Food priest

[imomus]

You know how, when you come home from a holiday somewhere, you get, for a few precious hours, a glimpse of your own apartment, your own city, the country that you live in as someplace other? Until habituation sets in, you see the place you live in with fresh eyes, in all its quirky quiddity. Well, this time, coming back from Italy, I suddenly got this vision of what Germany feels like, Germany in autumn. There's a lot of orange around; the leaves, falling through the air or flat underfoot, are orange, and tables at the Saturday vegetable market on the Boxhagener Platz heave with orange squashes and pumpkins. The first gluhwein is being sold. Here's the man we buy our organic vegetables from, and here's his stand:



This man interests me. He's more than a market trader, he's a kind of food priest. He works at what the Germans call an Ökologische Lebensmittelgesellschaft, a radical and egalitarian green cell dedicated to non-industrial food production. There's something of a hippy about him, an anti-capitalist, but also something of a Rousseau, a Tolstoy, a poet or a pagan saint. He first caught my eye because he and his girlfriend are very handsome, ethical-looking people. I imagine them living according to strict principles, horrified by much of modern civilisation, working with dedication and positivity for a different outcome. They are, in a sense, rock stars or poster children for what I call "the Old Religion", the pagan fertility cult that underpins many of our industrial cultures, predating monotheistic religions, and always seeking to link food cultivation to something spiritual, a vision of society in which peace and fertility prevail, and in which there are still strong links between cult, cultivation and culture.

I spoke about this in Ask the rice last month, and I mused on Germany's special relationship with forests in Some thoughts about forests. I think this mentality connects certain apparently unrelated quirks of German life: the fact that you see so many wind farms when you travel through or over the country, the fact that Germany's most famous living novelist, Günter Grass, so often uses food, soup and cookery metaphors in his books and poems, the fact that, at the time of the Iraq invasion, Germany had a pacifist Green Party politician as its Foreign Minister. Perhaps even the fact that, in German philosophies like materialism, down-to-earthness becomes, paradoxically, a transcendental value (you see this in Brecht and Martin Luther too, I think).

I've often noted links between the feel of Germany and the feel of Japan, and I think it's something to do with attitudes to nature and to cult-cultivation-culture issues. Germany has a kind of Shinto of its own. Both Germany and Japan have real forests, but also "inner forests". Industrial Japan is a narrow, dense ribbon hemmed in on one side by the sea, on the other by wooded mountains (I often think the dizzying multiplicities of industrial products available in Japan might owe their forms to the example provided by all the different fish shapes you see at Tsukiji). Japan has 65% forest cover, Germany 40%, and Britain a mere 10%. Even in the cities of these countries you sense the presence or absence of forest, not just in air quality (Berlin has the best air of any city I've lived in) but in something spiritual, something the Germans may or may not call WaldGeist; the spirit of "inner forest". Japan and Germany both have strong Slow Life movements, and although their food production and distribution systems are industrialised, there's a clear feeling that food must be respected, savoured. Whereas in Britain supermarkets are all about saving time and money, and making food ever less recognisable as an agricultural product, in Germany and Japan it seems to be a vehicle for spiritual-national-cultural values.

These values aren't unproblematical; no doubt they infused even Nazi Germany's "blood and soil" philosophy. The cults-culture mindset, with its keenness to see a national link between body and soul, can also close food production to outsiders, or make weird culty, mystical leagues and apprenticeships for brewers, butchers, chimney sweeps and so on, designed to consolidate ancient semi-masonic power relationships. (Did you know that a German chimney sweep has to serve a five year apprenticeship? "At the end of five years, he is permitted to take his test for a master's license and if he passes, he may exchange the black skull cap he has worn as an apprentice for the master's top hat.")

What's good about a cults-culture mindset, though (a mindset I opposed in Ask the rice to an Anglo-Saxon logic-logistics one), is that there really is a strong argument for saying that food is culture, much more important than mere fuel or goods. Our bodies know this, even if our minds don't. Longevity in Germany and Japan exceeds that in English-speaking countries. In Russia and America, life expectancy has actually started declining.

As the Germans and the Japanese both seem to know, food is always soul food. That's why we buy our hokkaido pumpkins from a sort of priest.

Comments

[hitori-photo.livejournal.com]

Amen brotha'.
Food is the shit.
You could say that My last girlfriend and I ended up separating over it because she said I spend too much of my life enjoying meals and contemplating food. To her it's just an annoyance to be deal with as efficiently as possible.

One of the reasons I wish so much to live in Japan is because high expectations are the norm, so you don't have to go out of your way to find them, and noone will give you shit for trying to enjoy the perfection of something as simple as a meal.

In America or other such places, sure you're free to eat however you want, but it's an uphill battle to get ahold of the goods, or make the time in other people's lives to merge with meals. It's like you're the snotty kid cause you'd rather cook for yourself than conveniently eat at McDonalds.

I think this relates to your key point about culture NOT being the same and everyone just being of the same root or whatever. Cultural egalitarianism or whatever.

Anyway, you're making me starve. I'm gonna go do something about food right now.
....

[king-chiron.livejournal.com]

Note the article you linked to doesn't say US life expectancy has dropped, it says it's predicted to drop based on some model. The problem is we know that the obesity issue has been politized to the point that many of the predictions out there are inaccurate. The CDC came out with a report claiming that obesity was killing 400,000 people a year in the US, then they came back later and lowered that figure by 75%. Given that, what kind of confidence can anyone have in these models?

http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=46807

In the meantime, German LE is rising (mostly due to improvements for those from the former GDR), but it's not even in the top twenty from the latest stats I've seen (the US is around 24th and of course Japan is first).

[petit-paradis.livejournal.com]

my first reaction on seeing that market man was: devendra banhart!

[pigpog.livejournal.com]

i totally agree. america and the uk have terrible relationships with food; one treats it as fuel, the other treats it as an inconvenience. food is central to being grounded as a human being, it's what living is all about, really.

[pigpog.livejournal.com]

japanese food is certainly better than la mian.

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

Hopefully we will see a turn in the near future. No fast food, only local resturants.

It has already started I heard.

[brosch.livejournal.com]

I just visited Berlin for the first time last weekend, and aside from the point of the post I am entirely in love with that city. I live in Freiburg, in the very southwest of Germany, with the Schwarzwald directly to my east. I can support your statement wholeheartedly about the Germans and their vegetables. Every street market I have seen so far has the most beautiful and plentiful fruits and vegetables that I have ever seen in any food market. And like those pictured above, almost all of them are organic- even in the grocery stores around here the majority of vegetables come from organic farms.
I am definitely enjoying the change of food attitude from America. Even still, I am from Portland Oregon and that city is exceptionally good for offering good vegetables and other food products in the Farmer's Markets. So the only difference is that the markets here in Germany are up more often.

[(Anonymous)]

Can I have a price check on the mushrooms please.

Another nit....

[king-chiron.livejournal.com]

the fact that, at the time of the Iraq invasion, Germany had a pacifist Green Party politician as its Foreign Minister.

The Green Party may generally be a pacifist party, but Joschka Fischer certainly isn't. While he opposed the war in Iraq, he supported German participation in both Kosovo and Afghanistan despite strong opposition from many members of his party. That suggests to me that he's not a pacifist, but rather a politician with the good sense to understand that invading Iraq was simply not a smart policy.

[serotuning.livejournal.com]

Buddha found his enlightenment under a tree.

Not much hope for the UK there then..

[hitori-photo.livejournal.com]

hHAHAHAHA ...yeah.

[(Anonymous)]

I'd really like to live in the Berlin you so eloquently describe. The one I do live in seems to be very different.

der.

[hitori-photo.livejournal.com]

Heard from who?

[nina-blomquist.livejournal.com]

"An extraordinarily versatile, fruitful writer with the moral energy and practical direction of the Scottish, and a sensuality and aesthetic vigor of his own. The sense for beauty accompanied him, until he could at last pursue it on his country seat with building and planting."

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, my Berlin is mostly a radius of 100 metres or so from the Boxhagener Platz... where's yours?

There are areas just a few stops up the 13 tram line from here that might as well be Novisibersk.

Peter Kubelka

[(Anonymous)]

I saw the Austro-Bavarian avant-garde filmmaker, cultural entrepreneur (co-founder of Anthology archives in NYC), and general polymath Peter Kubelka give a lecture a couple of weeks ago about food as the central metaphor in human life, the very root of culture, the essential communicative art. His rhetoric was full of killing, dominating, incorporating--food is the way you take control of your universe, show your mastery of it and incorporate it into you forcibly. In between invectives against global agribusiness, he took bites from a raw steak, made mayonnaise, and ate raspberries with warm milk. Extremely charming, vaguely unsettling. Very German.

-B

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

heh yeah i had a similar reaction scrolling through. though i think dev.b.'s got more manic shine behind the eyes. this guy looks pretty cool. vegetables....alright by me.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, physically it's not very far, Prenzlauer Berg. It's just that it is filled with people who do actually have to work the same insane hours as people in other cities do, and who hence do not have the time to worry about soul food too much.

der.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, you just named the district even more yuppie-ish and leisured than this one. Prenzlauer Berg is where Friedrichshainers go when they get a bit more disposable income and decide to have kids. You'd think they'd then have to go out and get a proper job, but no, there they are at 3pm on the Helmholz Platz, collecting their kids from school, walking the dog, playing table tennis, sipping latte macciato... The only rush hour I've ever seen up there is when people are all coming out of the Prater Garden and Bastard Club at the same time and heading to the U-Bahn... I think you need to spend some time in London to know how calm Berlin is!

Cities of forrests.You wood not believe it

[rober-dyeatribe.livejournal.com]

Nick, I'm not sure about the 40% ratio of forestry in Germany. I think it's more. Does the analysis take into account tree lines Strasses and the huge number of city parks? Altona for example, one Hamburg densely populated district very near to the Elbe, has a dense population with so many parks, seriously woody affairs too. You just wouldn't expect it.

I'm about to move home, not a meteoric change but from Southend-on-Sea to Dawes Heath (buy the woods at last). One of the reasons being in that for me to walk my dog I presently need to drive him somewhere to begin. In the UK new developments and urbanisations look for say 30 homes or 200 apartments. Why not 28 homes and a park or 180 apartments and a park with lake? We obliterate our land to build new in Robert Mogwabe scorched earth style, planting new growth which becomes neglected by all, never having a chance to establish through council neglect and vandalism.

But you know, you're vegetable man's ideals even run through too autobahn service areas too, which are nowhere near the franchised and corporate excess of the UK. It's worth stopping at anyone of them. And when you park up the woods aren't fenced off, like here in yukky uk.

But hey, you've got me looking forward to Medica International Trade Show in Düsseldorf next week! Gluhwein, ahhhh.... sacrifice some cinnamon bark to it in a toast to the trees!

Robert

And butternut squash risotto in coconut milk must be in the top 3 pumpkin dishes!

Re: Cities of forrests.You wood not believe it

[rober-dyeatribe.livejournal.com]

........hoping my contribution doesn't (yet again) bookend this subject! Was thinking it may branch out a bit.

Should it stall, they'll be an image with my i.d. coming along.

[(Anonymous)]

well, that was supposed to be a metaphorical "my", as in "the people I know." It hasn't escaped my notice that people here in Prenzlauer Berg generally seem to be spending the whole day in cafes (although many of those people are tourists). I just don't know how they pay for that, what kinds of jobs they have (if they do have any. They're probably all living off my taxes. Ha!)

I just wanted to correct the picture a little bit, by saying that there are people who do actually have hectic jobs (just as there are people who are too poor to be sipping lattes all days).

der.

[(Anonymous)]

I thought it was Richard D. James.

[dmlaenker.livejournal.com]

I have this habit of saying that food is art through cuisine, just like shelter is art through architecture. People scoff at that and call me a fat boy most of the time.

Then again, I live in the suburban American South.

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

You know how, when you come home from a holiday somewhere, you get, for a few precious hours, a glimpse of your own apartment, your own city, the country that you live in as someplace other?

I like to pretend that I'm on vacation in the city I live in. I first got the idea when I was in college in a dinky little town. I got some friends together and we took cameras and went on vacation to the mall. We posed with manequins and clerks. You know, got to know the locals. Thats the way to rally get the feel of the place. It was funny. We we're stoned.

Today I live in the S.F. Bay Area. Been here since '78. The place is stunning in so many ways and it's easy to forget that. You would think it would be hard to forget that but when you're bogged down in day to day toil you loose perspective. I try to live in the moment but quite often the moment sucks.

So when I'm tired and driving home from work on the Golden Gate Bridge I pretend like it's the first time I've seen it. "Hey, why isn't it painted gold?' I ask myself.

A whole bunch of years ago I was driving down route one. Cliffs and crashing waves and crystal clear sky. I had a little fiat spyder and I was just watching the road. My traveling companion who was wearing a head scarf and dark glasses (http://www.cheapsurrealism.com/fiat.html) said "When you were a little kid isn't this just the way you pictured California? Driving around in a sports car with the top down on an ocean highway."
"Yes", I said. But I kept my eye on the road. Those are steep cliffs.

Ethics of organic food

[tenelson.livejournal.com]

I wonder if anyone else has thought about this. Since organic food uses less efficient methods of farming, resulting in fewer actual foods per acre, isn't the recent drive towards organic foods somewhat unethical? Organic crops certainly use more water per bushel, at least, than conventionally grown crops. And of course, a farmer will get fewer bushels of the crop per acre when growing organic, perhaps resulting in more forests being cut down to feed the 1st world's growing hunger for organic.

With science, we should be able to create strains of vegetables that use less water, that need fewer pesticides, and feed more people. Yet the science of agriculture has been demonized recently by those who can afford to eat organic.

Is anyone aware of any studies one the effects of eating organic in terms of length of life? Have there been any blind taste-tests between organic and conventionally grown foods?

The problem is, the governments of the world prevent starving people from being fed. Imagine a world with sane governments, and no starving people. Is this world possible with organic food?

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

"Fast food nation" by Mark Schlosser? He said that McDonalds along with other fast food companies are loosing ground.

[hitori-photo.livejournal.com]

Nice. I do think it's true. I'm glad to hear it's backed up.
I doubt we'll ever really be able to cut it out though... but maybe. McDonalds and their whole salad thing and all that. Maybe in 100 years McDonalds will be a health food establishment that's efficient and cheap. hahahahahahaha (but only cause that's where the money''s at) Wouldn't it be nice.