Breakfast has always been a battlefield. To some, happiness is synonymous with a leisurely breakfast, to Jean-Paul Sartre: “Hell is other people at breakfast.” Some prefer bacon, grits, toast, eggs and beans — others just eat a grapefruit. Most of the shit we do we don’t have to do; but consuming (mostly)[1] organic material is one of the only things we need to do and everyone does it differently. Some like Moliere ate to live and not the other way around, others had doctors who plead them to “stop throwing intimate dinners for four unless there are three other people.” (Orson Welles)
Some imbue the act of eating with mystical and/or spiritual potential. Frances Moore believes that, “the act of putting into your mouth what the earth has grown is perhaps your most direct interaction with the earth”. In a rather different tone Erma Bombeck once alleged that she came, “from a family where gravy is considered a beverage.”
There are also those for whom food is a more practical affair, a matter of life over death. As the ancient Cantonese proverb goes “if it has four legs and it’s not a table, eat it.” Me I don’t know. Sometimes I’m bout some fine dining, other times I need to work and what not so I just order Boustan or steal my roommates’ milk and cereal. Or actually if they have those granola bars with the chocolate coating I’ll usually swipe a couple of those. Or yo if they have those little cheese things with the cow on it, I’ll steal some bread from the other one and gourmet it up. Shit is finesse.
Anyway I think this says something about our evolving relationship with food. Once (for about 145,000 years) food was the central component of our existence, now? Either an indulgence or a bother. Food is at once more prized than it’s ever been but also less coveted or worried about. Powders like Soylent altogether replace it, addressing the hassle aspect of it all, thus leading those inclined to be as productive as they desire. But now Mario Batali and Rachel Ray go to the Oscars and Grammys. They’re a fixture in celebrity culture, and people give a shit about them. Top Chef and Chopped garner ratings similar to those of Seinfeld reruns and 106 & Park’s Freestyle Fridays. Food Network is now a darkside corporation, as greedy and carnivorous as the rest of them.
Vegans are no longer frowned upon, and people still think ‘free-range’ is a real thing much like wrestling in the 90’s. Meat is murder, Lola Rosa’s. Whole Foods and empty fridges: while half the globe continues to starve, Williamsburg hipsters consume 60$ hamburgers and whatever a cronut is. Enter Graphite Thematic Week to make sense of it all…
Last word to Kafka: “So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.”
Peace,
Kasimir X
[1] see Cheese Whiz.
