The Hammock Papers: Chatham

14 June 2010

Chatham

Dusting is a sure-fire way for me to get distracted and this morning was no different than any other time I've ever done it. Today my focus was sharply and enjoyably shifted by a collection of essays by one of my artistic, literary, and culinary heroes, Russell Chatham. The collection, Dark Waters.

There are many highlights in this volume, but The Great Duck Misunderstanding is my favorite ...
But most people get it wrong, and so you learn not to talk about it. Raving about how you like to eat duck might bring invitations to dinner from hunters who have freezers of them. Many of these hunters will be baffled by such enthusiasm because they themselves would “rather have a T-bone.” You’ll find out why when dinner is served. The missus will have stuffed the ducks with breadcrumbs and baked them in a 325-degree oven for three hours, creating in the process a classic je ne sais quoi. Served thus, with some dried out peas, mashed potatoes and a cup of coffee, a date with an icebox full of wet hair would be preferable.

The best way to bail out the evening, aside from very heavy drinking, is to convince the hosts the bird was delicious, and hope they’ll give away the rest of the ducks from their freezer. Later they will make fun of you as a screwball, but you will have skated off with the raw material for many quasi-orgasmic moments.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL