vol. 28: patti smith, passover cakes & spring visits home
Here in this spring, stars float along the void;
Here in this ornamental winter
Down pelts the naked weather;
This summer buries a spring bird.
-Dylan Thomas
Books and breakfasters!! I am so overdue for a post after what feels like months of lacking moments for breath catching (aside from my “working holiday” to Winnipeg last month, which was a dream!). I’ve just arrived back in my Montreal apartment after what was meant to be a restful trip home to see my nieces and celebrate Passover with my family, though ended up being quite exhausting in itself. I’m recharging by cooking myself matzo brei, doing online pilates classes with my fave Toronto teachers, & listening to the new TSwift (🙈).
I was inspired to write after my foodie cousins reached out to comment on the deliciousness of a cake I made for our family Seder the other night. The cake comes from Nigella Lawson’s book, Feast, which is one of the books that helped me get into cooking (or let’s be honest, baking!). When I was living at home during my undergraduate, I’d pour over the Chocolate Cake Hall of Fame chapter, making different ones for various celebrations. Nigella’s Passover cake is one I like to make almost every year. As it’s farbotn to add leavening or flour, the cake has eight(!!) eggs to make it rise, a ton of almond flour and some cooked apples. It vaguely reminds me of a gluten-free version of my favourite apple cake from the Harbord Bakery in Toronto and always feels so extravagant to make.* Also, for those who aren’t familiar with Nigella, she is legendary in so many ways. When my friend Charlotte ran a bookstore in Toronto that hosted her in my early twenties, I waited in line for hours to have a little spiritual connection moment with the domestic goddess herself.
*Another runner-up is the pistachio cake in the Momofuku Milkbar cookbook, which is wild just in the expense of the ingredients!
As far as TSwift goes, I didn’t want to like the new album (or even listen until my sister asked two days after its release, “you haven’t listened??”), having only really been drawn in by her indie-collab albums folklore and evermore. But the catchiness of my almost-birthday twin’s new works have been a nice chilly-spring balm over the last few days, and her collab with Aaron Dessner on this album gives it folklore vibes. I really enjoy the painstaking specificity of her songs, which lands somewhere between reality TV / the confessional poetry of Sylvia Plath / the autofiction of favourite writers of mine like Sheila Heti and Emmanuel Carrère / even the Lieder and mélodie I devote much of my artistic practise around singing. A little girl pop as the weather gets warmer also never hurts. Very cute to see Patti Smith’s reaction to her references along with Dylan Thomas in the chorus of the title track too.
here’s some Dylan Thomas, a poet Taylor admits she is not:
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.
And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.
At our yearly Passover Seder, my parents always request that guests bring a poem on the subject of either spring or liberation from oppression. I could feel the heaviness in the air this year, as all references to oppression felt tainted by the horrors of what’s been happening in Israel and Palestine. One of my thoughtful cousins offered a poem by the beautiful Arab-American poet Naomi Shibab Nye, while I offered an old favourite of mine by Ada Limòn (give this one a read, if you’re in the mood for more poems).
In other news, my wonderful pianist-collaborator Alex and I are deep in the throes of picking obscure lieder for our summer in Austria coming up. I haven’t been to Europe since I moved back to Canada in October 2021 and I have to admit I’m extremely excited to be back biking Vienna’s windy streets/jogging along the Donaukanal while soaking up the mix of palatial & funky Bauhaus/Modernist architecture/stocking up on their amazing herbal teas/poppyseed icecream/frequenting the local Heuriger of course...
What about you all? Any good poems/reads/bakes lately? Please share. Bis zum nächsten mal, Freundin*nnen!! :) :)