dinner for one is the place where (oh go on, call it ‘the table at which’; you know you want to) recipes, paintings, photographs, tales — of, on, about, with, containing, alongside— ingredients, kitchen encounters (confidential or otherwise … vale, Tony), meals, memories of culinary experiences, recountings of memorable noms (remembrances of lost thyme), gather.
Not so much as a mélange: there is no mixing here (we’re not making a fecking salad). But where our tales, photographs, paintings, recipes, are in-conversation with each other.
For eating is always an eating-with, even when you are alone: each dish, and every meal, contains within it, a multitude of stories. Journeys, travels, histories, images, stains, marks-made, remarks, remarques, notes, music, tones, rhythms, improvisations … all waiting to be told, heard, seen, felt, touched, tasted.
And, each time we eat, we are eating not just in but as communion— a coming-together (right now … ) that transcends the profane (over me … ).
As Italo Calvino reminds us, each time we chew, there is an « extraction of vital juices », after which a « process of ingestion and digestion leaves its imprint », as in « every amorous relationship ». Much like how « a kiss », as Georges Bataille never lets us forget, « is the beginning of cannibalism ». (Oh, Gregory Peck … *turns away shyly*, exit stage left, chased by a bear)
To eat … to touch … to kiss … to know (ooooo you, is to love love love you … ).
Where what we ingest shapes us, takes us on turns, slants us, forms us, makes us, becomes us. Where tears in the batter of a wedding cake not only causes us to cry, tears us up, maybe even tears us apart, but that at that moment of ingestion, of chewing, of eating, we— momentarily — become rivulets flowing down a cheek.
Métamorphose involontaire.
Come dine with us! (nom nom nom)
A meal so lovingly prepared you wish and wonder if its words, too, are edible. If ‘abandonment is a form of freedom’ then time is at once precise and indefinite — like the memory of sherry buzzing on your tongue. And if food is love, and love is food, simple ingredients just won’t do — you need the magic of Jeremy Fernando’s language and Sara Chong’s paintings alongside a slab of butter and a goblet of gin. This body of work tastes like a stiff Irish coffee on a cold Sunday morning — goes down easy, and you don’t know you need it until you’re knocked out.
Rollicking good fun!
Excellent— sound above sense every time!
‘were it that easy’ & ‘dinner for one’ © Jeremy Fernando
Paintings © Sara Chong
Photographs © Jeremy Fernando
Recipes © Sara Chong & Jeremy Fernando