Lesley Truffle's Blog, page 9
June 27, 2021
Ritual Madness
The Ancient Greeks were enthralled by opposing forces and heavily invested in two of their gods, Apollo and Dionysus.
Apollo was the god of reason and wisdom – devoted to logical thinking, patience and duty. Dionysus was significantly more adventurous and dealt in the realms of imagination, play and chaos.
Dionysus – known to the Romans as Bacchus – was also the god of wine, grape cultivation, fertility, ritual madness, theatre, and religious ecstasy. The Greeks believed humans should strive for a balance between the two opposing forces. Or it could lead to unbalanced minds or even madness.
Down through the centuries various cultures celebrated the Winter Solstice which operates on polar opposites. For Winter Solstice is a celebration of light over darkness. A time when the earth’s southern pole tilts away from the sun, creating the longest night.
Once the new solar year begins, we know that warmer and brighter seasons are heading our way. Fire and light are traditional symbols of Winter Solstice and feature heavily in pagan celebrations past and present.
But according to some anthropologists, our obsession with fire is not due to our pagan pasts but the fact most Westerners were not raised with the ability to master fire.
Evolutionary anthropologists tend to be more devoted to Apollo rather than Dionysus. For as anthropologist Daniel Fessler states,
‘My preliminary findings indicate that humans are not universally fascinated by fire. On the contrary, this fascination is a consequence of inadequate experience with fire during development.’
Taking Fessler’s theory to its inevitable conclusion – those who didn’t get to muck around with fire as children – starting and controlling flames – will find themselves eternally fascinated by flames. Interesting, yes. But is it true?
The Greeks in 450BC identified four elements of nature: earth, air, water and fire. Could it simply be that dangerous soaring flames appeals to the primitive part of our brains?
I’m thinking of the popularity of festivals such as of The Burning Man in Black Rock Desert, northern Nevada.
The Burning Man is a nine day annual event. It’s a temporary city that vanishes leaving no trace. Thousands briefly populate the desert, bringing everything with them – except for ice and coffee.
Although it’s now been cancelled in the pandemic years of 2020-2021, in 2019 78,850 people attended the festival.
Burning Man functions on Ten Principles but these anti-consumerism principles have been taking something of a bollocking. Due to the influx of the uber rich there’s been considerable outrage about the violation of principles concerning communal effort, the banning of money and commercial logos.
When Elon Musk of SpaceX rocket company flies in, he doesn’t join the other ‘burners’ in their dusty, primitive camping areas. In between coolly observing the Dionysian shenanigans on offer, Musk resides in an air-conditioned, fully staffed, luxury playpen.
Regulated craziness and wild costumes are paramount. Astonishing art installations and flamboyant performances are actively encouraged and the festivities culminate in the burning of a massive wooden sculpture.
Standing at forty feet tall, the burning man is a pyromaniac’s fantasy come to life. An extraordinary achievement and a stunning visual.
I regret that I didn’t get to attend one of the earlier Burning Man festivals in the early 90’s. The festival had started out in 1986 as a small event at San Francisco’s Baker Beach on the Summer Solstice.
As Burning Man co-founder Larry Harvey put it,
‘I think the things that people seek can’t be purchased. The things that matter most in life have an unconditional value. You can’t buy them. You can’t buy a friend. You can’t buy a lover. You can buy the semblance of those things—and you’ll live to grieve over that.’
photo: Burning Man Flames by Dane Deaner on Unsplash.
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June 10, 2021
Cake in the Time of Pandemic
Cake in the Time of Pandemic
‘I’m known in Melbourne for this elegant, sophisticated pastry – the croissant – and the cruller is the exact opposite. It’s a super naughty New York street treat … there is nothing refined or elegant about it.’
Kate Reid, proprietor of Lune Croissanterie
In 2020 most Melbournians embraced the first pandemic shutdown with missionary zeal. It lasted four months, by which time everyone was fed up with the joys of domesticity. The smug delight of spending the day in pyjamas also lost its charm.
Sports gear was referred to as leisure wear – unless you became part of the tribe that jogged & sweated around the Botanical Gardens. Preferably in the pre-dawn hours with a dashing personal trainer.
Sour dough bread, making Ravioli pasta from scratch and organic Masa flour were embraced with evangelical fervour. Pretty much everything that was time consuming and a distraction from reality was thrilling.
Cults developed around online Kundalini yoga, Brazilian Zouk and circus contortion sessions. Physiotherapists sternly warned us that injuries were becoming common, due to flabby or unfit civilians limbering up while unsupervised.
There were an astonishing number of walkers out and about in the streets, sauntering along the bay promenade and bustling around the lake. Dodging other folk was difficult in the crush. Maintaining social distance an impossibility. A few people were walking their dogs several times a day.
It got to the point where some local dogs were flatly refusing to leave the family nest. An affable mongrel – who’d previously been obsessed with ‘walkies’ – was having tantrums. When his dog leash appeared, he’d hunker down on the floor and whimper as though being brutally punished. He had to be forcibly carried out the front door. With all four limbs in locked position.
Meantime the heart of the city was desolate and eerily quiet. Many city workers lost their jobs. Just getting food on the table for their family was a struggle. They couldn’t give a shite about the joy of hand rolled gnocchi or freekeh risotto.
The homeless were put into temporary accommodation but they’d already wised up and knew it was too good to last.
There were government payments available for the recently unemployed but many workers were not eligible. International students were stranded in Australia without work and no funding. Many casual workers and local university students struggled financially. Generous folk rallied and organized food supplies for those who’d been stood down.
Small family businesses were forced to shut down, driving the proprietors to the wall. Meantime several mega stores and supermarkets made record profits.
Tragic stories are still reported daily. There’s also the grim TV reminders that other countries are doing it much tougher than we are.
Cut straight to the city’s fourth shutdown – an extension of shutdown three. For those who can afford it, hunting down gourmet food has become something of an obsession. The Epicure pages of a city newspaper provides lists of where to purchase tasty baked goods such as the cruller.
For the uninitiated, the cruller is a cross between a doughnut made of choux pastry and a canelé. It’s flavoured with chocolate pearls, chocolate, passionfruit, vanilla or cinnamon sugar. When a 5km zone was imposed, it became more difficult for citizens to indulge their latest carb crush.
There’s a small bakery shop around the corner from my apartment. It produces delectable handmade breads, gourmets pizzas and fougasse – French-style focaccia. People patiently queue up and the slow moving line often extends around the corner.
It seems most folk can no longer be bothered baking exotic breads at home. But pandemic carbo loading is still modish – especially when washed down with barista-made coffee. The added attraction being you can whip your mask off in public when eating or slurping down caffè lattes. Some wily citizens carry their empty takeout coffee cups the length of the beach promenade.
The current shutdown is easing up. But crullers and all its distant cousins remain the comfort food of choice.
Note: if you’re interested in the mother of all cakes – the Sachertorte – see REFLECTION:
Photo above: a unique bayside cake shop called Let Them Eat Cake that closed down about three years ago.
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May 29, 2021
Finding a Soulmate
Unbroken happiness is a bore: it should have ups and downs. Moliere
Some folk secretly hope that hiding in the wings is their one and only soulmate. Many spend their lives looking for this very special person, believing that once they find the one they will live happily ever after.
However, among the disbelievers is Doctor Robert Epstein. Based in New York, the professor is a Relationship Researcher. This means he’s had time to become seriously interested in how people fall in love.
Epstein took it further and asked himself – can I deliberately manufacture falling in love with a stranger?
Not being a shy chap, Epstein wrote about it Psychology Today. The idea was he and a complete stranger (female) would sign a contract in which they would commit to deliberately falling in love with each other. The faux couple’s progress would be assisted and monitored by qualified counsellors.
His concept was an immediate sensation. And more than one thousand women from all over the world, generously offered to help the doctor out with his ‘Love Project’.
And the result? As Britain’s Evening Standard gleefully reported in April 2012:
Besieged by offers, the editor of Psychology Today magazine chose a South American beauty to make his soulmate. But despite signing a “love contract”, Dr Epstein will be spending Christmas alone after the object of his affections decided no amount of tuition could make her love him.
Judiciously Doctor Epstein then concluded there had been too much media intrusion to enable his romance to bloom. Given he’d actively sought publicity to launch his ‘Love Project’, I thought this was a tad unfair. But I guess spending Christmas alone is not optimal for one’s being.
As many of us find out, relationships fail for all sorts of strange reasons. Numerous psychologists believe the way we were raised affects who we choose to fall in love with and our ‘attachment style’. Apparently how we relate to our partners goes right back to the love – or lack of love – we received as children.
The late British Psychoanalyst John Bowlby once stated, ‘A good childhood is the bedrock of a happy life and a bad one just about dooms us to enduring misery.’
It’s always good to know such things. Perhaps.
However, Edward John Moyston Bowlby, who was born in 1907, also argued that kindness does not spoil children. And he worked to reform the harsh paediatric procedures that were dominant in British institutions and hospitals in the early to mid 20th century.
Bowlby theorized there were three distinct attachment styles that develop in children. He considered Secure Attachment as a rare ideal. Whereas Anxious Attachment and Avoidant Attachment could mean trouble ahead in later life:
Children who were securely attached to their parents are more likely to handle problems in a relationship better. They’re more able to be accommodating, generous, slow to anger and quick to forgive.
Needy, anxious children may grow up to be anxious adults – too much is at stake. Minor slights or oversights are interpreted as enormous threats. Those who were anxious children may become clingy. Constantly checking up on their partners and selfishly focusing on their own needs.
Avoidant children had a greater separation from their parents. Feeling helpless or possibly abandoned they became detached and chose to hide in their own private worlds. And later in life closeness, tenderness and emotional investment may appear threatening rather than comforting.
Bowlby believed as adults our attachment styles affect how we perceive what other people are up to, how we define our own needs and how we think things will work out.
His theories seem to indicate that finding a soulmate or even someone we can tolerate may well be exceedingly difficult!
To make matters even more tricky, Professor Arthur Aron notes, love is addictive –
‘it activates the same brain areas as cocaine … being intensely in romantic love takes so much attention, it can be hard to keep your life going, let alone have other relationships.’
Subsequently, Aron strongly recommends taking regular breaks from the ‘love experience’.
On the other hand, Philosopher Alain de Botton recommends Romantic Love is an ideal that should be abandoned. He believes the problems we have with finding a soulmate originated with the 1850’s Romantic movement. Romantic ideals replaced a much more sensible, pragmatic approach to love.
De Botton firmly believes – there surely lies our downfall. What do you think?
Note: for more on de Botton’s ideas about love and sex see REFLECTION: The Insanity of Love.
photo : Foggy Pier by Les Truffle
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May 20, 2021
Publish and be damned
Publish and be damned
Well some people try to pick up girls
And get called assholes
This never happened to Pablo Picasso
He could walk down your street
And girls could not resist his stare and
So Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole …
Pablo Picasso lyrics by The Modern Lovers
The term cancel culture is still being thrown around with wild abandon in 2021. During the first pandemic shutdowns – when just about everyone had a short fuse – cancel culture thrived.
Largely it is based on what folk find unacceptable, but this can be something that offends a small cohort or an entire goddamn country. And if the person or event is considered to be improper, unacceptable or disrespectful a relentless shit storm follows.
Somebody or something can be cancelled by Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or any other social media platform. In the past something similar went down in the village square. Loitering gossips would get indignant at perceived transgressions or errors of judgement. And immediate revenge would be sought.
Gossip is frequently the currency of the righteous. The 16th Century practice of locking miscreants into wooden stocks and pelting them with stones, offal and rotten vegetable matter was probably an earlier method of ‘cancel culture’.
Cancel culture has many critics but it thrives on disharmony, political correctness, fear of the other, aberrations in contemporary culture and a mad desire to ensure grievances are aired.
And so we come to Philip Roth (1933-2018), American writer and acknowledged bad boy. Even at the age eighty-five Roth was still rumoured to be far too wicked and subversive for his own good.
Roth’s new biography by Blake Bailey has been under fire since it was alleged Bailey (not Roth) sexually abused young women and committed rape. The publisher W.W.Norton announced they’d cease further publication and cancel all promotions. In the meantime, the controversy ensured fresh speculation into Roth’s much debated sexual history.
Roth was one of the most respected and awarded writers of his generation. Even the Czechs loved him and honoured him with their inaugural 2001 Franz Kafka Prize.
But even though Roth was feted globally and ranked highly with the heavy hitters of literature, he’s been under scrutiny for his sexual obsessions, misogyny and treatment of women for years.
According to Roth’s second wife, Claire Bloom, Roth was capable of great cruelty. Her biography of 1996 was titled, Leaving a Doll’s House: A Memoir. Subsequently misogyny accusations flew thick and fast even during Roth’s lifetime.
Some of Roth’s women are in print claiming he was controlling in the relationship. But he was also charming, witty, kind, generous and very supportive of their own writing. Who knows? Only those directly involved in a relationship can truly know what occurred. Others can only speculate.
Roth’s early novel, Portnoy’s Complaint is often cited as testament to Roth’s open contempt for women. Yet in 1969 it was an immediate best seller while sparking controversy. The novel concerns a young Jewish man, Alexander Portnoy, who is obsessed with sex, masturbation and his upbringing.
Portnoy speaks directly, describing himself as a ‘sex maniac’ who can’t ‘control the fires in his putz, the fevers in his brain.’
Sex was used by Roth to question accepted universal truths. At one point Portnoy admits to his shrink, ‘I don’t seem to stick my dick up these girls, as much as I stick it up their backgrounds – as though through fucking I will discover America’.
When I first read the novel in my twenties it was the humour, the anger and the joyful craziness of Portnoy that fascinated and dazzled me. He freely admitted he’d had it to the back teeth with being a nice Jewish boy. He was done with being polite.
Portnoy also contemplated the heavy burden of Jewish history. I found it especially comedic when Portnoy yelled, ‘Doctor, my doctor, what do you say, LET’S PUT THE ID BACK IN YID!’
Roth’s novel, The Plot Against America, in 2004 finally alleviated the ongoing accusations that Roth was a Jewish anti-Semite. The novel focused on the deep terrors of anti-Semitism in America. And in 2011 President Barack Obama presented Roth with a National Humanities Medal.
Many have come out in support of the late Philip Roth. Journalist Julie Szego commented recently that Roth’s body of work ‘helped liberate Jewish literary consciousness’. Szego quotes writer Zadie Smith as saying, Roth’s writing freed her from thinking she had to ‘create positive black role models for my black readers’.
Former political advisor and AGE journalist, Sean Kelly, states ‘But culture wars are almost always tedious, because they pretend these big debates can be settled, once and for all, by resolving the specific situation that happens to be in front of us. If you choose to stop watching Woody Allen films, say, then freedom of artistic expression is dead; and if you do keep watching then the forces of sexism have won.’
Writer Peter Carey admires Roth’s work and believes the artist’s lived life and the imagined life should be kept separate.
Carey put it quite simply, ‘I think the work will come back. I don’t think we’re going to lose great literature because Roth acted like an arsehole. In the end the work will survive.’
Photo: Philip Roth in 1968 by Bob Peterson.
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April 26, 2021
Naked in Leopard Skin
Naked in Leopard Skin
Born into Italian aristocracy in 1881 and heiress to a fortune made in cotton, Luisa managed to run up personal debts of $25 million. She and her sister had been orphaned when both parents died and Luisa was only fifteen years old.
The Marchesa Casati was a devotee of the Paris Ritz. Her nickname was ‘Medusa of the Grand Hotels.’
While living in Venice at the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, she was often seen roaming the city in the middle of the night, dressed in nothing but a black velvet coat and mother-of-pearl high heels. She liked to create a sensation by walking her two cheetahs on jewel-encrusted leashes. Frequently she would be applauded by late night revelers.
Luisa Casati’s behaviour and lifestyle were outrageously hedonistic and she lived recklessly, giving little thought to either the future or the past.
The Marchesa became a muse to Jean Cocteau and Cecil Beaton. She modelled for photographers such as Man Ray and Baron Adolf de Meyer, and inspired many other artists, renegades and designers. All her life Luisa fought against convention and she was immortalized in photographs, art and print.
The Marchesa’s sartorial style was sensational and bizarre. She wore creations made by the avant-garde designer, Léon Bakst and declared, ‘I want to be a living work of art’. It was said by the Surrealists that the she succeeded brilliantly in her quest.
Jean Cocteau swore that the only time he ever saw Pablo Picasso astonished, was when they visited the Marchesa Casati’s palazzo, in Venice in 1917. Luisa was devoted to surrealism and infamous for her devotion to the black arts, the occult and spiritualism.
Cocteau liked to regale his friends with stories of the goings on at Luisa’s palazzo. Occult rites and aberrant pleasures were the basis of her unique hostessing style. Naked footmen, gilded with gold paint, tossed copper filings into the open fires. The filings flared blue-green in a hellish manner, while guests lounged around smoking copious quantities of opium.
Luisa’s six-foot frame was very lean and mostly sustained on gin and opium. Although not an acknowledged beauty, she was strikingly handsome. With her skin powdered white, her hair dyed a fiery red, her pupils darkened with Belladonna and black velvet false eyelashes, she did not go unnoticed.
The Marchesa had a menagerie of animals that included snakes, cheetahs and peacocks. At the Paris Ritz, her boa-constrictor was fed live rabbits by the maître d’hôtel, Olivier Dabescat. Olivier maintained the social fabric of the Ritz hotel and he knew everyone’s secrets including Marcel Proust’s.
Luisa’s rages were legendary and when she awoke at the Paris Ritz – late on the afternoon of August 4 1914 – she threw an epic tantrum. Why? Because nobody was around to make her breakfast. The staff had more immediate concerns for Germany had declared war on France, and the German army was marching to take possession of the ultimate European prize – Paris.
According to another Ritz guest, the sculptress Catherine Barjansky, ‘I found the Marchesa Casati screaming hysterically. Her red hair was wild. In her Bakst-Poiret dress she suddenly looked like an evil and helpless fury, as useless and lost to this new life as the little lady in wax. War had touched the roots of life. Art was no longer necessary.’ (The Hotel on Place Vendôme by Tilar J.Mazzeo).
When Luisa died, she was buried dressed in leopard skin and a thick pair of false eyelashes. In the coffin, at her feet, lay her beloved Pekingese. She’d had the dog professionally stuffed at the time of his death.
There are so many stories and myths about the Marchesa that she’s become increasingly more mysterious, exotic and unknowable as time passes. I wonder if maybe that’s exactly what she’d hoped for?
She died in poverty in London in 1957. Luisa Casati’s simple tombstone at Brompton Cemetery is inscribed with a quote from Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra:
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.
Photograph above: Portrait of Marchesa Luisa Casati in Egyptian costume.
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April 20, 2021
Cleopatra’s Erotic Vagrancy
Cleopatra’s Erotic Vagrancy
Cleopatra V11 – born around 69 BC – was an object of fascination and gossip even in her own time. She was a child goddess who was married off to her brother and became Egypt’s queen at eighteen. After many poisonings, killings, plot twists and turns, Cleopatra went on to control most of the eastern Mediterranean coast. She also cunningly expanded her empire with the backing of Rome.
I wish that Cleopatra’s Alexandria still existed. It’s architecture, ship building, culture and devotion to the arts was unsurpassed in the ancient world. Alexandria had colonnaded streets to supply shade even at midday, a shimmering lighthouse, well-appointed gymnasiums, magnificent theatres and the most extraordinary library of its time.
Unfortunately the entire city of Alexandria is now buried under the sea. Following a Fifth Century earthquake, Cleopatra’s palace collapsed into the Mediterranean and vanished forever. And strangely enough, the Nile River changed course.
There have been several films about Cleopatra and to date they have been fantastical epics. Despite what we have been led to believe, Cleopatra was not beautiful.
In the biography, Cleopatra A Life, author Stacy Schiff does a great job of bringing Cleopatra to life. Cleopatra comes off as being an enormously gifted ruler: shrewd, pragmatic and well able to hold her own against the domineering Roman warriors who were sent to control her and claim the phenomenal wealth that Egypt possessed. Neither Caesar not Marc Anthony could resist her charm.
It seems that the real Cleopatra had little in common with the voluptuous beauty, Elizabeth Taylor, who appeared in one of the costliest and most derided toga dramas of all time. Cleopatra – made in 1963 – nearly bankrupted 20th Century Fox. The Shakespearean actor, Richard Burton played the handsome Roman General and politician Marc Anthony. Marcus Antonius was a complex Dionysian character who furthered his own career while passionately pleasuring Cleopatra. He met with an unfortunate end.
Much fun was had over the amount of thigh Burton revealed in his exceedingly short Roman tunic. Both actors were already married to other people but during filming Burton became Liz Taylor’s lover. Even the Vatican became involved and in an open letter to the press, hotly denounced her for ‘erotic vagrancy‘. Taylor wept but quickly recovered and sportingly went on to marry Burton not just once but twice.
Taylor admitted that at one point, during a riotous procession, she thought hundreds of film extras were going to turn on her and things would get nasty. They didn’t, because like the rest of the world the extras were entranced by the Taylor-Burton love debacle and the awe inspiring legend of Cleopatra.
In Cleopatra A Life, Schiff assiduously sorts through the historical data on Cleopatra and comes to the conclusion that she was frequently represented as an objectified woman. Everyone from Cicero to Shakespeare used her to their own ends and in the stoush Cleopatra was defamed, reinvented, abused, sanctified, venerated and scorned in equal measure.
Cleopatra took a thrashing from poets, politicians, historians and writers. To Lucan she was a woman who ‘whores to gain Rome.’ And to many historians she was simply ‘a Royal whore’. It was in the Arab world that she was given a fairer viewing. And there she’s described as: a philosopher, scholar, physician, scientist and Egypt’s mightiest queen.
If Bollywood made a biopic Cleopatra movie we could all have some fun in the cinema again. Hrithik Roshan could curl his luscious locks and sort out Marc Anthony. And Salman Khan would look swell shimmying around in white toga, shaven head and gold laurel leaves as Caesar.
According to Schiff, what Cleopatra had in spades was: wit, personality, charisma, intelligence, playfulness and a heart that had been steeled by the vagaries of life within the Ptolemy dynasty.
Cleopatra V11 was a survivor, a dealer in poisons who knew how to play the Romans to get what she wanted for Egypt. Interestingly enough rather than being Egyptian, Cleopatra descended from Macedonian Greeks. And no – it probably wasn’t a delinquent Asp reclining in a basket of plump, ripe figs that got her in the end.
I’d love to tell you – but it would be a spoiler.
Photo: Theda Bara vamping it up in the audacious 1917 silent film, ‘Cleopatra’. It had lavish sets, sumptuous revealing costumes & was filmed in California. Unfortunately Fox’s last two prints of the film were lost in a fire in 1937 at Fox Studios. Only a few brief segments of the original film are known to exist.
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March 24, 2021
Romancing the Mushroom
Romancing the Mushroom
pine mushrooms
live a thousand years
in one autumn
Den Sutejo 1633-1698 (translated by Makoto Ueda)
Autumn in Melbourne is a fine time to take a trip to the Prahran Market and visit the wild mushroom man, Damien Pike. For many years he’s been sourcing and selling mushrooms. Much of his delectable produce is devoured in Melbourne’s finest eateries.
Damien Pike’s mushrooms are displayed in perfectly neat rows, flat on their backs with their stalks sticking up. He specializes only in what he likes to eat and veers into the unusual and exotic. Apart from wild mushrooms and exotic truffles he stocks in season: flat peaches, edible flowers and white asparagus.
A few autumns ago, my first purchase from Damien’s stall was a plump, pine mushroom. It spoke to me as I went past. Pine mushrooms are also known as Saffron Milk Caps or Orange Fly Caps and are usually found under pine trees.
When I sheepishly admitted I didn’t know what the hell to do with it, Damien laughed and gave me advice on the best way to cook it. The result was so delicious I pounce on pine mushrooms whenever I see them in Autumn.
Ever since I read, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, I’ve had a thing for mushrooms. I was about six when I first came across the notorious Alice Liddell, disappearing down the rabbit hole into a fantastical world. The scene where she comes across the caterpillar sucking on a hookah – while seated on a sinister looking mushroom – really tickled me.
The caterpillar was imperious in manner and rude to Alice, “Who are YOU?” I was very taken with the notion that if you ate a chunk of the caterpillar’s mushroom, you’d be able to grow or shrink at will. I’ve since discovered that premium champagne can sometimes produce a similar effect.
A wonderful book on mushrooms was first published in 1925, The Romance of the Fungus World by mycologists R.T. Rolfe and F.W. Rolfe.
Between 1925-2014, eighteen editions were published, including a 1974 edition featuring a trippy purple cover with an illustration of the caterpillar from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. (photo above).
It perfectly suited the decadent era of LSD, hallucinogenics, Pink Floyd, David Bowie and exotic smoking drugs imbibed from hookahs and bongs.
The wonderful thing about The Romance of the Fungus World is that it seriously examines the gastronomic delights offered by mushrooms, their medicinal uses and the effects of poisonous fungi. Yet this scientific information sits comfortably with the esoteric, mystical side of fungi.
A whole chapter is dedicated to fungi lore and mythology: predominately the association between fungi and devils, witches, elves and fairies.
Toadstools in a circular formation (known as fairy rings) have numerous mythologies explaining their existence. One ancient story has it that after the wee people had danced around in a circle, toadstools grew on the grass where they’d danced, and were used by elves and fairies to rest their tired feet.
An old English West-country superstition held that if a maiden wanted to improve her complexion, all she had to do was to nip outside on a May morning and rub dew from the grass all over her face. However, it was imperative that the maiden didn’t intrude inside any fairy rings, for the wee people might get angry and take their revenge by giving her a hideous rash.
Strange things happened to folk who were foolish enough to step into the fairy rings. In Germany it was once believed that the bare portion of the ring was the place where a fiery dragon had rested in his nocturnal wanderings.
The dedication in the 1925 edition is lovely:
To the memory of George Edward Massee … to whom the Authors are indebted for their first glimpses of the Fungus World, and in whose company, in field and by fireside, they spent many delightful hours.
Photograph: Cover of The Romance of the Fungus World (1974 edition) by R.T. Rolfe & F.W. Rolfe
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March 22, 2021
The Insanity of Love
The Insanity of Love
‘Marriage is the tomb of love.’
Giacomo Casanova
Some time ago I went to hear Alain de Botton – philosopher and author speaking about modern relationships and love in Melbourne’s gloomy town hall.
I’m not sure our drafty town hall is conducive to love. The couple in front of us were engaging in covert hostilities. De Botton is a witty, engaging communicator, but every time he made comedic asides about marriage the woman laughed like a drain and the bloke became even more incensed.
He sat stony faced with arms crossed while his partner shrieked with merriment. She kept it up even when the rest of the audience had stopped laughing. Had they had an argument on the way to the venue?
De Botton’s first question to the audience was – raise your hands if you are married and reasonably happy. Very few hands went up and the audience laughed.
According to de Botton the problems with contemporary love originated with the 1850’s Romantic movement. He marked it as the point where romantic ideals replaced a more pragmatic approach to love.
The Romantics popularized the idea every one of us has a soulmate waiting in the wings for us. And when we find our soulmate, our loneliness is over because we move into in a coupled world. Another romantic ideal is that real love is instant, euphoric and will last until death do us part.
De Botton maintains that the romantic concept of love changes how we view sex. Sex becomes the consecrating moment of love. And this means that when adultery occurs, it takes on the proportions of a real catastrophe.
In the 1850’s there was the rise of fictional lovers such as Madame Bovary. And like Bovary we think life has gone horribly wrong if we can’t find our soulmate and attain the romantic ideal. Subsequently our love lives have become more difficult. It doesn’t occur to us that the premises we operate on are unrealistic and largely unattainable.
De Botton also pointed out that we are shaped by our childhood experiences of love, especially by what went down in our family and how we first experienced love. We tend to seek out the same type of love we are familiar with. In effect what we are doing is choosing our pain.
Given what he said about sex being the consecrating moment of love, there might be mass confusion going down. I’m thinking that in the present era of quaintly named online dating sites, sex might only be only one or two swipes away but love appears to be somewhat thin on the ground.
Augusten Burroughs doesn’t believe in romantic ideals. In his book This Is How he writes, I don’t believe in the concept of a soul mate. Because we are all unique, but we’re also simply too similar. Burroughs reckons we need to get right out of our immediate environment, change our daily routines and go someplace else. This would raise the possibility of meeting someone new. As Burroughs puts it, I believe destiny and chance are the oldest poker buddies in town.
Not much has changed. In History of My Life – written over two centuries ago – Casanova wrote,
What is love? … It is a kind of madness over which philosophy has no power; a sickness to which man is prone at every time of life and which is incurable if it strikes in old age … Bitterness than which nothing is sweeter, sweetness than which nothing is more bitter! Divine monster which can only be defined by paradoxes!’
Image (above) is Baude Cordier’s rondeau about love, Belle, Bonne, Sage. The chanson is a piece about the love of a lord for a lady. It’s in a heart shape, with red notes indicating rhythmic alterations.
Baude Cordier (born c. 1380 in Rheims, died before 1440) was a French composer from Rheims. Some historians believe that Cordier was the nom de plume of Baude Fresnel.
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February 25, 2021
My Favourite Horror Child
My Favourite Horror Child
Eloise and I go way back. At about seven I discovered six-year-old Eloise. She was parent-free, running amuck in the Plaza New York with her nanny, a pug and a turtle.
I didn’t find it strange that Eloise exercised with champagne bottles, as my sister and I had hidden a bottle of Sweet Marsala under my bed. It was delectable topped with cream and after indulging in a couple of night caps, we slept very soundly.
When in Paris, Eloise insisted that if ‘ You cawn’t, cawn’t, cawn’t get a good cup of tea ’, you simply must devour a peach languishing in champagne. I was smitten.
The Eloise books were not intended for children. The first book was published in 1955 under the title, Eloise: A Book for Precocious Grown-ups. Later this was re titled simply as, Eloise. Kay Thompson’s series, brilliantly illustrated by Hilary Knight, is still in print.
Kay Thompson, was a habitué of the Plaza Hotel and it’s famous Persian Room. She was a professional singer, vocal arranger, composer, musician, dancer and actress. When asked on whom Eloise was based upon, she answered simply, ‘I am Eloise ’.
Kate Thompson was a true eccentric and a bold woman who defied social conventions. She became the most the most popular and highest-paid cabaret performer of the time.
Filmmaker Sam Irvin observed, ‘Her nightclub act pulled in huge money — she was the first person to crack the million-dollar ceiling performing cabaret. Her grand success even led to a new fashion trend.’
‘She just was everywhere,” says Irvin. ‘She was chic and new and different. She wrote the material; she designed the wardrobe that she wore, which was slacks. You know, most restaurants back then had dress codes, and she’d show up and try to defy the code and get in. Some places she didn’t get in, but she’d make headlines with it …’
I purchased an original 1958 copy of Eloise in Paris. Published by Max Reinhardt, it retailed for the princely sum of twelve shillings and sixpence. On the back cover, there are comments from celebrities of the era.
Nöel Coward stated, ‘I adore Eloise’ and Vivien Leigh declared, ‘Eloise is entrancing.’ And indeed, generations of children decided they felt the same way.
Steve Irwin revealed. ‘Kay actually had a childhood imaginary friend named Eloise, and she spoke in this voice of Eloise all through her life.’
Most of the time, Eloise lives in luxury at the Plaza Hotel New York, at a time when the Plaza Hotel was considered the height of elegance and the haunt of fashionable and wealthy folk. Many artists and creatives also hung out in the Plaza Hotel’s bar and restaurants.
What is it that makes Eloise so damn appealing? For me it was the fact that Eloise is essentially motherless, she lives in an adult world, doesn’t attend boring schools and gets away with absolutely everything.
Eloise has a nanny to take care of her. Nanny loves a tipple of champagne, luxury travel and adventures. On their trip to France, Eloise’s observations of French society are astute and wickedly funny.
And Hilary Knight’s marvellous pen and wash drawings capture the curiosity and delight that Eloise brings to the adult world.
Then of course there is Koki – her mother’s lawyer’s chauffeur – who lives in Paris. A telegram, from Eloise’s mother to Nanny, reads –‘ Koki at your disposal, let Eloise do anything within reason.’
Koki knows all the great places to go and he takes Nanny and Eloise on a picnic to the Bois de Boulogne. While Nanny drinks wine and recklessly plays with a flick knife, Koki plays guitar and Eloise dances wildly. Bliss.
‘French sandwiches are abolements large and we had to put all these flags on them so we could tell which one was anchovy and which one was concombres which is cucumber.’
No wonder that when I was a child I didn’t just adore Eloise, I wanted to be her.
Photograph: Cover of ‘Eloise in Paris’ by Kay Thompson, illustrated by Hilary Knight.
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February 7, 2021
25 Cats and One Blue Pussy
25 Cats named Sam and One Blue Pussy
The reason I hate regular underwear – and socks, too – is that if you send twenty pairs of shorts and twenty pairs of socks to the laundromat, you always only get nineteen back. Even when I wash them myself, I get nineteen back. The more I think about it, the more I can’t believe the diminishing returns on underwear. It’s unbelievable. I WASH MY OWN AND I STILL GET NINETEEN BACK! The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: Underwear Power by Andy Warhol
For most of his life Warhol lived with his mother, Julia Warhola. In the 1950’s he shared an apartment with her while working as a commercial illustrator. Warhol became famous for his vivid, colour saturated, Pop art works.
His subject matter ranged from household cleaners and soup cans to celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe and Mohammed Ali to Blondie (Debbie Harry). Warhol was shameless in his admiration for the bold and beautiful.
Warhol also loved animals – especially cats – and he and his mother ended up with 25 cats after they found a companion for his first cat, Hester.
He once said, ‘I’ve never met an animal I didn’t like.’
Every one of the Warhol cats – except for Hester – were named Sam. Warhol released cat drawings in a limited-edition book – 25 Cats Name Sam and One Blue Pussy.
His mother, also an artist, did the calligraphy. Julia missed the ‘d’ out of named but Warhol decided to retain the original title.
When I read Warhol’s book, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: (From A to B and Back Again) I was taken with his theory of the diminishing return of socks and his sly humour.
The book is dazzlingly witty and bizarre, while providing an insight into Warhol’s day to day life and mindset.
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol has been denigrated as being shallow and superficial. And so was the man himself – he revelled in it and played it up.
Warhol openly admitted he really loved money, material possessions and beautiful people. He freely admitted to adoring his own fame, gross superficiality and how he was frequently star struck by other celebrities.
His favourite things were inevitably shallow, fashionable, wildly funny and definitely not Zen.
‘I think it would be terribly glamourous to be reincarnated as a great big ring on Liz Taylor’s finger’.
As I understand from other Warhol biographies, during his pursuit of fame and wealth Warhol developed some dodgy business principles. At his New York studio – known as The Factory’ – the artists, photographers and artisans who laboured to complete his artworks as ‘studio assistants’ were often poorly or never paid, and their contributions rarely acknowledged.
Warhol admitted to being anxious and fearful, particularly when he was younger. But he also claimed that after he’d formulated his ‘So What’ theory, he felt significantly better.
The principle of his theory is that you should simply disengage from any life events and disappointments that leave you feeling wretched and unloved.
In The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, he wrote,
‘Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, ‘So what.’
‘My mother didn’t love me.’ So what.
‘My husband won’t ball me.’ So what.
‘I’m a success but I’m still alone.’ So what.
I don’t know how I made it through all the years before I learned how to do that trick. It took a long time for me to learn it, but once you do, you never forget.’
I’ve often applied Warhol’s theory in practice – but instead of saying ‘So what’ in English, I murmur it to myself in French.
Why?
Because it’s pretentious as hell and everything sounds so much better in French. Besides, it seems to work just fine for me.
illustration: One of Andy Warhol’s 25 cats named Sam.
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