101
g i F T s
s i x
Bread ... and bread and shadow ... pablo
ner u d a
o c T o b e r
2 0 1 2
r e c i p e
The etymology of ‘recipe’ is a little confusing, but offers a sweet ambiguity about the difference between giving and receiving : receipt was ‘the act of receiving’ in the early 14C, reseit was a sum of money c.1390, and receit was a medicinal recipe in 1392. From the Anglo-Norman receite. Yet Modern Latin offers only sumo/suscipio (take/receive) with no sign of recipe*
recipere is to take back; to receive recipe – ‘take, thou’ (Rx): the word written by physicians at the head of prescriptions) 1580s medical prescription from M.Fr. recipe Latin, recipe is to take* (contradicting the above) 1743 – first record of recipe as a set of instructions for preparing food *From the etymology of Yeast – foam, froth, ferment, boil, seethe
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b r e a d
a s
w i t n e s s
Bread In some ways I feel this gift has been a witnessing of other people. Their feelings, art and interpretation of bread. I have been there for their experiences, their passions, their discoveries as well as partially bringing them to fruition by giving them my attention and fostering. It is a gift where the potential of the imagery of bread has brought strange pain to the surface or to the depths. Where bread untraps an unfolded part of someone’s life. bread is for food a necessity of living food for thought food as nourishment in all ways I would like to think of all of us being bread witnesses with the possibility of being fed.
Clare
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Clare
3
E lemen ts
o f
J o u r na l
M aking
S u m m e r
2011
First I knew of an artisanal bakery near Bodiam Castle. I had two introductions from friends of the owners. I emailed a first request to talk and visit. I was told they would get back to me – nothing – I tried again and they said although they were both artists they did not want to have an event at or outside their bakery. I was taken aback, I felt we might have had a meeting at least.
Clare:
But then I found the next three bakeries also said no. I do understand bakeries are busy places, but no one would even talk to me – I may just have wanted to visit, to talk, to see one. There are some industrial bakeries to try.
I am going to have to use this refusal of bakeries to find other sites, maybe this wonderful ‘gift’ is not so wonderful if there is no time for exchange, the letters of refusal could be part of it? from
my
no te b o o k
–
4
Just before Bread started, that week, I had been to a meeting of female artists who work with nature, Artisans of Transition. I met a culinary activist artist there, who has done amazing events with bread. Thought she might be the connection but instead it was with another woman, Jane, who would become intregral to the piece. Marina was making a film about my Gifts Project, so we started to talk about bread. Marina is on a very strict diet for her health so can never have bread. The first image that entered her head was ‘empty bread’ – taking out the centre and filling it with hard things – the opposite of goodness. An unexpected impression of bread.
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Sep t ember
2011
I had met a man in Denmark, Seb Doubinsky, a live wire of a person who writes non-haiku poems. I asked him for a few bread ones.* They arrived in October, they will come in somewhere.
*See Loaves
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Jane
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Oc tobe r
2011
I arranged to take Jane on a visit to Bunces Barn. We had a great time and started talking about bread by chance. Miche Fabre Lewin, the breaker of bread artist, had organised the food for Jane’s ‘relationship ceremony’ and wanting everything to be organic had researched bakeries in Jane’s part of North Kent. Had found one, Blackthorn Bakery in Maidstone. Jane had been getting her bread and a veg box delivered from there ever since. All she knew was that the bread was made by people with mental health issues and convalescents and somehow felt there was something wonderful about bread that was made as a ‘recovery’. Anyway we decided to visit. I looked it up on the website and found out more.
Blackthorn Trust is a charity whose aim is to help those facing physical or mental health issues. The garden is a work community where one can find friends, security and gain confidence to face the world at large. In such a climate illness falls into the background and the true character shows through. Some of our co-workers will learn the creative art of breadmaking, so every loaf we sell helps us continue our therapeutic work with others.
B l a c k th o r n
t r u st
w e b s ite
–
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Novembe r
2011
Kay mentioned the empty Hovis factory at Woodingdean. I got very excited – but it has gone.
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D ecember
Ba k i n g
2011
b r e a d
I had booked a place on a one day baking bread course at Battle Community College. I may have wanted to do the expensive course at the artisan bakery but decided this was a better way to start (I don’t cook, I thought this gift might change that!). I rushed around collecting the ingredients early on the Saturday morning before Christmas. When I arrived I was put at the only single person workstation, everyone else was opposite someone, I was looking out of a window at a car park – isolated from the start as the chatting and connecting happened around me. I diligently followed instruction from the teacher, a round, red faced, jovial man in chef’s outfit and white hat, the ultimate baker. It was all quite threatening to me – well, nerve wracking – and so hot, all those ovens. We had to make four different breads over the day, the kneading was the pleasurable part, but only in a ‘I should be enjoying this bit. This is the special part of being a bread maker’. I went away with my efforts, dropping them off at my mother’s, my sister’s and then at home – I didn’t eat any of it. Apparently it was ok. I was just glad to stop being hot! I have not baked anything since.
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I
h av e
kep t
th e
instru ct i o n s
“Use Your Loaf� bread and sweet buns White rolls, saffron bread, bagels and malted wholemeal and rye
Ingredients required 1.5kg strong white flour 1 pack strong wholemeal flour 1 small pack rye flour 1 packet (6 sachets) fast action dried yeast 1 block butter Saffron 2 eggs 25grm raisins 100grm caster sugar Apron Tea towel J-cloth
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At some point over the autumn I did some general bread research. Not es
Christian symbolism... Give us this day our daily bread Bread as symbol of metamorphosis, seed to grain, grain to bread Farmer miller baker Dionysis bread as a blessing, pagan ritual ritual of bread as remembrance Passover Mexico Pan del Muerto bread of the dead – circular bread with a cross of bones covered with sugar – bread links the dead to the living through a communal bond of shared sustenance and remembrance When you die, all the bread you ever wasted is weighed. If it is heavier than you, hell is your destination. Russian Proverb.
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from
my
no te b o o k
–
definitely feelings of rejection, will try a few more bakeries then open wider – must talk to Kay – I feel there is an idea about ‘recipes’, fantasy ones I had heard a radio program last year about a yeast museum, in looking for it I found a few yeast centres. I am scheduled to visit one in February, a real white coat sort of place. I know there is something about ‘rising’ that has to be explored.
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J anuary
2012
J a n e We went to find Blackthorn Bakery on January 18th, a gloomy, rainy day. I met Jane at East Farleigh station on the River Medway, could have met at Barming station. Equidistant. We drove the few minutes to the place. A long stone wall and massive gates looking in to a park of dark cypresses and a huge Victorian pile. We went through the gates to find out what this place was. It said private residence. A man was walking his dog, we asked him about it – its the old ‘Barming Hospital’ (the origin of the word barmy). Oakwood Lunatic Asylum only closed in the 90s to be changed into gated apartments. It was overwhelmingly oppressive, massive, blocks and blocks of it. This man, Paul Hayman, had worked there in the mortuary and as we asked began unrolling macabre tales of all the worst sort of things. Jane and I were really affected by the place and the atmosphere,
Oakwood Hospital in Barming Heath was founded in 1833 as the Kent County Lunatic Asylum when the first 168 patients were admitted. By 1948 there were 2,000. Oakwood closed in 1994 and was developed into a residential estate.
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and in the drizzle walked around the whole site, finding our way into private areas, looking at the converted church, imaging what it must be like to live in buildings that have contained so much pain. We walked to the bakery, it looked welcoming but it was shut. We could walk up to some gates and a padlock, a distinct feeling of another barrier to this gift. We would have to come back for a proper visit, but for now it felt like the discovery of the place was the way forward. We walked past Balmy Fish & Chips for a hot drink in the only pub. Jane was overwhelmed, her great-grandmother had been put away in one of those institutions and it set us up on a rambling conversation about this bread made by these people needed to be taken on pilgrimages to places like the institution – Bread/Pain – the first connection between bread and its French translation: pain. Somehow the idea of burying the bread, maybe with a lump of yeast formed. Grave goods. Jane had come for a “soul moment”. She got one, but not the one she expected. Sad, touching and going to the core.
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17
February
Vi s it
t o
13
2012
th e
Ye a s t
Library
All my adventures on following bread started with something negative. On the day of my journey to the Yeast Bank/Museum I lost my bank card in the bank machine, nothing major but still not the most auspicious start one cares for. I travelled with David by train to Leatherhead, it could have been anywhere, followed some bland roads to an unexceptional building, Leatherhead Food Research, got passes and waited in reception. Transferred to Ali Aitchison Principal Microbiologist by Dr Hilary Flockhart, the scientific visit proceeded. The scientist began by asking what an artist wanted to know about yeast, that it was an usual request so they had been interested. My visit had taken quite a few emails and valedations before a date was set. The unexpected high security was a surprise but then I had no idea of the worldwide value of yeast, it was not something I had ever thought about. So a scientific lab, white coats, mob caps, protective shoe covers and intense security greeted us. I was allowed to take photographs but codes and names were covered up. We started with what yeast is. After passionate explanation and diagrams we donned our whites and where taken into the secure unit. Opening the vat filled with dry ice was a tense, dramatic
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moment. We could look at the special metal holders which held everyone’s unique ‘recipes’ of yeast – secrecy, security and mystery like an ancient ritual, a shamanistic dance in clouds of mist. Then into a lab and looking through a microscope at the birthing of a yeast bud. A final summing up in the office, grateful thanks and again curiosity about how I would use the information. Its hard to explain, even to myself how it comes in, but somewhere this passion for a strange element – yeast, transcends the scientific, the monetary value, the necessity for it in bread, and it becomes a symbol of transformation, of possibility, of rising, of hope ...
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Prin Cipal
A l i th e s e
Microbiolog i s t
A i t ch i n s o n are
h e r
wo r d s
a s
s p o k e n
d u r i n g
our
flour standards taste panels salt sweeter tasting good from batch to batch some people have to taste every batch how to train a yeast taster ... ‘my grandmother’s cupboard’ it’s memory mixed with smell my palate is not particularly sensitive to be very sensitive is useful a yeast tester is employed for their natural abilities and then one is trained memory mixed with smell
meet ing
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– she draws a small square in the air with her fingerspeople must be subjective and objective to validate the tasting flavour standards taster valedation software yeast banking storage and supply projects in the laboratory how we look after yeast remember it is alive yeast, our way of describing a tiny single-celled fungus not a plant, from another kingdom as different as a tree and a tiger yeast can be altered but not by grafting
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hold yeast as if holding a baby something almost live yeast is everywhere in the natural world the outside of fruit among strands of hair in dust its not from fifty fathoms under the sea its in the park on the surface the scientist was interupted to sign a Russian customs letter the single cell grows a bud, the bud births, the mother cell is left with a scar and is near the end of its reproductive life, it can exist but can’t reproduce yeast depends entirely on conditions the ancestory, the family line of yeast is its evolution if it gets too warm, too salty, too acidic if it is stressed, it loses vitality and dies in a few hours
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it needs oxygen and sugar there is individuality in yeast clarity or cloudiness in the same fermentation the preciousness of yeast it is closely guarded it is stored confidentially no speck of yeast can go in the wrong place some bakers get attached to their yeasts and believe they can trace them back before their birth there is a sourdough baker who believes he can trace it back to the 1800s bakers sing to their yeast like gardeners sing to their plants yeast has been used as money how did you become fascinated by yeast? I asked she wanted to be a nurse but was unable to face the blood and guts so turned to genetics, actually it was the taste of her first beer
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this company is based in Leatherhead and Copenhagen in the old building in Denmark there is a library from 1883 full of dark brown books recording every exchange in the 30s yeast was delivered by camel to the Sudan killer yeasts can be put into vats and cause disaster its a world of spys and security and money ‘yeasty fingers’ scientific version of ‘green fingers’ everything is closely guarded and coded bakers sing lullabies to their yeast the irregular shapes of wild yeast like a lemon, a peanut or a club there are flocks of yeast, flockulation
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she said – some yeasts won’t hold hands with their friends however hard you try and a wild yeast does its own thing, makes its own flavours maybe a single cell is closer to God it’s whole in itself it creates the air in bread simple, calm and precious*
*See Loaves
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February
16
2012
J a n e a n d i g o b a c k t o f i n d th e B a k e r y
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I waited at East Farleigh Station marveling at the crossing keeper to open and close the gates, he must be one of the last left. I walked down to the lock and along the crowded riverside. There is a strange island with a crane, an edgeland, a place of neglect. We went up to the Bakery, open now, and wandered all around the grounds before having a meal in the cafe. Jane mentions Germinal by Emile Zola as another painful way of thinking about bread. The cry for revolution, murder and the oppressed. I will read it immediately. We meet John the baker and start talking. He calls making bread ‘the art of self-forgetting’. He shows us the bakery, the two clasping armed mixer, explains where his biodynamic flour comes from in Canterbury and tells us if you get flour from freshly slaughtered wheat and make bread immediately it doesn’t need yeast – it could be a fairytale! Stonegound flour means it keeps the nutrients. He shows us some fresh yeast off the block, it can be unpredictable, it is ‘live’, it gives the ‘flying crust’ the open air bit at the top of bread when its risen too fast. He keeps a piece of dough and adds it in to the next day’s batch, it improves the flavour. They make bread with things from the garden – beetroot, carrot, parsnip and thyme.
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Jane and I have a pleasant visit entirely different from the harrowing one in the rain. We walk around the retired asylum but its power to bury us has lessened. Jane buys us each a plant to take away as I buy bread, spelt bread. Bread I can eat. We stand on the tiny platform waiting for the train and more family histories and personal stories come tumbling out. We have found an intensity of connection that is confounding. bread as stone bread as survival bread as hidden history
I have asked Kay to write ‘recipes’ with the information up to now. I long to have to make something with ingredients.
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Marina
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Marc h
2012
Ma r i n a My illness is called CPT 2, and I can not eat fats (any kind of...!!), as they become toxic instead of being transformed into energy ... even bread can be harmful This was the starting point for Marina’s inclusion in bread/pain, that she could not eat bread. Of course I avoid eating bread as it disagrees with me, physically and mentally, for Marina it is a much more life and death situation. Marina has been unwell since she was eight, or that is when the investigations into her sickness began. It seems to me that the investigations into her illness have been harsher than the illness itself, though she assures me that it does manifest with acute pain as well as muscle use loss and no energy. Amazing that she is a dancer considering physical exercise can be a trigger for attacks. From that early age she has been at the mercy of doctors. Biopsy after biopsy on muscles all over her body. One without anesthesia. ‘I felt this guy cutting my hand, I could feel everything inside, I could not even scream though tears streamed from my eyes, silent tears just coming. I thought I was a ‘martyr’ in a painting from several centuries back, instruments stuck into my
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living flesh – from that point on I had nightmares. My body has been treated so badly. It took till 2010 to be diagnosed. There are bits of my muscle in Greece, London, Paris and Sheffield. The strictness of a diet without fats takes some thinking about. It is a life’s work, it is disciplined, careful and isolating. A family meal becomes untenable, a quick bite in a rush, or cooking and sharing are perscribed. Failing to adhere to the diet and the needed pills has consequences. So the work started with a white table, a loaf of bread and some silver tools and a world was uncovered where bread became flesh, became examined, treated, torn apart, became body, became pain.
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MARC H
25
2012
Ma r i n a We met at the Nightingale Theatre in Brighton for a morning of exploration. We worked in the white room with a white table and chair. Marina’s first thought had been to ‘empty’ the bread and re-fill the empty space with other objects. She then experimented with wearing the loaves as shoes the question being ‘how long can bread shoes support me?’ empty the bread create empty spaces get inside bread find ways in emptying a baguette with nutcrackers like a bottle or a tin full bread dropping nails a cooking, medicinal procedure separating the materials ‘taking it out’ If one is not allowed to eat bread how else can one use it? a peaceful way to not eat bread
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footprint in the bread anger at health gender white table white chairs a procedure light silver objects outlines and edges as if table laid just like knife, fork, bread in fact it is bread a whole loaf crusted and combed deliciously skinned bread still comes from hand made labour like the silver tools objects made by hand by manual labour solid in their own ways
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meaningful in their own ways valuable in their own ways of use in their own ways useful use full made for action excavation ritual an experiment in materials and uses nutcrackers to pinch out particles of bread such small parts and intricate work material changes it sinks inside its shell, thins against the crust maybe now it can be filled silver nails fill and tip musically on the white table some stay inside or stick through the skin a glass jar holds the specimens like clouds of cells ready for examination removed from use
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the hand reaches in the loaf fingers tight human delving caliper-like circle of steel measuring the outer edges crushing they are all instruments of help and destruction lay them out neat lay them out in order lay them out carefully broken a careful destruction unknown but forceful is there anger hidden in the forensic order is there pain try making two loaves into shoes and walk a hundred miles the bread breaks then moulds, then hardens, then cracks, then bares the foot
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what does walking on bread mean to you? how about a pair of bread shoes? are our skins reacting in the same way? does the food we eat, or don’t eat, work as well on the outside? it almost seems it could be ancient history like walking on grapes could we make bread with our feet? is bread as shoes a metaphor for walking dough! I loved the task and attention to detail methodical experimentation hidden agendas the actual beauty of plain things crusted bread, ravaged and torn silver implements a square glass jar a white surface
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staggering anger I could watch that and wonder why and why it matters to her mysterious, level headed the implications of images bread metaphors begin to mix and rise as bread continues on its painful journey*
*See Loaves
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April
–
J a n e ’ s
June
2012
W r it i n g
Through this time Jane had been researching her family history, visiting archives and talking to her father. Her thinking, writing and feeling became a history of her two great grandmothers.*
*See Loaves
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A ugus t
13
2012
K ay I visted Kay. I knew she was going to tell me that writing a recipe for Bread was most likely impossible at this time. It was entirely expected and understood. Another bread halt.
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Augus t
14
A s y l u m
2012
Pi n e s
V i s i t,
Clare
roar of council mower and strimmer one old green door into a walled garden two pouches in stone walls big enough to hold a loaf of bread an empty pavilion, a roof on spindle legs one strange lamp post at the crossover of the paths a slow black-clad man walking through an elderly Indian woman in a sari walking back and forth face immoveable is it my imagination working with the pain and gloom that lingers a family, four boys, one baby, a dog, tattoos only now do I start to believe in a place’s memories causing response in children, in adults sensitivity I am looking at a place of pain yet people live here who would resent my thoughts magnificent dark trees huge stone building memory-container of pain
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I leave and enter Blackthorn Bakery for a wander and lunch. A woman has started to play a lyre! I am eating squash, chive and celeriac soup and I am doing what I do. I am in a strange place, the heartbreak can happen at any second but I stay calm. I buy an Austrian loaf and a spelt loaf. I ask for a lump of yeast and John the baker gives it to me, at the same time he gives me a slice of sourdough ‘made with an immense amount of gentleness and love’. It’s for my meeting with Jane near Oxford tomorrow.
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Br e a d
T h o u g ht s
Sitting in the bakery I put together my thoughts about Germinal by Emile Zola. As a mother one of the duties is to provide food the makers of food have power the makers of bread have power the isolation of not having it I am reading it because of bread because of justice and bread because of starving and bread because of poverty and bread because of violence and bread because of injustice and bread because of power and bread
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Br e a d
a s
Pr ot e s t
... But such vengeance did not feed hungry mouths. Their stomachs cried out even louder. And the great lament could again be heard above the din: “We want bread! We want bread!” ... It was though an ulcer of resentment had been growing within them, a poisonous abcess, which had finally burst. Year after year of hunger had made them ravenous for a feast of massacre and destruction. ... Once more the mob cut a swathe across the open plain. It was now re-tracing its steps, along the long, straight highways and across fields that had grown bigger and bigger over the years. ... It was midday: the hunger consequent on six weeks of strike was gnawing at empty bellies, and appetites had been whetted by all this rushing about the countryside. The odd crust eaten that morning and the few chestnuts bought by La Mouquette were already a distant memory; stomachs were crying out to be fed, and the pain of it added to their fury against the traitors. ... “To the pits! Everybody out! We want bread!”
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... It was four o’clock: the sun was setting on the horizon, and the shadows cast by the horde and its wild gesticulations fell across frozen ground. ... Without breaking step the mob cast sullen glances through the iron railings and along the perimeter walls topped with broken bottles. Again the cry went up: “We want bread! We want bread!” ... It was five o’clock and dusk was already filling the room when a loud noise made M. Hennebeau jump, and he sat there dazed and motionless, his elbows on his papers. He thought that the wretched pair had returned. But the commotion grew louder, and a terrible shout went up just as he approached the window: “We want bread! We want bread!” ... And what they saw was a vision in red, a vision of the revolution that would come and sweep them all away, without fail, one murderous night before the century was out. Yes, one night the masses would slip their leash and seethe through the highways and byways just like this, unchecked; bourgeois blood would flow, their severed heads would be paraded for all to see, their coffers would be emptied, and their gold scattered far
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and wide. The women would howl and the men would have the jaws of wolves, gaping wide and ready to bite. Yes, it would be like just like this, the same tatters and rags, the same thunderous clatter of clogs, the same terrible rabble with its foul breath and dirt-stained skin, overrunning the place like a barbarian hord and sweeping the old order away. There would be conflagration and in every town and city not one stone would be left standing upon another; and when the great feasting and the orgies were done, and when the poor had emptied the rich man’s cellars and flayed his womenfolk alive, they would all go back to living in the wood like savages. There would be nothing left, not a penny of their fortunes would remain, not a single deed of property or bill of contract, until such day as a new order might come to take the place of the old. Yes, this was what was passing along the road at this very minute, like a force of nature, and they felt it hit them in the face like a violent blast of wind. A loud cry went up, drowning out ‘La Marseillaise’: “We want bread! We want bread!” ... And so out on the open plain that lay white with frost
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beneath the pale winter sun, the mob departed along the road, spilling out on both sides into the fields of beet. ... Once more the cry went up “We want bread! We want bread!� And bread they would find beyond this door. They were seized by a frenzy of hunger as if all of a sudden they could wait no longer, as though otherwise they would die right here on the road. ... The mob had caught sight of the baker up on the shed roof. Suddenly both hands lost their grip, and he rolled down the roof like a ball, bounced off the guttering and landed so awkwardly on the boundary wall that he rebounded on to the road beneath and split his skull on the corner of a milestone. Brains spurted out. He was dead. At first there was a stunned silence. ... All at once the jeering started up again ... They all stood round the still-warm corpse and shouted insults and laughed at it, calling the shattered skull a dirty gob and flinging all the accumulated resentment of their long starvation in the face of death itself ... ... And scratching at the ground with her fingers, she scooped up two handfuls of dirt and rammed them into his mouth.
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‘There! Eat that! ... Go on, stuff yourself, like you used to stuff us!’ The abuse intensified as the dead man lay there motionless on his back, staring with his big wide eyes at the vast sky where darkness was falling. This earth stuffed in his mouth was the bread he had refused to let them have. And it was the only sort of bread he would be eating from now on. Much good it had done him, starving the poor to death like that. “We want bread! We want bread!”
Excerp ts
from
Emile Zola’s Germinal 1885 Translation Roger Pearson
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“Let them eat cake” Supposedly spoken by “a great princess” upon learning that the peasants had no bread. Often attributed to Queen Marie Antoinette in the French Revolution.
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A ugus t
Fa i r
15
2012
m i l e
I was the only person to get off at the train station, and only Jane was standing there. We have always met at railway stations. This felt like the middle of nowhere, a good place to start a pilgrimage. We drove to a cafe. Jane talked me through her research, her family history, the suicides, I saw birth cerificates, (Edith Josephine Rainbird Swaddling) records, information about the two asylums, her father’s reluctance. She had been with him that morning. We drove to Fair Mile. This asylum is in the process of being turned into luxury apartments keeping appealing features. The sales lady was happy and helpful and took us to look at the show home. Made from a communal hall, next to gardens used for ‘airing’ all made marvelous with a cricket pavilion out back. Both the asylums we have looked at have cricket pavilions, are they signs of stability? Then we went out and got our stuff from the car, it was starting to rain as we set off down Ferry Road to find the Thames. The road spread out into a launching place for boats. There was a nature reserve along the banks two fields down from Fair Mile, we walked along a well trodden, overgrown and wet path, I wondered if it was from the new ‘inmates’ on their daily walks. We chose a place on the riverside for our
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contemporary ritual. The rain poured as Jane recounted our history of meetings, the other people involved in her enquiry and the journey to this unlikely place on the side of the river. She had brought water in a blue jug from ‘downstream’ in the Thames from near her home, and returning the water to where it had already run seemed an important act of ceremony, of memory. So much pain commemorated.The photographs show an orating Jane head to toe in rain gear, spots all over the camera. We swaped places and I brought out my offerings from the bakery next to the other asylum. I began to break the bread and Jane, with the camera, stepped backwards and fell into the river – a total surprise, the rain stopped immediately. A moment of shock and pain and being stuck, then it became something else. The water was not cold. We started to laugh and laugh at the ridiculous baptism. Monty Python meets Ingmar Bergman. It took a while for Jane to manoevre around and to slowly get out, her legs, shoes and feet covered in mud. We tried to continue but the humour of it all took over – we dropped the bread into the river in pieces, to watch it slowly move away and ducks appeared to eat it. I still had the yeast and with a last bit of ceremony I dug a deep hole next to the river and planted and covered it with earth.
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The idea of suffering, being buried, and then rising again as hope, completed our ritual. Laughing and wet we walked back up Ferry Lane to the car. We met a builder near the abandoned church, he wanted to get us in. We did not have a need anymore but we dutifully went into the Victorian church filled with builders supplies, and realised it was the builder who needed to say something about the former inmates and the fragility of mental health, ‘it could happen to any of us at any time’, and his folk memories of people in the river, on the train tracks and hanging from trees. We had buried ghosts.
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Fair
Mile
Asylum,
1870 - 2 0 0 3
Architect Charles Henry Howell commissioned to build an asylum in the tudor gothic style capable of housing 285 lunatic inmates, a chapel, superintendent’s house, farm and a gas works. 1877 extended another 500 beds, with three further expansions. ECT used from 1940s-1970s. Fair Mile’s final patients transferred to Prospect Park Hospital in 2003.
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An email arrived from the Centre for the History of the Emotions: Pain as Emotion; Emotion as Pain. Every time I see the word pain I now think of pain/bread ...
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Pa i n a s E m ot i o n ; Em o ti o n a s Pa i n
‘With the benefit of the last two centuries of scientific work and thought, can one define pain? The question was asked by the neuroscientist Edward R. Perl (Nature reviews: Neuroscience, 8, 2007). He concluded that ‘it seems reasonable to propose pain to be both a specific sensation and an emotion’. Emotions as pain: grief anxiety fear anger Emotions as bread: black bread monkey Bread sourdough bread bread stick
(a rye thought)
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59
Augus t
2012
Ma r i n a We meet again for three days, one a visit to Blackthorn Bakery. D ay
1
We talk first, her history, then return to the white room, white chair, white table. I had bought a white coat, one that is used by farmers when showing livestock at county shows, I had wanted a lab coat. We bought bread from the stall outside Brighton station, beautiful bread, shameful not to eat it. Intense investigation began, Marina within, me recording and writing. D ay
2
I meet Marina at Bexhill station and we drive to Maidstone. We walked around the old asylum then entered Blackthorn. Sun, flowers, soup, care. I bought some beetroot bread which we took on a walk, a bread like blood. D ay
3
Both too tired, bought more loaves and different objects. A tiny bottle of rose perfume awoke an encompassing memory for Marina, smell and memory become so interlinked she forgot the bread.
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how to capture dissection kill the beast with swords right to the heart squeeze the life out remove the weapons fastidiously open with knife, excavate expose the innards in opening halves remove internal organs part by part the outer skin is left bury your face in it wear the skin be the blind conqueror*
*See Loaves
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Sep tember
J oh n ,
5
2012
St o r y
of
a
B aker
I am a musician, it’s what I always wanted to be, all my energy went to music. The thing I first dreamed of was to be in a band, the life, make the music, work has always been there so I can do music. I had no teachers I am self-taught. For me music is all from the heart and emotion, aural emotion. I have four strands to the music. ‘The Singing Loins’. The group has been going 20 years or so and I joined three years ago. I had seen the band at a festival long before and really liked them. Chris, the lead singer came to work here, Blackthorn, after a time he asked me if I played the double bass, I had had one in a corner for 15 years but quickly began playing it. Another band I am in is The Outcast, folk/rock with violin, we tour the festivals, and I play for Rob Johnson a protest song writer, and then my own acoustic guitar and basouki. I’d stopped writing for 10 years but started again last May. I got a job in a printer’s because I read an interview by a singer in a band, and that’s what he did! So I worked in a print shop then transferred to graphics, I was sent to Ghent in Belgium at 18 to learn the ‘code’, that is how it worked then before computers! I always worked so I could do
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music. My partner and I set up our own firm, in our own house, but it wasn’t for me and so isolated. The work began to dry up, we broke up, I lost the house, the job, the dog... at a crossroads. I still had not worked out that I need to make things with my hands. Did not want another office job, wanted to be in the environment, my new partner suggested a farm shop was looking for people, I applied, I had always been a vegetarian and a cook, I think they were glad to have someone for lugging stuff! I worked on the farm and loved it, driving an vintage tractor around an orchard and raspberry fields, in the pouring rain with an Alsatian by my side. I felt right. The bread that was sold came from Blackthorns. I saw the sign for their vegetarian cafe and popped in. I was blown away. Andrew, the chef rang the farm shop one day looking for volunteers. I could be at this wonderful place and learn vegetarian cooking. I started one day a week. The baker’s job came up, nothing happens quickly here, I was concerned about doing the same thing every day, and if it would be boring, but I applied.
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I don’t find it boring, making bread one is always fighting, whether too wet, too dry, whether it is rising or not, always tactile, always feeling it, it brings me back to being a musician. I teach making bread without instructions, feel it, not by the clock, encourage the feeling of it not, like a recipe. I use things from the garden here to make the seasonal breads, beetroot, honey and pumpkin, courgette, I’d bake with them to see if I could do it. I ignore advice and seem to get away with it, if you feel how the bread reacts you can wing it a bit. I used to think of music and work as separate lives. As working here is not like work they have started to intertwine. To make music and bread a musician a baker a therapeutic baker a therapeutic baker musician! –
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John was interrupted by a phone call. It was an elderly lady he had not spoken to for a while. ‘She likes to sing to me.’ John has a tattoo on the inside of his wrist, a bird, designed by one of the co-workers. Baking and Blackthorn is ‘under my skin’. I have been to visit Blackthorn Bakery over the year, and every time I see and meet John the Baker. Gradually he has become the link between all the visits and I am glad I have found the baker for this gift.
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Sep t ember
12
2012
K ay Suddenly I got an unexpected email from Kay. Although she had told me to expect nothing she had come up with something. Research on recipes and taste and a bringing together of many stories into a recipe for me to make. – Clare: And I am so sorry about not giving you things in the way and when I had hoped, because apart from everything else I went all the way to Maidstone and had a great plan for a sequence or stories because I got really fluttery about Oakwood Hospital, imagining the patients arriving in carriages, the great house looming into view, all its windows, inside and outside; and the farm all around, where the patients could work (like they can now at the Blackthorn Bakery) and work is what I am most interested in (how old-fashioned am I?)
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Kay
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Meanwhile, for your delectation, here is a recipe – a ‘found poem’ I created from a medieval recipes website: T o u r t e l e tt e s
in
f ry tu r e
Take figus & grynde hem smal; do Þerin saffron & powder fort. Close hem in foyles & dowe, & frye hem in oyle. Clarifye hony & flame hem Þerwyt; ete hem hote or colde.
And a recipe for you.*
*See Loaves
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the journal is ending this could be a start a trail of breadcrumbs……….. bread as a path bread as an offering to the forest bread as a marker a trail of breadcrumbs……… not being able to cook, breaking ties with mothers, footsteps leading on a trail of breadcrumbs……….. to find a way back, a connection inside of wanting to remember something important bread and memory and here an end…………………
Set an empty cup in the storm, hold a slice of bread in the storm. Then put a little salt and a little pepper on your storm soaked bread, maybe some oregano and garlic. With deliberate SLOOOWNESS chew your storm bread and drink the storm captured in your cup. Slowly. So, slowly, please, with, a, slowness, that, is, foreign, to, you. (excerpt )
W i th
CAC o n r a d
th a n k s
Jane Trowell Marina Tsartsara Kay Syrad John Forrester Clare Whistler Š 2012 www.clarewhistler.co.uk
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