of Juliet, the Magazine volume 3, part 3

Table of Contents

Curtain Notes 1

Walking Down Washington 5

Letter of Recommendation 2

Light a Good Fire 8

I Am 4

Steakhouse: a zine within a 'zine 10

Just One Brick

An End

An Updated Gospel

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33

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The Hands: Suspiria’s Morbid Savior Complex

Restaurant people remember a strange holiday

How to Fry Smelt

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Katie's Corner: Give In 49

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Home of Somerville's Most Unique Dining Experience as well as Juliet Café Living Wages Great food.

Great jobs.

Great company.

of Juliet, the Magazine is: a little piece of something bigger, of Juliet Media not a food magazine, not really presented by Prospect Tower observation in association with Juliet + Company Joshua Lewin, director Katie Rosengren, managing editor Ariel Knoebel, art Sam Mangino, design + layout Contributors Ariel Knoebel Nora Connolly Meredith Leigh Merissa Jaye Justin Burke Joshua Lewin Samantha Mangino Maria Molteni Nathaniel Mondragon Nina Coomes Katie Rosengren

Contributors ARIEL KNOEBEL is a writer, food historian, and sometimes illustrator when she is not helping lead the front of house team at Juliet. In her time off, she is likely wandering in the woods with a hot beverage in hand and her dog Whiskey underfoot, or cooking and watching bad TV with friends. She was raised to never leave the house without a book, and is always open to recommendations. For more of her work, visit sipandspoonful.com.

NORA CONNOLLY is a server and enthusiastic lemonade-maker at Juliet. She is the author of Celeste Gets an Answer, a children’s book about a curious snail, as well as a prolific walker, talker, reader, and swimmer.

MEREDITH LEIGH Meredith Leigh is a writer, activist, and teacher pursuing stories and experiences that invigorate the land-to-people connection. She is a specialist in food and agriculture with expertise in ethical meat supply chains. She consults and writes from these foundations, with a focus on the lesser-explored and often ignored margins in the realms of science and food. Her books are The Ethical Meat Handbook: Mindful Meat Eating for the Modern Omnivore (3rd place, MFK Fisher Award, 2015) and Pure Charcuterie: The Craft and Poetry of Curing Meat and Home.

SAM MANGINO is a writer third-generation restaurant professional.

She takes her martinis with gin and olives, and her chips with extra dip. She has a complicated relationship with tomatoes. You will often find her on the internet. Other times she can be spotted around the Cambridge-Somerville area almost always listening to NPR. MARIA MOLTENI is a Boston-based visual and performing artist, educator and mystic. Their practice has grown from traditional, formalist roots, studying Painting, Printmaking and Dance at Boston University, to incorporate research, social engagement, channeling, and witchcraft. They pull from a well of historical contexts, reimagining traditional narratives for visionary revolution. Find more of their work through @strega_maria and www.mariamolteni.com NATHANIEL MONDRAGON is a Brooklyn-based performance artist who makes paintings, objects, and videos. He enjoys spending his free time watching Gothic horror films and television series. This past year, he binge-watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. You can view his artwork at nathanielmondragon.com.

MERISSA JAYE is often a server at Peregrine and sometimes a server at Juliet. Born and raised in Greater Boston, you can find her biking around town with a backpack full of peanut butter and overdue library books.

NINA COOMES is a Japanese and American writer, performer, producer, and artist, currently living in Chicago. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, EATER, and Catapult. You can read more of her work at www.ninalicoomes.com.

JUSTIN BURKE is a food writer, recipe developer, and award winning pastry chef and baker. His work includes kitchen culture and mental health, queer food, and American dessert history. Justin has contributed to many publications including Eater, Compound Butter, Food & Wine, Garden & Gun, and Bake from Scratch. Justin lives in Columbia, SC with his partner and son. For recipes, follow his Instagram @JustinBSamson

KATIE ROSENGREN is the Operations Director of Juliet + Company, a job which combines two of her favorite things, making spreadsheets and eating food. After a decade plus detour in New York, Katie and her husband, Cole, both native Mainers- are happy to be back in New England and call Somerville home with their son, Henry. She is a playground aficionado, lover of tv, and unapologetic feminist.

Curtain Notes Call of Juliet, the Magazine is three years old. This is the ninth time that I am typing this page, late, past deadline. This is the last time I will type it, but not the last time that it will exist. the Magazine which was originally known as simply of Juliet has evolved into a “little piece of something bigger,” and it will be given a second chance at permanence in someone else’s hands. of Juliet will continue, in mine, as that something bigger itself. What began as a sort of behind the scenes program of the happenings of one little restaurant is now a world of media possibilities — in print, in pixels, soundbites, text, and pictures; moving and still. The printed page is our origin, and represented our first expansion (of Juliet Media now includes three standalone books: our market season, Bean Zine, and Celeste Gets an Answer). The printed page is our safe place, and the place where any brave exploration begins. the Magazine, then, is an important piece of who we are and what we do, and it is now out of my hands. With the next issue, I am excited to turn over the opening of the curtain to Sam Mangino, who has been here from the beginning, and will steward us toward no end.

Before then, though, I have one last spell to spin. This issue completes the nine part trilogy (my rules still, for now, and my math) that has established the identity of the Magazine, and of Juliet as a whole — a natural evolution of looking at first squarely inward, then distinctly outward, only to finish with the intention of looking without direction or forced intention...only to find ourselves unexpectedly at exactly the same place we began: looking inward and sharing stories from the margins of our work.

In these pages you’ll find restaurant stories, from our places, and others, and you’ll find explorations of identity, magic, and all the strange and reverential details that make life alive, no matter which way you look at it.

Then, now, and later: this is everything I have to tell you,

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Letter of Recommendation: see things differently, that’s the way it should be from Ariel Knoebel As the screen fades to black and the credits begin to roll, I peek at the clock, half-panicked to see we’re in the deepest hours of midnight. I’m punchdrunk from a week of little sleep and something akin to wine-drunk after a glass and a half in this state, sitting in my PJs, slack-jawed and heavylidded as we enter our second hour of season 20 of Bob Ross’s Joy of Painting.

I didn’t grow up in a PBS household. I came across Bob first as an adult, initially charmed by his mild-mannered passion, his penchant for conversation with the canvas as he paints, his simple “shoot’ when he surprises himself with a particularly well placed bush or an accidentally charming shore. No, I didn’t trust it. No man is kindhearted enough to garner that much joy out of the right shade of yellow ochre against the painted moonlight.

Bob dissolves skepticism like turpentine. I mean, when not in the studio turning out gosh darn masterpieces of American landscape painting, he rescues and rehabilitates woodland creatures like a denim-clad Snow White with a salt-and-pepper beard. There he goes, telling a sweet little story of a baby raccoon while he shadows the snow-capped face of a distant mountain with just a few effortless strokes. His palette knife is loaded with precisely mixed paint tinted pink so the sunset he just slapped onto the canvas glints off the snow like a freaking fairytale. What the heck.

Despite all that, Bob Ross is selling a lie. It’s just not the one I thought. He wants you to think that anyone with a canvas coated in liquid white and a clean 2 inch brush can create a masterpiece. I think he actually thinks that. I’m here to tell you that it is simply untrue. Because he’s too good. He doesn’t understand that, when staring down the barrel of an empty canvas, he sees something other people cannot. I, myself, have not tried to paint along with Mr. Ross, but I promise you the dulcet tones of his voice would fall on deaf ears after a harried half hour spent trying to keep up with his casual mastery, and end in smudgy, muddy

disarray certainly not fit for prime time, even on PBS. You see, Ross exhibits the epitome of what we call, in training circles, “unconscious competence.” He has achieved such excellence in his craft he doesn’t believe it is excellence at all. He thinks it is natural, normal, even expected.

Unwittingly, he is lying to himself, and he is lying to you, sweet viewer.

What you don’t see, kind watcher, and simply cannot know when he is rattling off color names as he loads his brush with paint, is decades of muscle memory, deep understanding of color theory, tiny, perfect movements of well practiced hands, and an instinct for composition the common person simply cannot ever hope to match. He is able to start tapping orange across those evergreens, throwing caution to the wind, because he has a clear vision of the end result. You, my dear viewer, don’t have vision two feet in front of your astounded face. You’re simply watching this Alaskan winter scene emerge from the Dark Sienna shadows. It looks like magic — as it should — it is unwitting misdirection. As he loads up a brush with Prussian Blue to paint over the valley we just created, you’re thinking, “Bob, how are you going to get out of this one?” Meanwhile, in the background, tens of thousands hours of practice and a keen eye work seamlessly with a fan brush to bring forward into the most natural, beautiful, perfectly lit copse of evergreens you can imagine.

Your evergreens, my naive observer, will not be lit like that, no matter how closely you believe you've followed along.

He can’t, in twenty-eight minutes and a brief message from our sponsor, teach you endless visual imagination, or finesse with a sable brush, or the quality of his lines, but fear not. There is still plenty to be learned from our late, great, friend Bob. He preaches often the value of making big decisions — it’s scary to lay down that first black shadow of a tree trunk over the soft colors of a pastel sky, but your painting can’t move forward 2

without taking that risk. There comes a time to make a big decision, and stick to it.

Painting should make you happy, if it does nothing else. That comes through in his pieces, full of happy little trees and friendly little clouds.

Happy people create happy worlds around them.

You don’t have to limit yourself to the expected — start a cold winter scene with a wash of pink, throw some purple into that tree lined horizon, go nuts. Know why though, back your choices up with strong knowledge, so that you can play. As Bob would say, ‘well shoot; why not?”

Eventually, what actually won me over about Bob is his humility. He is painting with you, fully believing that if he just shows you how to paint that sunbeam with soft little x-strokes, you’ll be as good as him. I still don’t know if it’s a character or his actual demeanor, but he is unfailingly optimistic. Maybe he’s actually starting to sweat because he can see the clock running down just off camera, after he’s gotten carried away with the wood grain on a cabin and still has to fill in the whole meadow beside it.

Maybe he’s realized the thirds of composition are off, and the horizon line really needed to be three inches higher up to start. We’ll never know because he doesn’t show it.

He is unflappable in the face of a setback, because he knows he can paint his way out of anything. It’s just that in his naivete, he thinks you can too. Then again, who am I to say that you can’t, certainly not after thirty-something seasons of timed painting and over four hundred landscapes invented from nothing. Maybe we all could paint our way through any mistake after that. Then again, he would say that there’s no need to paint yourself out of a mistake, because there are no mistakes, only happy accidents. AK

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I Am, part 3 I am from the end of the rail.

Where an ancient man is waiting,

heavy leather briefcase held tight by his

cold, old, fingers, for a train that was before but cannot be again.

I am from bookshelves, where I won't read anymore because the dust settled there is more valuable than those old words.

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Walking Down Washington

by Nora Connolly In the spirit of These Wild Apples, this series turns snippets of conversation from our dining room into stories for everyone to overhear.

I switched o f the heat lamp a ter the silent couple le t. They had been the only diners on the patio all morning, and now the first lakes of the snowstorm that had kept the other brunchers at bay were falling. I took my empty golden tray and started back to the restaurant, giving the man with the brown dog who walked up and down the sidewalk all day warm eyes, since we’d already said hello thirteen times that morning. As he passed, I slipped on a patch of invisible ice and clattered to the sidewalk, failing to use my arms to break my fall in any way.

When I opened my eyes it was snowing harder and felt ten degrees colder, so I was worried that I’d been lying on the snowy sidewalk for hours, until I saw my golden tray rolling down the sidewalk towards the restaurant. Just a few seconds, then, I thought, inspecting myself for injuries. All I’d sustained was a run in my tights, which was not untypical of my look.

When I opened the door of the restaurant, I knew right away it was last year from the way the warmth of fi ty people packed into a smallish room fogged up my glasses. I wiped o f the condensation and saw that it was one of those Saturdays where there is no lull between brunch and dinner, and instead of setting up for the evening’s service, the kitchen keeps on warming up chicken soup and scrambling eggs all a ternoon.

“How can I hop in?” I asked A, the manager.

She told me that S was on his way out, and would fill me in on the status of his tables.

“31 has a check but hasn’t paid yet,” S said, pointing at eight women crowded around three small tables pushed together. There was no doubt that a complicated check-splitting situation was brewing there. “33 just got soup.” He pointed to two older men blowing vigorously at the steaming bowls in front of them. “And 35 is waiting for food,” he finished. The three women glanced expectantly towards the kitchen on cue. I headed to them first, to refill their water glasses.

“I went to Rite-Aid today! I’m bummed with them!” said the woman with the curly red hair, 5

embarking on the tale of a lint-roller bought for a grandson. It was clear she was the leader of the table.

My next stop was 33, to inquire a ter the deliciousness of their soup. They assured me that it was delicious, but their minds were clearly elsewhere.

One of their acquaintances had recently lost a leg, and as any waitress can tell you, no subject captivates a table like the loss of a limb (or a digit, to a slightly lesser extent.)

I went to 31, hoping that my physical presence would be a reminder of the unpaid check in the center of the table. I filled the waters slowly, trying to figure out the connection between the eight women. They were all di ferent ages, and didn’t have the rapport of friends. Coworkers maybe. I was rewarded for making a meal of the waters by the dropping of a bombshell: the woman in the turtleneck so high it covered her chin was pregnant. Congratulations mixed with “we weren’t sures” and “we thought you might nots,” but the waters were too full to discover more.

The unmistakable clank of a dropped spoon brought me back to 33.

“It changes your life. At a restaurant, say, you’re not a man drinking straight from your bowl of soup. You’re the one-legged man drinking straight from the bowl of soup.”

“I don't think—” “Even if they’re not thinkinging it, you’re thinking it.”

35’s omelettes were ready. The subject of soup had dri ted over from 33.

“And I didn’t know until I was fi ty-five years old that you were supposed to push the spoon away. Can you believe it?”

“You’re supposed to push the spoon away?”

At 31, eight cards were now heaped over the check. The topic of soup was now too heavy in the air to be resisted.

“The whole time I was pregnant, it was the only thing I craved, mushroom soup—” As the restaurant crescendoed into a symphony of soup, a yellow glint caught my eye through the window. The snow was now blowing diagonally into the matching grimaces of the man and his brown dog.

They passed, and I watched as my golden tray made one last lazy spiral under the now-lit streetlight, and luttered to the ground.

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Light a Good Fire

by Meredith Leigh As the weather cools and the leaves change in my corner of the world, I am pulled outside, pulled to the ridges of Cold Mountain and Mount Mitchell, to the Art Loeb Trail, and to Ferguson Knob near my home. I'm pulled into my own backyard, to the towering protection of the trees, to the fact of morning and night stacking upon each other, a reliable fortress of days lived. I'm pulled to the birds, to the curious details of their voices, and the sounds of their wings. The steadfast accompaniment to all of this outdoor time, as I've pieced together another piece of my 2020 puzzle, my online course, has been fire. A warm fire, the smell of wood smoke, and the crackle of small things burning has made an indelible mark across my days. As I build fire and tend fire, I've been musing on the building and tending of culture, which is, I feel, perhaps the greatest calling of our particular moment.

Our world is burning with thoughts and feelings these days, and our feeds and our inboxes are full of who is right and who is wrong. I find it increasingly difficult to complete a thought in the noise that has become 2020, and it seems as though the noise hasn't even crescendoed. Instead, I go out in the morning and light the flame. As I go about my day, I am moving coals — some into the stove, some into the smoker. All the while, an open fire burns in the fire pit, and my son is warm and playing on the large stone beside it. He is learning, when I ask him, to add another log; gently, and without fear. By the time dark comes, he is asking for marshmallows, and hugging into the margins of the fire's glow, as the air turns toward an evening hue, and chills.

All the while I think of my friends in the west, who are living in a fiery apocalypse.

Farmworkers are being displaced and poisoned by smoke. Communities and families on the frontlines of the food system, and people who are already the most vulnerable to disasters are falling victim to fire's force. I muse and muse, over this elemental energy that is simultaneously so damaging, yet primordial and constituent to life itself. I build the "Smoking Meats" course as this paradox consumes my thinking, and the fires consume more and more acreage in Oregon and California. I speak of "the fire here" and "the fire there" with my children, as a way of discussing respect, as a way of considering elements, conditions, context, courage.

There are endless symbols in the twisting flames. And always, I am comforted.

In a time of death, and fear, and fighting, fire remains a living force for good and for bad.

Just as are our other outputs. Words. Body language. Social media posts. Norms for group meetings. Methods of debate. Decisions made.

Discomforts lived. Stories told and translated. I tend one fire after another just as I tend the moment to moment volatility of this year.

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I begin to think of these things as one and the same. As in: Every morning, every moment, light a good fire.

As a pandemic brings out the best and the worst in society's built reality, as radical calls for social change reveal more fully the dichotomy of peoples' lived experience, and as political rhetoric reveals the utter tragedy that my country faces, I feel more than ever the call to create culture. To move culture. To build it and tend it and breathe into it a life force that is powerful and warm. I look around me, I listen to the calling cards of the culture I live in. They are not of good fire. They are of destructive fire.

A good fire, a healthy fire, is restorative to everyone. From its fruits of smoke and heat, I can create infinite offerings. A space to gather. A comforting meal. A lesson. A story. A renewing idea of stewardship and respect and good faith. From the consciousness that it requires in me, I am building other things. Quiet. Time to think. Attention toward what I believe is valuable in a time like this: intention toward what a better cultural situation might actually contain.

Smoking foods successfully throughout history has been a multi-purpose endeavor. It is a journey in preservation and flavor, but at its base requires knowledge and nurture, and a very good fire. My online, video based, courses don’t always include these more philosophical and spiritual angles, but know that they are behind all of the science, technique, and tips.

What you'll gain along with the instruction can't necessarily be recorded. As you make these good fires, we hope you’ll find the space to contemplate the metaphorical openings, and cultivate time to conjure appropriate fuel.

Fire requires of me an immediate congruence between attention and action. The culture I build within my circle of influence, with every post, every utterance, every action, requires the same. If I look around and see the rootlessness that has created such vitriol and harm, then what are the ways to provide for the culture that I’d like to see? Down to the barest minutiae of every day, I find ways to change what fuel I put into the cultural pile.

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Pages 13 through 30 were reprints of Juliet restaurant's Steakhouse and bbq zines curated and created by Merissa Jaye 27

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Just One Brick

by Justin Burke It would be a disservice to describe 2020 as a complete dumpster fire. Though nothing went as planned and it seemed that my life would continue to stay in a state of perpetual catastrophic change –– going on two years of lifealtering adjustments and evolutions that have knocked me down to the shallowest depths of rock bottom. The shitshow that was 2020 did offer some positive and much needed change. Despite the depression and anxiety, 2020 was the year I came out of seclusion, isolation, and darkness. The year I stepped out on my own and owned my identity and talent as a queer food writer, regained ownership of my personal finances, walked the world comfortably alone but welcomed a partner to journey with me, and took pride in what my previous life accomplished and lay to rest the trauma and abuse that came with it. I finally met my true self and the ambitions and life I wanted to lead. 2020 was the year I knocked down the oppressive walls, went against the grain, and let the guy I knew was behind them come out after nearly 37 years of hiding in darkness.

I grew up in a small desert town in California, smack dab on Route 66. The town is one of the 10 poorest towns in the state, and the site of Julia Roberts’ Academy Award winning performance for Erin Brockovich –- if you’ve seen the movie then you know the disaster of a town I grew up in. Growing up with a single teen mother and a birth father who would come and go as quickly as the dusty wind would change you start to find comfort in isolation. On top of that, when the adults in your community whisper among one another that there’s something different about Justin and fear he is too sensitive (thats a conservative’s way of saying gay), you become a target and are invited but never welcomed or accepted, merely pushed aside present but not acknowledged.

I started to question self worth, slowly building brick-by-brick a wall that resembled the person I thought people wanted around, protecting my true self. After a while, the person behind the wall became comfortable in the darkness and let the person outside take hold and steer the ship. I was a brick wall, hard on the outside but so soft and fragile on the inside. I was told repeatedly that I would never amount to anything, that I would repeat the same trajectory as my parents and live in my small desert town forever. At an early age I was told my dreams were impossible –– that I was impossible. Those demeaning words and actions towards me would shape my adult version as a rigid person, unwilling to let people in; who would make a knee jerk decision and stick to it, whether it was a good idea or not. I become impulsive and unhinged, fragile and weak. There were two versions of me competing with one another and the duality that I lived with would meet head on one day, crumbling my world.

This is an important context to understand why my life the last few years has been rough and why 2020 has been the year that reshaped everything. The summer of 2018 my life drastically changed. My marriage of seven years (together for 13) was crumbling as we prepared for the arrival of our first child. My career was changing from being just a pastry chef to being a writer and advocate when my personal piece for Eater was published about the homophobia I experienced in professional kitchens and a call for an improvement of inclusion in our industry to create a healthy and safe environment.

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I was juggling both professional and personal changes with a magnitude of emotions and responsibility that crippled my ability to function with a clear mind.

Navigating whether to divorce, preparing for a child as a first-time parent, maintaining excellence at a job, and upholding a commitment to help other queer voices find safety and selfworth in the food space, I finally broke –– I couldn’t take it anymore. I walked out of my dream job and all the hardwork and sacrifice I had made. I called off my marriage and we started a new relationship as co-parents. I lost job security and all my finances, and I abruptly ended friendships and didn’t tell my family what was going on. I cut ties with editors and publications leaving them confused to what was going on, and I went back on my commitment to helping queer voices. I ran away, locking myself up in seclusion and darkness, becoming exactly what I heard growing up I would become, another Burke –– a poor single parent with another divorce in the books who can’t stick to one job.

Between 2018 and 2019 I was scrambling to make sense of my reality. What the hell just happened?

Why did I leave a career I worked so hard to get? Why did I let my marriage fail and how did I not see the warning signs early on? Why wasn’t I more involved with our finances? Why did I allow my employers to bully me, my peers, and my staff? I had questions, but the biggest one was why did I let my fears and the giant brick wall win? I was a mess. I had zero sleep, was raising a child, and was trying to fill the void of love I once had with really lousy people, expecting them to make me feel better. My career was holding on by a thread and I was doing anything and everything to transition it from being a chef to a food writer. My heart was full of resentment and I was callous. I didn’t like me, so why did I expect others to like me? All I had was my son and the option to either continue down this terrible dark path or get myself together and make sense of my life.

2020 exposed our truth and forced us to decide –– are you a good human who respects human kind and lives fairly, or, are you a bad human that is selfish and corrupt?

2020 rolled in with nothing but promises. I repaired relationships with editors. I started writing regularly for a local publication and after a few successful recipes nationally had negotiated a few contracts to regularly contribute to three publications. I finally found the time to start pitching my first cookbook to publishers with an agent, and I was in negotiation for a new baking show as a regular judge. I met a lovely human and was happily dating someone, nurturing an honest relationship. I was still grappling with what had just happened in my life, but I was seeking help and relying, slowly, on others to come alongside me. What I didn’t realize I was doing was simply repairing a few of the fallen bricks, I didn’t keep knocking down the wall.

Instead I returned to my comfort zone, playing it safe. I was giving the food space the same persona despite knowing that wasn’t me. I was letting people direct my food, my words, and my representation to be approachable and welcoming for all readers. I was not letting them see the whole me –– the progressive humanist queer chef and parent that I desired people to know. I was staying behind my wall. The only brick I didn’t repair at the time was a block that kept me from being true in a relationship, that part of me –– the real me –– was exposed and I loved him! The rest was still hiding.

Then the real promise of 2020 showed up and hot damn did it turn shit up. Everything got turned upside down. Mainstream food media was being dismantled, something I had longed to see happen. The truth that our country is rooted in white supremacy was exposed and advocates chipped away at everything white supremacy touched. The COVID-19 pandemic came barreling in, despite warnings, and stripped everything that we knew away from us and altered our way of living. 2020 knocked us all down, ripped us out of our comfort zones, exposed the harmful, toxic people in our lives, and made room for the voiceless to be heard. It was a wake up call to everyone that how we’ve been living has been detrimental to human kind and that we

needed to wake the fuck up. We become divided as a nation, led by a shallow and weak president fueling the fire for hate and violence between communities, businesses, and families.

2020 exposed our truth and forced us to decide –– are you a good human who respects human kind and lives fairly, or, are you a bad human that is selfish and corrupt?

It wasn’t until I contracted COVID-19 that I began to respect myself and the life I wanted to live. I had a severe case and my life was almost taken away from me. My brick wall was completely knocked down and I couldn’t, I wouldn’t, repair it. I was set free and I would be damned if I would continue living life behind false fabrications of me to appease and make others comfortable.

I turned down opportunities with publications and walked away from the tv show. I benched my cookbook because if I couldn’t find a publisher that would grant me permission to write freely about myself as a queer chef and parent, then I was not interested in making them money. I once again found myself running away from everything I worked for, not in fear or depression but out of respect and pride for myself and my fellow humans.

I no longer had interest in writing about food or developing recipes without acknowledging and representing my community truthfully –– I did not wish to continue to live behind a heteronormative brick wall. I no longer cared to make people comfortable to maintain their status quo, and I did not wish to take up space where my BIPOC peers should rightfully be. I do not, and will not, sacrifice others to get ahead. I will not leave anyone behind and I will not stop looking to bring others up with me. I occupy the food space, it is my job to contribute my food to the world. It is not my job and is irreisponsible of me to contribute others’ food with my words or misrepresent my food and life as heteronormative. If I can’t be authentic, then the opportunity is not a right fit. If my words prevent 30

opportunity for someone else, then my work is not valuable. If I cannot share the space with others then I shouldn’t be writing in the first place.

I started to heal, drawing my true self out from behind decades of hurt, trauma, and abuse. I was able to stop worshiping false idols, to meet real authentic people, to uphold a commitment to be an advocate for my queer community, and to be an honest, loving parent to my son and family.

What has happened in 2020 is just the start, we will continue to evolve and change for the betterment of humanity and the good humans will continue to put constant pressure on the world. Unraveling the false reality that I created for myself and acknowledging that I want something completely different despite what the gatekeepers in this world want me to think has been a long almost 37 years. I do not want another brick wall around me. It was exhausting living in a world of monotone expression and hiding behind a wall of seclusion. It felt impossible to knock the whole thing down and to have the confidence to be authentically me.

But, the wall is gone and I like who I am.

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THREE WITCHES REVIEWS OF SLEEP NO MORE THE CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRRINA SUSPIRIA (2018)

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An End Joshua Lewin visits Sleep No More All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts...

-William Shakespeare My first visit to The McKittrick Hotel was a surprise, in every way. The ticketing process was not something I was aware of, as it was a gift — no clues to be gained from policies or confirmations. I guess I had been told to wear comfortable shoes. Maybe we’d be running a race?

Immersive theatre fans will recognize the Chelsea, NYC location of the McKittrick Hotel of course as the setting of Punchdrunk's Sleep No More.

Entering the world of Sleep No More you are confronted with assertively competing realities — at first tossed anachronistically and convincingly into the sea of pre-war elegance, then being asked to step into absolute darkness as you are forced to make your way through a winding corridor in nearly complete sensory deprivation.

My second visit to The McKittrick Hotel ought to have felt more familiar. "Have you been here before?" we were asked while lined up along the sidewalk before it was time to check in - velvet ropes neatly containing confused patrons, dressed up just as neatly - both circumstances contrasting with block after block of pale city bricks...

What follows is reflection on my second viewing of Sleep No More nearly five years after the first show. I knew that I would momentarily be asked to don a Venetian mask. I knew that I would be gently separated from the rest of my party, I knew that allowing myself to be guided by the raised arms and silently pointed fingers within the show was mostly optional, but meant to enhance the experience, to offer more to the willingly curious.

We were invited into the "hotel." Our coats and bags were checked. The bell staff gave us our

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"room key" - a curious playing card with a hole punched through it. Smiles and the open arms of hospitality erased what I knew was coming next. A bell rang. The big greetings to the guests arriving behind me were apparent in one breath, but disappeared with the next as we entered the expected corridor.

We made our way. Track lights encouraged us for a few steps, then faded away as we entered the black.

Too quickly and it may have been just jarring enough to set us on high alert for the rest of the night. But slowly, casually, then completely, we yielded equally to trust and disbelief. A few strangers, unseen and unheard, but felt - turned themselves around backward and bumped their way in the wrong direction. Unqualified. Still unmasked, but all of us anonymous in our pursuit of the way.

At that moment, one of our party turned to me and said I don’t think we are going the right way any more. Immediately the corridor opened up in front of us and, truly like a mirage, a red hued velvet accented smoke filled bar room appeared before us filled with bodies in quiet conversation. Imagine, a new incongruity — 100 bar patrons, all drinks in hand, and barely an audible voice. The illusion, fully activated, we were greeted at the Manderlay Bar and invited to settle in with a drink while accommodations were finalized for our “stay” at The McKittrick Hotel.

Sleep No More is a paragon of immersive design. Masks and anonymity are required. One of the most successful magic tricks of the production: creating silence. Of course there are a few holdouts, so uncomfortable that they must laugh at every bump in the night as if to prove themselves invincible and unafraid. Plus a handful are so drastically addicted to their phones that they can’t help but pull them out… and do what? Steal secrets from behind the curtain… no…send texts to others at the show too!

There are always a few outliers — that even masked, literally, from view — can’t manage to allow themselves to sink into the arms of the experience.

Like anywhere they are encountered, they are best simply ignored here. This needn’t be done in judgment — they just aren’t ready. They’ll make their way, in time, or they won’t.

My first visit to The McKittrick planted the seeds that grew into a piece of our first restaurant: Experiential by design, life as show, action designed and controlled side by side with the audience. On this second visit, again, I knew something about what to expect. Still, the power of the design is that the magic was not broken. I found new ways to experience the spell cast by this world.

Roaming aloof, I watched as the overeager attempt by enthusiastic fans to interact was consistently rebuffed — “achieving” personal interaction with the show is a sort of holy grail moment for repeat visitors. When successful, their interaction played out as a sort of surface victory, like the loud customer who gets attention, but not terribly sincerely while lightly annoying those around them.

I tucked close to the action, bold but leaving space. Curious but resigned. Acting I suppose, exactly as myself, but finally fully comfortable in that self behind my mask, and fully aware of my darkened surroundings inside of my own silence.

The stage managers, like in any traditional theater, were visible, but intentionally unseen. Unlike in the traditional theatrical experience, they had something overt to offer to the audience, not just the players. Of course, the audience in this case, were the players, too. Instead of chasing the most exciting characters' every move, I started to mirror the behavior of these hidden figures.

I saw a broader picture of the story, by remaining engaged as it evolved around me, but by never racing to be first in line for the main action. I experienced new sounds, and took in the beautiful magic of actors shuffling into place, remaining in character, unwitnessed by those following more closely; and therefore less completely.

In high school, I loved the theatre. But I was attracted to it long before I loved it. I was a child actor. Not as notable as some, but famous among my family and the three to seven neighbors who were also in the audience of every single one of my dozen or so community theatre roles. I played everything from an eagle (The Hobbit) to a meta role -- ahead of my time -- as a Kabuki actor, on the stage, on the stage (Momotaro the Peach Boy) to Mabrubrek (Aladdin, Disney renamed him Jafar), to my favorite role as the Mad Hatter...which I am still playing a little bit today (at least on my favorite days). My step mother knitted many scarves and socks while attending my auditions (and I have to assume, performances).

That was all long before I fell in love with being involved with theatre though. I was addicted to its magic, and I suffered through the bright lights and vocal exercises to be a part of it, begrudgingly.

To play directly on the stage was the only entry point I was aware of into this world I needed to be a part of. Until I found out about "production."

In high school I found an elective class that allowed me to light, mic, schedule, and eventually fully design, produce, and even direct everything from talent shows, to D.A.R.E assemblies, to battles of the bands, to three times yearly full length theatrical presentations. Once they even tasked me with lighting and wiring for sound...the Mayor! And that is when I fell in love with a magic I was already fully committed to and in need of.

The point is, I knew something of the secret language of the stage manager. I love that language.

And all at once I realized that within The McKittrick Hotel I was invited not just to another performance, but had fallen into something I had wanted my entire life, and had been trying to design for others. An interaction that was not transactional, and not purely for viewing. An opportunity to design your own experience within the vision of someone else.

As a player on this stage I was eventually rewarded: An empty chair left behind after a murder, practically begged to be occupied. Why didn't an actor remove it, like they had the upended table that used to sit next to it, and the suitcase that had been tossed aside?

Otherwise amid all of this exacting and specific design, why was that chair even there? So I sat, and was offered the passing of a note. A note that I couldn’t read in the dark but that spoke to me so clearly. Yes, you can be a part of this. Thank you for making me a part of this.

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And then a chase; Lady Macbeth on the precipice of madness leaned over, closer to me, just barely, taking my upper arm and whispered: “don’t help me with these trees.”

All at once this actor/dancer kept me immersed in Macbeth — I was warned not to follow their path, the future is outside of your control, she highlighted exactly what I needed to hear as if she knew my exact path through the mass of her life and stage.

She and her fellow actors then began to roll the trees all around the room. Transforming a forest into a banquet hall. She ran by, tapped my shoulder, and I turned. She was gone before I turned fully, but a door opened just as I made it all the way around. An actor looked at me directly, barely leaving space, but distinctly not standing directly in the doorway. An invitation?

I stepped inside a room no one else had seen. I was told no one could see me break the rules here, and if I wasn't willing to, I'd have to leave and return to my place among the masses.

There was only one rule I was aware of: I removed my mask. The show went on, but this time only for me.

I was thankful to Lady Macbeth.

Wherever she ran off to. I missed her scene at the banquet table. In return, I received something no one else can know.

Her unsaid lesson sticks with me: Be bold. Be ready. Seek opportunity when it is clear. But also, remember to just wait and watch. Ultimately she was providing me with necessary stage direction as she spun into madness and began resetting the stage, cleaning it of the trees on wheels all around us, acknowledging my part in the show: “You there: yes, you with the note from my husband…Yea, you are one of us, welcome, but now just stand and watch." Absolving me of responsibility [read: forbidding me from interfering], while acknowledging my importance in their story’s evolution.

To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to -Hamlet

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An Updated Gospel

Sam Mangino reviews Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

In the final season of Mad Men, there’s a scene of Sally Draper (played by Kiernan Shipka) sitting passenger’s side to her mother, Betty. With Sally’s prim blonde bob and school girl clothes, she rolls the window down and bums a cigarette o f of her own mother. It’s a vision of pure angst that to loyal viewers of the show is a near shock to the system. Just 7 seasons prior, we met Sally as a wee adolescent crying over the Kennedy assasination – then a symbol of American innocence.

The cohort of Gen Z teens that I run in, all of us primarily existing on the internet, lock to this image of Shipka. It’s reposted in various .gif, .jpeg, and .png formats.

In this scene Shipka is the saint of teenage girls capturing what was true in the 1960’s and still so in 2021. Teenage girls are complicated, and boy do they want you to know it.

So it seems all the more fitting that Shipka holds the reins on Net lix’s series The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, a far darker take than we’ve ever been o fered before on Sabrina, that teenage witch. This series, which began airing in 2018, is barely reminiscent of the most recent Sabrina the Teenage Witch that aired on ABC and then WB between 1996 to 2003 and starred Melissa Joan Hart.

The original series was a 30-minute sitcom, full of heart, that was a dream for any awkward teen who felt like they had a secret self they hid away from the world. At the core of CAOS is a similar principle except the bass is bumped up and the volume is cranked full blast. The teenage girls of this world are angry, brilliant, courageous, lustful, and ready for a fight. They’ve told their friends online, but now they want the world to know.

When we meet our updated Sabrina Spellman, you’ll recognize the set up. She lives with her two quirky aunts in Greendale with her sidekick Salem (he doesn’t talk in this version). The similarities end there. The production design has escaped the bright and constrictive set of being filmed in front of a live studio audience. Now Spellman lives in a large, part gothic mansion part mortuary, with a front yard that doubles as a graveyard where her aunts Hilda and Zelda bury each other a ter killing each other (you can laugh – it’s a game!) It’s far more polished with special e fects in line with any mid budget horror movie.

And tonally, it’s sure no sitcom. It sets itself apart from that genre in the first 10 minutes of the series as you see Sabrina’s favorite teacher brutally body snatched by a demon. It manages to sweeten itself with a cast of characters featuring her first love, Harvey Kinkle, and two best friends, Roz and Susie, the latter of whom transitions to Theo.

The path we see Sabrina begins on the dawn of her 16th birthday. As a half witch born to a witch father and mortal mother, Sabrina is told upon this birthday she must choose between the magic or mortal realm. The show is head over heels to ask the question of can a teenage girl have it all? It answers it quickly as we see Sabrina straddle the two worlds honing her magical abilities and battling a variety of demons with blood painted across her face. But those adventures don’t slow down the very realities of teenage life: first love, bullies, sex, coming out, and anything else you would dread talking to your parents about.

The show itself is a campy fantasy drama filled with sequences of terrifying evil spirits interwoven with magical physical comedy, and the occasional pop culture joke to remind you that these are teens who are in touch. At this intersection of genre it exceeds in capturing the precise interest of a modern day internet teen born in the last of the 90’s or early 2000’s. It preaches feminist values.

The fashion is chic with Sabrina sporting turtlenecks tucked into short a-line skirts with tights and loafers; an outfit that reads far more Sally Draper than 2020 teen.

There’s pent up sexual angst and lust plus exploration of gender and sexuality. It’s just the sort of thing you talk about on your secret blog, before brie ly setting it aside to join the dinner table.

In many ways the show is so in tune that it feels like a reaction to the internet lives of so many members of Gen Z who are begging to scream their melodramatic truths from the woods of Greendale. For another generation, it’s a shocking (but hopefully welcome) dark and angry update to the Sabrina they knew well.

This Sabrina is closer to a Bu fy the Vampire Slayer than Melissa Joan Hart. Ultimately the show, which just concluded its fourth and final season, is deeply satisfying with entertainment driven by action, dramatic teen romance, a good laugh, and nonetheless sincere heart as family and friendship wholesomely prevails above any evil that comes their way.

The show is trying to be a lot, and while maybe imperfectly, it achieves almost everything it is trying to be.

It feels as though the creators have taken to heart the attitude of a teenage girl. It’s punchy, somewhat unpredictable, doesn’t care what you think, while simultaneously truly hopes you like it. In this fan’s opinion, it is successfully spreading the gospel of the teenage girl – if you just set them free from the constraints of the world.

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The Hands: Suspiria’s Morbid Savior Complex Maria Molteni and Nathaniel Mondragon

Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 Suspiria premiered in theatres two years ago. Dozens of film reviews have been published since then. It may seem there is nothing left to say, but few have analyzed its intersections of dance, art history, politics, or witchcraft. We recommend checking out Hubert Vigilla’s Flixist review to bring you closer to our interests. We explore those he did not touch upon, but left us pondering.

Dario Argento’s original film was released in 1977. Set at a classical ballet academy in Freiburg, Germany, the film is an unexpectedly indulgent fairytale-100 minutes of psychedelic escapism that is otherwise a rather ordinary horror film in which the pure, concerned “final girl” defeats a coven of murderous witches. The boundaries between “good and evil” are straightforward, adhering to centuries of patriarchal Christian standards for courageous women. It is intriguing that Guadagnino and screenwriter David Kajganich also chose to set their remake in 1977, this time in Berlin, yet explore an alternate depiction of late-70s Germany. Guadagnino’s film, which employs nuanced post-war political shifts of the German Autumn as background noise, is seeped in references to Jungian analytical psychology throughout its dream sequences, dialogue, and notebooks. They seemingly offer tools for decoding the many layers of meaning and motivation.

Whereas Argento’s original film uses the classical ballet academy as a backdrop for the horror, Guadagnino’s Suspiria is poised in the feminist visual art and dance revolutions of the 1960s-80s.

It is worth noting that this film features almost exclusively women and their occult power while it was written, filmed, choreographed and composed by men. However, there is a clear decision to root it in a feminist avant garde context that has often been overlooked, even by art historians tasked with studying it.

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It is refreshing to see content cradled in the ghostly arms and collective consciousness of choreographers like Martha Graham, Katherine Dunham, Mary Wigman, Pina Bausch, Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker (mothers of modern and contemporary dance), as well as Magdalena Abakanowicz, Lenore Tawney, Anni Albers, Otti Berger, Eva Hesse, Claire Zeisler (mothers of modern and fiber art). Many young art students may relate to Susie’s erotic expression of respect for her mentor-as-mother in the figure of Madame Blanc, the great choreographer and dancer.

Dancers rehearse to fill the shoes of their goddesslike mentors as they study an artist’s evolution through early, mid, and late careers.

This progression illustrates the archetypal paradigm of the Triple Goddess, a woman’s life cycle from Maiden, to Mother, to Crone. As these matriarchs age and can no longer perform the physical spellwork that is dance, the baton boomerangs back to younger generations, ensuring the work’s immortality. In one scene, Madame Blanc explains to Susie, “When you dance the dance of another, you make yourself in the image of its creator. You empty yourself, so that her work can live within you.” One could even transpose the designations of Suspiria’s mythical Mothers--of Tears (Lacarymarum), Darkness (Tenebrarum) or Sighs (Suspiriorum)--onto Bausch, Wigman, or de Keersmaeker respectively.

While women filmmakers did not control the film’s action and dialogue, the visions of several designers and set decorators influence the texture of the film. Production designer Inbal Weinberg states she was inspired by modern dance as well as fiber/ textile-based artists such as Chiharu Shiota. Her subterranean maze of webbing that restrains captive dancers in the basement of the company also recalls Faith Wilding’s Crocheted Environment (Womb Room) (1972). The roped garments for the public dance spell entitled Volk were created by costume designer Giulia Piersantia. While also evoking bondage and bright red bloodshed, they emulate the thickly knotted forms of Francoise Grossen’s early ‘70s sculpture. Even the references to hair and piss, collected from students and woven into dresses for the film’s climactic ritual, invoke a world of natural, raw material, and traditional craft techniques (when objects are created for utilitarian or ritualized use but arguably not for critical viewing). In the art world, fiber craft had been an unwelcome taboo, viewed

as less sophisticated in its association with unacademic aesthetics and women’s labor, until the 1960s when it forged a place for itself in contemporary fine art. An early shot of a cross stitch from Susie’s Mennonite childhood home reads: “A Mother is a woman who can take the place of all others, but whose place no one else can take.” This sample of what is often called “folk art” portrays the humble, even obedient, quality of many objects crafted for domestic use and decor, now often viewed as trite. Many contemporary artists have appropriated these techniques, imagery, and associations to reclaim feminist concepts.

The Helena Markos Dance Company is more often referred to as “the company.” Its founder, reelected to lead the coven from her deathbed early in the plot, insists on being called “Mother Markos” to further validate her claim to be the mythic Mother Suspiriorum. She screams that there should be “death to any other mother” as she seeks immortality through rebirth in a younger body. As Professor Milius in Argento’s original film explains, “A woman becomes queen if her magic is a hundred times more powerful than the rest of the coven, which is like a serpent. Its strength rests with its leader, that is with its head. A coven deprived of its leader is like a headless cobra… harmless.” The company itself acts as an organizing body with Markos at its head.

When Blanc asks Susie which part of this body she’d like to be “The heart? The brain? The sex?”, Susie replies decisively, “The hands,” which have their own connotations within intersections of magic, visual art + craft, dance, and dreamwork. The hands of Christ were laid upon the sick to heal until he was pierced with the stigmata. Today healers and mediums practice varying forms of “laying of the hands.” Hands may also imply agency or activation: the wand of power where energy is released from or the landing pad where it is received. For artists, the hands are creative tools, allowing them to make, build, form, carve, sculpt, sew, and weave. The mythological spinners of fate are fiber artists, whose hands determine the length of a life. The shape and movement of hands are used for expression and signaling (throat chakra communication), in the Bharatnatyam dance tradition for example. In hopes of lucid dreaming, a sleeper may gaze upon their hands before bed, a dreamtime focal point that anchors one’s agency to control their own narrative.

Susie’s choice is enlightening-- she, like Blanc, does not vie for the company’s head. Instead, as its hands, she is able to take hold of the body and steer its mission.

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Feminism is the only overt political ideology that the company seems to identify with (Madame Tanner tells Susie upon her arrival that they believe in a woman’s financial independence. They also refer to Madame Blanc’s resistance to the expectation that women close their minds and open their uteruses after WWII). While it is unclear whether the company invests in other political arenas, the film depicts complex ethical and communal dynamics that we see in most resistance movements. There is often a leader who starts out with care for the whole, but gradually prioritizes their own desires. They may convince the group (or political body) to sacrifice and exploit individuals for a proposed greater organized power structure. In Suspiria, several instructor witches appear to have loyalty to Helena Markos based on a cult of personality rather than the common interest.

Within the company, there appears to be an internal division with Markos on one side and Blanc on the other, though Blanc is not overtly competing for leadership. Throughout the film, Blanc theorizes about what dance is and what it is not, often with reverence to the sacred ideals of fine art (“Two things dance can never be again: beautiful and cheerful.

Today, we need to break the nose of every beautiful thing”). She believes in the power of art and dance as magic, while Helena Markos insists that the ritual meant to ensure her immortality is “not art!” Blanc is more concerned about the spells being “right” within a larger code of natural balance.

If not ethically altruistic, she feels there is a correct and noble way to do magic, relying on her bodily intuition to let her know when “something is not right here.” She does not prevent the atrocious harm that comes to her dancers, but she is more emotionally invested. She is uncomfortable with how the spells are becoming out of hand and reckless as their failed spellwork leads to the mutilation of three prized students: Patricia, Olga, and Sara. Despite the political divisions within the coven, it seems the most basic goal of their combined magic is to keep the company alive-despite the passage of time, aging of leaders, and shifting political dangers of the outside world. If the school can survive, then so will the high art being made by a body of women; a superorganism that transcends time, gravity, and space.

The origins of the company are never made clear beyond Blanc’s reference to their struggle 40 years prior, but it tends to feel like an old tree that’s grown

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over hundreds of years. A political art history nerd cannot help but imagine the Helena Markos Dance Company as a contemporary of the Bauhaus, since they both struggled through the political climate leading up to WWII. The German Bauhaus school opened in 1919 when founder Walter Gropius was enamored by utopian visioning. This included the progressive decision to admit women to the school and eagerness to hire core instructors who openly incorporated occult and mystical studies. Not least were Johannes Itten, who practiced a mystical composite religion called Mazdaznan (later suspected of racist sentiments), and Gertrude Grunow who used sound and movement to “tune” students to the frequencies of their own bodies to prepare them for artmaking.

Haunted Bauhaus, a recent book by Elizabeth Otto, brings many of these shrouded histories into the light. Before the school was shut down by the Nazis in 1933, the culture had undergone a shift, largely under the influence of a hardening, mechanical “brutalist” outlook and change of heart about gender inclusion when Gropius saw how many women were actually willing to join the school (furthermore, they were restricted to the weaving workshop and rarely allowed to study other mediums). Toward the end of its third relocation, finally to Berlin, there was much political tension among Bauhausler. Many organized with the Communist party while others who were more right wing sought to remove Jewish or left-leaning instructors. The fate of classmates upon the school’s closure tragically included seeking refuge in other countries, conforming to work for the Nazi party, and even being captured and sent to concentrations camps. The great weaver Otti Berger was lost this way.

In some ways the Helena Markos Dance Company feels like a futuristic mirror of a haunting Bauhaus, which did have dance and set design departments under Oscar Schlemmer. Though we have watched many new movements grow out of the Bauhaus diaspora, it would be fascinating to see how the company might have innovated into the 1970s, given the chance. Despite unknown origins of the Markos Company, it survives at least into the Cold War era, reportedly from “going underground”. But any hope of survival for the Bauhaus through the terrors of WWII would seemingly be by magic or surrender to fascism.

After several viewings of Suspiria, we are still left with suspicious wonderings: Were these witches aligned with the Reich? Dr. Klemperer, who is visited by a spiraling Patricia in the opening scene, grows to

believe the students are in real danger and reports to the police station. As he recounts Patricia’s experience, police ask him whether he really believes in witchcraft. The doctor, who has racked up his own trauma over the disappearance of his wife by Nazis, replies: “No I don’t believe in witches but people can organize themselves to perpetrate crimes and call it magic.” He suggests parallels between The Reich and the company, including the use of signs and ritual in both movements.

If we knew that the company’s coven was aligned as he suggests, it would be easy to close the case on their attachment to evil. Film and literature often want to draw the line between “dark and light” magic, good witches and bad. Typically the latter is assumed, but in recent times the witch has been reclaimed by feminist movements and presented with more complexity. In Guadagnino’s Suspiria, there are clearly political allegiances from within the company’s ranks, but it is difficult to tell if they align with larger political conflicts throughout Germany’s history.

Which brings us to Volk. This feels like the sharpest clue in the film, but most overlooked in reviews, probably because it is so uncomfortably complicated. Volk is the title of the piece that leads Susie to her destiny. Obsessed with her experience in New York as a witness to Madame Blanc’s star performance, she set her heart on escaping Christian life in Ohio for Berlin. It is the same piece that she trains to lead in a public spell at the company, epically “performed for the last time” upon the floor diagram from Patricia’s notebooks. The spell becomes an apparent failure when Susie goes “off book” to follow her own growing intuitive direction.

But as viewers, we never seem to gather conceptual context for “Volk” or what its failed spell was meant to accomplish exactly.

Until watching Suspiria, we had only encountered the racist term Volkisch within magic circles that had rightfully been a target of contemporary occultist call-out. It appears as though the shorter term “Volk” leaves its own trail of elusive shape shifting connotations. Roughly it seems the roots point to a few different ways of saying “people”, denoting a “crowd” of people, an “army” of people or an “ethnic group or nation”, a people.

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It was more likely used to talk of “a large crowd” as far back as the Middle Ages, but by the 18th Century it meant “mass of the population”. After 1800 it seemed to carry the growing identity of German nationalism as well as a cultural opposition to modernity, but apparently Hitler thought the word was too vague and its meanings too varied to be useful for the exclusive and aggressive racist identity of the Third Reich. Still, it was apparently appropriated into nationalistic slogans by the party and has continued to be used by right wing movements up to the present. For a brief period after the wars, as we might recognize from Volkswagen branding, it simply implied “common people.”

It does appear that the term has fallen into a tug of war between different German identities throughout history, with the ever re-emerging right wing towing it slightly over their line. One wonders what Kajganich aimed to invoke with this weighty (even risky?) title. He must intend for its tension to characterize the coven’s mysterious operations.

However, since the dialogue in Suspiria occurs in three languages- French, German and English- it’s tempting to reframe our questions by Volk’s English cognate: “Folk.” Folk also carries layers of connotations. The analogous concepts of “common people” or “a group, class or nation of people” are perhaps the most dry iterations. It can also point to ancestry or cultural lineage that is passed down in order to be preserved. In the mid 19th Century, the term “Folklore” brought a new appreciation to the term as a container for the uncorrupted mythologies of different cultures. Folklore can include different forms of ritual magic that today’s dominant cultures often study with fascination, but write off as superstitious or outdated. To return to an earlier idea, the mainstream fine art world considered folk customs and traditional craft techniques to be less conceptually rigorous, relevant or valid until they were incorporated by the scene’s witchy women.

Their work was just beginning to be taken seriously.

Madam Blanc, who straddles a line between the shining stage and underground shadows, wants her dance students to be aware of the struggles that the company faced, trying to preserve its legacy and operation through repeated cycles of political violence. She looks down on what is beautiful and cheerful, characteristics we might associate with a less pretentious sentiment in folk art. Yet you get the sense that there is an old world craft that vies for

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survival through regenerative high art expression.

Blanc believed Patricia was too invested in politics to be a vessel or channel for spellwork. She appears as uninvested in resuscitating a zombie-esque crone via the body of a maiden if there is no inspired future vision, no radical cycle of rebirth. She knows this in her own body, believing that art and magic are one, noble and capable of transcending shifting government within and outside of the coven. There is preservation and innovation expressed in the same sigh. Is Blanc trying to establish a new cultural identity, “a people” within the company? Should dancers become loyal to an established common ideal rather than an appointed Head? Is it this idealism and deep respect for the craft- of art, of dance, of magic, and those performing it- that motivates her to shoot higher? We recall her instruction: “Every arrow that flies feels the pull of the earth, but we must aim upwards.”

When the film reaches its violent climax, we witness a bloody regime change unseating Markos’s false claim to the title of Mother Suspiriorum. We then learn that the true Mother of Sighs is in fact Susie. She takes ownership of her womanhood and destiny, denouncing her own birth mother who believes her daughter is a stain on this world. Instead of offering rehabilitation to Markos and company, they are quickly obliterated, severing the company from their hungry snake head.

Though the scene is gruesome, there is a restorative exorcism taking place, a wiping clean, a Baptism of blood that allows for rebirth. What we are seeing is an erasure of institutional memory and perhaps a removal of the psychological context that spawned the modernist dance piece Volk. The weight and shame that had robbed their work of beauty and cheer has been miraculously cleared though only the gift of death can be extended to those dancers stuck in an agonizing limbo. Susie can now safely proclaim that dance is beautiful.

Throughout the film, the witches use the erasure of memory as one of their tools for spellwork.

They also refer to “a custom from the old ways,” in which a witness becomes one ingredient. For Markos’s body transference to work, Blanc suggests that they use Dr. Klemperer as the witness. They don’t want to forfeit the sanity of a company member.

The witness perhaps carries the burden of the spell and binds it to the world. As the film concludes, Susie uses her merciful powers to erase

Dr. Klemperer’s memories, of the loss of his wife and of all the women he has “undone.” As if reversing the roles of a therapist and client, Susie has relieved him of his trauma. She tells Dr. Klemperer, “We need guilt, Doctor. And shame.

But not yours.”

This statement is endlessly perplexing. Do the witches require guilt and shame as another element for spellcasting? Do German peoples need guilt and shame to avoid repeating the atrocities of WWII? Perhaps the Christian Mennonites from Susie’s childhood sustain their faith by shame of mortal sin. It is strange to reflect on Susie’s role within the film as a benevolent savior, however morbid her method of pardon. She is an American, who inserted herself into the political environment of Cold War Germany. By the end of the film, she fulfills her role as new mother of the coven by erasing its trauma. Like the other characters in the film, she is not ethically flawless; however, she is sympathetic (though we’re never sure what becomes of her beloved Blanc’s half-severed awareness).

After the credits roll, we are given one last shot of Susie as she motions her hand across the screen, breaking the fourth wall and presumably wiping our thoughts clean. Without the trauma of the wars, dance has come full circle and can be beautiful once again. But as viewers who have witnessed what becomes of American savior complexes and political amnesia, we are tempted to quote Susie on the evening she stepped into her power: “Why is everyone so ready to believe that the worst is over?

MM + NM.

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Restaurant people remember a strange holiday w. Ariel Knoebel + Joshua Lewin

Restaurant dining rooms remained closed for the majority of 2020. Juliet + Company restaurants initially closed just before one holiday (St. Patrick’s Day) and we got some reflections from the staff, 8 months later, as final preparations were being made for the beginning of the fall and winter holiday season — restaurants reopened by then, but completely reimagined.

Josh: One of my favorite days at Peregrine 2019 was Thanksgiving Day. Or really -- Thanksgiving night. We were coming up on six months old. It was our first holiday season. Things were falling into place in all kinds of great ways.

By 9pm, the team had all been on their feet for hours. I had been in the kitchen since early that morning.

The first thing I did that day was run across Charles Street with armfuls of pies, baked by our chefs at Juliet to help us out in our first big holiday service.

The last desserts started to make their way to the table. The turkey carving station was still set up. A final batch of gravy was still on the range. There was a pot of mashed potatoes that just needed a few grinds of pepper, a stir of butter. Our work was done. But we had a little bit more to share.

We have this one long table at Peregrine. It is called table 41 (you can read more about table 41 in our second cookbook Bean Zine: cooking in the time of corona).

The way I remember it is we all just kind of looked at each other in the kitchen and started piling the platters with Thanksgiving dinner and carrying them out to "41." The way it really happened probably involved a little bit more conversation than that. But I like the way I remember it, still.

Anyway. We sat and had supper. We had conversation. We got to know more about each other in about 45 minutes than we had in the previous months. And it was the most important dinner Peregrine had ever served. In my opinion.

Nearly every single person who is on staff at Peregrine today was also at that table that night. In a year like this one...what a privilege it is to be able to say just that.

••• Ariel: This year, Thanksgiving wouldn’t look like a table stuffed with sides, friends and family snuggled all around, breathing air together; but as the day approached, it began to dawn on me exactly how different everything was bound to look. At the restaurant, we were working hard to offer a way to bring Thanksgiving to our guests’ tables, no matter what they were shaping up to look like -- large or small, or over a keyboard.

The menu was sourced from our team’s favorite family traditions; Josh’s magic carrots, Megan’s spinach artichoke dip, Peregrine manager Joseph’s favorite white chocolate fudge.

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I’ve loved learning from everyone’s memories, because my family doesn’t really have holiday traditions. Our location, guest list, and collective enthusiasm varied widely from year to year, so things always looked a bit different.

My personal enthusiasm for Thanksgiving, however, only grew as I aged into being able to help cook, and eventually took over planning and execution of the meal.

The first year that I took on cooking the supporting cast of sides (leaving the turkey in my mom’s seasoned hands), I poured over months of my favorite food magazines to put together the spread. I scheduled a turkey pickup at the farmers market, selected the best potatoes for mashing at the stand next door, and got to work early the next morning to get dinner on the table by 5:00.

As I was stirring a roux to build into my kale and sweet potato gratin, the drippings from the turkey roasting in the oven below overflowed the pan, filled with just a bit too much stock (my mom so deeply feared committing the ultimate Thanksgiving sin cooking dry meat), and started a bonafide grease fire.

Suddenly, there were flames licking the cabinets, fire alarms ringing, and smoke pouring through the open windows of the kitchen.

The family dog jumped over our half-open dutch door to escape the chaos, circling back into the yard only to investigate the half-cooked turkey that Phil, a sweet family friend, rescued from the flames (suffering some not-insignificant forearm burns in the process) and dropped at the doorstep while my brother snuffed out the fire with the contents of the countertop flour jar. The oven was rendered useless by flame and turkey-flour paste, the turkey still functionally raw, the perfectly gathered array of sides still waiting in the wings, uncooked.

This past Thanksgiving was entirely different from that one, of course. The sides all got cooked, -- and individually portioned, packaged, and packed out the door for the largest single service Juliet has ever (and likely will ever) execute. Luckily, we did not start a grease fire. But, we did something just as new, and for the first time, for all of us.

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How to Fry Smelt

by Nina Coomes The obsession began in England. I was on vacation in Oxfordshire with my mother, the first time I’d ever paid my own way to go abroad somewhere that wasn’t Japan. My mother decided to join at the last minute, and so the two of us tromped through London, endured tea in a hotel restaurant that lost power midway through thanks to a guest’s overflowing bathtub, browsed the aisles of M&S and navigated the city’s bus system. Halfway through the trip we relocated to the small village of Oxfordshire where we traded sight-seeing for rambling along footpaths, taking in the bucolic British countryside. One day after one such long stroll, we ended the walk in the only restaurant in the village - a pub whose name I’ve forgotten. I ordered the chicken curry and my mother, with her keen eye for menus, ordered a half pint of a crisp lager and a plate of fried smelts. The fish arrived in a neat mound of burnt sienna, adorned with a bright lemon wedge. They were fried impeccably, like French fries but made of fish, a little meaty, mouth-tearingly crisp, salty and a bit smoky. The curry sat forgotten at the side of the table as I ordered my own half pint, tucking heartily into the fried smelt my mother was gracious enough to share. It was the most perfect meal of our entire trip.

I tried to recreate the smelts on a sweltering day in New York the following summer. I was hosting a small dinner party, though I’ve since learned that it’s a bad idea to do something for the first time when you immediately have to serve it to people. I woke up early and walked to the fish market in Astoria where I lived. I asked for smelts and the fish monger pointed me to a tray of fish that looked suspiciously large, but I ordered a pound of them all the same. Looking back, this was a miscalculation. I then proceeded to tromp all over the neighborhood, buying vegetables, flowers, dish soap and fresh bread. By the time I’d returned home, the fish had been in my bag for nearly an hour in the hot sun. I hurriedly put it in the fridge.

How to describe the ensuing disaster? For one, the smelts in my mind were British and because the only other fried fish I’d eaten in the UK was battered, I assumed the smelts too must have been battered. I made a paprika and beer based batter, much too gloppy and heavy for the small fish. I’d also been less than discerning with the fish monger, and realized as I washed them that the smelt I’d bought were much too big, something I should have avoided given my mother’s life long advice that big vegetables and big fish are waterlogged and lack flavor. I won’t even mention that I was called away midway through prepping the fish by work, leaving my then-boyfriend now-husband to sweat in the unairconditioned apartment as he chopped vegetables for salad. By the time I came back, it was mind meltingly hot. The oil heated too quickly, the fish spat and burned, cooking much slower than I’d imagined. The resulting dish was a beige heap of flaccid fish in bland coats of flour and beer. My friends were gracious and ate a few but I couldn’t stomach them, having so clearly in my mind what they ought to be instead.

A few months later, I was home in Chicago bemoaning the damp fish when my mother informed me she would teach me how to fry smelt. It wouldn’t be in the British style, that mysterious coat of impeccably clinging seasoned breadcrumbs, but it would be light, hot, salty, and delicious. She proceeded to take me through an extraordinarily simple process which I will detail for you below. Now, I make perfect fried smelts all the time.

Thanks, Mama.

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Ingredients

• 1 lb smelt, the smaller the better. Usually they are sold cleaned and without heads, but if you are buying them from a fish monger, you can ask them to snip the heads off and pull out the intestines.

• Neutral frying oil with low smoke point, like Canola.

• Salt • Potato starch or corn starch

1. Wash your smelt and pat dry. Lay them onto a large plate or baking sheet.

2. Dust the smelt with enough potato starch that they are all wearing a light coat of starch. This is usually about ½ cup for me. I toss them with my fingers after the sprinkle to ensure a better, more thorough coating.

3. Pour enough oil into a heavy bottomed pan (Dutch oven or cast iron skillet will work if you don’t have a dedicated deep frying pot) that if dropped in, the smelt would be submerged in oil, about 2-3 inches. Heat oil until hot enough for deep frying. I test the heat by putting a bit of corn starch on the end of a wet chop stick and submerging it into the oil. If it spits and bubbles enthusiastically, it’s hot enough.

4. Add smelt into oil in batches, careful not to crowd them. Time

wise, they probably need 3-5 minutes to cook all the way through depending on their size. But I don’t time them, I instead listen to them. This is very unscientific, but basically, when you put the smelt into the pan, the popping of the oil will be very loud, sort of percussive with a wet, hollow echo. You can tell the smelt is done because the sound of the oil will change, to a lighter, faster sound, more like a snare drum roll or a hiss. I think this has to do with hearing how the water in the smelt decreases as it cooks so you start hearing it less, but I’m not a scientist, I’m just guessing. Anyway, if you’re afraid of raw smelt, five minutes should do it---they’re really such small fish that you can tell pretty immediately if they are burning. They should be golden brown when finished; any darker and your oil is too hot or the smelt has been fried too long.

5. Scoop up smelt and deposit onto a paper towel lined plate.

Immediately sprinkle with a bit of fine salt. Repeat with the remaining salt until finished. Serve as soon as possible, hot and crisp, with a lemon wedge if you have it. Kewpie mayonnaise with a bit of smoked paprika mixed in is also a good dipping condiment.

Try to eat all the smelt; it really does not warm up well the next day, but if you must warm it up, do so in the toaster oven. Enjoy!

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Katie's Corner: Give In April will mark the 30th anniversary of my father’s death. That just occurred to me the other day. Three months shy of my 5th birthday, grief was introduced into my life and I haven’t been able to get rid of it yet. My mom telling me that news in my aunt’s bathroom was the defining moment of my life; it informed everything that came after. If I were a superhero, that would be my origin story. I guess the same would be true if I were a supervillain.

So what can I tell you about grief as someone whose entire foundation has been built around it; whose scaffolding is that of pain and resilience? It won’t always be this bad, but you will feel the loss ripple in your life forever. We often think about the stages of grief as something that you move through, one after the other, and then put neatly away.

There, all done with that. The process never ends though, it just stretches and morphs, takes new form. We often mistake repressing our feelings for being “over” something. Or is that just me? Grief is inconvenient, it’s uncomfortable, it’s annoying, and stupid, and necessary.

The majority of 2020 was a wide scale grief response to a once in a lifetime pandemic, with some systemic racial and economic injustice thrown in for good measure.

Sometimes experienced over a matter of hours or spanning months. It is natural that we would all look forward to the end of this; to get back to normal. But grief doesn’t leave things unchanged and there is no going back. Grief is not an object that gets put back in a box, tucked in the back of the closet when we’re done with it. It’s a river, whose ebb and flow cuts a path, erodes the banks, floods and dries.

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I spent a lot of my life trying to put my grief in a box. Even if you don’t face it head on, it will creep in around the edges.

So give in. Let it wash over you. If you must push it down, commit to unpacking it later. We will feel the effects of this pandemic for a long time. Let it exist alongside your joy. When you’re finally able to embrace your loved ones again, don’t hide from the sadness of the year you lost. It doesn’t take away the happiness of that moment, it feeds it. It makes it stronger. Let your grief rebuild you more grateful, more honest, more reverent. Make space for the grief in your world, because feeling everything - even the things we don’t want to - is what makes us alive.

Thank you for your time and attention!