Based on this image of Anna Pavlova wearing a kokoshnik ballet costume, taken either 1909 or 1911, photographer unknown. The costume (designed by Ivan Bilibin) still exists intact, and currently belongs to the Museum Of London.
EDIT: You can now check out the art process in a cool animated .gif if you like things like that.
Get some croissants. My favorite croissants are actually Costco’s but maybe there are some you like better? That’s crazy though! Costco makes the best croissants. Anyways: slice those croissants into halves, as shown.
Fully zest two or three oranges into a little bowl. Make sure your hands are clean before you do this, because the zest will get all over your fingers and make them smell really good.
Make up a mixture of 1 parts cinnamon and 1 parts white sugar. Maybe like 1/3rd cup of this? If you make too much, that’s not a bad thing.
Add cinnamon-sugar to your orange zest until you have something that looks a little like sandy kelp on the beach, and then add a little more. (The play between the orange and the cinnamon is the highlight of this recipe.)
In a generous bowl, beat eggs (you know what French toast is; I don’t have to tell you how many eggs you need) and add a splash of milk (only enough to change the color of the mixture, really), a splash of cream (half and half works here too), a dash of vanilla extract, and a big squeeze of honey. While you’re doing this, preheat your oven to 325 (F) and get a pan up to a low medium on the stove.
Lay out a few paper towels somewhere close. When your pan is hot, throw in a little olive oil and butter, dunk your croissant halves in that egg mixture and fry ‘em up. Briefly! For like, 30 seconds each maybe. Active spatulas here.
You’re not trying to fully cook the eggs at this step, and when you pull your halves from the pan to shake a little grease on those paper towels…
… they should still be floppy and not very firm. Transfer your croissant halves to a baking pan (or two) and sprinkle with your orange-cinnamon-sugar magic.
And then put ‘em in the oven.
I like my eggs (and my French toast) rather well well-done, so I’ll let you decide how long you want to leave your halves in the oven, but this step is important not only for completing the toast’s cooking, but for rendering that white sugar, cinnamon, and zest into sweet deliciousness.
Pull out your pans, set ‘em up on cooling racks and—with a new spatula, probably—transfer your toasts to yet another landscape of paper towels.
Plate and serve.
You get two plantains, right? Let ‘em get real ripe, maybe call ‘em a few names. “Big bananas.” Just let ‘em hate you so much. Split ‘em, open ‘em like autopsies, and bake ‘em in their peels: 45 minutes on 350. (You don’t have to use just two plantains, but be sure to adjust the rest of the recipe’s measurements if you up your numbers.)
Scoop that gooeyness into a food processor, gradually adding 1 tsp sugar, 1 tsp salt, 3/4 cup flour, and a bit of honey. Make with flour like it’s warpaint and roll your resulting dough into little flat patties. Flatties.
Same food processor, different food processor, whatever—1 cup black beans, 1 chipotle pepper in adobo, a lil’ squeeze of lime, some coarse salt, some garlic. (Maybe some corn, some shredded pork?)
Give each patty a dollop of bean paste and roll ‘em like cigars.
And then fry ‘em up in oil, 355 degrees or so.
from 2009.
Definitely read this one aloud:
With one grain of faith he’d pray to the skies
With face raised,
Place savior saliva clay in his eyes and brainwaves
Party ’til Seis de Mayo or his pesos ended and
Painstakingly try to keep his soul in stasis
Like cryogenics.
But he lacks a basis for belief
In either hell or the highest limits.
In all his years
He’s never felt like defyin’ the biochemists
Who tell ‘im life sentences get punctuated when breath goes,
Though a bunch of creative nuns claim somethin’ goes on
Beyond the death throes
Some abstraction that by some quiet, tiptoe tactic gets
X, O’d
Marked outta frying pan for heaven or the next stove.
His friends describe smoke, brimstone, Abbadon fumes,
He thinks they’re mad
He’d have his friends thrown in padded rooms,
Priests repent, the scriptures blank or reprinted in his words
‘Three princes delivered frankincense to beg for insurance.
Too afraid of a made-up lake of flame and embers.’
They all say he’s in for the pots bakin’
Oven open
But if God’s throne is vacant
Nothin’ but faith and covenant broken.
This work by Patrick Fisher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
She asks:
How come we never hold hands in public?
And she says:
‘Cause they wouldn’t understand who I’m in love with.
Says: Fuck ‘em, let ‘em pass judgement
I know you’re scared,
You think I would’ve asked if I wasn’t?
She replies: I ain’t embarassed, like,
But I see you when my eyes closed
Like you’re the afterimage when I stare at lights.
You stand between who I am, and who I’ve been
But that girl had family and friends
Who’ve gotta examine me again.
Crazy talk? I feel like I been Sadie Hawkins’d by a goddess.
(Or at least a goddess’s high priestess.)
Can’t confide, they couldn’t pay me off to give ‘em my secrets.
Despite society, my true thoughts got me wantin’ to climb trees,
Rooftops with memorized lines
But I’m speechless.
Got it scripted and phrased right:
‘I find her desirable’, yeah, but I’m sick with stage fright
I feel like Turbulence, stomach drop, plane flight
You wanna be out, I wanna hide in plain sight.
I mean when guys watchin’ think I’m only on you
‘Cause guys watchin’
Unaware I don’t experiment—it’s hot, but no,
I’m way beyond weighin’ my options.
Then she responds: maybe yes, maybe I want for too much
Could be exposure is right or wrong for the two of us
Maybe it’s like real exposure to cold, ears and toes lost
But we’ve got something here that I wanna show off.
This work by Patrick Fisher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Written for my friend Will Houchin’s senior recital on April 11th. He asked me to draw from this quote from tuba player Gene Pokorny: “For those who regard music as something very special, there is an emotional reverence that goes beyond the notes. Moving quickly on holy ground is pointless, when the main thing is the journey itself.”
I’ve been alive really only for the past two days
My name, my sword the same
Still on the same holy path, crusade
Like the game demanded quarters and
“Continue”
I am reformed with every acquisition, act of change
Now my age, yeah, the Rabbi’s clay is dry
But what’s written on my head is
Daily re-erased and edited,
All teacher’s corrections, all red
I am all up to the edge, all precipice
Some cuts
But only some set precedence
Ain’t all success,
I’ve made mistakes yesterday
But for every bleed I’m raised up by
Therapies, medic and medicines,
And ’til they spell ‘Death’ on me
I’ll carry these messages.(Spoken: No, wait… not like that…)
I’ve been alive really only for the past
Day and half
I’m Today, and Two Days back me is gone
All memories
Like some vivid Vietnam flashbacks
The contrast between what happens in
Play and practice: I’m that
I wake up the picture of a place
Lay up on top of the days events
And they trace the map
That’s how it happens, morning to afternoon,
And epiphanies mean added degrees of latitude.
But any man can take new meaning
Translated from afternoon to evening
And in some acoustics
What a man says is superseded by the
Echo from the room, the ceiling
So if I’m on another stage,
In front of another audience
Can these words ever have the same truth, same feeling?
Maybe.
Or we’re pilgrimage saints kneeling
In front of an image of god with the paint peeling.
But maybe it remains in notes on page,
Or John Cage, breakin’ a radio on stage.
Is it only intention, composition?
Is it the Fifth if he got
Nothin’ audible out the written?
Huh? Nothin’ audible out the written, like
Four minutes on the stopwatch while the audience listen?
Is a song still a song when the curtain’s drawn
And y’all applaused?
If you put your iPod on pause?
Is it space for sound?
Pitted, cored, hollowed out?
Orchestra pit, the floor a stage made hallowed ground?
If you’re in the same place make it your own
Approach at a slow pace, bow before Apollo’s throne.
I can’t rush, I’ve gotta match the beat
And two: the music will continue after me.
This work by Patrick Fisher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
(to be read aloud)
When those deep coma dreams
Reach up from below the rungs and grab ahold of me
Like: Lungs close when you go to sleep,
Heart counts down like a priest or a nun’s roseary
Your body is beyond reach, beyond thought
You cannot breathe, you cannot be at peace, be calm,
And for as many minutes, seconds before what’s next
You are a song of Johnny Got His
Weapon in the trenches when the bomb hits:
Consciousness set up without the senses.
As though at lower depths
Or indebted a pound of flesh in Venice made from
Eyes, Ears, and neck below the cortex.
Or: A clear picture of somethin’ false
Where my eyes and and ears work fine
But my mind is flipped, doin’ somersaults.
Phone won’t ring or pick up any number called
And what I perceive as sweet on my tongue is salt.
Caught up in conspiracies of things not as they appear to be
So in fault: I credit the uninvolved.
Bein’ dog-bitten, bee-stung, betrayed,
Hands clutchin’ raw meat, kitchen gone up in flames,
Or is fear different from what I’d desire least,
Skin in the grease fires, peers liars and thieves?
Immobility, no freedom, no control of the body
Goin’ mad, seein’ ghosts among those that haunt me?
Out my head or someplace that I can’t run from
Is Brave based on what I dread may someday come?
That’s nothin’
I am unafraid of never raising a son
And in young numbers of my age I accepted death
Say that it’s sleep’s cousin; I could get some rest
The main fright is dyin’ come a century off
So when I MIGHT come up heads, come up dead in the penny toss,
I stick to safe chances, Maybe’s, Perhaps’s
Don’t trust myself to dictate my first actions
In case I should miss the next decades of hesitance;
Fear is bein’ afraid,
Scared that I never live.
(References: Johnny Got His Gun The Merchant of Venice)
This work by Patrick Fisher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
A variation of Gâteau Basque (rather, the recipe found here).
INGREDIENTS:
DOUGH:
1 cup sugar
2 sticks minus 1 tablespoon butter
2 egg yolks
2 and 1/2 cups flour
A pinch of salt
Grated peel of 1 lemon
Almond extract to taste
FILLING:
1 and 1/4th cup milk (I’ve been using 2%)
2 egg yolks
5 tablespoons sugar (I’ve been using 3 white, 2 Turbinado)
4 tablespoons flour
Rum or other flavorings to taste
STEPS:
DOUGH:
Cream butter and sugar. Add egg yolks and combine. Add lemon peel and almond extract. (Note: Many traditional Gâteau Basque are made using actual almond flour.) Stir in flour and salt. Dough should be good and crumbly. Chill (covered) for an hour or so.
FILLING:
Preheat oven to 350°. In saucepan, mix flour and sugar. Add egg yolks and combine. Add flavoring (I’ve been using 3-4 tablespoons of honey vodka, though a spoonful of actual honey might work well too) and mix well. Add milk and stir down/grind out any lumps. Stir over medium heat until the mixture thickens.
With a portion of the dough, form a centimeter-thick layer in the bottom of a greased 8 x 8-or-so baking pan. You don’t have to pack this foundation crust too tightly, but it should at least be nonporous. Spoon in filling. Gently stir in the rest of your crumbly dough particles, but make sure the top is entirely coated in dough bits. You’ll need it as an indicator for the next step:
Bake at 350° until golden brown on top.
Let cool and then cover and assign to the fridge to chill completely.
Cut into bars and serve chilled.
The following is the most vital cut of the songs I’ve been feeling lately. The tracks are numbered to flow and be played in order, though all (imo) are superb on their own. Mostly (relatively) new stuff, and I tried to represent and introduce artists whose whole catalogs were excellent. Many artists. It’s a bit of a trail.
TRACKLIST
Buddy Rich Big Band - West Side Story Medley
Emilio Rojas - Just One Night
Skyzoo - The Shooter’s Soundtrack
Nosaj Thing - Fog
Elzhi - Talking In My Sleep
Old Crow Medicine Show - Pour It On, Dock
City and Colour - Sleeping Sickness
Beatnick and K-Salaam - Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell - Ain’t No Mountain High Enough (Remix)
Novel - So Much More Ft. Joell Ortiz and Papoose
Mndsgn - Flying Lotus - Smoke City - Camel (Remix)
Jay Electronica - Exhibit C
Pill - Dropped a Mick On Me
Yukon Blonde - Rather Be With You
Akira Kiteshi - Pinball (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZshZp-cxKg)
Diamond District - PJ’s Remix
Arcade Fire - Keep The Car Running (Live on BBC Radio 2)
Royce da 5′9 - Murder
Mount Kimbie - Field
Baths - Hall (The One AM Radio Remix) Ft. The Los Feliz Ladies Choir
Eli et Papillon - Comme Avant
Lupe Fiasco - Popular Demand Freestyle
I hope you find something you enjoy.
(To be read aloud)
I believe that
Way back before Eve and Adam even
Spat out the seeds and the core of the the last ingredient,
Real, true happiness was absent from Eden
Unless the serpent’s recipe also demanded a
Hot stove, good work
Good friends over on the weekend,
A couple leaves over what’s indecent,
Gettin’ real cozy bundled up in sleeves in the low degrees
And some fuck-the-police disobedience.
So the same moment the police raised megaphones,
Unfolded wings, told ‘em they had to leave
Bright halos, Archseargant on radio to the chief,
I could maybe see ‘em crawl, reduce themselves
Beg on palms and knees in the fall from God’s graces
But never trade back knowledge gained in non-complacence.
‘Cause temperance means you’ve got a beast
And you tie it down,
And honesty means you’ve got something to lie about,
And confidence means that you understand your flaws and that
With experience and practice they can be ironed out.
Joy is brand new music, concerts,
Handing entire afternoons off to good authors,
Being stumped ’til it dawns on you,
‘Clicks’ like conductivity over wire, filament, copper,
A rhyme, a fingertip on the switch for the light
“That’s the word…”—That’s happiness,
Gettin’ verses RIGHT.
This work by Patrick Fisher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
