WARMING OURSELVES WITH ART, MUSIC, FOOD, & FRIENDS

We’re still in October, and the basics seem to be staying pretty constant. The main themes of life this month continue to be art, culture, and friends, all under a chilly rainy sky. We’re not drowning in floodwaters, as the people of central Thailand are, but we too have had enough rain and dampness to last us awhile. I’m ready for some sunshine!

Meantime that warmth and optimism has to come from other sources. Just yesterday I went with a friend to a free concert at the Opera House here in Toronto. There’s a kind of amphitheatre two floors up. That's where the free noontime concerts are held. This one was by the Zodiac trio - have you heard of them? I hadn’t - who are American and French: clarinet, piano, and violin. They were terrific, and so was their program. The concert title was “Music from a Silenced Nation: Soviet Composers.” I knew Shostakovitch and Stravinsky, but the other two were new to me: Edison Denisov (one movement of an amazing sonata for solo clarinet, moody and impressionistic with slides and quarter tones, completely remarkable); and Galina Ustvolskaya, whose Trio, written in 1949, was haunting, each movement tailing off into silence, a questioning suggestive absence.

Then there’s the Chagall, the AGO show on Chagall and other artists who were born in the Russian empire and worked in Russia and then mostly in France, in the first half of the twentieth century. In my ignorance I knew nothing about many of the artists in the show. Apart from Chagall paintings and drawings, there was a wonderful Lipschitz bronze and some lovely Kandinsky’s, but it was the work by the others, called collectively the Russian Avant-Garde in the show’s title, that was new to me and sometimes took my breath away. I didn’t know about Sonia Delaunay or Natalia Gontcharova, nor about Tatin, Malevitch, Rodtchenko... If you have a chance to get to Toronto’s AGO before January 10, do go. And try to make time for two visits, because ther’s a lot to absorb.

There’s often discussion in art and literature crcles, and argument, about whether knowledge of the artist or writer is important or should even be a factor in appreciating the work. At the end of the Chagall is a long (fifteen-minute, maybe twenty-minute) film made in the 1970’s I think, when he was living in the south of France (he died in 1980 at the age of 98, a beautiful looking man). Somehow, watching him talk about his work, watching him work, and hearing about his first stay in Paris (1910-12) when he met Braque and Picasso and the other painters in that then-vibrant art community, helped me get a handle on his achievement. Until then, to me the paintings were whimsical or amusing or sad or sorrowful, sometimes all at once, and their colour and vibrancy and life-force was extraordinary, but I’d never been able to get hold of them for myself. I sat on the surface, you could say, but didn’t “get” them, most of them.

After the film somehow things fell into place: the pictures aren’t disciplined workings out of a theory or a geometry, they’re pure expressions of how he was feeling. In them there are elements of the painterly schools or techniques (the newspaper seller has a cubist feel in parts, in the papers he carries, for example), but he has digested all that others were doing and remained himself. He’s always Chagall, the man from Vitebsk, not contained or constrained by theory or specific techniques.

Now to go back and look at the whole exhibition with fresh eyes. What a treat to have the show waiting for me a few blocks away.

All this Russian art and creativity, from the AGO show to the Zodiac Trio program, is a reminder of how much the world lost in the twentieth century because of anti-Semitism and the totalitarian politices of Stalin et al. Artists were persecuted, some of them managing to flee, others not surviving. (Of the artists in the Chagall show, almost all died in France; one died in 1944 in Auschwitz; I wonder about all that got buried in history, whose work we don’t know about) It’s also a reminder, as the Zodiac clarinetist said in some opening words, that human creativity is remarkably tenacious. Even in difficult circumstances, many artists manage to produce work and to keep their integrity. They’re valuable to us all, a reminder of the larger view, the bigger horizon, the potential in all of us.

That’s the warmth we find in art and music in this chilly damp weather.

Other warmth comes from the glow of the leaves, still clinging, many of them, despite the rain and winds. The huge maple out my back window, a squirrel high-rise, is a blend of red and green against the sky, wind-tattered at the edges of its generous canopy.

And then there’s Diwali, the festival of lights, which was last night. We aren’t Hindus, but we did have tiny candles lit and other lights on. It was dark and chilly outside but the house was full of welcome conversation as we talked and ate mostly leftovers with good friends in the warmth of our shared humanity.

AND AS FOR THE DETAILS: We ate well, in many stages, with a backdrop of roasted pumpkin (I was cooking small pumpkin halves to soft, to then puree them for soup), very autumnal altogether. The "menu": dal with cauliflower, reheated with some water and olive oil, and thickened with leftover rice, comfort food at its best; leftover Italian sausage from Sanagan's, sliced fairly thinly, wok-fried to reheat and tossed in the wok with leftover tubetti; multi-colourd fresh carrots cut into sticks, for crunch; and fresh rice to take care of the lovely sauce on some leftover Thai chicken curry, red curry, small pieces of chicken, and delectable. For afters I simmered chopped Grey County apples in brown sugar and a little water, then served them with a dollop of very unsweet stewed damsons and a long lick of maple syrup.

MAKING HEADWAY IN THIS GREEN & FLOWERING TIME

I apologise for not posting for nine days. I'm in the sprint-to-the-finish-line stage of my Burma book. Writing here feels like an easy pleasure, a welcome and unpermitted distraction you might say, so I haven't dared even think about it for more than a week. I have so much work to do! On the other hand, there's a lot done; it really feels like a book. What a great thing to be able to say that. Now I'm just obsessing about details, as always!

And with spring springing so beautifully, and slowly this year, there's lots to celebrate, even as I complain about how deep in my deadline trench I am!

Just an update about this and that: My lilies of the valley are still not quite out, so that makes them a full two weeks late. My trilliums, valiant survivors in the harsh city envirnment, have just finished. On the other hand the crab apple tree that spreads the full width of the front yard is in glorious show-offy bloom, delicately scented, like a dreamy miracle. And as I run in the mornings, these last damp and rainy days, the humidity carries the scent of blooming fruit trees, and the overcast light makes the colours pop. It's pretty psychedelic out there! The best I think is the fall of brilliant citron-yellow-green little tree-flowers from the maple trees. They carpet the dark-with-rain sidewalks in an incredible glowing blanket of colour. Yesterday at the end of the street someone had dropped a couple of pink flowers, almost magenta, onto the brilliant green. It was intense, a jolt for the eyeballs!

In the back garden my first lettuce greens are up, little green spots of hope, planted ten days ago as seeds and rained on since. It's an exciting time as I visualise the shape of the garden this year. I've been eating dandelion greens from the back, and garlic chives, stir-fried with a little turmeric and mustard seed, a great start to the day, ingesting greenness and life!

Speaking of life, this week I tried to see if I could get cooked soybeans to ferment the way it's done by the Shan and northern Thais...and it worked! It's a recipe for Shan (Tai Yai) tua nao, dried disks of fermented soybean paste. I cooked the soybeans on Saturday and by this morning they were fermented and sweet-smelling, so I added salt and ground them to a paste in the processor. The paste is delish, on its own and also when fried a little; now I have a stash in a jar in my fridge, there to play with.

Tua nao disks are available in markets in northern Thailand and Burma, but here if I want them I have to make them. Of course there are substitutes, such as fermented soybeans from China, and even miso paste, but I'm delighted to know that if someone wants to make them from scratch, it's easily doable. That's my big hurrah! for the day! I'll try shaping some disks and drying them out in a low oven (since the air is too damp right now to dry anything!) tomorrow.

I dropped by the AGO the other day (yes, I have been taking the odd break!) and saw the Inuit exhibition, a collection now donated to the gallery, of mostly modern (post 1970) pieces, but with some old too, to give context. There's a wonderfully expressive figure, standing, carved from whalebone, and some minimalist soapstone carvings, huge smooth blocks with just enough detail carved to make you see the bird or the musk-ox. They're weighty with seriousness and somehow heart-stopping. Whalebone is such an extraordinary medium, so alive and so varied in its textures. The Henry Moore pieces in a neighbouring gallery look like they too, some of them, are carved from whalebone, as if they are an extension of the Inuit work.

As the news out of Syria etc continues dramatic and troubling, I can't stop checking twitter (I use Tweetdeck, which at least simplifies and sorts the incoming) for news. The rhythm of that is of course directly opposed to my need to settle in to editing, writing the last bits of text, polishing, etc. But the alternative, to ignore what's happening, is not acceptable. It feels as if, even from this distance, we should at least be imagining and thinking about what is going on, don't you think?

Recipes, and food questions seem trivial next to political action and active suffering, but they are all part of life and all necessary, that's what I tell myself. After all, growing food and getting it on the table every day is what keeps people going, and allows them to find some self-respect when life is tough or oppressive. Or so it seems to me.

And the kitchen is a place we can all retreat to, in fact, and in our imaginations, when we're feeling squeezed. It's a place of comfort, a feeling of home, an emotional refuge too.

Maybe that's why in these last weeks I feel so tempted to flee the computer and retest recipes. Taking concrete action is often much easier than working away to shape a difficult paragraph or think through a complicated concept. And at the end of recipe testing there's food to eat, and to feed others, which feels a lot more valuable, often, than whatever ideas I manage to express on a page.

But now I'm whining. It's time to stop that!

Time instead to celebrate a lot of birthdays, R, and X, and E and D and lots more, I'm sure, whom I'm forgetting. They get to celebrate at this flowering lovely time of year, when all is promise and freshness and optimism. How lovely!