Gezelligheid

Acts of creation combine the messy with the marvelous. It is too easy, and perhaps too common, to step back and observe a final product and say: Ah! Creativity. Creation. The Created. And I am a witness!

The Created that we perceive is actually the final moment in a process that involved conception, design, structuring, rehearsal, building, destroying, bleeding, and a multitude of other elements and efforts that often stay hidden behind their final façade. Some of the greatest works--and the greatest workers--overcome this. The evidence of their creative processes reveals itself. This is why people visit museums to see paintings and sculptures instead of simply looking them up on the internet--we love to see brushstrokes and chisel marks. It's why we attend readings by authors instead of merely staying at home with our books--we want to hear the text read in the author's voice and ask her questions about how it was written. It's why we attend concerts instead of just jacking in to our iPods.

The best concerts I've attended have made me feel as though I was witnessing Creation: Nickel Creek, The Swell Season, Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, the Dave Brubeck Quartet. And last night, Andrew Bird.

Bird's performance was stunning and recalled to my mind these other concerts where I felt privileged to be a witness to something new and original and impossible to recreate. But there was something about it that made it seem different from other creative performances I've been to. I'm having a hard time explaining it--even to myself--but I think I've come up with a decent metaphor.

Watching and listening to The Swell Season was like arriving in time for the sunset on the Sixth Day. The majority of the work has been done. The lights in the firmament are in place, the waters and the dry land are divided, vegetation is growing and the animals are up and about. There's man, but he's alone. Aha--now he's not! Off they go into the garden!

So much of what we saw (and were allowed to participate in, bless Glen Hansard), was a unique act of creativity unrolling before us. But The Swell Season had a setlist and they'd rehearsed it in order. The lights were timed to cues that had been set weeks before and run through hours before the performance. The roadies knew when to bring out what instruments. The band knew when to take its breaks and let Glen and Marketa go on without them. The trial and error and most of the creative processes were past.

Being in attendance at Andrew Bird's Gezelligheid concert last night was like arriving midway through the Fourth Day as the seeds of future vegetation are being scattered before the wind. Some may take root immediately while others drift along to find more suitable soils. They're beginning to spring up to see what they'll be, to adapt for specialized pollination, to produce new perfumes and colors and shapes that a moment ago didn't exist.

Gezelligheid is a Dutch word, roughly translated as "coziness." Bird's work in his Gezelligheid concerts is to bring about an informal, conversational performance where he can relax and be a little more intimate (DC's Sixth & I Historic Synagogue was the perfect setting for this). After his opening number he decided to play a familiar song he loved because it helped him to relax. He played a lot of new songs being prepared for his next album. He performed an unfinished number that he said he'd probably never record. He shared a song with us that was written and recorded by The Handsome Family because it had inspired him long ago to reach for something higher in his lyric-writing ("'Delirious with pain, his bedroom walls began to glow and he felt himself soaring up through falling snow. And the sky was a woman's arms.' I can be better. I know I can be better"). Most of this was impromptu and decided as he went, sharing with us what he was thinking about at the moment and what his favorite tunes were right now. He wasn't afraid to improvise, even with the setlist.

And he wasn't afraid to make mistakes or to start over when he wanted to try something different or wanted it to sound better. He laughed at himself when he created a 28-second loop on his on-stage mixing board when the time limit is 26 seconds. He plucked and then replucked and then re-replucked intros and bass lines so that everything would be the best creative product possible. And he let us watch and listen! It was amazing to see and hear a master as he went through the processes of making something astoundingly beautiful and new. It was true Creation, the messy making it even more marvelous than it would have been otherwise.

Instead of using the house sound system, Bird set up about 20
speakers of various sizes and used Victrola horns as amplifiers.

These twin Victrola horns oscillated when Bird hit a pedal, creating a
repeating miniature Doppler effect on the background of certain songs.

This ample amplifier was just in front of where I was sitting. Every
time I looked at it the words "dinosaur Victrola" from Creedence
Clearwater Revival's "Lookin' Out My Back Door"popped into my head.

Grah

I was all set to have a blog post every day this week. I had a great topic that I was going to go on about after a small project to be completed during my morning walking commute yesterday. But the small project turned into a much bigger project that I haven't been able to finish yet, and so that planned post had to be delayed. Stymied, my work day ended and the evening ran away with me. Ah well. Here is a post for today, even if a small one, and an apologetic one at that (and not even an epic apology, like Socrates').

I hope to make some headway on this project over the weekend so that I may blog about it next week.

Hell damn World Series

fruitatthebottom.blogspot.com is probably written by a female somewhere between 36-50 years old. The writing style is personal and happy most of the time.

Thank you, urlai.com, for determining that my writing indicates that I'm a middle-aged woman. Apparently this conclusion came from analyzing the text of 24 of my previous posts, including (but not limited to):

1. Roll my blues 11/30/2010
2. Don't call him Shirley 11/29/2010
3. A tale of two turkeys 11/28/2010
4. Two things 11/17/2010
5. Mosaic project--YOU decide! 10/3/2010
6. The bluest skies you've ever seen 1/29/2010
7. Chewing exotic 1/8/2010
8. Bison riding...? 9/2/2009
9. Kitchen fail 9/1/2009
10. Genius 8/5/2009
11. Grilled 6/17/2009
12. Old and cheap 4/30/2009
13. Rush Write 3.23 (on 4.08) 4/8/2009
14. Music of the spheres 3/30/2009
15. Snow... snow... snow... snow... SNOW! 1/26/2009
16. Dreams: Soccer and the LOC 1/15/2009
17. Dreams: Nazis and Lamb 1/12/2009
18. Sweet, sweet freedom 12/11/2008
19. Peace on earth 12/11/2008
20. Feeling scholarly 12/8/2008

So what drove this blog analytics site to determine that my writing is 68% female? I can see that I've got a lot of posts in there about cooking... but two of them deal with outdoor grilling. There's also a post that's based around a speech given by Elizabeth Gilbert. Too bad she's more known for the indulgent feminine anthem Eat, Pray, Love than she is for her chronicle of frontier manliness The Last American Man. There's a post that references a musical, too. Ooo, and "Old and cheap" talks about my inability to resist chocolate. Hmmm. On the other hand, I've got posts in which I discuss:

• Bison riding (surely a manly American frontier activity)
• Space exploration
• A dream involving a raucous game of soccer in the Library of Congress
• A dream in which I fought Nazi stormtroopers and succumbed to an experiment in self-cannibalism

I don't know, urlai.com. I'd say it's more 50-50.

What would make my writing more masculine? What is urlai.com looking for in a man's writing? More curse words? Sports? Violence? Scratching and burping? I'm seriously not sure.

At the very least, perhaps I can take comfort in the idea that I've overcome gender stereotypes and risen to a higher plateau in my writing. Behold, I am the Transcendental Male Blogger.

Roll my blues

This post goes out to Darrell, who broadly suggested I blog about food. Though broad, it's a pretty good suggestion, and it's one I plan to continually follow up on. (In answer to your question, Darrell, no. I have not read In Defense of Food, though I have read The Omnivore's Dilemma.)

Since I moved to the DC area, I've made breadmaking a focus in my home culinary practice, trying to recreate the warm taste of home that I remember from my formative years. It took a little over a year of baking before I began to feel like I was doing it well, and I think I'm continuing to improve.

One of the recipes that has come to be a standby in my repertoire is for homemade rolls, and it's one that consistently gets rave reviews from those who eat them. The recipe comes from Sue Marten, a woman that was a good friend of my mom's and that was pretty influential in my childhood (as Primary president as well as a Cub Scout den leader). It's actually pretty simple and relatively easy to follow:

1 1/2 cups warm water
1/3 cup of honey
1 tablespoon of yeast
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/3 cup of melted butter (or other oil)
1 teaspoon of salt (or 1 tablespoon if using all whole-wheat flour)
4 1/2 cups of white flour or whole-wheat flour or some combination of the two

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and lightly grease an aluminum baking sheet.

Stir the honey into the warm water until it's mostly dissolved, then sprinkle the yeast on top. When the yeast begins to activate and grow, stir in the eggs and melted butter. Then add in the salt and stir in the flour, one cup at a time. Stir only until the last of the flour is combined into the dough, then sprinkle with a thin layer of flour and lay a cloth over the top. Let dough rise until doubled in bulk. Punch it down and form the dough into rolls, laying them out onto the baking sheet. Sprinkle very lightly with flour, cover with the cloth, and let rise again. Bake for 10-20 minutes, until the tops of the rolls are lightly browned. Cool a bit and serve.

One Thanksgiving I accidentally made the rolls too big and they ended up having a diameter close to that of my palm. I thought it was kind of funny to have such huge rolls until I realized that the leftovers were the perfect size for making turkey sandwiches. Now I make them too big every year so I can slice the extras in half and stack turkey and lettuce between them for the next few days after. I even made another batch of huge rolls on Sunday so I could have more sandwich material.


Incidentally, this year my brother Scott told me that he thought this batch of rolls was the best I've ever made. We discussed what made them good and I think I've determined that the difference came from using a new type of honey--a jar of apple and peach blossom variety that I picked up at the Arlington Farmers' Market. It might be worth a try to experiment with other types of honey to see if it makes a difference in the outcome of the rolls.

Roll my blues away...

Don't call him Shirley

Many of you may already be aware that Leslie Nielsen died yesterday. Having had some impact on my enculturation as a kid and the development of my sense of humor, I thought it appropriate to write a few paragraphs on the man and his career.

Nielsen did some great work in the field of comedic film, but like any actor he also performed in some really lousy movies. This may have been unavoidable in the last couple of decades, having fallen in as a regular in the Zucker Brothers' films (once a great parody team, now factory engineers of vapid no-brain spoofs). What I'd like to do here in this post is talk about three great works that Leslie Nielsen has left us to admire, lest anyone be tempted to remember him for his role in Superhero Movie. Shudder.

Airplane! (1980) I probably don't need to trump this or worry that it will be forgotten, but I had to mention it first because it is by far my favorite work that Nielsen was involved in. It was also his first major comedic role, setting the stage for the career he'd be known for. My mom recorded this off of television when I was 9 or 10 and my developing sense of humor encountered it at just the right time. I loved the movie as a whole, but to me Nielsen stole the show with his deadpan performance as Dr. Rumack. "Captain, how soon can you land?" "I can't tell." "You can tell me--I'm a doctor."

Police Squad! (1982) Few today remember this short-lived television show with much laud (it got canceled after six episodes), but it was a hilarious work of comedic genius. All the one-liner rapidity and comedic timing of Airplane!, wrapped up in a 30-minute television show. It is renowned in some circles as one of the few shows on TV never to have jumped the shark. One of my favorite gags on the show was the "freeze frame" at the end over which they ran the credits. Rather than broadcasting a still, the actors all just froze in place, sometimes in the middle of pouring liquid (which proceeded to overfill the cup and run everywhere), sometimes in the middle of booking a criminal (who looked around confusedly for a moment before slowly slipping away from the frozen cops and running off).

Police Squad! also laid the foundation for the much better known film The Naked Gun. Not many people pay attention to that movie's subtitle: From the Files of Police Squad! Personally, I think the series was funnier overall than the movie, not to mention a bit cleaner. But then you don't get to watch O.J. Simpson... Oh wait. Maybe that's a good thing.




Forbidden Planet (1956) This was Nielsen's premiere role in film--and a lead role at that! Don't watch this movie expecting the deadpan, wise-cracking Leslie Nielsen you've come to know. He's completely straight-arrow and no-nonsense in this film, the captain of a starship sent from earth to a distant planet to investigate the disappearance of an entire colony. He plays opposite the formidable Walter Pigeon, working off a script that was inspired by Shakespeare's The Tempest. Forbidden Planet was one of those early sci-fi films that set the standard for all other sci-fi films to follow. It's also notable as the premiere performance for Robby the Robot, an iconic cinematic automaton who continued to appear in science fiction spots for the next five decades. In the movie's titles, Robby is credited as "himself." And Nielsen got to star alongside him.

A tale of two turkeys

Thank you all for your suggestions for future blog posts. What I did not tell you when I made the request is that I intend to write up a post based on each and every one of the suggestions I received (JBod's second suggestion is likely eclipsing his first one, for the record). So my goal is to get my fingers flying and write a post every day this week. Starting today, with a suggestion from ANJ to blog about the Great Turkey Experiment my brother and I pulled off for Thanksgiving this year.

Two and a half weeks before 25 November, my brother Scott sent me an email titled "Interesting Method to Cook Thanksgiving Turkey." The email contained a link to a Huffington Post article with detailed instructions on brining, rubbing, perching, smoking, and grilling a turkey in spite of many traditional methods that produce dry or otherwise undesirable meat.

Everything about the method looked good to me, but I kept going back to the explicit instructions NOT to stuff the bird. Which makes sense for this recipe. But the unfamiliar reader here must understand that for a Gillins, a Thanksgiving turkey is really just a vessel for creating moist, flavorful stuffing.

I pointed this out to Scott, and he saw my point. We then agreed that the only way to proceed was to cook two birds--one traditional, the other new.

I picked up two 10-pound, free-range turkeys from Whole Foods (no performance-enhancing moisture injections in those birds) on Tuesday, and on Wednesday I made two separate batches of brine (one the recipe from Alton Brown we've been using for the last three years, the other the one from the Huffington Post article). I set each turkey to rest overnight in separate containers, as depicted below:*










Thanksgiving morning Scott and I set to work preparing each bird according to its prescribed method. I left partway through the process to donate blood (the American Red Cross really, really wanted it). When I got back, one turkey was stuffed and in the oven, the other perched over a gravy pan, hot coals, and smoking wood chips outside in my grill.

The grill-smoked turkey required a little more effort than the oven-roasted one. Scott had to add fresh, hot coals three times during the cooking process and all-in-all it took a little longer to cook. But the results were well worth the work.

We pulled the stuffing out of the oven bird (delicious as stuffing from inside the cavity always is), then set to work carving each turkey up. I cut an entire half-breast off the smoked turkey and sliced up three slivers for me, Scott, and Scott's wife Marilee to try.

Many of you who know me well understand that I have an affinity for hyperbole. I use it from time to time as I see fit. However, I mean no exaggeration when I tell you that that smoked breast meat was THE BEST TURKEY EVER. Under the browned, crispy skin was a rosy, smoke-infused meat that retained more juices than I'd ever seen in a roasted turkey. The smell was tempting, the taste irresistible.

I carved the rest of that half-breast and the majority of a thigh, then set in on carving the oven bird. It seemed to have no flavor. I ended up slicing up one half-breast, but I didn't bother with the rest, knowing where my attention would be during the dinner.

After our dinner was over and Scott and I laid on our backs for a while, we went back into the kitchen to divide the two carcasses between us. With a few hours of objectivity now between me and my first try of the two meats, I took a taste of the oven-roasted bird. It actually tasted quite good. It was reasonably moist, had a nice flavor, and it was pretty tender. Then I took one more small bite of the smoked bird--it was simply superior. I conducted my first taste test in an order that was unfair to the oven-roasted bird. If I'd given it the first shot, I would have appreciated it for what it was. Putting it second in the line-up was like having the Beatles open for your cousin's boyfriend's Oasis tribute band.

The future of Thanksgiving is undecided. Now we know how great a turkey can be, but stuffing is still the king of dishes at our table. The next 12 months will be filled with careful deliberation--and possibly some heated debate--as we decide how the next Thanksgiving turkey will be prepared.

*I intended to take pictures of the entire process and the end results for comparison, but I only got these two preliminary brining shots. Ah well.

Two things

Thing 1:

I never got back to you, dear readers, about the results of my mosaics project vote-off. So technically the Beatles won out, what with a couple of Facebook votes and a text message that put the U.S. cover of A Hard Day's Night over the line.

However, when I showed up to class with a large printout of the image, my teacher immediately nixed the idea, saying it would be too difficult for a beginner such as myself.

So you would think I would default to the roots... but no. I went a totally different direction. Well, not TOTALLY different.












Behold: The Apple Records logo! A-side and B-side! Yeah, it's still The Beatles, but a bit more abstractly. I'm doing both images side-by-side--sort of a diptych, but without the hinge.

The project is coming along nicely and should be done in a few weeks. I'll be sure to post pictures when I'm done so you can all see the results.


Thing 2:

I have fallen out of the habit of writing. And I'm not just talking about the gross understatement that that would be about this blog. I mean that since I graduated in May, I have done almost no writing at all. Maybe chalk it up to wanting a brief break after all the paper writing that made up my graduate career? Whatever the cause, it is time for the dearth to end and for me to start composing again. I've been pondering ways to get back into it, and it seems to me that blogging would be a healthy exercise.

So.

In order to jump-start this renaissance, I am proposing to allow you--my few, faithful readers who have decided to revisit this page--to choose a series of topics for me. The idea is that your topics will stretch me and help me to think outside myself again--to think more like a writer, that is. There is no limit to what you may suggest as a topic, or even as a genre. Fiction? Sure! Biography? Definitely. Poetry? I'm willing to give it a shot. Literary criticism? Try me.

Please place your suggestions for topics and/or genres in the comments below and I'll start working on them as soon as time permits. You know, if I happen to have some downtime at work or some oddity like that.

Mosaic project--YOU decide!

Trusted friends and unknown readers:

Over the course of the next eight weeks I will be attending a weekly art class on the creation of mosaics. The class is offered by the Art League of Alexandria through the Torpedo Factory. I've always loved mosaics and I have a lot of time on my hands since I finished school. So I figured, "What the hey? I'll take a mosaics class."

My assignment to complete before this Wednesday (6 October) is to bring in a picture of what I want to make my overall project for this class. It can be literally anything. I'm not a skilled artist by any means, of course, so it shouldn't be anything too complicated. But really, I can make whatever I want.

I've narrowed it down to two choices, quite different from one another. I like both ideas, so I thought I'd put it to you, my dear readers, for a vote. Democracy!

Idea 1: I love trees, and I think that tree roots are quite interesting. They're not the subject of art quite as often as their trees' lofty limbs, so I thought it might be cool to do a mosaic study of at least a section of a tree root system. Could be quite lovely. I did a quick Google image search for tree roots, and here's something that at least somewhat represents what I'm thinking:


It's not quite it--I would definitely set the roots in an earthy background (there'd be a lot of brown in this mosaic), and I think I'd make it clear that we're looking at roots by making a basic horizon with a strip of blue sky above the ground.

Idea 2: As most of you know, I love The Beatles. The US release of the cover of their album A Hard Day's Night differed from the UK release in that it took just four of the many images of the band members' faces and then cut them in half, showing the moppy tops of four young lads' heads. Cutting out the album title and focusing in on those iconic coiffures makes for a pretty cool image, and one that would do well in mosaic form, in my opinion:


So what do you think? Idea 1 or Idea 2? Roots or Beatles? Vote in the comments!

The bluest skies you've ever seen

My friends: I, like most of you, am a fan of fine photography. As such a supporter of the arts, I urge you all to check out Rachel Thurston Photography.

Not only is her photography great--she also knows that Seattle is awesome. In conclusion, take a look. You'll enjoy.

Chewing exotic

I recently acquired this pack of Eclipse Breeze: Exotic Berry gum. I got it for quite a steal: the friend I went to see Avatar with offered me the rest of her pack for just one piece of my Original Flavor Trident that had been sitting in my pocket for several hours. For those of you who are counting, that's six pieces of foil-and-plastic-wrapped gum (only ONE of which had already been chewed) for one piece of paper-wrapped gum. That had been hanging out in my pocket. Her reason for this shrewd deal? It was the worst gum ever. I told her I'd take the remainder of the pack and decide for myself.

The peculiar thing about this Breeze line of Eclipse gum (which also includes Exotic Mint) is that it uses cardamom as an active ingredient and a central flavor. Cardamom is a seed-based herb that generally plays a major role in Indian and other Eastern foods. You can buy it ground on the spice aisle of your grocery store and it often makes a nice compliment to both sweet and savory dishes (I have a recipe for some whole-grain pancakes that calls for cardamom--it plays well with the hint of cinnamon and the nutty whole-wheat and buckwheat flavors). Cardamom seeds are actually sometimes chewed like gum, and are known to freshen breath. The idea to include cardamom in gum is not bad in and of itself.

Where Wrigley went wrong in this particular venture was its attempt to wed the unique taste of cardamom with a totally incompatible berry flavor. Cardamom in my pancakes, or in sweet Scandinavian breads or savory Indian dishes, is carefully balanced against other complimentary flavors. Not so in Eclipse Breeze Exotic Berry. It's like someone just decided to take some berry gum and add in some cardamom to "neutralize the toughest breath odors," then threw the word "exotic" into the name of the gum by way of explanation or apology. Noting that the berry is exotic does not excuse it from sucking.

And yeah, it's probably the worst gum ever.