JUST AN ORANGE

I was excited to ask Linsdey of Cafe Johnsonia to write about her experiences in the kitchen, because she really is a culinary wonder. And even better, Lindsey shares her talent with those around her and they get to benefit from it (especially their taste buds). Art is a good thing to share. And I do believe that cooking and baking are an art. One, that I have yet to really attempt, but that I appreciate. Thanks for sharing, Lindsey!

Sometimes when I read a beautiful poem or look at a spectacular painting, or hear an orchestra playing exquisite music, I get emotional. Cooking and baking conjure those same emotions.

Even as a young child I was interested in food. What I didn’t know was that my environment was limiting my inner creativity. The artist within was being prevented from escaping and flourishing.

Then I moved to New York—the most pivotal, wonderful thing to have ever happened to a girl from a small town in the Mountain West.

Moving to New York was like adding water and sunshine to a seed that lay dormant under a forgotten piece of earth. I was just waiting for the small ray of light and a few molecules of water to feed me so I could grow.

In one fail swoop, I was introduced to ingredients and cuisine from foreign lands. Suddenly there was more to dessert than chocolate chip cookies or cake and ice cream. And dinner was more than meatloaf and mashed potatoes.

When I moved to New York almost seven years ago, I was twenty years old. I was naïve, yet I thought I had the world all figured out. I had traveled abroad. I’d been to a few years of college. I knew it all.

Working as a nanny during my first year in NY taught me more than just how to take care of four small children simultaneously. I was living with a family who truly appreciated fine cooking and the art of cuisine. To a girl who grew up on canned veggies and Hamburger Helper, this was uncharted, but exciting, territory.

During that year, I shopped at Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Citarella, Dean and Deluca, and other gourmet markets. I ate at fun places in Manhattan. I was given my Professional series KitchenAid mixer by the people who employed me. They could see that there was something in me bursting to get out. Sure I could whip up a batch of cookies and cook spaghetti. But there was so much more awaiting me.

When I married my husband during my second year in NY, the union of my new found creativity and his unique sense of taste and smell collided in a wonderful way. I cooked and experimented; he tasted and critiqued. There were failures. There were successes.

All the while, I thought I was just having fun.

One day I was having a pity party—why wasn’t I born creative? Why couldn’t I sing or dance, or paint? Where was all my talent?

My husband told me something I will never forget. It was engraved upon my very soul. He told me that he’d never seen someone who was so creative. And what did I think I was doing in the kitchen all this time? Was that not pure, unadulterated creativity? Was I not an artist?

From that point on, cooking and baking took on new meaning. As did life–I saw myself for who I really was. That part of me that had been hidden and locked away was finally let out all the way.

I had finally found my true self.

Now maybe that seems like a stretch—“finding myself.” Isn’t that what people do when they go on long road trips with their friends or backpack through Europe? Or go through a horrible, debilitating illness?

I never thought of myself as being creative—not in the littlest, tiniest bit. Creativity was something reserved for poets, painters, musicians, vocalists, and photographers. (To name a few…) The thought of being an artist in the kitchen never occurred to me.

I enjoy the process of cooking. It has never become mundane to me.

I pour over recipes and cookbooks as someone might a book of poetry. I can tell by looking at a recipe how it will turn out and how it will taste. I appreciate what lies behind the scenes even more than the actual finished product.

Surely it must be the same with any artist—my medium is just different.

I adore the feel of bread dough between my hands. The smell of searing meat, melted butter, and toasting spices awakens me. I get excited watching butter and sugar whip in my stand mixer. I love to frost and decorate cakes. The joys and possibilities in the kitchen are endless. I’m always finding new ingredients to try. I’m always thinking of a better way to execute a recipe. Sometimes I don’t even need a recipe.

For the first twenty years of life, I was unknowingly stifled. The last seven have been a rebirth of sorts. And I hope the next five, ten, or fifty years bring as much wonder, excitement, and pure exhilaration.

The week’s loose theme is art, and who better to have comment on art and life than Julie of Mental Tesserae? I always appreciate her insights as she ties together an aspect of life with a piece of art, and how both are illuminated together. I’d like to go traveling around Europe and take her with me; not just because she is a Humanities scholar, but because she is a kind, genuine person and I think we’d have fun. Thanks, Julie.

It was getting dark and my husband was late picking me up after class. For a while I leaned my head against the concrete column near the front doors. Then I sat on the bench in the lobby. And I waited. And I thought. And I thought some more. And this is why it was in the lobby of the Olmsted building on Penn State campus where I had an epiphany that helped me define my life. I did not see angels. There were no trumpet fanfares. With its converted-Air-Force base décor, the Olmsted building is about the farthest thing from a visionary space you can get. But inside my head, I had a moment of mental, if not spiritual, clarity. I processed some thoughts that seemed so right to me that I still carry them with me and use them to make sense of my life.

I had not intended to major in Humanities as an undergraduate. I was going to be a journalist. I wanted to write or perhaps be an anchor on the TV news (a most glamorous profession in my teenage mind). But then I took a few Humanities classes and discovered that they were more than a means to an end. I loved the arts. My father had directed a few Study Abroad programs in Spain when I was young so I had visited many museums and cathedrals in Europe. But I had never analyzed art, never studied it and peeled away its layers of meaning. I also loved music and architecture and literature and theater and dance. How lucky I felt to have discovered a major that did not make me choose between them; I could have them all. Of course, the question of what to do after graduation was a tricky one, but eventually I applied to graduate schools with the intention of teaching on the college level. This brought me to Penn State, which brought me to the Olmsted building, which brings me to the night of my epiphany.

I was depressed about many things and questioning my past choices. I have made mistakes in my life. I guess we all have. But there are certain themes (one being regret) that seem to run through my story like threads in a novel. And the novel was exactly the image that began to take shape in my mind. Waiting at the Olmsted, I started to see my 21 years spread out before me like the pages of a book. I studied them and I saw all the things I had been trained to see in literature: the plot, the foreshadowings, the flawed protagonist and antagonists, the losing and gaining of symbolic objects, the thresholds and conflicts and archetypal patterns. It was clear to me that my life was a work to be interpreted. And my experience as a humanities scholar and student of the arts had given me exactly the tools I needed to interpret it.

Socrates said that an unexamined life is not worth living. I worry sometimes that an over-examined life is not lived. But I have learned to find a somewhat reasonable balance between the two extremes. I realized that night, while waiting for my ride home, that I loved art and literature and all the forms of creative human expression because they allowed me to examine my life. They framed it and gave it meaning, gave it focus. I don’t think everyone should study humanities in order to understand why they are here and how their lives matter, but it has worked that way for me and a few others I could mention as well. Michelangelo talked about God as the “divine hammer” –one who sculpts us into who we are and polishes away our imperfections until he has managed to release the soul within each block of stone. Saint Augustine wrote about the patterns in his own life (after the fact, of course, because it’s always easier to see them in retrospect) as signs of God’s hand in the writing of his story. In Rabbi Harold Kushner’s books, he uses the metaphor of a tapestry: God is weaving his masterpiece in each of us. We only see the messy underside—the broken threads, the knots and confusing imagery. From above, the divine work that is our lives takes shape with full purpose and beauty.

I believe in the power of art to carry meaning—to express truths and feelings and ideas through words, images, notes, or gestures. I also believe in the power of art to teach us how to find meaning in our own lives. Once we follow the threads and once we respect that the hand of a creator is at work, helping us weave our own decisions and intentions and accomplishments into a larger whole, we will find something worth studying. Something worth defining. Something worth living.

I have many callings. And I feel obliged to say that motherhood comes first (after all, that‘s all I can talk about at My Many Colored Days). But music, well music is a vital part of my existence. And I am so grateful that somebody is interested in how that came to be… (thank you Allysha)!

How does music fit into my life? Well, sometimes (just like any mother) it is merely a tool I use to lull my child to sleep, or even just to get him to brush his dadgum teeth. But, I love to play my violin for children. They are such a gracious audience… birthdays, class parties, or even just because there’s a Backyardigans song with violin accompaniment that would “sound so cool, Mom“! And occasionally, I am able to step back into familiar territory and play on stage, or for an event. Whatever the reason, music is an integral part of my life and relentlessly finds its way “in“.

I began studying the violin when I was 8 years old. I remember it vividly; I’d been begging my mother to let me play for years. She took me into a luthier’s shop… the smell of rosin will always return this memory for me. Rows of violins lined the walls: red ones, orange ones, yellow ones. Brand new shiny ones, dull, antique ones. And the sound the violin produced was perhaps the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard. I remember touching it, picking it up, practicing just holding it the right way - long before I ever carried a tune.

As an aside, music wasn’t my first love… I’d begun dancing a few years before I picked up the violin. But music held its own, and when I got to college, it won over my affection completely. By then I’d also been studying the viola, and consequently received my degree in viola performance and pedagogy (teaching). Following graduation, I freelanced at several recording studios, performing in a number of movies and trailors for Disney/Pixar Films, song artists’ albums (the Three Tenors is my claim to fame), commercials, soap operas - you name it. I toured Central Europe, subbed for the Utah Ballet orchestra and later the Honolulu Symphony. I taught both private lessons and at a private school. I fulfilled every musical curiosity and possibility and loved every minute of it.

When you are passionate about something, you can’t let go of it. Not even when your priorities take a pretty significant shift. This may not be my time or season for big performance opportunities, but music is here to stay. I have to admit though, it isn’t like riding a bike. If enough time has passed my fingers feel much like I am moving through water. I am currently preparing for a recital in a few short weeks, the first one in about 11 years. It didn’t take long for everything to remember what it’s supposed to do, though. And I think anyone who feels like they are just destined to do a certain thing with their life will agree that a higher power sometimes transcends your capabilities. I’ve had several sort of out-of-body experiences with my music - whether I’ve practiced for hours or not - where I really didn’t feel as if it was me that was playing, but like something or even someone else had taken over. It’s a grand feeling, to know that what you are doing is so vital to your existence that you will not fail at it. I have felt very much this way over the last couple months as I was invited to perform with my old university’s touring orchestra and now as I prepare to give this recital, and have little time to spare for proper warm-ups and ample rehearsal time. The music is well beyond the learning stage, though. And I am enjoying the stage where I seem to have a purpose to fulfill and where it fulfills me.

I love this quote: “Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.” Beethoven said that. I honestly believe there have been times when music has helped me understand something words could not. It definitely helps me FEEL things that words could not. So I can imagine the lives it has touched, the lives I have touched and have yet to touch, through music. I’ve read about the spiritual experiences that have come to those who‘ve composed the greatest works…Beethoven, Mozart, Bach. Igor Stravinsky said “I cannot separate the spiritual effort from the psychological and physical effort; they confront me on the same level and do not present a hierarchy.” It’s obvious that music itself serves a divine purpose; it is a staple in most forms of religious worship. The orchestra concert I recently performed in was in honor of one of my former viola professors. He was a deep, passionate, faithful man who used to encourage me with “Play as if you are gazing into the heavens!” It was heaven to hear him play, and I think he helped me to catch my own glimpse a time or two.

The untrained ear may tire of Pachelbel’s Canon, but not I, because I know the intricacies of successfully staggering three different voices on one melody. I’ve had to write a pandiatonic phrase of music and study hours upon hours worth of medieval chant. I forced myself to learn about jazz music and improvisation and what do you know, I have a knack for fusion. I still get excited over the Bach Double Violin Concerto even though it is the most overplayed solo and ensemble entry. Because it’s a rite of passage for violinists…it was my rite of passage. Music returns old memories, it taps into your senses, it generates emotions that need to surface. I have seen cold expressions become warm and hard exteriors soften through the effects of music. I‘ve watched babies become perfectly still at the remembrance of a song they‘d heard in the womb. I‘ve seen music comfort those that grieve and liven those that are ill. In my own life, it has carried me through and truly been a labor of love, like the children I am busy raising. I’ve turned to my instrument when I am depressed, when I am anxious, when I am happy. I’ve played it even when I didn’t want to, simply because it was there for me. I use my struggles and my triumphs to relay certain emotions when I perform. Music can be such a personal thing for both the performer and for the listener, serving both needs. How miraculous!

I believe there is little else that carries with it the same power, the same vast influence as music does, and I am grateful - ever so grateful - for the blessing it is in my life.