Lately, I have been throwing myself into the very depths of understanding, the situational flavorings, and breaking free of using recipes. It would seem that as one chef put it, cooking from a recipe is no more than painting by numbers. I know in my heart, that my initial drive is something primal. I have to do it, I have to cook whatever that thing is that hits me like the fever. I’ve become powerless to resist. Suddenly I give in and I fall and keep falling. Then the wonderfulness happens. So, come on! I know who I am there, or at least, I’m knocking on the door. Thinking, analyzing, breathing, and tasting. Feeling the vibrations on the floor. The light breeze. It’s all there, all contributing. What it becomes is that taste that just may never happen again, and if you were here, you were here. You can never tell its story, you can never give it, sing it, or paint it. Maybe.
I know Poppy Crum how right you are. I am talking about art. With my head in the clouds thinking and meditating, all of this tuning and acoustics of flavor. Uncle Paul is singing in my ear. At first, I do not think much of it as there has literally been a song in my head playing every nanosecond of my life. But the flavor is more than the ingredients, more than the atmosphere, the mood I am in, the season, the weather, and yes, how I will feel walking out of a restaurant on a crisp fall night, or a sweltering humid afternoon. That is a lot to be accountable for man!
Paul’s voice, feet in the clouds, head on the ground. I realized what was playing in my head was the medley from the “Memory Almost Full” album. This was one of my favorite 21st-century McCartney compositions. The complexities of this medley are staggering. It will certainly take 1000 years to decipher Macca’s genius.
We start with “Gratitude”. I hear Paul’s voice of the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s in this. The almost reconstructed musical transitions, that in another universe, and played underwater, listened to through a stethoscope against a glass wall, may be identified as something Zappa was demoing in a home studio, one night when he could not sleep. OK, maybe that’s out there, but this medley is so unprecedented, it is taking me years to absorb.
“Gratitude” is followed by a favorite of mine called “Vintage Clothes”. It’s happy, it’s gritty, it’s got the carney element to it, and yes, I am afraid it has it all. I never want it to end, but of course, it must. But it does it in such a beautiful way, by which I mean, sort of clumsy, but in a sophisticated way. Instead of that expected climbing and heart-racing speeding around the corners of one of those coastal, California roads, that the star in the movie suddenly loses the brakes on, then arrives like superman, landing with perfect balance, then, last note, then boom! “She came in through the bathroom window!“ Yeah, not here. In the transition from “Vintage Clothes” to “That Was Me” you might expect that “Abbey Road” and “Red Rose Speedway” interchange but instead, the instruments trip over the threshold in the doorway, and somehow pull that off perfectly! I said, clumsy, OK, but strangely it is clean, too! “That Was Me” is beautiful, hard, and driving, nothing stops it, and it declares I was here! I did it! That was me!
I think it is a worthy pause between “That Was Me” and “Feet in the Clouds”. There needs to be a division here, kind of like that very odd silence that would fill my childhood home before that first note would sound as the theme from “Perry Mason” would start playing on television. You’re in a different place now. This is a song about authority telling a young Paul. This is where he is supposed to be, but he was somewhere else.
Why am I on this? Because this medley speaks to me on all of this study of what makes a successful and memorable meal. Food that is said to be made with love, not from habit or script. Something happened! I always say dining should be like snapping life out of the jaws of death!
This medley from “Memory Almost Full” is the musical, lyrical, artisan expression of what I have been trying to wrap my head around. It is something I do, and yet I understand so little about it. My absolute need to hear the “Memory Almost Full” medley shows that my awareness of this cooking by season, weather, flavor, heart, soul, texture, atmosphere, and let the night decide what the dish will do is an awakening giant for me. And so, dear friends, y’all need to stand back. …and I sure hope the power comes back on one of these days.
