A Prayer

The artist Paul Klee said that an artist starts out knowing nothing, and as he or she matures, he or she learns his or her craft, until it is so firmly embedded in their heads, that they forget the craft and just do their art. In this way, they come full circle: starting out with no craft, focusing on craft very hard for a long time, and eventually becoming the craft and not thinking about the process anymore.
I think it is the same thing with cooks. There is this debate in the culinary world as to whether chefs are artists or not. For me, the jury is still out on it. I used to think, "Wow, art you can eat!" I didn't want to think of chefs as anything less than artists. To be "just" a craftsman, well, that was lowering one's self, wasn't it? I think my mind is changing.
More on all that later....
I had written the whole thing.
A whole blog dedicated to how hard things are here, and how crazy last night was at the restaurant. I had written that I wanted to come home now, please, and that last night was horribly busy, so much so that I was ready to give up.
But to quote the good Lord, from Leviticus 2:14, "Save the drama for your mama, y'all."
Last night was super difficult. All the regional train drivers are on strike, so you cant get into or out of or around Paris, at all. So everyone who is staying in the hotel is stuck in the hotel. So what do you do when you have money to burn (basic rooms in the hotel are up to 550 euros per night, that's close to 800 American) and no place to go? You barrage the restaurant, of course.
The woman who works lunch finishes her shift as I start, so it is her job to tell me what things I need to make so the restaurant can be ready for service that night. She told me we had all kinds of things that we didn't really have, just so she could get out of work earlier. So, again, we were totally swamped and under prepared.
It was a really tough night. At 10:30pm, we are usually slowing down, but at midnight, last night, we were still going full tilt. We ran out of all kinds of things that had to be made on the spot. This is not an easy thing to do.
And something in me broke. I think the glamour of being here is gone. I don't look out anymore and think, "Wow, I'm in Paris." This has become my life, and so, in that, I can really start to learn.
So back to Klee. I think the guy was pretty spot on. The longer you study something, the more you become that thing. Take riding a bike for example: at first, you don't know how to ride one at all. Then you spend a long time focusing on how to break, how to turn, how to speed up, how to stop, how to fall without smearing your face all over the street, etc. But after a while, you forget all of that, and you kind of merge with the bike. You don't think, "Gee, I'd like to go over by those trees, so first I will pump the peddles, and now I will turn these handlebars to the right..." You just go over to those trees without a thought as to how to make the bike do it, but all the while you are manipulating the bike in ways that you never could have done when you first started to ride.
Its like that with cooking too. I got here and thought, "OK, I am going to make some onion frizzles. So first I will peel the onions, and now I will dredge them in flour, and now..." But now, I am at a point where things are starting to click into place. I don't think about the process of making the Norwegian salmon plate; I just make it. I don't think about how to correctly prepare a tartare; I just do it.
There are men here who have been doing this for so long that it is as though their knives are in their arms. It is hard to watch them work and make a distinction where their hands end and the knives begin. I am learning that process.
And that sounds like a really happy thing. "Awwww, Mark is learning his trade. I promised myself I wouldn't cry...."
Let me say this here: this is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life.
The glamour is gone from living in Paris.
When Ruta left, I said, "OK, I am ready to get my ass kicked", and so it has been everyday.
The language barrier is one of the things that is most difficult.
I feel as though I am in a glass box in the middle of a crowded room. I am seen and can see everything perfectly clearly, but I have to struggle to understand what is said to me. I have to struggle to make myself understood.
I am learning, but painfully slowly. At least it feels that way. And it is pretty lonely.
Everyday that the restaurant is busy, which is every day now, I am cut and burned and bruised. Last night, in the heat of it all, I re-twisted my ankle. It was an intensity of pain that I cannot describe, but to say that I had to lay against the closest wall, face first, waiting for the pain to diminish so I could get back to work.
I am mocked for being an American; I am laughed at for not speaking perfectly, and I am looked at as the new guy who doesn't know what he is doing.
And still, I have to carry on, burns and bruises and all.
This is the part where I am learning to pump the peddles.
This is how it is done in Europe. Nobody will hold your hand at all.
I can sit here and cry about it, or I can decide that this is how it is and how it is going to be.
So, that's that. This is the hardest thing I have ever done, and it is kicking my ass, just like I asked for.
People tell me often, "Oh, you're learning to be a chef? I love to cook! Last night I made..."
So, in all of this, I have learned a distinction: loving to cook, and being a cook are about two different things. The first is about loving to eat; the second is about loving to serve.
I am serving the guest, true, but before that, I am serving myself and the skills I have learned. I am serving the history and culture of my cuisine. I am serving the art of the craft.
And what a craft! You know, a piece of music is recorded; a movie is filmed; a house if built. But a finely crafted meal, it is eaten and it is gone. A dish is created by someone, just like with music or film or anything, and like those other arts, the next generation refines that craft, and so on and again, so that when you have, say, pasta with pesto, you are eating the refinement of that dish from many years before. Add to that, that the ingredients take months to grow, and the chef who receives them has taken years honing his skills so to best serve those ingredients. I don't mean just "serve", as in "to bring to the guest," but I mean "serve" as in "to do justice to" or "to do right by" those ingredients. In every dish you eat that has been prepared by someone who loves food and has been trained well and knows the value of his or her ingredients, you are eating decades, sometimes centuries, of human craftsmanship. But unlike music or film, when you have finished eating, the meal, the art, the creation is gone.
How zen! All that work to go into a moment of pleasure, and then it is over. And tomorrow night I will come back to the kitchen to create it again, because my knives are in my arms, because I have been broken down, piece by piece, to learn the craft of creating a cuisine, so even though the bread is eaten and the wine is drunk- tonight, the table is set again, and the bread is served and the wine is served, and the guest is served.
This is the hardest thing I have ever done. I thought I was coming here to refine my skills, but I have come here to learn to be a man about the kitchen and in my life, and that means willingly submitting myself to flame and ridicule, every day, until I do not think, I just do.
So, I am cut.
So, I am burned.
So, I am lonely.
So, I am discouraged.
That is what I came here for.
This is the hardest thing I have ever done.