It feels like the end of every passing month comes by faster and faster, and I can't outrun it. A month with lots of hubbub. This month took it's cue from what I can only assume is the pace of a professional kitchen. Talking about kitchens, I finally finished reading Kitchen Confidential. This book, if you're even remotely into food, has a weird cult status – or maybe it's a cult favourite among wannabes, don't know and frankly do not care. But, what a book. It made me laugh (at several points), made me introspect, made me audibly wonder if the chefs in my life live like that and finally, made me cry. When I reached the end of the book, I actually did start sobbing because I remembered the first time I watched Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations. No Reservations, for me, was the gateway to food and food culture. It was the first time I watched someone on TV, and was almost propelled in to foods other than rice, dal, and chicken fry – not that there's anything wrong with this simple and frankly, divine, combo. But, it was the searing of foods like pho and som tam and polenta and empanadas into my brain. Of looking at fish heads, and camel eyes and feeling squeamish but entranced. Of Bourdain boarding trucks, rickshaws, buses, trains and trams and just getting on with his day, on his quest to see more, eat more and experience more. Kitchen Confidential also gives you a taste of his thirst, or rather his appetite, when you reach one of the final chapters and he takes you through his culinary slamming at a small izakaya where he and his colleague out-ate the Japanese chef's expectations of what "gaijins" would be able to stomach. Fascinating. Watching the show, I remember having a particularly distinct thought, even as a pre-teen –
"I could never be like this, he's talking to strangers in a new country." To be honest, I think that's when me having social anxiety should've clicked, but it only hit sometime last year, 15 years after being introduced to the indomitable Anthony Bourdain. Coming back to how the book made me feel, I think the most important favour it did me was that it made me want to experiment and write again. This my 5th blog post in the self-inflicted "at least one post a month" challenge and my will to write (or do anything at this point) has ebbed and flowed. It isn't that Kitchen Confidential is ground-breaking today. Maybe when it was released 23 years ago. That doesn't take away from its merits. The structure, the advice, the style of writing, the letting one in to your brain without being pretentious about it – sure someone I talked to about the book said it talks about a "cis-hetero white man's experience" and of course it does, but if it was that terrible for him, I can't imagine what it would've been like for the immigrants that he worked with and constantly praised.
Coincidentally, in conversation with my professor, a few days ago, I was telling her that it feels like my critical analysis, thinking and writing have dulled down. She proposed a two-step trick to getting back on track.
Read more. Anything. Just keep at it. And when you're back to being able to sit and comfortably read, slowly switch gears into subjects you want to dive deeper into.
Write more. Start. Let it be bad, it doesn't matter as long as you're trying.
And with practice, you'll begin to hone a skill that you think you've lost. So that's my challenge for the next three months. To read more and write more. More than one measly blog post every month. I will leave with this thought I had spurred on from finishing the book, my constant food anxiety and from my own tribulations of trying to be more, less laissez-faire with life.
The gift of beautiful writing, effusive writing is like a wonderful knife. You can lose what it means to have it if you don't care for it well.
Commentaires