Music, Food and Art

Music - Food - Art #3

Guy Clark, Beets, Mark Rothko

by Cork Marcheschi

Melancholy

With each additional year I live, the criminals that dwell in my body gather force. The power of youth and middle age has slipped away and maturity has me in its crosshairs.

To give my body a fighting chance I walk every morning. My sculpture studio is about 200 yards from the ocean; this makes for good walks. I start by the sea and then go through an abandoned quarry. The quarry has been dormant so long that nature has reclaimed the marks of man and given us a field of pampas grass and cattails, a great way to get any day going.

I have 3,000 songs on my iPod and I keep it on shuffle. I am constantly surprised by the combinations that appear from my library of song. Some days it is Glenn Gould's "Goldberg Variations" or second wave British Ska or Taj Mahal, the Penguin Café Orchestra and many other surprises. This morning I was bushwhacked by "Desperados Waiting for a Train" by Guy Clark. I had heard the song before by many artists but had never really heard it! Alone on my sunny and cold walk a story unfolds about a young boy and an old man - this wasn't a love gone bad song - or a love gone right song - or an angry or happy tune. I wasn't prepared for the story and it brought me directly to my magical relationship with my grandfather. As I crested the hill above the creek, I felt the largest tear in the world express the scientific principle of surface tension. The depth of the emotional source of this tear seemed to determine its tension. It grew and it sloshed from side to side - the tear swelled to a size that it became a lens and distorted my vision. Finally I blinked and the tear slowly slid down my cheek. I imagine dust on a windshield and the trail the first drop of rain clears.

Melancholy is what I felt, melancholy is a very familiar and quietly comfortable feeling for me, I don't know why but it has always been my companion. My wife is always curious about the pensive images I choose of my happy 10-year-old daughter. I know she's not sad but these occasional moments where her face is in repose and her eyes are focused on a non-existent horizon I see into her and recognize something about myself.

Music - Food - Art

Melancholy is not sadness or anger or depression. It is subtler. It could be what allows you to enjoy the shade - or fog - or rain. In art and music this moody position is understandable and can be mined or visited. But what would melancholy food be?

This episode started with a piece of music, so I will start with "Desperados Waiting for a Train." The song is a story and seems to be heartfelt. Like the youngster in the song, I was Roger's sidekick. I remember him picking me up and putting me on his shoulders and I don't remember ever coming down. What a wonderful sound, the squeak of his leather jacket as he would wake me at 5:00 in the morning, and then the two of us would drive into San Francisco and go to Butcher Town and the Crystal Palace Market. I would sit around with these old Italian and Greek guys and listen to them talk about politics, food, the old country and the price of today's catch. At 7:00 am they would all have a coffee royal and I would be sat on top of a 200 pound wheel of cheese with an ice cream in my hand. Even as a five-year-old I was blessed and knew it.

A bit at a time cancer took Roger away from all of us. I was 17 when he was bedridden. I would visit him frequently, and after a couple of years of this, the cancer got the best of him. During many visits he would start to cry and then ask me for a gun to end his life. Man - I was way too young to handle or understand this. I did my best to console him but nothing would stop the pain or the deterioration. I watched him shrink and in four years he was gone.

Many years after he died I had dinner with my Uncle Hank and Aunt Ester. Over the course of this meal I was surprised to find out that my grandfather was a single minded, opinionated, patriarch that ruled his home under his tight set of rules. Apparently this held true for everyone, but me. The man that I knew was not the man the rest of the family experienced. From 2 years old to 21 we were a team. He knew people everywhere and took me to the best places in San Francisco. Pure magic. "Desperados Waiting for a Train" evoked the texture of the time we spent together. Roger wasn't the old man in the song but he was the old man in my life and the things the sidekick in the song shared are the same things that we shared. It has been 38 years and I still grieve.

That song pulled big things out of me. I want to honor that scale and timelessness.

ART

For ART, I would say the Rothko Chapel in Houston Texas. The chapel was dedicated in 1971. It is a free standing building designed by Philip Johnson with the express purpose of housing Rothko's suite of paintings for this space. These large brooding canvases require time to be experienced. They are not fast art - they are slow art and need you to come to them. They take me to an impossible scrap yard where huge plates of steel are resting and slowly rusting, or glacial polish on granite cliff faces. These paintings are indifferent unless you are willing to energize them with your self. There are eight murals that surround the viewer. They are larger than you but are not threatening. They are still, but not like the stillness before a storm. They are more akin to the silence in an Edward Hopper painting that surrounds its inhabitants.

Look into the darkness as if it was the opening to a cave. Watch the light recede as it moves to fuzzy darkness and then see that darkness animate it self in your eyes.

These are melancholy paintings. These are tributes to the mysteries that must remain unsolved.

FOOD?

A country folk song about enduring love in its truest sense.

A series of paintings that have the gravity of a meteor and mock black holes.

What would this food be? There must be simple honesty, a sense of time. And a comfortable and natural darkness.

Beets with blood oranges, cold-pressed olive oil and balsamic syrup.

Find one large beet - something about the size of a soft ball. I always find beets this size at Whole Foods. I guess you can do this with smaller beets but try for the big one. Beets also known as Blood Turnip have a couple of things going for them that have made them my choice. The dark red and purple colors. The 60 to 70 days beets have spent under ground absorbing darkness and the earth itself. The feeling of the skin as it slips off a just-cooked beet and you are left holding this dark, solid, warm, heart-like mass. Finally I love Beets - The Color - The flavor that actually speaks of the dirt they were grown in and their even texture.

The Blood Oranges should also be as large as you can find them. Be sure they are ripe and not too hard to the touch.

Costco has a brand of balsamic vinegar that is very good. If you can pick up a litre, I recommend it. The olive oil shouldn’t be silly light bodied oil - you want a first cold press with a greenish tint. You want to taste the olives - no SISSY oil. Frequently the cheapest of the cold press oils are the best. They are not as refined and they maintain a connection to the olive. If you have never seen how the olives are pressed, it is very cool and primitive. Large round stones crush the olives and then the rough mix flows though stacks of porous paper used to filter the oil. It has the feeling of grinding your own pigments.

To cook the beet, the simplest way is to boil it. (I don't want to hear about roasting for one beet.) Cut the greens off the beet leaving one inch on the body and leave the entire pointy barb. Place the beet in a lidded pot big enough to have the beet covered with salted water. On high heat get the water boiling then reduce to a low rolling boil and cover with a tight fitting lid. In 25 minutes stick a fork into the beet and if it allows smooth entrance and then builds resistance as you reach the center, you are done. You do not want the core soft - you do not want the fork to pass through the core with out resistance.

Now in a large bowl run cold water over the beet till it cools enough to stop cooking (about 3 minutes.) You will know if the beet is done correctly when you pick it up. The beet should slide out of its skin and present it self to you as a dark, opaque, shiny organ of the earth.

Set the beet aside and with a sharp knife peel the orange as if it was an apple. Cut the skin off enough to reveal the pulp of the blood orange.

In a 1 quart sauce pan put one heaping table spoon of honey, next put one cup or a little more of balsamic vinegar in the pot. Give it some heat on the low side of medium and stir to be sure the honey is dissolved. Let this boil till the liquid has reduced to at least 50% of its original volume. Remove from heat and let cool. The syrup should cling to a spoon and quickly run off.

I recommend something akin to a lasagna pan to dress the beets. Squeeze the juice of two of the blood oranges into the pan and a tablespoon of the olive oil and mix. The beet needs to be sliced extremely thin. A mandolin slicer is the perfect tool. If you don't have one of these then a thin bladed sharp knife will have to do. Slice the entire beet and carefully lay the slices into the blood orange juice and oil.

Now with the very sharp thin bladed knife slice the peeled orange as thin as you can with out tearing the slices. If you do not have a knife that will do this, may I suggest going to your local hardware store and getting a cheap razor knife. The kind that is about 4 inches long and you can snap off blade sections. Wash it in soap and water and you are good to go. This will let you slice transparent rings of orange. Lay the orange in a separate plate.
Before you start to arrange the beet slices in the final dish, drizzle olive oil on them and then a good grind of coarse black pepper.

Now, take one slice of the beet and hold it up to a light source. If it is thin enough you will see a complex composition of color and density. If this was the surface of a painting it would have been worked a great deal, layer upon layer of thin washes accumulating in veils of translucency and opacity.

A large clear glass platter would be extraordinary to plate this on and then illuminate from behind but if you do not have a clear plate, use a large white platter. The white will act as gesso.

Place one complete ring of beets around the edge of the platter, let the beets hang over the edge, then lightly salt and pepper. Now as you move toward the center start to combine the oranges and the beets. When you have covered the plate it is time for the balsamic syrup.

With a spoon drizzle strings of balsamic all over the beets and oranges. The syrup will slowly flatten out and leave a dark patina on the entire dish.

Look at your hands and they should be red - don't wear gloves; let the blood of the beet saturate your skin. For this dinner, let the beet dry on your hands.

If you want to duplicate the image of luminous beets that I have included in this article, it is a bit of work but it is worth it.

Get a piece of translucent acrylic plastic about 14" x 18" by an 1/8" thickness. Any plastic shop will have this. The specific color is "Lighting white". I suspended the piece of plastic on four short glasses and then used some LED's I had in my studio to light up the beets. It is a beautiful thing to see on the table. Do not clean up any of the beet drips; let them collect on the table.

A song of grieving and profound love that is expressed through the heart of a child who's grown up. Or as best stated in the song "Angel from Montgomery":

"A child that's grown old."

And Mark Rothko, who was dead before the Rothko Chapel opened. On February 25th of 1970, he arranged a number of his paintings around him, took off his pants and neatly folded them on a chair. He sat down, and while looking at his paintings, he bled out through self-inflicted cuts in his arms. He was found in the chair surround by a field of his blood the size and hues of one of his color field paintings.

And finally food from the darkness of the earth that bleeds and stains your hands if you get involved with it.

And maybe that is it, the getting involved, the allowing the stain of another human to imprint your soul. My grandfather loved me in a simple and clear way. I didn't know that it would be any other way for anyone else.

Have a few close friends over to your place. Have the beets in the center of your table and as I stated earlier, let them drip onto the table. Get some great bread that has a crust that can be torn and expose a delicate, airy interior. You also want a few cheeses that say something. If you can stay away from Brie of cream cheeses, do it. Go for something that has character. To drink, a light-bodied Port.

Hopefully you have your beets glowing with little puddles of red, purple and mottled rust collecting around the plate.
Take the lead from the classics and break the bread with your friends. Don't cut it. Tear it and pass it around. Eat and drink and with your good friends. Offer remembrances of the people that loved you - no holds barred.

Later when it is dark and you are alone, take your bright fuchsia hands, find a window that will open and that doesn't directly face a street light, neon sign or other bright form of artificial lighting. Turn out the interior house lights and have a seat. Take a bite of the beets and blood orange and focus on the darkness just inside the frame of the window. Let the darkness flatten out and then become solid and then start to move. It may not be a Rothko but for a little bit, you can view some of the questions that expressed themselves in Rothko's works and possibly feel the shape of your own melancholic space.

-Cork M

Read MFA #4: Redemption and The Wheel of Doom

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