Thanksgiving Thoughts

 

 

Thanksgiving is a day of culinary creativity. For me, there has always been a connection between writing a piece of music and making something in the kitchen. On holidays, I'd typically make something a bit more involved, like a lasagna variant, or a pastitsio, or a mushroom tart, and work on the music at the same time. It's the combinatorial process that I enjoy.

In an abstract way, a multi-step recipe is like multi-tracking and overdubbing. The seasonings and other flavor-enhancing processes (like caramelization) are the "effects" and "treatments".  Serving and savoring the food is the "mastered final mix".

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Social media has put us all in our heads more than they were historically. More people are writing now as a daily routine on whatever social media platforms. So it's not that we just bring ourselves to the table--it's all the content that we've shared online.

This reminds me of the word "share": It is now embedded in the lexicon. It used to be you'd share (or simply bring) an item to a dinner gathering. Now we share our user-generated content. It creates the possibility of talking points.

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TV has been a part of Thanksgiving since its inception and has changed its meaning. It's what we've been gathering around instead of a table or hearth. It used to be "pushed" to us with scheduled programming, now algorithms serve us our perceived preferences, whether they are appropriate or not, as we sit around glued to our phones. A few days ago, I had watched a documentary on inflammatory foods and all the ads were for junk food. In the 50s, TV commercials were never inappropriate to viewers, even if they were selling with the usual stereotypes, such as the Mom being kitchen-bound while the Dad simply relaxed and waited for dinner to be served. Now with all the YouTube cooking channels (including Big Chef--could you kill your "pet" turkey?) everyone does some part of the cooking, and every day is a big (TV) production, and elaborate meals lose their uniqueness. 

TV was always in the background as a piece of furniture in the 50s, until people started to live inside of TV in the 1960s as we now live inside social media. Eating a TV dinner on a TV tray in front of TV in the 70s watching developments in the Vietnam war is in many ways the same as everyone having their phones out at the table following Putin's latest assault on Ukraine, the 600th mass shooting this year, the "tridemic" and myriad other catastrophes.

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How do certain tastes and smells become seasonal? Why do we use sage and nutmeg in autumn, when they are available year-round? Again, it's all in the marketing and the "packaging" of holidays. Food is in many ways archetypal in nature, and the holidays are a way to play in those archetypal patterns at holiday gatherings.