----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, June 08, 2007 12:16
AM
Subject: OT: thoughts on music and
cooking
In addition to creating music, I also like to cook. I
especially like to making (or rather, attempting to make) sauces.
A few years ago I set out to make the perfect salsa. It took me a
few tries, but pretty quickly I came up with a recipe that embodied what I
think salsa should taste like. All my friends love it too. I
usually make it a little thinner and milder than I would personally prefer,
but I'm still happy with the flavor, and I feel like it has something unique
about it; a little bit of myself expressed in a sauce.
This year I decided that my previous recipe was too complicated, so I set
out to create a new recipe with half the ingredients. I nailed it on my
first try, and honestly I think the simpler recipe tastes better (though a
couple of my friends would argue with me).
However, I've also been trying to come up with a barbecue sauce recipe
that embodies all I love about barbecue for a few years now, and after dozens
of tries, I'm about ready to give up. Everything I make sucks, and while
a couple of my friends are nice enough to eat my experiments, I know it's
never very good.
I think there are several reasons for the difference in success rates,
but perhaps the most important is this: I have an exact idea of the way
I think salsa should taste, and I'm familiar enough with the ingredients to
make that happen pretty much every time I make it (a few flops
excepted). But when it comes to barbecue sauce, I've tasted so many
different influential sauces that I loved, from thin and vinegary to thick and
sweet, spicy, brassy, smokey, tart, etc. that it's nearly impossible for me to
envision a sauce that captures my favorite things about each.
Furthermore, there are so many possibilities for different ingredients that
I'm just not as familiar with, that when I taste a half-finished sauce and
think "hmm... it needs a little of that sweet flavor from Sharon's house
sauce," I'm left guessing at how to make that happen.
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All of that to say, I look at a lot of you guys (and groups like The
Books, Sigur Ros, etc.), and it at least appears that your efforts at making
music flow the way salsa-making does for me. You know exactly what
you're going for, and you stick with it. Even when it takes a surprising
turn, it still turns out great. And I've watched with envy as several of
you have sold-off gear and simplified your sets (stripped out half of the
ingredients) and come up with a new recipe that's even more profound and
satisfying that what you did at first.
But lately, making music has felt like trying to make the perfect
barbecue sauce to me. I have so many diverse influences and sounds in my
head that I want to combine, and I have all this technology at my fingertips
that I'm just not as familiar with as I would like to be, that I feel
overwhelmed by the endeavor. And everything I have come up with so far
is just not satisfying to me.
And I'd like at least a few people to think it's good too, but right now
the artists I'm hearing who come closest (check out
http://www.myspace.com/sonlux for one
example) are too much of a stretch for even my most musically inclined
friends.
Has anyone else been here, or am I even making sense? Any words of
wisdom?
--Josh
