Mahwah, New Jersey, USA
Saturday, 21st. – Thursday, 26th. January 2006
It is easy to forget that work in the kitchen is sacred: life dies that life might continue. The sheer pressure of delivering meals on time to hungry eaters, diet fetishists, and gastro diners is similar to the pressures placed on professional musicians. Music is not a commodity and performance is not a commercial event, despite all evidence to the contrary.
How to hold a quiet and open space between the two incompatible demands of material delivery and qualitative action?
Part of the answer is this: reconciliation of the incompatibility takes place within a quiet, open space. This space is where the action takes place, where all that is valuable moves from being possible to becoming actual. A performance space may not be quiet and open; a kitchen may not be quiet and open. May I be quiet and open?
So, we have a practical question to address: how may I be quiet and open, while functioning in a busy and often pressured environment? This is a question common to both guitarists and cooks, and answers are very close to being the same.
Tuesday, 23rd. August 2005
