not-rly-relaxing, movies and the only thing that brings me peace: Samin Nosrat
I hadn’t known until very recently the pleasure in doing one thing that is nothing and amounts to nothing for a whole evening or a whole day. I think… it’s something known as relaxing?? On depression symptom checklists u get from the doctors when you’re trying to get diagnosed (possibly on anxiety ones actually - either or), they ask you if you “have trouble relaxing” and to rate it on a scale of 1-10, 10 being extremely severe, 1 being not at all. When I’ve filled it in (about 30 times over the course of my life xoxo), I’ve always thought for that one - hmm, do I have trouble relaxing? I don’t think I do? I hang out with people, I watch TV, I browse the internet (lol), etc etc. So probably like a 2? No matter how severe my other 1-10s are, the relaxing one I’m always like this guy: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It only occurs to me, really, as I write this that that is definitely not correct; I’d started this newsletter with the idea that I was beginning to believe I was missing something on the relaxing front. As I type though, I’m remembering my Big One atm - I can’t watch movies anymore. I always got upset at movies, as u might imagine, but now I can hardly stand the emotion of them. I had to make Toby turn off The Sound Of Metal halfway through the other day - when he was watching it as I did some work - because I could feel from their strained voices and perfectly fucked up soundscape that the movie wasn’t going to end happily. It seemed beautiful and poignant, and so clever, up until where I had to turn it off - and 3 years ago, I would have adored it. You’ve heard me bang on about La La Land, right? Exactly. Imagine what a clever, well executed, thoughtful, beautiful and well acted film does to me these days. When I watched A Star Is Born I cried myself to sleep. The bit where he calls her ugly? I could cry thinking about it now. That’s actually a lie because I don’t even let myself think about it properly, because it hurts me in my chest. I can’t even watch a regular level emotion film these days, because the fear of how it might make me feel weighs too heavy on my head. The pressure of not wanting to be upset for the characters is too intense. I don’t know what to do really, because I used to fucking love watching movies. If u have any advice or are, like, a hypnotist, get in touch in the comments (actually not if ur a hypnotist, I’ve been terrified of them since a friend of a friend’s mum got hypnotised once on stage at an event and then fucking died the day after. No thank u). Is it lockdown? Or is it just me? Or is it a combo of probably a million different things? I wish I could answer that a lot a lot - but not quite enough to pay £100 per session for therapy yet, am I right.
My favourite soft-but-beautiful (read: depression-friendly) thing to watch is Samin Nosrat’s Salt Fat Acid Heat series. I’ve been obsessed with it since it came out (presumably as a result of the catchiest title ever?) and as such I’ve consumed everything Samin-based, everywhere. I think I’ve even talked about this in FMH before tbh but I’m bringing it up today because I’ve also been watching Cooked on Netflix (branching out, u know), which is hosted by Michael Pollan - who Samin worked with in the past, teaching him how to cook, after having taken his writing class. I’d forgotten this fact until she appeared on my screen, as I file my gel nails off, lamenting the joy of adding flavour to raw ingredients. Lighting up the screen more than my brightness setting could even allow. Incidentally, she arrives in the episode Water - an episode that explores where the concept of spending a whole evening, or even a whole day, making food has gone. I thought it was explored carefully, without persecuting people for Not Knowing How To Cook and instead persecuting big corporations and the m*dia (lol, I’ve been dying to make that joke for ages, sry) for coercing us into believing quicker, easier and less effort is better. Capitalism, baby!!! And it’s true - it’s taken me too-long-to-disclose to realise that the pleasure derived from eating M&S mushroom pasta ready meals (fucking delicious) isn’t necessarily less pleasure than eating a home cooked mushroom pasta, but the actual process, the time, the art, of making the home cooked mushroom pasta is a meditation that no three minute meal can provide. You eat the pasta, and it’s gone - you’ve nothing to show for it. But you feel different, even if you can’t see it. It amounts to nothing but, as ever, it means everything.
I think what I really love about Samin is the way listening to her talk about food is such easy escapism. The thing is: I feel like at the moment I need calm. It's like there's all the tension of a movie in my head all the time anyway, all the ups and the downs and the rounds, all the highs and the lows and the to’s and the fro’s (they left me dizzy, oh won’t you please forgive me <3) - so, yeah, I just feel I can't add more to that at the moment. I need to counter that. I guess the way that you might watch a movie if you were bored or if there was nothing else happening to engage yourself, to feel something, is the opposite for me. I need to disengage; take away the tension. And watching or reading Samin’s stuff does that for me in a way that other things don’t at the moment. It makes me detach - it’s meditative (maaaaan). That's what it's like cooking food, too. Chopping tiny slices of garlic with a sharp knife, watching them fall to the chopping board, sheer cream shards piling up as I slice, slice, slice. Cutting chillies in even rounds, admiring how they look like doll’s house bell peppers. Folding the spaghetti into my too-small pan once it’s softened in the salted water. Hearing shallots dancing in hot oil, popping intermittently like they’re applauding the end of each song. Watching anchovies melt into the sauce, disappearing like feelings into the ether. Being with Toby. Tearing the mozzarella ball with my hands, soft centre relaxing as it’s released. Having a sip of the first creamy bit of a Guinness. Layering the pasta sheets into a lasagne, sauce spilling over the edges as though it’s a modernist painting. Shimmy shimmy shaking my frying pan to emulsify my pasta sauce. Zesting a lemon, citrus oil springing out as I squeeze. Stirring miso into warming water. Watching butter turn from a yellow block into a shiny gold liquid. Getting in bed in the evening. Pressing play on Salt Fat Acid Heat.
I feel like I have always been scared of meditating, actually. I've been scared of seeing inside my own head - of being inside my own head - which is why I relentlessly listen to podcasts and music and the radio and watch Friends on repeat, even though I've seen every episode of every season literally 200 times, because then I don't have to sit and listen to myself. But maybe I just understood meditating wrong; maybe I just meditate in a different way, you know. I suppose it’s not exactly meditating - I'm not clearing my mind and I’m not understanding myself on a different level - however, I am calming myself, I am going somewhere else. I am escaping the barrage of thoughts that hound me every day (#tumblr). This is such a fucking cliché, isn't it? I haven't got an analogy yet to pull it round, to make it cool - hopefully one will come to me by the end of the newsletter. Sure you’ll be waiting with baited breath.
In one of the SFAH (true fans call it SFAH, obv) episodes, the Acid one, Samin goes to Mexico. Spanish language comforts and calms me too, and I love this episode so much. The delicate way they grate chocolate onto a citrus pavlova, the bright white fish layered with rainbow chargrilled vegetables, the moment when Samin squeals as she tries the Melipona honey and all the local honey producers laugh. At one point in the episode, Samin is trying different salsas with Rodrigo, described only as a salsa lover (fair, tbh) in the show, and they go in for the third salsa, the hottest, the habanero one. “Do you think I’ll cry?” Samin asks. Rodrigo replies, without hesistation: “Ah, if you cry, it’s good.”
Samin bites the taco, is hit with the full force of the habanero, and she laughs instead.