Happy New Year Everybody!
The Beauty of Observation
I hope everyone had a wonderful and restful holiday! Today I want to step away from talking about food just a bit to tell you what I read over the holiday. I have been immersed in my books and giving myself time away from food studies and recipe writing. Keep it fresh kids!
Quite by a happy accident, I found myself reading two oddly well paired books at once. Reading several books at once is a habit I’ve had for most of my adult life. I think it keeps me from attaching myself to one voice too strongly and thusly, being too influenced by it during my daily writing practices. (It’s one thing to be influenced, it’s quite another to realize you’ve immersed yourself so deeply in one writer’s voice that you are being a mimic.)
The happy accident was that the two books I chose to read simultaneously could not have been written by two more wildly different humans with wildly different experiences. Yet, both guided me toward some deep, deep reflections on observation. The fine art of paying attention may have been, in every essence of the word, perfected by these two authors.
I received a gift in the mail from my best friend who lives in Oakland. She had recently gone to hear Werner Herzog speak. She and I share a deep love for Mr. Herzog’s works, and films in general, and she sent me a signed copy of his new memoir Every Man for Himself and God Against All (Oh Werner! So wonderfully melodramatic, I love you.)
Somehow, given all of his innate and unmatched talent for filmmaking and the visual practice of storytelling, Herzog - to my mind - is, unfairly, a more masterful writer. He is, and has been forever as far as I can tell, committed to his singular perspective and voice in his work. Herzog seems to have never once struggled to define his perspective, to tell you what he sees, not just what is seen. That difference is what makes him a master. I study this and strive for it in my own work. I have far to go.
As most memoirs go, we cover a lot of ground in Herzog’s life - beginning at his birth in Munich, right before the second world war. Herzog’s dry humor and sharp wit lay underneath each written line - I always find myself eagerly awaiting the observational punchline to even the most dreadful stories, told like plain fairytales in a nearly Chekhovian style.
Herzog is known for being a great narrator, but reading his words offers something more, something I did not know was lacking in film. It offers time to sit with his reflections, reread them, allows your eyes to linger on the specific words he chose (every one is full of intention) and to really take them in before you move onto his next absolute genius story full of details, combing out the cultural and societal connective tissue for you just enough, never heavy handed, never without room for your internal dialogue.
It is a stunning read. And you should read it either alone or, as I’m about to suggest, as a companion piece to this next book, which feels like a miracle.
I don’t even know where to begin with my love for Margaret Renkl.
I will begin here, by telling you what kind of mentor and friend Margaret is: Margaret sends me my newspaper clippings with handwritten notes of support and love. I mean. Who DOES THAT ANYMORE?
Margaret Renkl.
There will never be a way for me to be impartial about her writing - to me it is beloved and comforting, enlightening and powerful. All words that can also accurately describe Margaret.
Margaret’s whole cannon, especially the essays collected in The Comfort of Crows, are a magnum opus on paying attention. Moreover: on paying attention and building a life around the power and beauty that lives in the minutia of our world. Connectivity through observation is the name of the game, for Margaret.
Margaret is a naturalist for the times and, while rooted in a deep love and dedication for and to nature, her message transcends her field of focus.
What I find so remarkable in both of these texts is that each broad and worldly message only lives buried under small wafts, lace trimmings, the smell of mud, the feel of linen, the flash of hummingbird wings, the slightest touch of shattered glass under a shoe.
The humanity of it all resides in the nooks, as it were.
I will stop here for fear that I spend six paragraphs giving you my half-baked ramblings about it all. But, I do urge you to read these books and these beloved artists of our time. They are the masters, look to them. Get these books and dive into spaces so rich with love for this world in all of its sometimes troubling inconsistencies and complexities and let it open some new pathways for your head and your heart. They busted mine wide.
My new year’s wish for us all: paying attention. Letting observation guide us. Looking. Seeing. Witnessing. And then, like good stewards, going forth to make something of these things for ourselves and for each other.
I look forward to making more things for you here.
Happy New Year friends!
More food content coming to you next week.
Love, L