Subscribe to
FlickrAn Artist's Lunch
I've been thinking a lot lately* about the curious alchemy that goes into my writing. Not necessarily all my writing, but all my really good** writing: that weird mix of inspiration, time, timing, energy level, environment, and mood that is magical when it all clicks together but is often only knowable by its absence. Specifically, I've been wondering if I can develop a mind hack (or hacks) such that I can, if not call up the writing mindframe on command, at least jumpstart myself on days when the Muse is giving me grief***. What I'm finding is that some things are relatively easy for me to control, but others border on the unstoppable and the ineffable.
I can deal with the relativity in issues of temperature, and I can certainly work harder on the issue of sleep (too little and I can't work, no matter how surreal a passage is supposed to be). I can handle the idea that I need to manage my stress. But then there are problems like how inspired I am in the morning (let's not discuss how many times I've tried to scrawl notes on a rocking, creaking bus), or how playing too many games can render my creative mind down into pudding, or how easy it is to miss the key two minutes of inspiration and wind up with aborted words smacking against the inside of my face instead of sliding out onto the paper. I can even deal with having a relationship to the English language that some might argue should be corrected with surgery.
What I can't deal with, or rather, can't currently figure out, is my literary relationship with food.
I'm an eater; anyone who knew me when I was younger can testify to that. Exercise and my stomach are at a constant war with each other, and I can be tricked into overexpenditure by the mere hint that I might get to try some new and unexplored food. For all I love the image of the starving artist, it's not me; food and emotion are inseparable in my mind, from the airy joy of well-made salad to the lust and decadence of a plate of calamari. Food is the fastest way to engineer a mood shift or a downfall—nothing makes me grumpier than the sensation that I've eaten too much, except perhaps the feeling of spending too much time hungry. This may be why one of my dork icons is Dean Winchester.
I've been trying for a month or so now to understand the effect of food on my mood in general and my writing moods in particular, and it's been a seriously stop-and-go process. At first I thought avoiding greasy was the key, but then I wrote one of my favorite shorter pieces after eating a Jack-in-the-Box hamburger; then I thought the key was just not eating too much until I found that hunger destroyed my writing too. I've tried eating local, I've tried eating fancy, I've tried eating fried and dairy-free and even almost tried South Beach. But nothing about my stomach is so simple that I can narrow it to one category.
Except for this morning, when I sat down with a cup of Red Rock coffee and a bag of dim sum, and just enjoyed the grass and the trees at my local park, and realized the ticket: I am happiest and writiest when I am eating "like an artist".
This doesn't mean starving, obviously; nor does it (always) mean decadence. It means home-cooked meals in my lovely little apartment; it means local restaurants whee I feel like I can talk to the servers. It means weird little dishes I've never seen before and seeing the night streets out of the restaurant's windows. It means putting hot plates in front of people who smile about it; it means a tray on my knees while I watch whatever I got from Netflix, and the chill of the kitchen as I try to make Indian food happen. It means experiments and failures, mise en place you're almost proud of, trying to add more adjectives to your dishes. It means I want cooking and dining to be as adventurous and wonderful as writing; it means I want to leave the meal with a story or else leave the meal feeling like I'm part of the metanarrative of being an artist. A recipe is like a magic spell.
That's what it means.
Maybe I'll find I don't have this right; maybe I'll find my categories are too complex, too simple, or too broad. Maybe an artist's lunch is not as easy as I want to make it, and maybe more of it has to do with the process than the end product. But one thing is for sure: I'm now off fast food, barring desperation; and I'm pretty sure I'll be needing a way to moderate my intake of bacon.
Oh, and in case you were wondering: I ate dim sum in the park after I wrote today; and before tonight's late-night editing jag, I'll be joining a friend in the city**** for Burmese food. So today, I think the magic will work; and thus today, I think I will do some editing.
Hooray for food.
*Read: Always
**Read: Really good relative to my own work and certain writers whom I will not name for political reasons
***Come on. We've all had them.
****San Francisco, for you non-locals; also, why did I get so asterisk-happy?
I can deal with the relativity in issues of temperature, and I can certainly work harder on the issue of sleep (too little and I can't work, no matter how surreal a passage is supposed to be). I can handle the idea that I need to manage my stress. But then there are problems like how inspired I am in the morning (let's not discuss how many times I've tried to scrawl notes on a rocking, creaking bus), or how playing too many games can render my creative mind down into pudding, or how easy it is to miss the key two minutes of inspiration and wind up with aborted words smacking against the inside of my face instead of sliding out onto the paper. I can even deal with having a relationship to the English language that some might argue should be corrected with surgery.
What I can't deal with, or rather, can't currently figure out, is my literary relationship with food.
I'm an eater; anyone who knew me when I was younger can testify to that. Exercise and my stomach are at a constant war with each other, and I can be tricked into overexpenditure by the mere hint that I might get to try some new and unexplored food. For all I love the image of the starving artist, it's not me; food and emotion are inseparable in my mind, from the airy joy of well-made salad to the lust and decadence of a plate of calamari. Food is the fastest way to engineer a mood shift or a downfall—nothing makes me grumpier than the sensation that I've eaten too much, except perhaps the feeling of spending too much time hungry. This may be why one of my dork icons is Dean Winchester.
I've been trying for a month or so now to understand the effect of food on my mood in general and my writing moods in particular, and it's been a seriously stop-and-go process. At first I thought avoiding greasy was the key, but then I wrote one of my favorite shorter pieces after eating a Jack-in-the-Box hamburger; then I thought the key was just not eating too much until I found that hunger destroyed my writing too. I've tried eating local, I've tried eating fancy, I've tried eating fried and dairy-free and even almost tried South Beach. But nothing about my stomach is so simple that I can narrow it to one category.
Except for this morning, when I sat down with a cup of Red Rock coffee and a bag of dim sum, and just enjoyed the grass and the trees at my local park, and realized the ticket: I am happiest and writiest when I am eating "like an artist".
This doesn't mean starving, obviously; nor does it (always) mean decadence. It means home-cooked meals in my lovely little apartment; it means local restaurants whee I feel like I can talk to the servers. It means weird little dishes I've never seen before and seeing the night streets out of the restaurant's windows. It means putting hot plates in front of people who smile about it; it means a tray on my knees while I watch whatever I got from Netflix, and the chill of the kitchen as I try to make Indian food happen. It means experiments and failures, mise en place you're almost proud of, trying to add more adjectives to your dishes. It means I want cooking and dining to be as adventurous and wonderful as writing; it means I want to leave the meal with a story or else leave the meal feeling like I'm part of the metanarrative of being an artist. A recipe is like a magic spell.
That's what it means.
Maybe I'll find I don't have this right; maybe I'll find my categories are too complex, too simple, or too broad. Maybe an artist's lunch is not as easy as I want to make it, and maybe more of it has to do with the process than the end product. But one thing is for sure: I'm now off fast food, barring desperation; and I'm pretty sure I'll be needing a way to moderate my intake of bacon.
Oh, and in case you were wondering: I ate dim sum in the park after I wrote today; and before tonight's late-night editing jag, I'll be joining a friend in the city**** for Burmese food. So today, I think the magic will work; and thus today, I think I will do some editing.
Hooray for food.
*Read: Always
**Read: Really good relative to my own work and certain writers whom I will not name for political reasons
***Come on. We've all had them.
****San Francisco, for you non-locals; also, why did I get so asterisk-happy?
Labels: writing process
posted by Tyler at
1:32 PM
2 Comments:
I have never heard of dim sum until now! I looked it up on Google images and am now intrigued.
I could never give up bacon.
I am just pleased that a cup of Red Rock coffee helped you come to that realization. What better endorsement is there than that? =)
No really, I actually am very pleased for you. This is something I've been looking for in myself recently. The key to motivation and quality work. Oh, and happiness. Can't forget that.
Post a Comment
<< Home