• Genius! A Chicken Recipe, Short Film & Poetry

    Screenshot from "Bardo: An Experiential Art Installation," a documentary film by Abby Thompson

    Sense/Perspective #6: I Just Don’t Use That Word Lightly

    Fall Harvest Cider Roasted Chicken with Walnut Goat Cheese + Grapes by Half Baked Harvest

    Connections: I made the chicken recipe and then I ate it.

    Cooking meals — not just dishes — is a fail-safe way of inducing satisfaction in my own skin. After traveling to San Francisco and eating out for nearly a week, roasted bird felt right up my alley for a homemaking meal. This recipe was a cornucopia of satisfaction with minimal effort. Yes, the effort included an overnight brine in some pricey local apple cider, a sticky skillet of hot honey, and shoving goat cheese under chicken skin but god would preparing food even fun if it didn’t involve textures and smells that make the cook feel like the goddess of creation and destruction?

    Cheers to my neighbors’ herb garden and the Persian Lime Curry Rub I picked up at Oaktown Spice Shop, which I used to flavor my cauliflower side. And cheers to Tieghan who puts together some of my very favorite sumptuous food blog recipes.

    “Bardo: An Experiential Art Installation,” a documentary film by Abby Thompson

    Connections: None

    Hurrah to digital deliberation of physical space. Marketers (aka professional folk I interact with) talk about moments, the digital to store experience. It frightens me and excites me. All I want to do is use that technology to take advantage of more spaces. I missed the installation, but I could live inside this two-minute documentary forever. I support the movement to make more spaces digital. Filmmaker Abby Thompson is not yet able to drink legally, but she can certainly gather the feeling of a room with a camera. You could use this film as a template to put all of the rooms on film, and I don’t know that it would ever feel old.

    Look out world. You’re encapsulated.

    “The Limits of What We Can Do” by Natalie Eilbert in the  The New Yorker

    Connections: Natalie is a friend, although I don’t know her too well, but she knows many people I know very well and I am humbled to even know her.

    This week I did not win a MacArthur Genius Grant, but I started learning to meditate from an app on my phone so I will be a genius soon. They say meditation changes your grey matter, your brain wiring. Mostly the app sounds like abad cover version of Damon Albarn telling me to feel my weight. That’s not to say I won’t continue learning to meditate from an app. It’s just part of the condition that is making me feel like absolutely not a genius.

    When I read Natalie’s poem in The New Yorker I felt like a genius of emotions. A good poet makes a reader feel the weight of words and feelings. A good poem changes your brain wiring, at least temporarily, makes you focus on the moment. Both poetry and meditation are things I approach with trepidation; I think apps are pretty cool. I’m certain I know some geniuses. Natalie may be one of them. I should ask her whether she meditates. I should ask her whether she feels her brain wiring has changed recently.

    A Self-Promotion

    I made some gifs about cooking and wrote an essay: both consider corn.

     

    October 1, 2015 / Deborah Carver

    Categories: Arts Writing, sense/perspective