Food for Thought
Limes. Linden-the fairer citrus, a sweeter less acrid alternative to its yellow brother. In ancient Rome, limes and citrus were signifiers of wealth and status. Limes and citrus also served as lofty symbols during the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th century, representing the evolving conceptions and implications of mercantilism. Limes, meet BEA, BEA, meet Limes. We love a velvet-emerald moment.
Mercantilism. Crazy word. Crazy history to it. Brutal philosophy. How can we pretend that economic growth for one party does not happen at the expense of another? Acknowledgement of the crime would be an emerald moment indeed! In a brighter light, posing next to these small, hardened objects of glistening independence, put together in a bag big enough to fit two dozen, makes me feel like I’m looking at a primary school photo packed with enthusiastic children about to *pop* off the screen, seized by an ecstatic greed for life. Limes have so much powerful taste embedded into them. Compressed, covered, and protected in thick glossy skin, the lime knows its own potential and waits for the hand to unleash its fifteen minutes of fame.
Tomayto. Tomahto. A Tomato can be pureed. It can be roasted. You can simply toss it in a salad. Salsa? Or Ketchup? Marinara? Or V8? Lots of folks look down on tomatoes for their slimy texture and lack of flavor, typically in colder places where the tomatoes are petrified from the frigidity. We like tomatoes in the Mediterranean. Where they’re svelte, flavorful, and juicy. All you need is some salt and pepper. Here, we see you guard the box filled with them.
Tamato. Sexy color, understated value. Worth guarding until understood. A lack of flavor? Surely an error has been made. She needs some sort of company to prove her effective impacts. Grown up in a group of multiple branch sister/brother tomatoes, the "T" is used to having her company in place. If you want her to flourish, don’t be ashamed to grind her into the mix. At times, TOMATO1991 operates at best in this way. She doesn’t bring out her flavor solo by the rule. She needs the insights/ingredients of others to proceed sometimes. Having said that, though, who doesn’t?
Grape juice or Cabernet Sauvignon? Grapes have undergone dramatic shifts through the magic, or nightmare, of GMO’s. People weren’t huge fans of seeds back then, and food scientists listened, I suppose. To make a Chardonnay, you simply take the skin off. To make Burgundy, you keep the skin on. The insides are all the same. It’s funny—grapes ferment into the blood of Christ, but they also ferment for the joy of Dionysus.
Ever thought about the varieties in alcoholic influence? The wine of grapes make me feel very different to the yeast of beer or the mash of whiskey. Red wine makes me feel, slowly but surely, like something throbbing on the wall, expanding in slow motion, increasing in deep colours of bordeaux and deep purple. A big numb heart-thumping body of work. Perhaps I actually feel how a fermenting grape would feel itself. Blowing up with time. My speech becomes “older”, more serious or pleading for “academic”, whereas with a beer, I will blabber and sound as banal as I can, letting out all the slush collected and stored in my brain. Whiskey makes me giggly, punctual, rude, childish. Drinking grapes feels ancient. Their effect on me feels ancient. I don’t like eating them—too sweet. I like the dust on them and the veins you can see when you peel the skin off.
It’s rare that a good dish begins without an onion. It’s the foundation. It’s the absolute fundamental. It also makes us all cry. Surface is irrelevant with an onion, for it has layers upon layers, sinking deeper into a more pungent, potent nucleus. BEA1991, your music isn’t showing any signs of tapering off. And certainly, your sound and lyrics don’t stop at the top. For you, we like to investigate further.
I am a thing of layers. I want to be fundamental. I want people to follow my process of un- and re-layering. I make people cry, too. I’m starting to appreciate my surface more. I’ve also started appreciating the onion in its raw form. Sweet and spicy, crispy, semi-challenging to the nostrils starting from within—can the body smell from within?! I like that this product of nature isn’t particularly beautiful zoomed out, but look at onions zoomed in; there are many different functionalities. Raw, she is absolutely ruthless—people crying, tripping, belly blown. Slowly cooked, she is an absolute pleasure.
