Paul Rozin, the psychologist of food, once said that, “the vocabulary of taste, smell and flavor is very impoverished” in every language.
Try describing chocolate using only words: no gestures, moans, or interpretive dances.
Sweet? Bitter? Complex? That’s it? Probably the same words you’d use to describe your relationship with your mother or that new experimental ballet you watched at the marquis in the park the other day. 🩰
What if you were the only person in the universe that had ever tasted chocolate? After being blown away by the sensation you’d naturally want to share the experience with others. You’d go mad in the desperation of wanting everyone to understand. You’d gesticulate, and moan, and probably find yourself in a state of disarray as you desperately try to convince those around you that something as mind-bending as chocolate actually exists. You’ll never rest easy again until someone, any one, confirms that you are not deluded and that the world really has gifted the cataclysmically delightful cacao bean for all to love and enjoy.
Speechless. Meryl Streep as Julia Child and Stanley Tucci as Paul Child in Julie and Julia, 2009
Rozin explains that we compensate for this deficiency by using words that allude to other flavors. A wine might have an “undertone of blackberry.” A mango might have the flavor profile of “warm summer rain.” A coffee might be earthy and carry the aroma of roast almonds.
A linguistic object can be understood by our previous experience of it, and by its commonly recognizable name. We call a melon a melon, and don’t even have to have it in sight to understand it, and remember its scent and glorious juices. But, try giving the word “watermelon” linguistic meaning if you shared a slice with your lover that hot afternoon under the willow tree, if your dog licks the juices dripping down your forearms in a silly frenzy, if you spent an entire summer guarding your vine to get the fruit ready for show. Words just won’t be enough. And neither will the few modifiers you’ll invoke to really get your point across: juicy? sweet? pulp-y? floral? gigantic?
Better turn to the poets for this one:
moon on earth…
You are pure,
rubies fall apart
in your abundance,
and we want
to bite into you,
to bury our face
in you, and
our hair, and
the soul!
…. among our longings and our teeth
you change simply
into cool light
that slips in turn into
spring water
that touched us once
singing.- Pablo Neruda, Ode to the Watermelon, 1954, Translated by Robert Bly
Yes. All of that.
Or just share a slice of melon with your dear companion, and forget about having to describe the gorgeous fruit. Just get lost in the ecstasy of celebration, as you spit seeds, and moan in sheer delight, and giggle in unison, and exhale in deep gratitude. 🍉
No words. Nothing can compare to the experience.
For those who come to Paris to really absorb it and delight in its splendor, this affliction is quite common. No words can possibly describe the pleasure, the tingles down the spine as you dangle your feet along the edge of the Seine as the sun sets in summer. No photograph or reel will capture the moment. No romantic movie scene will come close to displaying that flirtatious play with life, that gladness that the moment will bring.
Perhaps the poets can help once again:
Behind the arch of glory sets the day;
The river lies in curves of silver light,
The Fields Elysian glitter in a spray
Of golden dust; the gilded dome is bright,
The towers of Notre Dame cut clean and gray
The evening sky, and pale from left to right
A hundred bridges leap from either quay.
Pillared with pride, the city of delight
Sits like an empress by her silver Seine,
Heavy with jewels, all her splendid dower .
— Willa Cather, “Paris,” 1909
Yes. All of that, too.
And in her Pulitzer Prize glory, Cather still bore the burden of the impoverished vocabulary incapable of conveying the disbelief that something like Paris actually exists. Yes, humans can make glorious beauty happen. Humans can come to an agreement and build the City of Light, or the City of Love, or the City by the Bay , or Rio de Janeiro, or Sydney Harbor, or ___________ (you fill in the blank). Humans can build beauty, and we stand in awe upon witnessing it. And in our ineffable shock that life can be much more grandiose than we’ve been led to believe, nothing is left but a gladness of the heart and the unmistakable longing to celebrate. And celebrate more. ♥️
How thrilling that humans can conspire to make the grandiose a reality. Where boundaries dissolve, and experiments of the body and soul push forward the evolutionary imperative without limits, or rules, or social norms, conditioning, expectations, tradition, laws, or obnoxious expert advice. Where the new is conceived out of the abyss. Where our divine nature is exquisitely exposed and we over-ride the mundane senselessness of the every day with leisure, pleasure, art, and sacred connection. Where celebration triumphs over slop, and squalor, and scrolling, and meaninglessness, and loneliness.
In the early morning, before the tourists come out, I watch my Parisian neighborhood come to life as locals manifest a Fellini-esque sweetness in their everyday tasks: elders in faded but tidy woolen suits walk arm in arm to market, toddlers travel to kindergarten on cargo bikes chitty-chatting with dad in the sweetest little French voices, students contemplate by the grotto at the Luxembourg Gardens next to the sensuous statue of Galatea and Acis, clusters of bureaucrats smoke outside their offices with no particular hurry to open on time, the radiant centenarian with silken daisy on her hair walking the park every morning with her assistant. Everyone is a stranger and a cohort at the same time — somehow we all share a common understanding to live life artfully and in sheer delight.
If Paris wasn’t so walkable, so communal, so choreographed for artful moments, I’d be on the freeway commuting to work and missing every little detail that thrills me and gives me hope that, indeed, humans can make beauty and meaning out of life. That, indeed, everything is a celebration.
What drives us to conspire to make splendor? “In the beginning was the word,” insisted John the Apostle in the Bible. Heraclitus of Persia, in the 6th century BCE insisted that the Logos (the word) came first, and form followed. But, if Paul Rozin is correct about our impoverished vocabulary to describe the scallop, or the strawberry, or the lemon then it well may be that the apostle and the philosopher had it all wrong. The proper language may well not exist to explain or impel the outpouring of art, expression, embodiment, and form. First there is splendor and form … then our feeble attempts, even by the poets, to scrounge up the words that will keep us from going mad at all that we experience.
The urge to make splendor pops up everywhere in the historical timeline. And thank goodness for the words that followed (no matter how impoverished) that left us with a written record and a legacy to aspire to when we fall deep into the hole of contemporary slop.
The Daoists pursued divine bodily pleasures more than 2500 years ago in Eastern Asia.
Two thousand years ago, The Hermeticists insisted that they could make their own reality, and experimented with the idea that they, themselves, were God through ritual and magic.
The counter-culture of the 1960s in California (and most of the world) lived in self-exploration, sustainability, free love and explosive creativity.
People knowingly, or unknowingly, agreed to live in the physical expression of elevated senses and the art of being alive. We all still do. The urge lives within us all.
Consider those moments in your life when you lived in this body-of-art for which you had no words? 🌸 Those moments of deep ecstatic union with your true love. That electricity when everyone swayed hips and arms in euphoric rhythm to the hypnotic beat on the dance floor. That moment when your baby came out and everyone in the room sat in quiet awe and common understanding of the force of life.
Moments when the banal disappears. When what is possible for humanity and the cosmos is revealed. When awe strikes, and words have very little use.
Is ecstatic love-making actually a thing? Is chocolate real? Why the hell do sublime experiences actually happen? And, even more important… why the hell is most of the world not living like this? Why isn’t everywhere beautiful? Why isn’t everything we do ecstatic? Why can’t we all live in a city like Paris? And take languorous lunches under the striped awning of a corner bistro? And pass by the steps of Pantheon and buy armfulls of roses on our walk to work? And dance the tango on the banks of the river on a summer’s eve? Why do we reserve all of this for novelty entertainment that only comes to life when we visit theme parks or tourist traps?
Travel writer Frances Mayes called American towns “actively ugly” in her memoir Bella Tuscany. And surely, any one who has seen the charmless, deliberate sprawl of suburbanism anywhere in the world would agree that this is a global phenomenon. Most people don’t live in beautiful villages, or hip neighborhoods, or with a view of the sea, or close to the opera, or in an arts district. Most of us live in dull peripheries, commuting to centers of culture and beauty for some inspiration that we can bring back to our marginalized homes. We consent to live the everyday without beauty. Getting lost in the ticker tape of fear porn, cheap entertainment, and trinkets and beads that hardly meet our visceral need for touch and scent and light and laughter. We live in austerity foolishly defending the myth of scarcity, maybe even justifying that there is only so much beauty to go around. Renouncing our birthright to celebrate life, and all along refusing to live in color, and twirl and dance.
Are we waiting for permission? Are we waiting for the WORD? What the hell is putting off our celebration of life when, in essence, CELEBRATION is the only way we can give language to the sublime?
Despite the pesky and appalling parts of the human dilemma, the French have taken a coherent celebratory stance toward life. Beauty must be prioritized. The senses must be satisfied. And no gatekeepers will be allowed to ruin the party. As if pleasure was a human right here, a natural law. Luxurious, slow, dedicated pleasure — the five course meal, the dedication to terroir, the culture of seduction. Art and symphony and hundreds of galleries. Wine and cheese and fresh fish and local produce even at the metro station. Apéro and sumptuous afternoons lollygagging and wasting time in the most pleasurable way. Long vacations and limited working hours. Way too many national holidays. And the secret relief on the days when all transport shuts down and no one can go to work and we get to enjoy an extra hour in bed with our beloved, and a well-deserved lazy-day.
Utter celebration.
The French understand this. They actively embody it.
Several years ago, Paul Rozin asked French and American folks what phrases come to mind when they see the words, “CHOCOLATE CAKE” Americans overwhelmingly responded: “GUILT TRIP.” French respondents overwhelmingly said “CELEBRATION.” No doubt, the celebration that keeps us coming back to France in the flesh and in myths no matter where we live. Seeking that jubilance that we all ache for in our day-to-day. Deep down inside, we all want to eat chocolate cake like the French — we all pine for pleasure and delight. And to be gobsmacked, speechless by the impossible, almost unbearable beauty of our aliveness.
LET CAKE GUIDE YOUR DAYS
Buy a cake and devour it with your dear companions, wherever you may be. Or buy pre-made genoise and frosting and chocolate syrup, and assemble with wild abandon.
Alfred Molina as Comte de Reynaud, giving in to temptation during Lent in Chocolat, 2000.
Or get filthy and messy and ecstatic baking the quintessence of CHOCOLATE CAKE in your own kitchenette. Make it divine and try your hand at the boozy, rich, fruity, delicate, ethereal adaptation of Claire Ptak’s chocolate cake. In London, Ptak serves some of the prettiest cakes at her bakery, Violet Cakes.
I pay homage to her wisdom and skilled hand with chocolate here. Forget about sponge, or frosting, or ganache, or glazes, or pretentious decorations. Throw away the flour. Lose yourself in the luxury of delicate clouds of merengue, and silky butter; the infusion of fragrant booze and rich, dried plum. The cake is a journey to what is possible with the ineffable cacao bean: the hand and genius of the human heart conceiving the impossible from an otherwise feral legume. A language of what chocolate actually means. No words can express the celebration, the gladness of the heart at being alive. 🍫 ♥️
To all the interpretive dancers out there, the poets, the improvisational vocalists and ukulele players… to all the experimental artists, and cooks, and lovers and seekers out there: may you find the words, the voice, the expression of what most brings you to life. And may deliciousness and celebration of body and soul guide you wherever you may be. Bon Appétit!
CHOCOLATE CAKE WITH BOURBON AND PRUNES
Ingredients
-140 grams (⅔ cup) of butter
-225 grams (8 ounces) of pitted prunes, well chopped
-350 grams (12 ounces) of chopped, semi-sweet chocolate (at least 70% cocoa)
-75 cc’s (⅓ cup) of bourbon, whisky, or rum. Alternatively, use a well-steeped Earl Grey tea: at least two bags of tea in one third of a cup of boiling water.
-1.5 Tablespoons of dark molasses
-6 eggs, separated
-120 grams (just under ⅔ of cup) of sugar.
-3/4 teaspoon of fine salt
Method
-Butter a 9 inch springform pan, and pre-heat the oven to 180 C / 350 F.
-Mix molasses onto the bourbon, and bring to the boil. Turn off stove. Add prunes, mix well, and set aside to cool.
-Melt the butter over low heat. Turn off the heat, add the chocolate and mix well until the chocolate melts. Add prunes/bourbon and mix well. Set aside to cool.
-Beat egg yolks with 65 grams / 5 Tablespoons of sugar for one minute. Add the prune/chocolate mixture and mix well with a wooden spoon.
-Beat the egg whites with 55 grams / 4.5 Tablespoons of sugar at medium speed, until the “soft peak” stage (see video, if unsure) and the merengue appears glossy.
-Add half the merengue mixture to the chocolate mixture. Mix gently with a wooden spoon until well incorporated.
-Add the remaining half of merengue mixture, and gently fold in. The batter does not need to be fully incorporated — it should look like a light, fluffy mousse mixture. .
-Bake for 30-35 minutes. The center of the cake should feel slightly soft — it will finish cooking during the cooling period. Let the cake rest for at least an hour.
-The cake will rise like a mousse during baking, and will naturally fall during cooling.
-Serve with a strong espresso. Bon Appétit!
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