I Can!
Most everyone has their own vision of retirement, financial independence, or whatever you want to call waking up and not having to rush to work. Mostly comes down to this: owning your time day after day, week in and week out. Not having to trade your autonomy in exchange for food, clothing, shelter, and Starbucks.
So - how to use that time when it is solely one’s own? Many of my hours are spent writing these pieces, helping maintain the household (shopping for groceries, cooking, fixing stuff that breaks), and taking long walks near home or on nearby trails. These make up my ‘work’ now. But there also is more time for leisure than heretofore. For me, leisure means reading, listening to music, and enjoying the occasional movie or TV series. Here are a few things that I can recommend.
What I am reading.
Back when I was in college, I worked summers to help pay tuition. I worked mostly in restaurants bussing or waiting tables. If I had met Anthony Bourdain in one of the restaurants where I worked, I probably wouldn’t have liked him much. I tended to disapprove of colleagues who used drugs on the job, shouted profanity at the other staff (especially me), or who threw things at servers in the kitchen. By his own admission, Bourdain did all these in his time as a line cook and executive chef before he became a famous food writer and travel show host.
But I met him as a reader of his breakthrough memoir, Kitchen Confidential, which I read for the first time around 2001. Bourdain was a talented writer and not only is the book laugh out loud funny, it changed the way I cook perhaps more profoundly than anything else I have ever read. I am rereading the book now and reflecting on the ways in which he influenced me. Three things stand out.
Blade. Bourdain’s take on the importance of the kitchen knife inspired me to buy a better knife, learn how to sharpen it myself, and to learn to use it in such a way that I wouldn’t cut my fingers off. I am still on the journey. In the 20 years since I first read Bourdain’s book, I have obtained a number of chef’s knives each time getting a little closer to perfection. I have bought at least five different sharpening systems before finally learning to hand sharpen my trusty bit of steel on Japanese made whetstones which range from 400 to 5000 grit and a leather strop to polish the edge. I can now achieve an edge on my kitchen knives that will push through paper with just their own weight or shave arm hair, but I still keep trying to get them sharper. A sharp knife is a joy to cook with and far safer than a dull one. If you don’t know why, you don’t cook.
Ingredients. Bourdain taught me to disdain shortcuts that diminish the quality of the end product. An example of this is garlic that is pre-chopped and sold in a jar swimming in oil. As YouTube Wünderkind Adam Ragusea and others have demonstrated, there is no substitute for fresh garlic. As Bourdain says, “You don’t want to peel garlic? You don’t deserve to eat garlic.”
Butter. Technically an ingredient but deserves a separate callout. Bourdain is hardly alone here. Julia Child, Jacques Pepin, and most everyone agree: there is little that can’t be improved with butter. And a small amount goes a long way in terms of flavor. Pitch the Smart Balance (you know who you are, mom, dad). I don’t know what that stuff is, but it’s not food.
Find a knife you love. Learn to keep it sharp. Chop some garlic and mash it into butter. Bake it in some nice bread. Mr. Bourdain, with his particular and distinct voice, taught us that yes, life can be this simple.
I wish I’d had the chance to have him throw something at me after all.
What I am watching.
If you have access to Apple TV+, try the new series, Severance. This darkly humous take on “work/life balance” is part science fiction and part Orwellian dystopia. It reminds me of several places I have worked. Lumon, the fictional company at the center of the series, has developed a technology that allows workers to completely separate their work life from their personal life. Office workers voluntarily undergo a procedure called severance in which a chip is inserted into their brain. From that point on, their memories are bifurcated. While at work, they can remember nothing of their personal lives. When outside of work, they recall nothing that happened there. The work personalities are called “innies” and the outside personalities are “outties.” Why would someone agree to have this done? Mark Scout, lead character played by Adam Scott, lost his wife in a car accident. Severance offers him the chance to completely immerse himself into his work every day and not have to think about his loss. The other characters have their own reasons. One can’t help but reflect on the place in our lives that work fills. How it can distract us from the pain of living. How it intrudes on or contributes to our happiness and how much or little it is central to our identities.
How often have we heard that we should leave our personal lives at home when we go into work or been told the corollary, “Get your love at home.” The advent of email, text, and portable technology has meant that work and personal life have been bleeding together for decades. And pandemic life has accelerated the trend this by eliminating even the geographical line between work and home. Severance asks us to consider if there should be a psychological line and where exactly and how firm a line it should be. It also seeks to answer the question, “Hey kids, what’s for dinner?”
What I am listening to.
When I am at home or driving, I usually stream either WRUR Rochester or WXPN Philadelphia. Both are public radio stations that play a lot of interesting and diverse music. It was on WXPN that I recently heard a track from the OG Rapper MC Lyte. She was big in the 1980 and 90s. I like rap, but embarrassingly, I was not familiar with her. The song I heard was “Cha Cha Cha” from the 1989 album, Eyes on This. I downloaded the whole album on Apple Music and have been loving it.
Here is a sample of lyrics from “I Am The Lyte.”
“I just thought that I should mention
'89 is the Lyte year
Now's the time to roll like a rhinoceros
Step to Lyte, that's preposterous
I'm heavyweight, though I'm lightweight
My looks the hook, my rhymes the bait
And when I throw the line you proceed to take
The goody, the treat that I hand you
That you couldn't refuse
Damn, I cram to understand you
Your love is to Lyte to lose.”
Check out this video of her performing at the White House on January 10, 2016 for President Barack Obama, the last commander-in-chief who didn’t need to be told to clap on the back beat.
As different as can be is the other album I am enjoying. It’s an album of Bob Dylan covers sung by Emma Swift titled, Blonde on the Tracks. Even if you (as I do) consider Bob Dylan to be the greatest American songwriter who ever lived, it is not out of the question that you might occasionally weary of his voice, particularly in its more recent manifestations. If so, this album may be for you with its fresh and melodious takes on Dylan from classics like “Simple Twist of Fate” to the more recent, “I Contain Multitudes.” Swift’s simple interpretations allow one to focus on the genius of the songwriter without the irritation of having to defend Mr. Zimmerman’s vocal stylings to family and friends. I only wish she had recorded twice as many songs. “Going Going Gone” is particularly lovely. For totally different take on Dylan try also, Bettye LeVette’s album, Things Have Changed. Like the Swift album, LeVette also ends with “Going Going Gone.”
It makes sense.
“I been hangin' on threads
I been playin' it straight
Now, I've just got to cut loose
Before it gets late
So I'm going
I'm going
I'm gone.”
Me too.