Comfort Food
when you eat just to know you're alive
First off, that’s a parody of a song lyric, so don’t get all panicky, y’all.
Dunno about you, but I’ve been eating SO MUCH these days. I can’t tell if it is because the weather is shifting, because I’m fighting off jet lag and insisting my body conform to this time zone, or just because good food makes me happy, but I am eating all the standards: noodles, chips, soups, and copious amounts of chocolate. Copious.
It isn’t making me feel any better. Okay, actually it is a little. But just a a little.
What’s making me actually feel better is seeing some great productions this week - first I went to see Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library at 50e59 which does fantastic productions of new plays, then I saw a SAG screening of a movie called Bird, and finally I got to see Vladimir at the Manhattan Theater Club.
Great distractions, all.
Actually the first two movies have a theme in common though one is set in a prison in Nazi Germany and one is a coming of age story set in Gravesend (an on-the-nose name for a town in northern Kent, where punk is still punk and no one has any money unless they’re dealing drugs). Each of these productions, one gray, one day-glo, ask: “in a society that is inherently and systemically brutally violent, can good individuals stay kind and watch out for each other.” The answer in both these cases is “yes” but there is no guarantee that kindness will lead to safety or success.
Still, kindness for its own sake might be something to strive for, no?
Vladimir tackled the question of how much responsibility an individual should shoulder to expose the evils they see, even at personal peril. But it is also about loving the place you were born, even while you watch it fall apart. And it is also about a very small, very mean, very self-centered guy who has a lot more influence than anyone that abhorrent should rightfully have.
Ah, analogies. How we love them. In a repressive regime, artists are the only ones with free speech, because we are able to speak on multiple levels. (I told you about the Lithuanian rock band during Soviet times whose name was Antis? The Soviets had to let it go: in Lithuanian the word Antis means Duck. How could they prove that it was Anti-Soviet?)
Like I said, distractions. Also watched the original Dune and GoodFellas and a few other gems. Am re-reading Thomas M. Disch’s 334 which is still a brilliant parody— only now a lot of the predictions have come true…or close. It’s set in 2024 NYC, but was written in the 1970s. You’ve never read a more diverse cast of characters, and I’m including the novels written today. Disch was ahead of his time; was discovered by Alice K Turner, who was the fierce genius who curated the stories for Playboy for decades, adding more and more speculative fiction…. I used to hang out with her in her apartment listening to her stories about the Disco Days of NYC. (I had won edits by her in a silent auction and we bonded over Shakespeare & Miyazaki films which we both adored.) She always had an unlit cigarette to hand, and usually a glass of merlot. Cheers, Alice. Great lady.
Taking comfort in entertainment, distractions, and food. That’s me this week.
And about comfort food: What makes something comfort food? Is it just the fact that it comforts us to acquire it, or does comfort food need to deliver comfort after it is eaten to be authentically comfort food?
In other words, if you eat a whole pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream and feel no better, was it comfort food?
Also is comfort food necessarily something you ate when you were younger, or can you have new comfort food when you’re an adult? How many times must you love eating something before it becomes comfort food?
Writing News
To no one’s surprise this week was a creative wasteland. I did nothing, wrote nothing. All I did was seek out distractions.
Okay that’s not entirely true - I sent out a LOT of poems. And a few short stories. But sending out isn’t writing, is it? Or is it? Just how much of this art is work, anyway?
I did get interviewed for a podcast series on literary nonprofit leaders that should come out in January - it was a fun interview if a little wild.
This Tuesday I host the Pen Parentis Literary Salon again - and the theme is The Politics of Parenthood. It could be a somber night. Or we might laugh our patooties off. You can only find out if you tune in. Everyone’s welcome, audience isn’t on camera but you can chat in your questions during the live stream. RSVP here!
Random Final Thought
In Japan it was very quiet. Tranquil, even, and I still can’t get adjusted to all the unnecessary noise in NYC. Next time you go outdoors, listen to all the things we ignore. Mostly it’s music (in shops, in cars, in restaurants, on bikes, on phones) but also there are clattery air conditioners, noisy mufflers, unmuted construction, coughing buses, random people laughing, sirens, dogs whining, but mostly its just people. Shouting, laughing, yelling, whining, talking into phones, screaming to be heard over the music, babies crying and parents being twice as loud as the kid to try to get them to stop.
We’re loud. Really loud.
(seriously: right now, what can you hear? what sounds are in your earshot?)
You certainly gave us a lot to chew on....I am divided between thinking "comfort food" is totally about guilt because we happened to have learned it is not physically good for us, or perhaps that it also originates from feeling the slight physical harm of it and lack of nutrition. But it strikes me as not something we would have to explain away, not something we would have to call "comfort food," if we were only speaking for ourselves and truth, and not to other people.
You use "yell" and "scream" in the same list toward the end of the blog. Is there any difference between them? Both certainly project anger, so from that standpoint, there is no difference. Reading someone the riot act can involve either yelling at them or screaming at them. It is true that we don't yell out of fear, while we do scream out of fear. Yelling more seems the part of the active party, screaming of the receiving and reacting party. But yelling is not necessarily calculated; people do say, "I lost my temper and yelled at her."
And where would "shout" come into this equation? (Which I now see you also use.) I don't see distance between shouting and yelling, although to say "twist and yell" would sound very weird. The shouting in "twist and shout" is for joy, I believe, a very unusual connotation for the signified.
Although it does seem like there should be a word that captures the underlying emotion when someone is excited and happy at a meal and raises his voice too loud. For that, we just say we raised our voice. We wouldn't say we were yelling. Odd that yelling, screaming, and shouting seem designed as if for one word, when they can refer to any length of increased-volume expression. (Although I would say the longer the yelling/screaming/shouting goes on, the harder it is to endure. How many loud words equal the same number of soft words?)
Hmm, some depression, some expression.