Issue 21, containing: Syllabub, Entertaining for the Uncertain, Remembrances, Commonplaces, &c.

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SOME EDITORIAL NOTES

Spring is finally coming, though not as fast as I’d like. It’s taken almost forty years for me to finally decide it, but I think my favorite season is the one we’re coming up on: the smell of wet ground, bright shoots of things peeking out, the colored fuzz on trees making everything look slightly out of focus. The sunlight. I’m a night owl by habit, if not by nature, but I’m happiest when I can actually manage to wander the world in the morning. The air feels different. I love it.

But my corner of the world isn’t quite there yet. We’re seated three-quarters down the end of the rollercoster, and the first car has just tipped over the edge of the first peak, held back by the weight of the rest of the train for just long enough to make everyone nervous — but any moment now the balance will shift and the rest of us will be yanked up and over the hill into the glorious spread of spring.

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SYLLABUB: FIT THE THIRD

Unlike my rash and extravagant promises from the previous issue, I didn’t end up trying the most exciting variant of the syllabub I found (the one with heated wine and honey), but rather I explored the first variant again, with some changes to methodology:

1. The electric handbeater was exchanged for a standing mixer. (Still no whisk in sight.) The high walls of the stand mixer significantly impeded the syllabub’s ability to get cream on every flat surface in a six foot radius, and this is a good thing. I do not own my own stand mixer, but should the world provide me a countertop sufficient to the purpose, I would be happy to own one for future syllabub-stirrings.

2. Instead of filling tiny teacups, I filled two wine tumblers (of the variety that have pithy sayings like “it’s wine o’clock somewhere” or “she said FUCK YOU and lived happily every after” etched into their sides). Filling those two glasses actually left only a small amount of leftovers in the bowl, thus clarifying that this can either be a fairly substantial dessert for two, or a tea-cup/amuse bouche-ish sized portion for perhaps six.

 3. The lemon used was not Meyer, but a bog-standard grocery lemon. There was, however, significantly more zest due to the use of a microplane, a kitchen tool which is both excellent and also out for my blood. I think the regular lemon is probably a wise move for champagne syllabub, with the heavy zesting — it didn’t overpower the champagne flavor, but rather complemented it. It also made for extremely pretty garnish.

Aside from future variants (of which there are at minimum at least three left to explore), the other thing this batch prompted me to consider was using syllabub as a side to something rich and dense, like flourless chocolate cake. Of course, this would require that I learn how to make flourless chocolate cake.

Darn. 

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ENTERTAINING FOR THE UNCERTAIN

Among the many other things I think about having in my future home, one that’s been floating regularly in my head for a while is investing in a record player, sound system, and record collection.

I didn’t grow up with records being the dominant technology — that was cassette tapes and CDs — and I don’t have any hipsterish inclinations with regard to sound quality or retro feelings or whatever.

But my parents had records when I was growing up, often containing multiples of the same album where they’d combined their collections. When I was very little, we had some kind of speaker that would show colored lights in rhythm with the music and I used to sit and watch it, letting the sounds of Steeleye Span and Fairfolk Convention and Battlefield Band roll over me while the colors danced. 

Later, my parents bought one of those multi-head machines that could play both records and cassettes, and I was deemed old enough to take out records and set them playing myself. I have vivid sense memories of handling the records, that twist of skin on my fingertips as I’d flip them from one side to the other. I learned where to drop the needle to get the songs I wanted. I loved reading the big liner notes, seeing the photos of the artists and trying to guess whose voice was whose. And later, I made my own mixtapes, timing the press of buttons to catch the right moments of each song’s beginning and end.

That’s what I want to get back, I think. I miss the physical sense of listening to music. Not all the time — but sometimes. Enough that it would be nice to have a room where there’s a large chair-and-a-half, a window, a low shelf stretching along one wall filled with the old folk of my childhood, and newer pieces, ones I’ve been aching to feel the touch of: Ludovico Einaudi, Vienna Teng, Nina Simone. A record player, unadorned with other mediums, taking pride of place in the center. A room that exists just to be in, with no other purpose than the music.

MP3s, while delightful and very useful for expanding my interests, I’m realizing can feel ephemeral to me — it’s easy to listen to something and feel affected by it, but it moves past quickly, here and gone until I feel like finding it again. I don’t have to think about what I like, because I can always determine it freshly every moment. And that can have it’s own sweet rush — I do love ephemeral things. But I’m remembering permanence, and how it felt to hold things, to wait to get what I wanted, to learn where a song lived by touch alone.

I want that again. And I want to feel the weight of my choices, as I haven’t really in years — I don’t remember the last time I bought a whole album, let alone a tangible CD. But if I wanted to make my own collection… I’d have to search them out, and think about which album in particular was the one to buy, and then finally I’d have them, feeling the ownership and the intention behind them. The act and effort necessary to listen to them would become a ritual in itself, an extra dimension added to the music.

And… it would be nice to know, really, what my own tastes look like. I like a lot of songs, a lot of fleeting moments — but what, when I fill my shelves, are the ones that I need to hear in this way? What are the ones that aren’t background filler as I make my way through life, but are the ones that make me stop and wait and listen?

I don’t know yet. And I may not for a long while. But I like thinking of it. I like knowing that this is something I can want.

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REMEMBRANCES

As many people have recently, I received a small assistance of the financial variety. It went, fairly promptly, in the direction of many things that help me get a step closer to seizing my cloud-castle, gardens and record players and counter space and all.

It’s the sort of thing my mother used to handle — the balancing of bills and awkward phone calls and other indignities associated with far too much American life these days. She hated it. She dreamed of a time when it wouldn’t be necessary for her.

I wish I’d had the chance to talk to her about my own efforts. I wish I could’ve succeeded faster, made a place for her where she was away from worry and could sit and read by a window, music spilling from speakers in a room with no other purpose than to sit and listen. 

I wish she was here.

I miss her.

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COMMONPLACES

From Vienna Teng’s “Hymn of Acxiom” from Aims:

O how glorious, glorious: a brand new need is born

Now we possess you. You’ll own that. You’ll own that
Now we possess you. You’ll own that in time
Now we will build you an endlessly upward world
(reach in your pocket) embrace you for all you’re worth

Is that wrong?
Isn’t this what you want?

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From June Gehringer’s “I get so jealous of euthanized dogs”, in Peach Magazine:

the worst thing about love is
i remember it.

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ANNOUNCEMENTS

You know what I need?

Cookies.

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Letter to the Magazine: [subject of letter as you would like to see it printed]

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-Until next week, be safe.