tom on my mind

I've been working away in my studio on a new body of work that's based in equal measure on riverside grocery store and the marvellous tom robbins. how you may ask, do the two relate? Well friends, if you have to ask, then you haven't yet got your hands on the right libretto. You'll just have to wait until January at the yukon arts centre to find out.

In preparation for the series I've been re-reading a number of Tom's classics and am struck by how relevant his writing remains "in these troubled times". First there's Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas set during the calamitous aftermath of a stock market crash. Then, Skinny Legs and All, where Tom waxes poetic on art, the hidden life of inanimates and the rising threat of evangelical christianity (bring on the rapture y'all yee haw). I've just moved on to Jitterbug Perfume, a time bending tome about our collective obsession with immortality, the origins of scent and the death of the mystic at the hands of organized religion.

here are a few lines from the opening paragraphs:

"The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent, not of passion. The beet is the melancholy vegetable, the one most willing to suffer. The beet is the murderer returned to the scene of the crime. The beet is what happens when the cherry finishes with the carrot.The beet was Rasputin's favorite vegetable. You could see it in his eyes."

In other news, I've been experiencing an ungodly craving for borscht of late.