved, which is seldom really either, and so it was in this instance, a lobster roll whose newer identity was of a sandwich with chunks of lobster in it, hardly the pristine joy of times past. Ah, well. The meat was reasonably fresh and sweet, and certainly the chance to find a lobster sandwich of any sort under about $30 (USD) in north Texas is not only limited but possibly, ludicrous.
Slaw on the side, fries rather than chips? Getting a little racy, aren’t we. A bit of green *in* the sandwich? My, what slippery slope is this!
After that, it was hit-and-miss hunting time, and the variations, while slim, kept the pursuit interesting. Another commonality when one’s lobster-rolling along is that most are served with french fries, or even more likely, potato chips/crisps, and a drink. Not more. A few places widen their scope to include slaw of some sort or perhaps even a green salad; corn on the cob; some kind of slow-cooked beans. Picnic fare, primarily. You might see hot sauce or ketchup or malt vinegar or other condiments on offer, and the drinks might be any number of things, though probably something equally picnic-friendly like iced tea, sodas, lemonade, or beer is the most popular. None of these is unwelcome, to me, but again, I don’t see any special need for any of them either. There’s a perfectly good reason that the tradition stands firm. Excellence. It’s all in the execution.
Next thing you know, somebody’s serving *plantain* fries (kinda hard, if you ask me, and not especially flavorful—maybe a shot of that Old Bay Seasoning would’ve come in handy there—but kudos for trying) and smoked Spanish paprika in the sandwich mayonnaise. Pretty soon we’ll be seeing cats and dogs living together and the dish running away with the spoon!
And when anyone gets that down pat, there’s no faulting the grandness of the invention. We found lobster happiness in several popular and highly touted locations along our short road trip route, both in towns and seaside, in shabby old rustic sheds and in white-tablecloth establishments. We found slight disappointments in a few, too, though nothing drastic. If we saw something less than enticing in the lobster rolls being served up before ours, we could always opt for any of the other treats I mentioned earlier, and we certainly did, in large quantities. We even discovered one of the currently trendy spots favored for its semi-puritanical goodness, right on the cover of the Sunday supplement.
As usual, of course, the satisfaction of the find was greatest when we listened to a few locals mention in a sidelong way a place that is a genuine jewel disguised as the neighborhood convenience store, truly convenient in that it lay about five minutes by car from one of our rented places. Driving by there, you wouldn’t guess that at the picnic tables by the parking lot, let alone at those tiny tables and chairs squeezed in the back corner of the store by the shelves of motor oil and snack packets and aspirin, you can have what we found to be the freshest, least in need of further elaboration, lobster rolls we’ve had yet. But boy, did we—and that, three days in a row.
When experiencing famous regional classics like lobster roll, one might be compelled to try some other regional specialities alongside. Like the unique Grandma Utz’s Handcooked Potato Chips, fried in 100% lard (yep, porky tasting) and a can of Moxie soda, a gentian root flavored carbonated beverage that lives up to its catchphrase of being Distinctively Different, though I can’t vouch (yet, at least) for its characterization as Nerve Tonic. Unless you count the fact that I’m widely considered to have a ‘lot of nerve’. Never mind the unusual accoutrements: the lobster roll at Libby’s is easily king of all I’ve had so far.
We’d’ve stayed the whole two weeks there (possibly just sleeping under the stock shelves) if we had known. The store owner’s lobsterman husband standing and cracking the just-caught, freshly cooked magnificence just a meter away from the service counter where we were ordering was the clearest possible <angels singing> moment of knowing that when we got our enormous lobster rolls we would be deliriously happy. And yes, we were. Even the “Small” (normal hotdog-sized) roll was jammed with huge chunks of sweet, sweet fresh lobster just faintly kissed with mayo (Days One and Two) or melted butter (Day Three, and the favorite, by a lobster’s antenna). The Medium and Large rolls were, well, too much of a good thing, but not so much so that we didn’t attempt them as well. As one should, because, well… Lobster. Amen.
Large enough to engulf the plate, but can one *really* have too much of perfection?
BEMF. Road trip. Wedding. Dad’s Day. Arguments. Home. Adventures. “I love you.”
What do they all have in common? One word.
Family.
I’ll bet you were going for: Love. And of course, you would also be correct, because that’s the very definition of family for me, as you well know. It’s not biology; it’s not pedigree and legal contracts and historical ties. It’s love. And love is not, for me, dependent on any of the aforementioned characteristics and descriptors, though it may—and I hope it does—have a close relationship with them more often than not. It’s respect and trust, support and kindness, even in the middle of stress and disagreement, illness, injury, confusion, and chaos. I am so very, very fortunate and blessed and grateful to find myself in the midst of an extraordinarily big, rich family network that comprises biological and legal relatives, yes, but also much more than that: a wide range of dear friends and comrades who are more than mere acquaintances or colleagues can ever be, each one tying me further to the next.
BEMF [the Boston Early Music Festival] was the beginning of the most recent two-week series of family events for me and, as in my previous times there, a joy from start to finish. As an arts event, it has very few peers in the world, being a week-long gathering of superb artists and dedicated audiences who converge for the love and celebration of Early Music and all of its many concomitant delights and beauties, all in a magnificent city. This biennial visit was a typically lovely one, starting with the gathering of our Early Music family from around the continent and overseas, especially the wonderful singers, players, producers, conductors, and other aficionados of the genre; they hailed from the university where my spouse works, well-loved Canadian spots, and many of the states and companies in which we have connected with such marvelous people. On arrival in Boston, we settled into our rented digs with a pair of our dear adopted kin and began the week with the rehearsal and performance of the university’s Collegium Singers and Baroque Orchestra friend-colleague crew whose concert was the impetus for the BEMF visit. And a wonderfully successful one, at that.
What followed was a week packed with beautiful music of all kinds set into the interstices between superb performances of the trilogy of Monteverdi operas and his 1610 Vespers, one of the most significant and exquisite foundational parts of the whole Early Music oeuvre and experience. The weather treated us all remarkably kindly, the food was as always inviting, varied, and delicious, and the historic and aesthetic pleasures of the city and immediate area renewed my love of being a happy observer and tourist there.
Next came renting a car and road-tripping to the Maine and Connecticut coasts, places I’d never been before and my partner, not in many years. Wandering gorgeous little towns and seaside regions like Brunswick and Bowdoinham, Maine, and Stonington and Mystic, Connecticut, and all sorts of big and little cities and towns around them with little specific agenda other than the rooting out of great seafood and scenery (more about both will surely follow here in many posts to come) was great post school year stress relief and entertainment in large measures. Spending time simply meandering in the wonders of the American northeast with my beloved, even better. A great time to reinforce why I love the guy so much and feel immeasurably blessed to live with him for the long run.
Was there stormy weather and bad traffic in our two-week outing? Yes, both real and metaphorical. Nature dictates the occurrence of these things around us, and human nature, within us. We’re all designed to need rebooting from time to time, if not a good boot in the booty. Just before heading home after the whole two-week extravaganza of beauty, wonder, love, happiness, and unbelievably good things, I got into an argument with my most beloved spouse—really angrily, ridiculously angrily. Over absolutely nothing. We were both very tired, at the end of a whole school year of huge commitments and busyness plus two weeks of (great and glorious fun notwithstanding) travel and social events and the demands inherent in both, and knowing we’d come home to huge lists of chores and catch-up tasks for both of us.
I’m not lying when I say we are not a fighting couple. But we do disagree, and frequently. One friend cheerily calls us the Bickersons for our style of daily communication, and I’m sure is not entirely feigning his worry that we’re going to don boxing gloves and just duke it out any minute, being an equally balanced pair of supremely stubborn and finicky people. Most of the time we equably agree-to-disagree, because what we do argue about is virtually always, as in the above case, nothing. Often, it’s mere semantics, each of us saying pretty much exactly what the other is saying but in such different personal language that it sounds like we’re worlds apart, and when we really are on different pages, it’s not about anything crucial to the foundations of our marriage. We share our core values, no matter how the day is going.
So by the end of the hour yesterday, tempers cooled down, and by today, I was firmly reminded that I would do well to keep my trap shut long enough to realize how petty and pointless the disagreement is before wasting any energy on arguing a non-point. I never feared that we didn’t still love each other or that a grave emergency was going to occur if he didn’t see the light and agree with me forthwith, but you’d not have guessed that from the way I was talking. How silly of me, and how pointlessly rude. How sorry I am.
I’ll at least give myself the concession that this is how things go sometimes with those we love the most, our family. We put on the proverbial boxing gloves because we love and care too much to just stomp off into the sunset and never get back to I’m Sorry and I Love You. It hurts, yes it does, to argue, and perhaps the more so pointedly when I know in my heart it’s over something idiotic and meaningless, but I suppose it’s far preferable to not having enough passion to vent and relent.
This misadventure was followed by not only reconciliation but remembering that it was, of all things, Father’s Day. We weren’t in one place (with cell reception, anyhow) long enough to call our two fabulous dads right on the day and give them the fervently felt thanks and love they deserved on the occasion—though, arguably (no pun intended), we could have made a pretty quick call to at least one in the time we wasted arguing. Being longtime family members of the truest sort, Dad W and Dad S will undoubtedly forgive our tardiness and just be glad we get around to calling tonight with belated greetings for the occasion. They are both past-masters at the whole Real Love thing, anyway.
Which brings me back into the middle of the story. I haven’t forgotten that way back in the first line of this post I mentioned a wedding. It was the excuse for our road trip after leaving Boston…why fly home to Texas and then back north within a week if a week’s holiday in between beckons? It was also, and no surprise, one of the clear and dazzling highlights of the whole fortnight’s expedition. Two other dear members of our extended family (both former students of my spouse’s) now uniting in the contract of marriage, in a fairytale sort of wedding held in the bride’s parents’ garden where the long threatening rain consented to abeyance, not because to do otherwise would have been a crime against the sweetness of the day but because it was probably more appropriate that the tears being shed were all joyful ones by various members of the wedding party and fond attendees.
There was visual gorgeousness throughout, just as with last year’s wedding of another such pair of adopted-kin sweethearts that took us to Puerto Rico, and as in that instance, also perfectly thought out and enacted to fit and represent the couple in question. The settings were spectacularly prepared, music exquisitely performed by musicians near and dear to the marrying couples, the wedding parties looking like some kind of ethereal Hollywood-designer versions of how wedding parties usually look, and the after-parties a couple of ones guaranteed to be recounted for ages by everyone who attended. And the friend who performed the marriage ceremony for this week’s bride and groom, for whom I am told this was her first such duty, spoke simply and eloquently in the most appropriate of ways for the occasion.
The centerpiece of her brief address of the bride and groom was recognizing their deep and remarkable commitment to family. To the community of care and comfort and love found in people who have chosen each other and stand together willingly, if not willfully, through thick and thin. Those present on the day were a clear part and example of this way of life. And it was impossible not to respond in kind, to acknowledge the connection and delight in it, and promise together to continue to seek it out.
I promise. You have my word on it. That word, you know—Family.
I’ve mentioned before that I follow in my esteemed father’s footsteps when it comes to his motto that ‘anything worth doing is worth overdoing’; my approach to many ideas and creative processes tends toward the Baroque, if not the Rococo. It’s not that I adhere to the design precepts and concepts of either of those eras, but I do have leanings that reflect their love of what others might easily consider excess. It’s one of the reasons I so often end up working in mixed media—combining a variety of seemingly unrelated elements into my works enables me to take advantage of the strengths of each while not laboring overmuch to accomplish a number of disparate ends with the same piece.
It’s also a reason I get pleasure out of making found-object artworks. There’s a lot of both fun and challenge in working to see the possible relationships, whether visual, conceptual, or metaphorical between all of the parts I’m using and figuring out how to showcase those ideas by the way I combine the multitude of bits and bobs. Old or familiar objects, put into unexpected juxtaposition, can take on new meaning or bring surprising revelations of their possible connection and mutual influence when my proposed paradigm shift begins to provoke any change in a viewer’s expectations and experiences. But it’s not necessary to alter anybody’s thinking very radically to make these kinds of artworks fun, provocative, and entertaining to make, anyhow. So I just throw everything but the kitchen sink at the project of the moment and see what the combination inspires in me.
Looking for analogues in the world that make fitting ‘ingredients’ for mixed media art and found-object pieces can bring useful and sometimes quite surprising insights into myself no matter whether anyone else shares my sense of the connections’ logic or my pleasure in the linkage or not. And since, as you must know by now if you’ve visited here before, I have never been skilled at making money of any sort from my artworks, let alone making a living from it, the ability to fully and effectively communicate my delight in making these odd discoveries and building relationships between unlike elements through art is just plain icing on the cake. I feel lucky enough to have had the happy moment of recognition myself. If I get a little carried away, can you blame me?
When the interplay of sounds, of melody and accompaniment, move toward that sharp, yearning suspension of notes that reach for each other but cannot seem to meet, the resolution—if and when it comes—is evermore the sweet. Pointed and poignant, that sacred space betwixt sunlight and shade, the delicate balance before sleep consents to wake, or life concedes to sleep in death, holds both precious sorrow and piercing joy. Just as forgiveness does not require forgetting but is rather accentuated by it, the brightest day shines all the more for its being cut with silhouettes of deepest shadow, and the inmost midnight anthracite of sky finds its peak of beauty when marked with sparkling points of stellar light.
Speak, and the silence quivers in recognition; sing, and it pulses with ecstasy.
Allegro gives way to the grieved pacing of Largo, and that, in turn, takes pause and after a longing sigh, begins to dance again, Allegretto. Season will follow season down the years, and I grow old and turn transparent with my age, until at last, hearing the call of the penultimate phrase, I remember that if I let my voice fall from the present chord, those who carry it on will draw into that beautiful, desired harmony and close the space perfectly once again. Whether voices falter, go astray, or fall silent, the return to harmony waits to bring existence back into balance.
Fish, I mean. I’ve never had the experience of sucking anything into my lungs through a burning tube of dead plants or any other sort of cigarette, pipe, cigar, spliff, bong, etc, and I feel not the slightest sorrow over that as a loss. But smoky foods? Oh, yes, please! Smoked meats, smoked salts and spices, and especially, smoked fishes.
Smoked cod, like the tenderly delicious star of that long-ago fish-and-chips feast in an out-of-the-way pub in Winnipeg where the air was suffused with the aforementioned kinds of smoke to the point that had my companions and I not been quite hungry and quite at sea about where to find another eatery, we’d not likely have stopped. One had to brave a dank, ill-lit stairwell to the netherworld of an almost invisible below-stairs bar, be “sponsored” by a dear friend to become a member of the joint (the barman was happy to be best friends with all of us), order from the cook who was sitting at the bar eating his own lunch of fried rice or chow mein, and trust that one was actually welcome and about to be fed something good. Happily, all of this oddball expedition led to one of the most spectacularly delicious meals of fish and chips I’ve ever enjoyed, not least of all made special by the cod being smoked rather than merely fresh and perfect.
Kippers and Kedgeree would be hard to beat for a tasty breakfast or light supper, being smoked-fish-centric. Smoked tuna salad is a lovely dip or spread for hors-d’oeuvres and snacks. Fresh bagels are a dream with any good schmear, but possibly best of all with some bright, pure cream cheese and pristinely sweet and salty lox.
And of course, being a good native Seattleite and of Norsk lineage, I am fond of salmon in a vast variety of forms, not least of all the Norwegian version of that Jewish treasure, the cured salmon known as gravlax or any smoked salmon worthy of the name. Growing up with a good supply of Gramps‘s freshly caught fish on the table was not only a boon to the economy and health of the household, but a training ground for the love of that noble fish that only grew over the years and expanded to include the beauties of those cured and smoked varieties. It’s no surprise that I should so often fall back on the inclusion of one or more of these salmon delights when it’s time to make a good meal, whether for just my partner and me or for more sophisticated company.
This time I opted to let several different favorites crash into each other on the plate: double salmon (cured lox plus candied/smoked wild Alaska salmon) blended with a little bit of lemon cream, and firmly tender white wine-steamed vegetables (carrots, celery, and green beans), all scooped on top of a goodly heap of baked macaroni and cheese. They were well enough behaved with each other that I never doubted I’d find them friendly toward me, too, and sure enough, they were. Like the Winnipeg barman and me, this dish and I became fast friends—that is, both quickly and deeply attached. Until the serving dish was empty, anyway.
While we were drawing in the studio where I taught—years ago—there were difficulties that came as much from my frustrated and inadequate attempts to teach as from the normal technical complexities of drawing well and the imperfect ability of any non-superhuman to master them instantly even if I had been a great teacher. But there were also moments of surprisingly peaceful, encouraging, engaging grace. A fair microcosm in this way, I suppose, of learning throughout life.
Art-Colored Glasses 