Creative Process

Secret De-Coders And All That Kind of Thing – Who Needs ‘Em

2006-09-07T14:11:00.000-06:00

I recently read Pete Hamill’s memoir A Drinking Life, mainly because it caught my eye on the shelves of my local small town library, and because I remembered reading an article by Hamill on the same subject at least ten years before, perhaps longer, and because I had also just read his Why Sinatra Matters, an excellent essay. As I’ve previously written (and quoting admittedly William Powell in The Thin Man), I’m way behind on my drinking. This unusual “drinking problem” leads me to pay attention to tales of others who discuss the more conventional variety.

Before the drinking, Hamill the boy was obsessed with comic books, started drawing his own, received professional training. Captain America, secret code rings, and that kind of thing, kept Hamill fascinated through his formative years, when you had the easy-to-hate villains of the Second World War. Reading all this made me think: none of this happened to me. Was I robbed, or was there a benefit?

An entire species of boy/man phenomena passed me by entirely. As the drinking didn’t happen to me, the superhero comics didn’t either. Of course you’d encounter them at the houses of friends, and I am familiar with their catch-phrases and references, but I’d never buy them (later I would never buy cigarettes, and still later never buy drugs, both good strategies if you don’t want to turn into bad habit that to which you may be exposed). No, the only comics that attracted me then, to the point of purchase, and even now, to the point of a browse, were the Archie comics. Teenage love is the theme, and is there truly any other kind of romantic love? (It’s a rhetorical question; you’re supposed to answer, “nope, I guess not.”). Oh, there are other types of love, and I guess more mature kinds of love, but romantic love, that’s a teenage phenomenon. When you go goo-goo- and gaa-gaa over someone, isn’t that the teenager talking? (Don’t answer if you actually are a teenager, or if you haven’t quite gotten there yet; bad, go read about superheroes, go eat something.)

This brings me back to the time when I was in fact a teenager, fourteen and a few months to be exact, and it was at summer camp. Understand this: when you’re walking with a girl and you’re fourteen and you want to kiss her, you are at a disadvantage if you have been imbuing yourself with all that Superman, Batman and Aquaman imagery. Oh, you want the kiss, you need that first kiss as much as the next guy, but all those flashing comic colors and sci-fi terminologies have got to be mind-numbing just at the wrong time. You hope that it will all happen automatically; maybe she will take the lead. You don’t know what the hell you are doing.

With Archie as your guide, you do know what you are doing. You have a model. You can divide all femininity into two types: Betty and Veronica. (Later you theorize females have six types, then twelve, even later they all act as one in league against you, but the comic’s producers conveniently bypass these themes in favor of hammering home their one insistent point: real heroes don’t fight evil, they smooch.) So Carol and I walked around the path to the back of the lake. Carol was at least two inches taller than me. I had to go on tiptoe. Didn’t Archie have to do exactly the same thing, the tall girl routine? I am sure I had seen this more than once.

What an advantage I had, all those impressions in my brain, those templates, those paradigms, of full-color smooching, all that was Archie. And Archie is still around; let’s not forget that, as action heroes come and go; kryptonite can get Superman, but even Mr. Lodge cannot truly nonplus this hero.

What I don’t remember is whether or not I stood on anything to reach Carol’s lips; what I do know is that I did reach them, tasted them, and can still taste their magnificence. Thank you, Mr. Andrews. (And thank you also, Carol, since you did have something to do with it.) Think of the years of drinking and dissipation you both saved me.

Making A Choice

2005-11-03T12:08:00.002-07:00

Strange to think, at this point in my life, I persist in the opinion that men and women differ. I should have a more thorough understanding of men than I do of women. I have, after all, logged considerable experience (that is pronounced ”trial and error”) as a man. I have had wives—yes, plural—and a son. I have had a business. I have both owed money (though not at present), and have had the onerous task of collecting it from others (some of whom, theoretically, still owe it from long ago; you know who you are).

I have never been a soldier, but I know that all maleness involves some kind of soldiering: the tasks soldiers usually do, surviving, getting rained on, enduring mud and slime, peeling potatoes, hauling out the trash. Glory is extremely rare in life, and then, Sic transit gloria mundi: when it comes, it leaves. You cannot count on fine moments. Everyday life is the vein you must mine. It’s one of those mines from a western, with desperadoes out there with guns waiting to steal your gold; if you finally do get down the mountain to the assay office, they rob you with a pen. You do what you can with what remains.

Despite the wonderful quote from Ray Davies—“girls will be boys and boys will be girls/it’s a mixed up muddled up shook up world”—I think the contrary applies: except for certain people who are genuinely confused, men are men and women are women. You hear popular talk of a man getting in touch with his “feminine side.” Claptrap; men don’t have feminine sides. Oh, they do have receptive abilities, nurturing instincts, gentle and sensitive aspects, but they are receptive, nurturing, gentle or sensitive as men, not as women. These sides of the male persona are admirable—necessary—just as strength, perseverance, courage and the like are indispensable in their female manifestations. Male nurturing and female nurturing, male courage and female courage, are not identical. I can sense and even be awed by these qualities in a woman, but I can go further than that and live them as a man.

The fact that the female is outside our male cognizance presents us with a great trap when we forget the fact that women, individually and in general, are real, not our fantasies. (I cannot speak of the distortions women may make of men in their imaginations, but undoubtedly I have female counterparts who may treat this issue.) One man, who represents the blundering all of us undergo from time to time (or in perpetuity, in the case of those of us who really are fools) was Paris, prince of the royal house of Troy. Troy is in ruins now, buried beneath successor cities that are themselves buried, all the fault of Paris.

Eris, the goddess Discord—nasty, for sure—threw the apple of discord among the gods. Picture this sphere as about as benevolent as a hand grenade; on it was engraved the rubric “for the fairest.” Zeus, king of the gods, lacked the confidence to tackle the question of who among the goddesses qualified. (Today’s equivalent of this unanswerable question may well be, “Honey, does this dress make me look fat?”) Zeus was no slouch, however. He had a W.C. Fieldsian instinct for finding a sucker; Paris was a natural.

Paris chose Aphrodite as “the fairest,” spurning the goddesses Hera and Athena, because Aphrodite promised him the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen, whom Paris had to abduct to get, causing a war of revenge, devastation, and ruin. This war was a cauldron that tested the mettle of every one of its participants, Trojan or Greek. The twin epics it spawned raised questions relating to the male role that we have been debating ever since.

I am glad of Aphrodite, but I am not calling her to my corner. Aphrodite is called the “goddess of love,” but she is better termed the goddess of the “narrow feminine archetype,” that fantasy woman every man wants but who will never be. Fantasies are about as fleeting as glory, even if they appear more often. Fantasies don’t work. They are fun when we perceive them as fun, ruinous when we confuse them with reality.

From what I know of Hera, wife of Zeus, I’d have to be alone on a desert island to have anything to do with her, you’d have to hold a gun to my head, I’d have to be sure it was loaded and that you’d actually pull the trigger. I’ve run across Hera many times in my transit across the arc of life; I’ve paid my dues. I’m already on her bad side, so these words shouldn’t make my lot on this earth any worse.

I will take real women in the real world as they present themselves, without expecting of them the benefits and burdens of a goddess, but if I must have an archetype, let it be Athena, so-called goddess of wisdom, though I would rather call her “goddess of considering the moral basis of action.” Spiteful Hera sent Hercules on his mighty labors; Athena stood beside him and allowed him to prevail. Athena stood behind Theseus as he slew the Minotaur. Athena guided Perseus in his high-risk raid on the terrifying Gorgon Medusa. Athena protected Odysseus during his ten-year ordeal after the sack of Troy; she inspired his son Telemachus to seek his father and protect his mother Penelope. Athena is responsible for great things: the courage of action, to be sure, but also the courage of endurance. For every morsel of action, we live a thousand chunks of endurance.

Athena is a demanding goddess. She is both a war goddess and the goddess of peaceful assembly and political affairs. She protects the brave, in all aspects of life, but she does not give them their bravery; instead she expects it.

Men have enough of their own momentum toward baser things in life: appetites and all that. Athena provides a balance: an austere standard of heroism, integrity, intelligence, capability, leadership. Athena represents the finest attributes women bring to the table of life. You can get kissing and snuggling with a real woman, you can certainly get nagging, but if you’re talking about a goddess looking over your shoulder, Athena is the one who can really help you make the most of yourself. Athena is not your wife, not your girlfriend, not your sister, not your mother, not your beloved nanny, and yet she is a woman, that other phenomenon out there, that difference. One of your teachers—the one who first credited you with intelligence and judgment perhaps—may have been Athena. That wonderful real woman in your life takes on what you think is the beauty of Aphrodite not because she is Aphrodite but because she is Athena. Athena is the fairest.

You, reader, may actually be a woman. Good for you. Keep at it. You can see Paris for the dolt he really is. I do hope he isn’t too familiar to you. You are right to want your man to be a hero, to look to Athena for his standard, not a shoot-em-up action hero to be sure, but the do-the-right-thing workaday hero just the same. Everything a man does well—be it leading, be it nurturing—he does with courage. Do not think for a moment that this courage is bluster, bravado, or boast; it is difficult, multi-dimensional, and exacting. Men do not understand their courage, yet they have no choice but to live it. Athena stands and reminds them.

Together

2005-10-24T11:53:00.000-06:00

Five years ago, my entire family found itself together in one place for the last time. There is no sense in romanticizing the family gatherings we had for holidays; they were excruciating. My father was a man who always had something to say. He was vulgar, and if a woman, especially a young one—one of my sisters’ friends or my son’s girlfriend—were at the table, he could not help but make references to sex, scatology, or bodily functions. If it came into his mind, it had to be uttered. One time when he was trying to tell a story he’d told before and no one seemed to be listening to him, he stormed out of the room. We all let him, without protest, and this became one of our stories.

My son, on the contrary, never seemed to say much to me. There seemed always to be something on his mind. At these gatherings, most of our communications involved patting each other on the back. I guess that counts, but I am a man of many words. I had always envisaged profound, ongoing conversations with my son, precisely those I was unable to have with my father. Instead I would exist in a limbo between the silence of one and the drone of the other.

My wife found these gatherings to be nearly unbearable. She cared little for any member of my family, especially my son (not her child), and they returned the sentiments in kind. Fortunately, we lived nearby and had separate cars. Often, she would beg off, and would hardly be missed. I cannot quite judge whether it was better having her around, as a foil, or absent, as one less irritant.

My three sisters rarely argued with me, but now and then they would have what I like to call a “frank exchange of views” with each other, or with my mother. Other than the general stress and the difficulty of being in the same house as my father and mother, two things about these family gatherings at my parents’ house were especially disturbing to them. My mother had a way of destroying perfectly good food, usually by overcooking or under-seasoning, always due to a maddening failure to organize and attend. In addition, she kept poor sanitary habits in the kitchen and in the house in general. My sisters were not shy about letting their displeasure with this be known.

The house itself could cloy on you, suffocate you, make you yearn to flee. Every room would be crammed with books, papers, unread magazines, mismatched furniture. Lamps did not work, or if they did they would droop in the wrong direction. In one drawer would be a dozen locks without keys, in another two-dozen keys without locks. It would have been charitable to have called the pervading odor of that house “stale.” You could never ignore it, and you couldn’t get it out of your lungs when you left. The house was always damp, always dank, which is perhaps the reason I live in the desert now.

I was spurred to write this because I was about to review a culinary book based on the warmth and conviviality of another family’s mealtimes with each other. We hadn’t a shred of that, simply the solid fact that we were together. My father is now dead, my marriage is over, my son lives in Australia, I live two thousand miles away, we finally emptied the house, engineered its sale, and moved my mother to an apartment she can afford. My grief at losing my father has yet to present itself, I am happy no longer to be in a marriage that wasn’t working, I am thrilled that my son has a wonderful wife, career and lifestyle in Australia, and I am ecstatic that the house has finally been liquidated before an oak tree careens into it. I cannot argue with any of these things. Each in itself makes sense. But we were together.

Writing By Hand

2005-10-11T11:48:00.000-06:00

I have been used to writing using keyboards for more than 30 years, harking back to the days of the typewriter (look it up if you are not familiar with the term). There is something wrong with either my hand, that part of the brain that controls it, or both, in that writing by hand with a pen actually causes me physical pain. Back in school, I never learned to write cursive script except for my signature. When I do write by hand, my handwriting is usually very large. It’s torture for me to fill out forms by hand, especially since I live in Albuquerque. People who live in Taos or Hobbs have it a lot easier.

Sometimes when I am in bed, however, I handwrite notes to myself. I also do crossword puzzles, filling in the spaces using a gel pen, one block letter at a time. Now and then, when I have to cross something out because I got the answer wrong, I wish I’d done it in pencil, but I’d have to press too hard to use a pencil effectively. The ink in the gel pen oozes out in some marvel of physics, insinuating itself onto the porous paper of the crossword (these are from purchased compendia of several hundred). This species of lettering requires positioning, but no pressure and hence no pain.

I do my puzzles on a clipboard. When I finish one, I unclip it and let it waft onto the floor. Sometimes, before I sleep, I see a layered pile of several sheets, showing the stamp of my primitive lettering. What a shock it would be if I glanced bleary-eyed at the pile and a phalanx of precise letters, not my own, glared back at me. I would instantly want to know the name of the trespasser. My lettering, after all, is my space, my own.

Public Speaking Techniques

2005-10-10T17:46:00.000-06:00

Back in June, I completed a draft of my book You Have A Voice, my key rules for public speaking success. This week, after allowing the book to ferment for several months, I added a number of example sections. It’s time for a second fermentation, which, as in the case of Champagne, should add some effervescence. I put up the basics for a web page for the book.

In writing the book, my aim was to distill my experience over a 25-year period and give some real perspective on what makes public speaking special. There are plenty of books out there about public speaking. I don’t agree with everything that has been written on the subject, but there is a lot of quality material. It seems senseless for me to treat subjects that have been covered at length. What I do give is my own set of ideas.

In my original outline for the book, I stressed that the actual “how-to” of public speaking may be less important than what I call the “why-to” (why speak at all), the “what to” (the subject matter), and of course the “who to” (the audience). If you know why you’re out there speaking, what you’re speaking about, and who your audience is, you can work on the “how-to” techniques as you go along. Many commentators believe that the method, the way you project yourself, is more important than the message. I disagree with this common view. I believe what you have to say is most important. I write a great deal about attitude, and respect for the audience.

Many public speaking trainers come to the profession from the world of the theater or have credentials as psychologists. Some may have degrees in communications. All that is well and good, but my background is from the world of front-line speaking: Rotary clubs, community groups, Toastmasters and the like. I am a philosopher, and theorize aplenty, but in this book I put constant stress on the pragmatic, real-world side of speaking. Fear is a constant subject in public speaking. I know how to deal with it.

In You Have A Voice I lay out 22 “rules” of public speaking, a distillation of the original 33 rules I keep on my web site (not every one of the 33 is pithy enough to generate a full chapter section in the book). Some of these rules deal with fear and nervousness directly; all of them tend to keep fear in its place. I really think in writing this book that I have put the lid on fear. I’ve never myself been afraid to speak in front of a group. Being silenced, to the contrary, seems the worse fate.

Moods and Brain Activity

2005-06-21T16:58:00.000-06:00

Reacting to stress has always been difficult for me, since I am not a naturally calm person. I’m sure there are many counterbalancing positives for my brain chemistry, but I wish I didn’t have to go through such changes for what are essentially small things. Being with people usually helps me snap out of the agitated state. I believe I have the opposite of social anxiety, or perhaps it is this: when I am alone my imagination takes over and leads me into agitation; when I am with others I am better able because of the circumstances to focus my energies on the moment.

Exercise: Keeping Up The Supply

2005-05-30T09:51:00.000-06:00

I’ve never been much of a sports buff, either in doing or in watching, but exercise keeps catching up to me. I have to admit I like the feeling of having done a good routine. I must have hiked three to four miles today in the desert. The coyote, rabbit and prairie dog sightings are a plus. It’s always a treat when you see a dozen hot-air balloons doing their runs, though hardly the thrill we get in October during Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta when the sky fills with many hundreds and you can watch them stage before dawn.

After the walk, I did weights: fifteen pound dumbbells. I do not wish to build impressive muscular bulk, though I do own a pair at twenty-five and thirty-five pounds. I am soon going to get into the habit of walking to do certain shopping and errands. I imagine walks of between one-and-a-half and five miles each way, carrying ice packs in a backpack when I need to buy perishables. It’s the routine of doing this that really brings the benefits. Of course, in Albuquerque, you have to be careful crossing boulevards, even at crosswalks.

I’ve never quibbled at the price of gasoline, yet I keep mileage down on my car as a means of being good to it. My 1997 Mitsubishi Galant has just over 60,000 miles and has never needed a major repair. Every errand done on foot saves several dozen startups, turns, backups, and other “wearing transactions” on the car. Since I may be driving the car to New York and back this summer, it can use the extra babying now.

Writing Standards and Limitations

2005-05-26T14:39:00.000-06:00

I’m writing this essay, as I write many of my pieces, as a break from my business writing. I’ve committed myself to writing at least five culinary book reviews a week for my web site and RSS news feed. Publishers are sending me culinary books to review. While I have active plans to revamp my publishing company, this time specializing in food books, I’ve made a commitment to myself to concentrate on establishing these cookbook reviews as the definitive site of its type on the web.

I cannot deny that I am prolific as writers go and accomplish a great deal, but I follow my own standards. There is, hence, a limit to how much I can produce a day and still maintain my own high quality level. I’m beginning to feel that my daily limit is about 1500 words, from concept to completion.

I’ve recently, after much thought, revamped my plans for a new book, You Have A Voice, in which I distill my experience as a public speaking trainer and coach. My previous outline was much too limited. I incorporated all the material of that outline into a new, more fluid outline. I still have a month or so of reflection to go before I get to work on You Have A Voice, and then it will only be in my off moments. It is precisely because I am constrained not to write the book in a white heat that a well-burnished outline is necessary.

Too Much Travel

2005-05-21T11:21:00.000-06:00

It has taken me several weeks to recover from more travel than I am used to. In early April I arrived in Australia, planning to spend two weeks in the Sydney area for my son’s wedding. As soon as I got my email, I learned that I had been nominated for the James Beard Foundation Journalism Award, with the ceremony to take place in New York City just ten days after my return to my home in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In Australia, I was Master of Ceremonies for the wedding. I arrived back in Albuquerque Tuesday April 19th after more than 24 hours in the air or in airports, competed in a Toastmasters speech contest that Friday (taking second place state-wide), flew to New York the next Tuesday, attended the sumptuous banquet and award ceremony that Friday, and return exhausted the next day. Three weeks have now passed and I am just back to normal.

My Books Are Out There

2005-01-26T10:16:00.000-07:00

As an author and journalist, I see myself in print frequently. Having two books on the market may feel good, but stacking 31-pound boxes of these books in the garage can sometimes get tiring. I've always felt content to be most important, hence I now have transferred one of my in-print books and two books that have never seen paper, all non-fiction, in their entirety, to the web.

www.lifeintheusa.com makes available my complete guide to American life for immigrants and students. You're sure to disagree with some of my take on American life, but I'm also certain much of this material will stimulate you.

www.buildingyourself.com/build/ is my published book, Building Yourself: Putting Your Success Together One Piece At A Time. I've recently revised this guide to living the successful life, first published in 1994.

www.buildingyourself.com/action/ is my never-before publication of Human Action: Ambition, Ability and Achievement, Finding and Using the Passion Inside. I have indeed been ambitious in creating this philosophy of human achievement. I want to know what you think.

www.stylegourmet.com is my food writing site. These are largely articles that are published in Albuquerque, NM where I live, in the Crosswinds Weekly newspaper's In The Kitchen column. There are additional culinary book reviews, airport restaurant reviews and more.

Albuquerque Album

2005-01-17T19:24:00.000-07:00

I’ve lived in Albuquerque now for more than two years; it’s the type of place that grows on you. If you are not a native of the place, you cannot prevent yourself from viewing the city through the filter of your own origin. I’m from New York City. Oh the ideas people have about that! In New York, I have little discernable accent, but here my speech patterns mark me. I only speak this way for the same reason you speak the way you speak: it was the way people around me spoke when I was a child; I imitated them. There’s nothing else to be read into it.

Albuquerque is called the “Duke” City. This has nothing to do with Edward Kennedy Ellington or the former Edward VIII, but rather with the Duke of Alburquerque, yes note the extra “r,” who was Viceroy of New Spain back when. If you have no familiarity with the region, Albuquerque serves as little more than one of those funny town names like Kalamazoo or Walla Walla; once you live here, the four syllables roll off the tongue with the ease of a “San Francisco” or “Kansas City.” The two “k” sounds are particularly definitive, functioning as a double cadence to the initial “l” and “b.” English speakers tend to pronounce the first “u” as a short “a,” but my French friends use their distinctive French “u” with pursed lips, and only accord the city name three syllables: “Al-bu-kairk.” This phonetic spelling harks to something Arabic; it may well be they liken the place to an oasis in North Africa, where they once had influence.

When you make homebound airline connections—and you usually must since we have few direct flights to any major city that doesn’t also function as a hub—you just by habit look to the upper left of the cities list on the “Departures” screen. You feel important then, especially as the length of the city name gives it such impressive screen presence. The real shame is that most eyes scan on to better known names: Denver, Phoenix. Speaking of those two western cities, it’s a fact that areas of Albuquerque—such as my neighborhood at 6,000 feet—are indeed higher than the so-called “Mile High City.” Phoenix, a huge agglomeration, is only half the altitude of Albuquerque and hence often fifteen degrees hotter in summer. Albuquerque is a high desert city; mountain chains surround the city, and the daily sunset is…forget adjectives.

The crux of Albuquerque, beyond the physical beauty and marvelous climate, is the city’s variety. It’s not a coincidence I get to speak French here with some regularity. There is a large and proud Hispanic presence here. I meet people who trace roots directly back to Spain, 500 years ago. There is a cowboy Albuquerque, a Native American Albuquerque, a hot-air-balloon-enthusiast Albuquerque, a military Albuquerque, a Route 66 Albuquerque (the storied road bisects the city), an Asian Albuquerque, and there are a lot of scientists here who are rarely allowed to tell me what they do (our minor league baseball team is called the “Isotopes,” if that’s any clue). It’s easy to drive by a strip shopping center and think it’s no different from any other, but these hyper-American icons never cease to surprise me. Of course we have a Turkish delicatessen; it goes without saying that we have an English tea-shop. Of course there’s an Alliance Française and an Irish-American Society (I’m a member of both). There are plenty of places to get your electric guitar fixed, or to hear real jazz (in small rooms). Other people—not me—point out that the city is filled with art galleries and studios, but my legs have little tolerance for shuffling around those kinds of places. Ditto with Neiman’s, Nordstrom, Bloomingdale’s or Saks, which we also lack, and which have never motivated me.

Susie Essman--Yes, I'm Related!

2005-01-16T07:32:00.000-07:00

Actress Susie Essman is constantly asked if she's related to Elliot Essman, me in other words. Now and then, I am asked a similar question. I have to answer, yes, I'm her big brother. Yes, during her formative years, Susie, who stars in HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm, routinely bounced her developing comic protoplasm off me. Ouch! I was recently asked from which of our parents we inherited our sense of humor. I answered, from neither; we developed our bite based on the abiding need to manufacture humor out of familial grimness. This is called survival.

susieessman.com, a site I maintain, follows the career of this quintessential iconoclast. Of course I have to censor many of Susie's gems for general public consumption. We don't include an email link on Susie's site, since she got tired of hearing from people who knew her way back in fifth grade in Mt. Vernon (New York) where we grew up, but you can always get in touch with me, if it's important, through my own home page stylegourmet.com.

Susie recently had her moment on the podium at the Friars club for a roast of Donald Trump. See susieessman.com for a few shots of Susie with "The Donald" as well as Susie's inimitable remarks.

Susie, being a dedicated New Yorker, thinks I have betrayed my origins by moving to Albuquerque, New Mexico, but I am unrepentant, as further posts will indicate.

For The Love Of It - The Only Way

2005-01-11T10:43:00.000-07:00

New careers are like hungry stray dogs for me: they scratch on my door; I feed them; they rapidly become permanent psychic residents. As an adult I studied the French language for my own stimulation—no business connection—until one day at an intensive school of languages in Europe, over champagne no less, I discovered I’d become the school’s North American sales representative. Hobby turns into profit source. I set up a web site. Inquiries came in. I quickly learned to separate the real prospects from the lookers and time wasters. The “real” people would tell me: “I’ve been studying French for years. I try to understand movies. But it’s so frustrating: I just can’t carry on a conversation. I love the language. Can your school help?” The time wasters—the college students and the young executives working on building their credentials—would ask questions like “How long will it take for your course to make me fluent in French.” While of course I’d take any customer as long as they could manage a bank transfer to the school, I understood quickly that “for the love of it” was the real hot button. Isn't that always the case? It's just unfortunate that often we convince ourselves otherwise.

Everyone Should Try Being Dead

2005-01-10T06:40:00.000-07:00

Phew! It seems I bailed out of Pfizer, taking a small end-of-year loss to offset gains from other investments, just days before the stock plummeted on news that the company’s Celebrex may follow Merck’s Vioxx into prescription drug anathema-land. There’s nothing quite like a close call to make you think and think again.

A few years ago I had a really close call when I gave blood for the first time. It turned out to be the last time as well. Toward the end of the bloodletting I felt faint, struggled with that state, then completed blacked out. They tell me that at the same time my face and body turned completely white, my pulse went to zero, my respiration was non-existent, and my blood pressure reading was zero. Medical science has a technical term for this condition: dead. Apparently my brain was still going, and was it! I remember intense activity. Did I see a white light? No, I’m afraid not. My theory, and this is only a theory, is that those people who have religious experiences during near death events have the predisposition or brain-wiring for that kind of thing (and that I don’t).

Obviously, since I am writing this, I was revived. Spiritual and religious questions aside, this type of experience makes you think. If I hadn’t been brought back, I would have died without even a split second apprehension of death. Alive one moment, dead the next, nothing in between. It can happen that way.

I have to add after some thought that "near" death experiences involve an apprehension of death. If you narrowly avoid a car crash that would have been fatal, your thoughts race with "what if." When you really go to the other side, even if briefly, the opposite may occur: you are taken up by the experience and have neither time nor occasion to reflect, except after the fact.

Horse In My Wine

2005-01-10T06:38:00.000-07:00

The words “wine” and “wit” may each begin with the same letter combination, but it doesn’t take long to exhaust reasons to connect the two concepts. Wine writers tend to be a serious bunch, as if the least literary lightness could compromise the ethereal stature of the subject. “Yes, my subject is wine, so my writing must be…grim? It’s not as if a subject so rarified could ever truly be…enjoyed?”

Enter, wit. Enter Jennifer Rosen, whose Waiter, There’s a Horse in My Wine, pops the cork on the notion that wine writing needs to be as dull as that case of merlot your brother-in-law has been aging all these years—next to his furnace. I have been following Rosen’s effervescent wine columns for years; it’s a comfort to finally own a distillation of her wit and wisdom in book form. Horse is the type of literary offering that only improves with age, its scope the stuff of permanence.

Take the concept of global warming, for example. Does it affect wine? You bet. Can you imagine…gulp…next season’s fine English vintages? Start imagining, and imagine as well climactic changes capable of taking that je ne sais quoi out of something expensive and French. Or contemplate—and this is not for naïve eyes—the absolute truism that wine contains alcohol? As Rosen writes, “It’s almost bad taste to admit you’re aware of it, let alone praise it. Yet it’s tremendously responsible for all that’s good in wine.”

The fact is, Rosen is not afraid to step on toes (or to tickle toes, if that’s what delights you). “Beyond the way it makes you happy…beyond the buzz,” she writes, “lie respectable reasons to appreciate alcohol.” Drill beyond Rosen’s first few playful paragraphs and you’ll find the trenchancy you crave in a wine writer. In alcohol’s case, it serves the important functions of transporting odors and flavors. We learn that the Europeans—oh them again—manage to process the wines they drink at lunch without jeopardizing their work output at the office because, having less sun, their wines have lower alcohol content (or will at least until that globe warms.)

Any writer with a reasonable pedigree can be oh-so-clever, but the key to Rosen’s approach to wit, in the largest sense of the term, is her erudition. She covers the world, in time and space, giving us history, science, subjective qualities and taste all in a package that leaves, more than any other oenological analogy, a fine and satisfying finish. Her coverage of wine issues—even controversies—is exhaustive: tannins, the role of oak in wine production, appellations, yeasts, corks and much more.

Speaking of corks, Rosen is not one to accord reverence just for the sake of reverencing. Screw-tops, she writes “preserve, protect and re-seal beautifully.” Even though “the wine elite and the paper-bag set accept them cheerfully,” she stresses, “the mass of uncertain consumers in between…continue to be suspicious.” Her section on the new wine-stopping technologies—Metacorks, Zorks, and the like—is a perfect example of her penchant for digging deeper than most of her ilk, all with a strange supposition that the reader is both contemplative and intelligent. I’ve always felt the writer who meets the reader on a two-way street deserves unambiguous praise; in Rosen’s case, I raise a glass. Waiter, There’s a Horse in My Wine is the kind of rare read that deserves to be bought, kept, gifted, and—yes—ultimately splattered and spotted with the very beverage it exalts. Amazon.com page for this book

The Lure Of Luxury

2005-01-10T06:33:00.000-07:00

All political revolutions occur because of a sophisticated array of underlying conditions, but the spark that ignites them has more often than not been food. The French people got really excited two centuries ago because of a ruinous tax on salt, one of the basics of life. The spark that lit the Russian Revolution was the people’s cry for bread, that perfect metaphor for the life force itself. In Chinese life, and in China’s various revolutions, the equivalent menu item would be rice. Then of course there is the American Revolution, which began due to irreconcilable differences over a minuscule tax on tea.

Hey, wait a minute, are we Americans really part of the revolutionary pattern? Have recent university studies proven that the human body needs tea as it needs salt, or basic grain products? Hardly. While I myself could not live very well without tea, I admit that, ultimately, it is a luxury item. At the same time I don’t believe the core of economic freedom has to do with the logistical control of staples like salt, flour or partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. We don’t need to actually possess or enjoy luxuries to be free, but we do need to have the option. It’s against our nature to allow any imperious arbiter to decide what is necessary for us and what isn’t. We want to decide ourselves, even if we reject the luxury. Further, as a cranky opinionated bunch, we often ridicule other people’s luxuries while defending our own as necessities.

Take a random group of American people, strand them on a tropical island, and they will most likely be fairly efficient in making sure basic needs are quickly met. It won’t take long before they progress from filling their bellies with anything handy to pestering those who have volunteered to do the cooking to begin improving the palatability of the mix. The same phenomenon will occur with clothing and shelter; they will inevitably spend time making aesthetic improvements to both. It will also not be very long before those with artistic, musical or dramatic talent will be drafted to entertain.

In America, even necessities are luxuries, in this sense: our abiding need for choice gives us nearly limitless variety. How many types of sugar, salt, flour, or beans can you find in the average supermarket? It is no happenstance that as we become richer, we support a growing market for specialty foods, not to mention four-dollar cups of coffee. We were a comfortable, well-fed people in 1775, and yet we took to arms to protect our own economic destiny. Given our antecedents, it is not surprising that today we gravitate toward luxuries both great and small. There are deep non-materialistic and spiritual currents in our society, to be sure, but even those of us who live the simple life would be hard put to reject the panoply of choice we’ve come to depend on. It is not a coincidence that the same society that supports scores of religious and spiritual traditions offers an even greater number of infused olive oils.

Essence of Genius

2004-12-28T01:58:00.000-07:00

“Genius” is a much-abused term, especially among the young. The young, in fact, abuse and overuse a great number of words and terms. For example, the word “awesome” connotes a thing or event that leaves a person wide-mouthed with awe, like a hurricane or a house-fire (or maybe a very significant other). Calling a cheeseburger “awesome,” may elevate the cheeseburger, but it deflates the word. A cold-blooded murderer or corrupt politician may indeed cause outrage in the community, but to call an excellent order of extra-hot Buffalo chicken wings “outrageous” stretches things a bit, don’t you think? The words “fabulous,” “fantastic,” and “phenomenal” are also widely overused. New word coinages that fit the hyperbolizing point would be more appropriate, and indeed more powerful. They could evolve with the seasons and generations, sprouting alternate grammatical forms, without compromising English. We’ve already suffered by our inability to use the excellent word “gay” in its original sense (“joyous,” “happy,” and especially, “lighthearted”); there is not yet a synonym that doesn’t pale in the face of the original. This is not a complaint, however, since the simple word gets good mileage now in its replacement role. I am also stimulated and amused by the recent semantic expansion of the term “dude,” a term that in my youth evoked the limited notion of a citified guest on a horse ranch.

But on to “genius,” that frequent synonym for other, lesser descriptors. Genius must transcend mere excellence. Innovation in itself is laudable and important, but it is not genius. A genius does more than please or stimulate us. A genius has the rare quality of synthesis: bringing disparate threads of our human experience together in a manner that ratchets up that experience. I like the word “ratchet,” and the connotation and standard I set here by using it is that the talented person may move, stimulate, please or agitate us, but the genius puts us through a process of significant and irrevocable growth.

I am a true lover of American music, a broad field indeed. Jazz is my standard, but my thoughts apply to all the other idioms. It is jazz, rather than the cheeseburger, that to me is truly “awesome,” (although having cheeseburgers around at a critical point in a late night jam session never hurt anyone). But there are two problems with jazz. Jazz buffs often fall prey to the notion that they are the elite when in fact it is the music itself that is elite. Jazz buffs are also overzealous in their attribution of the word “genius” to individuals rather than to the overall jazz colloquy. The greatest lights in jazz itself have always understood this distinction. Jazz, more so than many other art forms, is the child of many thousands of hearts and minds.

John Coltrane was a stimulator and an innovator, but to call him a “genius” does him a serious disservice. The key to my experience of Coltrane is the raw sensitivity of his playing. If Coltrane is playing on my car radio, I idle my car in the driveway until the piece finishes, even though this is not good for the engine. Miles and Monk get the same treatment. I am willing to concede that both press into the realm of genius, but I want to remember (and be grateful) that all these artists were workaday performers. If there is a true Shakespeare of jazz, it has to be Ellington. Yet even here, I hate to bandy about the term “genius.” In Ellington’s case you could also argue that the overused term “genius” qualifies as a demotion. I’d rather leave the vocabulary aside and let the music do the speaking.

Meet Me At The Mall

2004-12-28T01:47:00.000-07:00

Do we writers who treat "light" subjects suffer any less with the human condition than did Flaubert or Totstoy? Writing the simple love song, the lilt, the lyric is indeed a challenge if we must leave out most of the building materials, leaving us with that which risks wafting into the celestial heights of hyper-sentimentality and cliche.

Why must writing be so hard?

2004-12-16T14:50:00.000-07:00

This is my first blog in this series. I've been a professional writer for more than 25 years. Over the past several years I have been fairly successful writing weekly columns about cooking. I've won a few awards in the process, nothing earth-shaking, but it makes me feel good about myself. I'm working on a culinary book right now, as well as a novel with a culinary theme, and am promoting a play I have already finished, also about food (specifically, chocolate). I get plenty done and have good work habits. The only problem seems to be that I must work in small bits, running out of steam frequently. Two hours of writing is a good result for a day's work, but it takes me ten hours to get it all done. I know when I don't have the creative edge, so I have the discipline to make myself stop. I guess because I put so much of myself into it, I burn out and must regenerate frequently. There's a cost to all this, isn't there?