SUBLIME WINE MOMENT, LIKE AN ENCOUNTER WITH RACQUEL WELCH
During a rather academic tasting of 2009 Bordeaux I was suddenly struck with a sensual pleasure, a sublime wine moment of the kind that is so rare as to be memorable for the rest of my life. It was one of those highly technical, partially blinded tastings where we all quietly sample a couple of ounces poured into half-a-dozen glasses and take notes, discussing each afterwards and unveiling them one at a time.We were at George Heron's house, a group of eight sampling six pre-decanted bottles from our own collections. I have a certain routine for this affair. First I[...]
FROM COPULATING DOGS TO TURKISH BUSES; RESEARCH, ITS UPS AND DOWNS
All fiction requires some research. Sometimes it is minimal. For my Appassionata story, I decided on a metaphor as a foreshadowing device, two street dogs copulating, a small dog mounting a big one. I know nothing about dogs. No problem, Google to the rescue! Within minutes I had a vivid scene involving a bat-eared bulldog and an Australian shepherd with a luxuriously shaggy coat.More often, research is complex and elaborate. For my story about a night bus from Istanbul to Fethiye I spent many days on the internet looking up maps of Turkish highways, towns along the route, and details[...]
FOLLOW UP; ALBEROBELLO, THE LECTURE SERIES AND MIM
I did finish Appassionata, my complex story about Alberobello in Puglia, Italy, set to various classical pieces for solo piano. Once I had my back stories for the three major characters, my story unraveled easily and went in some surprising directions I myself could not have predicted two weeks ago. In the meanwhile much of the music I used blended well either as accompaniment to the narrative or as crucial metaphor.I used a Chopin Nocturne, Rachmaninoff's Prelude in G minor and all three movements of Beethoven's Appassionata for the story. Two Schumann pieces from his Carnaval also have a brief[...]
ICEBERGS AND APPASSIONATA, THE CHALLENGES OF CHARACTER
As I devour my writing lectures, I struggle with a difficult story that has already failed twice. The teacher is giving general instructions about plot, character development, settings and action in a way that I would have found confusing if I were a novice college student. I am not. I know most of what he is saying because I have discovered it by myself through experience. There are little pearls here and there however, or concepts that succinctly summarize certain issues. One of them is, iceberg.I generally approach a story with a few little kernels of inspiration as a starting[...]
ACCENTS IN WINE; SAME AS LANGUAGE
Can wine speak? And if so, can it speak in accents?If you get to know certain wines well, you'll find that they indeed do speak a language, and with certain accents.A case in point: take the above 2011 Healdsburg Rancher from the Russian River we recently sampled in a blind tasting. It had a clean, fruity domestic pinot nose, a delicate structure as all pinot noir should have, but robust and fruit forward, enough to announce itself as being from the New World. It has a slightly sweet mid palate profile and a food friendly, acidic finish with no[...]
BUYUKADA; NOT ENOUGH DRAMA
Several years ago, I wrote about a visit to Buyukada in Turkey, an offshore island in a chain known as the Prices' Islands that Istanbul dwellers use as a summer resort. It is a scenic place with hillside villas, beaches, a lively boardwalk full of outdoor restaurants and an ornate, fin-de-siecle pier. There are no motorized vehicles in the island except for fire and police, all transportation via donkeys, horse driven carriages and nowadays by bicycle.The essay was to be a chapter in a book I conceived as a memoir-travelogue that I never finished. It described the traditional fayton tour[...]