The Diving Bell and the Butterfly of My Memories

Last week I wrote about my admiration for Julian Schnabel's unique film, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. The film released in me a flutter of gastronomic memories. This week, I am going to see how many I can capture, chasing after them in the tall grass of time like a man with an unwieldy butterfly net.

(scroll to bottom for info on these paintings by Robert Henri)

Foremost among my childhood memories of foods discovered and then forever adored: white peaches, brownies, and fragrant wild strawberries. 

At my Grandmother Simone’s elbow in the Cognac region of France, I treasure the memory of the first time she prepared Œufs à la Neige for me; and also Mousse au Chocolat--always in exchange for the feignedly protested kiss. 

My first croissant, at age nine, I smelled from three stories above the street, through the open window of a rather disappointing hotel in Paris. I had not before believed that anything could taste that good. 

A time of rapture in the summer before my senior year of college, when on our first day-off, after four weeks of horrid synthetic food (the downside of an otherwise wonderful summer as a sailing and archery instructor at a sleepaway camp), we hiked the White Mountains of New Hampshire and happened upon a tiny French restaurant that served real butter and real bread. 

It brought me nearly to tears.

The summer I lived with my uncle Alain, who passed on to me his passion for wine..He had inherited a dazzling collection of great wines.  Before every luncheon he would emerge from his cave with a special bottle covered in decades of cellar dust. 

“Today you will try a very old Criots-Bâtard-Montrachet with those crayfish your Aunt has prepared…” 

Later, his vinous reveries over our ritual petite cigar opened new worlds to me every day.

Alongside those memories, the cuisine of the great restaurants: 

The first was the meal with my Aunt and Uncle at l’Auberge de l’Ill in Alsace, declared by at least one critic as “The World’s Most Perfect Restaurant.”

Thereafter, Bocuse, Troisgros, Girardet, Chapel. 

And later, when I was a young professional cook, the experience that exploded all my previous convictions about the limitations of cuisine--the stage at the great Joel Robuchon's restaurant Jamin. 

There would be dozens more in the coming decades: Le Bernardin, Bouley, Lutèce, La Côte Basque, Trotter, Le Cirque, Ma Maison, Le Coup de Fusil, Le Pont de Brent.  Each one marked me for life. The genius of Gagnaire, of Spain's Ferran Adria. 

The three best meals of my life--all at Michel Bras in Laguiole, France.

For most of my career, I believed that my creativity came from my intellect, processing and interpreting all I had been shown, all I had read, and all I had tasted. 

More recently, I have learned  that is not true.

Creativity comes from a place quite apart from the intellect.  I do not know from where. Perhaps, it is the soul.

To paraphrase the Canadian spiritual teacher and motivational speaker Eckhart Tolle, “Beauty is apprehended in the split-second before the mind can describe it with words. The instant it can be described, it is no longer.”

What fuels my creativity are the memories of my life in food. That includes the childhood “first encounters” as well as my intellectual and gastronomic training.

So, in a time of pain and fear, is it permissible to speak of Beauty and Art and Cuisine?

In search of answers, I re-read FDR’s famous inaugural address.Our situation today is in no way as bad as then, but we are dealing with some of the same symptoms.

And while some students of history might debate whether his policies ended or prolonged the Great Depression, no one can deny that any President ever penned words of greater wisdom than, “…the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Now let's return to the subject of Schnabel's great film--Jean-Dominique Bauby, the brilliant and vivacious editor-in-chief of French “Elle” magazine, who at 43 suffered a catastrophic stroke that left him mentally sound but utterly paralyzed except for the ability to blink one eye. In medical terms, he was a victim of "locked in" syndrome.

If the final chapter of Bauby’s life proved that the minimum requirements for humanity are imagination and memory, could it not also be true that the quality of that humanity depends upon the quality of both that imagination and those memories?  Could that also be true for the collective humanity of a nation?

It may be that in a time of difficulty and fear, when so many, like myself, are in one way or another “locked in” by circumstances, it is even more crucial to look for guidance and wisdom in the realms of Beauty and Spirit. 

Robert Henri, an early 20th century American painter and venerated art teacher, advised his art students,

“What we need is more sense of the wonder of life and less of this business of making a picture…There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom.  If one could but recall his vision by some sort of sign. It was in this hope that the arts were invented.”

Perhaps now, even more than in a time of exuberance and abundance, there is a need for cuisine. For it is said that, “food feeds the body, but cuisine nourishes the soul.” 

Note on the Photos. From Top:

Robert Henri: Self-Portrait

Robert Henri, later Self-Portrait

Robert Henri: "The Little Dancer," 1916-1918

Robert Henri: "Jessica Penn in Black With White Plumes," earlier than "The Little Dancer" and in his more typical style.

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