Present Tense #1

Notes on what I saw, heard, smelled, tasted, and touched in June on Gotland, Sweden.

This is where I bring you what moved me over the past two weeks, whatever stuck itself in the senses and simply refused to leave. Food is my obsession and my livelihood, sure, fine, we’ve established this. But I’ve never trusted the palate as the only door in.

SIGHT

I’ve fallen, recently and completely, for Milton Avery. It’s the color! Avery himself once said his work was about stripping away everything except what mattered, which is either a painting philosophy or a very accurate description of my current emotional state (I did, in fact, give up a career in fashion to bake cookies on an island, as a life choice).

Here’s the serious bit, because I can’t help myself. Avery gets filed as “America’s Matisse,” and there’s something to that (a pure color relationship?). But what I find more interesting is his position as the hinge between figuration and the abstraction that came after him. Rothko and Gottlieb both sat at his kitchen table in the ‘30s and ‘40s. Avery never made that leap into total abstraction, he kept the beach, the figure, the dog, the wife knitting.

Two Figures on the Beach undid me a little, and so did several of his nudes, the body in them so unbothered, so loose limbed, like it’s never once considered performing for anyone. There’s a heat in so many of these scenes too, a sense that summer is already happening just beneath the paint. Feels correct, given the heatwave.

HEARING

My fiancé, my friend Monika, and I made a trip to Konditori Norrgatt in Visby, old school, Prinsesstårta, black coffee from the pour over, sprinkle ice cream. I knew there was a song machine in the corner. Monika had brought her vintage camera specifically for this, we had specific 1960s Swedish pop in mind, and the machine simply refused, coin after coin. On the fifth coin it gave us Yoko Ono’s “Kiss Kiss Kiss.” Not what we ordered. It’s been on repeat since.

SMELL

The only smell I can register right now is the island itself, flower drunk, faintly narcotic, different every day depending on what’s decided to open. Gotland does not do subtlety in June. I’ve started bringing it into the kitchen, which brings us to,

TASTE

Lavender and honey biscotti, elderflower butter cookies, rose and strawberry cake, thyme flowers scattered over friands. How is anything allowed to be this beautiful and this edible at once? It’s eating like a fairy tale illustration. Flowers in food have become a genuine obsession, I find my eyes constantly drifting to gardens, hedgerows, verges. What’s leafing and what’s ready.

There are so many edible flowers, each with its own character, and I’m still learning them one mistake at a time. I assumed most would lean sweet, until a colleague watched me reach for a handful to decorate a cake and said, “you know those taste like garlic, right?” One never stops being corrected by nature. Good.

TOUCH

Wearing silk while doing yoga was one of the more purely pleasant experiences I’ve had in months. The lovely friend who owns Maglieria Rosaria sent over my favorite baskets along with two pure silk ribbed tank tops, black and white. It’s a little sexy. I feel confident in it. Paired with black leggings, flip flops, Celine sunglasses, and a basket it is, I regret to inform you, a genuinely hot look.