How did you spend your snow day?

When my friend sprang up from her seat and ran to me in the excitement of telling me the good news of getting an extra day-off, I breathed a sign of relief. Thanks to the snow, I could finally escape from the endless art history reading assignments for a while and go back early after spending three hours studying in the library and preparing for my upcoming exam on Thursday.

Actually, I only have two classes on Tuesdays, so my day was not significantly different from a normal Tuesday: getting up around 8am, having my regular breakfast in the dining hall, and heading to the library instead of classes. With tons of materials to study for exam, I planned to immerse myself in study slides and readings. However, after finding a spot by the window with a perfect view of the outside, I was surprised to see gleams of sunshine falling on the big colored glass windows and casting the reflection of myself. I was blown away by this unintentional glimpse: a nice day, despite the low temperature.

I rejoiced that I raised my head and caught this beautiful image of the snowy town, a scene I would not have noticed if I had been sitting in the auditorium listening carefully to the professor, a scene I would not have noticed if I had been hasting to finish up lunch, a scene I would not have noticed if I had been rushing from class to class worrying about being late…I almost felt like a thief, who hid in this lovely corner of the library after covertly peeling today’s page from a tear-off calendar. However, it is not fair to say that such beauty does not exist when I hurry from place to place with only one thought in mind: to get things (homework, papers, reading, etc.) done. Instead, it is me who keeps ignoring the peaceful and beautiful nature of life and chooses to constantly rush without noticing or appreciating the views along the way. I overlook many beautiful moments like this as if they never exist, but whenever I slow down and look around, they are always there.

How will you spend your next snow day? Whatever you plan to do, just take your time, and enjoy the relaxing tranquility of life.

Yawning and groggy-eyed, I stumble over to the coffee pot. I’m in a hotel lobby, and need something strong to wake me up and take the edge off the free continental breakfast sloshing around in my stomach. We’ve got another day of driving left, and since it’s my turn first, it’s going to take at least two cups. Given the quality of the breakfast, I’m not looking for much from the coffee and load it up with enough french vanilla cream to turn it into milk. I’m walking away, when I realize that there won’t be any left for the elderly gentleman patiently waiting for me to finish ruining the integrity of my drink. I turn to him just as he’s discovering the coffee’s gone, and I offer him one of my cups as penance. Of course, I’m forced to ask him if he takes it with cream, and that’s when he fixes me with a look.

“You want to know something my wife always used to tell me,” he asks. I’ve been in enough situations with wisdom-bomb dropping elderly men at this point to know that I should nod. “She always used to say, that if you don’t drink it black, you will never know how good coffee can be,” a wry twinkle catches the light in his eye and he continues, “or how bad.” We laugh and he walks away to go check out, as I make my way towards the door. He turns to me one last time as I’m exiting and calls out, “remember! You’ll never know!”

I had a long drive ahead of me to think about this, and the more I did, the more I realized that I hadn’t even been considering how the coffee would taste. I wasn’t drinking it for that, I was drinking it because I was in a situation of caffeine-or-die, and I still can’t bring myself to trust energy drinks. One of my favorite movies, My Dinner with Andre, begs the question, are we simply eating out of a sense of routine without really considering or even tasting our food? “If you’re just eating out of habit, then you don’t taste the food and you’re not conscious of the reality of what’s happening to you,” Andre says.

Mindfulness is all the rage these days as people climb aboard the Zen train (or at least the Americanized/commercialized version of Zen), but what does it mean to really apply the principles of this art of conscientious living? For me, it started with the taste of coffee. Something I’d only regarded in its most basic, utilitarian dimension opened up the way fine red wine does if you let if you’re willing to give it the time to let it breathe. Eating food doesn’t have to just be a necessity, a source of energy, or something we do when we’re bored and on tumblr; eating food can be a celebration of our bodies and what we put into them! Having a relationship with food can be a marvelous thing, and I can certainly attest to a transformation of my meal times by applying this principle to both eating and drinking.

As a result, I’m proud to say that those two cups of coffee were the last non-black cups of coffee I’ve ever had (though I did try a dirty chai last week and it was DELICIOUS).

Head hits pillow after a long day,

eyes seal shut,

in sweeps the sound of simple silence.

I drift off into my dream,

silence hugs around me

like a second blanket

like a shield.

Doctoring me as I rush though the day

working, running, cooking, cleaning, screaming,

it seeps into my mind disintegrating the chaos into smoke.

It is a newly cleaned cardigan

lingering of sweetened Downy

refreshing me

reminding me of who I am.

 

Head hits pillow after another long day,

I reflect on life,

I hear no one,

I feel nothing.

Silence becomes a load of bricks

falling down upon

my legs,

neck,

head,

suffocating me until I fall asleep.

The movement of my day rushes by

no missed calls,

working late tonight,

reservation for 1.

Reminding me of who I am.

“Here’s to alcohol, the rose colored glasses of life.”

– F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and the Damned

Earlier this week, I was perusing the National Public Radio website when I saw an interview with author Olivia Laing titled ‘The Mythos of the Boozing Writer.’ Laing talked to an interviewer about her new book, ‘Trip to Echo Spring,’ which explores the alcoholism of a selection of famous, beloved American writers.

It hadn’t occurred to me that the stereotype of the ‘boozing writer’ was surrounded by mythology – in fact, I hadn’t even questioned that it was true. The alcoholism of writers such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald seemed to me a characteristic both inextricable from their personas and intertwined with the substance of most of their work.

Although the stereotype of the heavy-drinking writer is based in reality – a huge amount of beloved American writers have been alcoholics, including 4 of the 6 Americans who have won the Nobel Prize for literature – Laing argues that many famous alcoholic writers, worked so hard to establish a romanticized idea of the boozing writer mostly in order to cover up the darker realities of their own alcoholism. Laing suggests in her interview that Hemingway in particular was responsible glamorizing the idea of the heavy-drinking writer, creating a romanticized account of alcoholism that she says is in some ways ‘addicting in itself.’

In her book, Laing focuses specifically on Raymond Carver, John Berryman, Ernest Hemingway, Scott F. Fitzgerald, Tennessee Williams, and John Cheever – all writers who have produced some of the most beautiful and beloved literature of all time, and all virulent alcoholics. Although these famous writers rarely actually wrote drunk, they certainly thought of alcohol as an intrinsic part of the creative process, and often wrote about alcoholism. Here, the difference between these writers’ accounts of their alcohol consumption and the realities of their alcohol abuse becomes a kind of sore spot for many who love their work – if we often engage with the works of these greats with the assumption that their descriptive genius can provide us with penetrating truths, unfogged by pettiness or subterfuge, are we being cheated by the accidental artifice of an active alcoholic’s take on alcoholism?

Lewis Hyde’s essay ‘Alcohol and Poetry,’ which specifically investigates the effects of alcoholism on the works of John Berryman, was one of the first explorations of the myth of the creative alcoholic. In response to critics who fear that a prejudice against alcoholic authors could in some way deprive us of a beloved literary canon, Hyde has declared that he “would shudder to think of a culture that would canonize these voices without marking where they fail us.”

In Hyde’s opinion, the active alcoholic cannot write with veracity about alcoholism. These writer’s twisted takes on alcoholism stand as accidents, artistic failures in their legacy. But many alcoholic writers have also given us tragically discerning accounts of alcohol abuse. Laing argues that the writers she researches often leave out the darker side of alcoholism, quantified in lost jobs, destroyed relationships and damaged families. But not all of these writers shy away from this side of alcoholism – in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘Tender is the Night,’ we watch Dick Diver deteriorate as his drinking problem becomes increasingly destructive; John Cheever’s famous short story ‘The Swimmer’ describes the tragedy of a declining alcoholic over the course of an increasingly surreal afternoon.

With the emergence of new scientific research, Alcoholics Anonymous, and 12 step programs, writers no longer control the broader cultural narrative on alcoholism. However, the mythology they have created still seems to control the narrative on alcoholism in creative communities. How significant is it that the ‘great writer’ is still usually pictured with a drink in hand? Of all of the points that Laing made in her interview, this one stuck with me: the alcoholism of great writers was less an effect of a riotous, inspired existence and more a symptom of deep, untreated depression. This may be the true failure of the intellectual community’s embrace of the ‘mythos of the boozing writer’ – it glamorizes, and in doing so dismisses, human suffering.

What a week of cold snowy winter we have had. Generally speaking I like to leave my house to do work, protecting my kitchen and bedroom so as not to taint those spaces with stress or procrastination. As I cycle through my favorite study spots I’m able to preserve home base and maintain a refuge. But this week has been so bitterly cold that once making it home, if there is no absolute need to seek the outdoors, my feet slide into slippers and my legs into sweatpants before I have time to properly blow my nose. To my delight, I’ve managed to find equal levels of productivity at my kitchen table as I usually discover at the wooden tables on the first floor of the Grad. With the wind whistling and piercing my windows from outside, I’ve fallen into a routine of lighting candles, cooking up some stir fry while painfully trying to make it through the opened box of Franzia from weeks ago’s party, and steadily completing my work. But the element that has really enabled me to find solace and warmth at home has been the soulful pleasures of Tom Misch.

Mixing jazz, hip-hop, soul and funk, Tom Misch is a music producer from London. He is relatively new and unknown, despite his extraordinary talent. Tom sings, produces beats and plays the guitar and violin, combining all of these skills into his impressive repertoire of tracks. If a friend had not sent his Soundcloud page to me, I doubt I would have come across him in any foreseeable future. He’s so new that there’s no Wikipedia page about him, and none of my favorite blogs have mentioned his name yet. He appears a handful of times on the conglomerate music blog “The Hype Machine,” but mostly through UK blogs. His youth can only be seen as a hopeful characteristic; with such a strong start he surely has a spectacular career ahead of him.

Two of my favorite Tom Misch tracks also feature his sister, Laura Misch, who plays the saxophone. Together, the siblings shine and create Tom’s best kind of music. Laura’s soothing grooves on the saxophone create a wavy, relaxed and pleasant tone. They compliment her brother’s singing voice and even carry the songs. For instance, on “Follow,” Laura’s saxophone melodies actually serve as the dominant force in the track, even though Tom sings throughout the whole thing. His voice is not the most amazing sound around, but on top of Laura’s saxophone vibes it soars and the two blend together seamlessly. But after I’ve shut my laptop and continued on my day, the melody of the saxophone stays with me, not Tom’s words.

<Follow> 

In close competition with “Follow” is another track from the siblings called “Eems to Slide.” Here Tom’s guitar is much more noticeable than before, and masks the influence of Laura’s saxophone. The lyrics of “Eems to Slide” are catchy, unusual and quirky, adding another element to Tom’s sound. It is clear that Tom is first and foremost a producer, but he proves that he can also write and sing on top of his own beats. This track is a little bit bumpier and the flow is purposefully interrupted. It loses the strong jazz sound of “Follow” but gains a more electric and edgy tone that sets the stage for more ear-catching lyrics.

 <Eems to slide>

The final realm of Tom’s music repository is Hip-Hop. The majority of his Soundcloud page consists of wordless beats, which are much more obviously Hip-Hop than jazz. On a few he even samples famous artists, like A Tribe Called Quest on the track “Got It Goin’ On.” He pays tribute to legendary beatsmith J Dilla on the track “Dilla Love,” sampling a few of the master’s beats into his own creation, and also incorporates lyrics from a Mos Def song on another beat.

Tom Misch is doing what few other producers can: creating an authentically musical sound, with real foundations in jazz and soul, while still making marketable Hip-Hop beats. Instead of the loud and abrasive house music that most producers are trying to create, Tom is making true, fundamental music. And he’s just getting started.