Bananas and Mortality
A bit of this and a bit of that
Weekly Digest, May 17th 2025
Favorites:
Factory Street Bells. The 3 singles from The Swell Season’s new album (which comes out next month) seem to be all I want to listen to, over and over. If you’re going to listen to only one I would start with Stuck in Reverse. It’s the kind of song that sweeps you up and carries you along with it. And I’ve just watched the video for Factory Street Bells and I could cry.
Classic Ghost Stories Podcast. I became obsessed with Tony Walker’s narrations a couple years ago and I’ve never gone off them. He usually gives some background on the author after reading the story and then debriefs a bit and gets chatty and sometimes riled up about things which is always fantastic. I think my all-time favorite is his version of The Picture of Dorian Gray. I love the way he says the word “exquisite”.
Banana. My friend (who happens to be the biggest coffee snob I’ve ever met, in the best way) ordered banana syrup in her iced coffee and I doubted her, but then I tried it and was immediately convinced. I found a recipe and made my own and let me tell you… I now want it in everything. I’m not even a sweetened coffee person but this changed me. Yesterday I made a banana matcha. I tried banana bread French toast and was so enamored by it that I am committed to making my own this week. I do not know how far this obsession will lead.
Painting: Still Life with Rayfish, Chaïm Soutine, 1924
I was reminded of Soutine this week and have been marveling at his paintings. I rewatched this wonderful video where several artists talk about why his work inspires them. The rayfish paintings are particularly startling and strangely gorgeous. I’m also very drawn to his landscapes with houses. One of the artists in the video describes his landscapes as looking crumpled and I quite like how she says… “I thought, ‘they are crumpled with the force of Soutine’s vision’.” If you want to see what she means just search “Soutine crumpled houses” and look at image results.
Quote: A section of this poem was used as an epigraph before a chapter in Daniel Deronda and it kept coming back into my head until I found the whole poem and spent some time reading and thinking about it. He wrote it after seeing the Elgin Marbles and it is a reflection on mortality, written just a few short years before he would die at age 25.
On Seeing the Elgin Marbles
By John Keats
My spirit is too weak—mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
And each imagined pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship tells me I must die
Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.
Yet ’tis a gentle luxury to weep
That I have not the cloudy winds to keep
Fresh for the opening of the morning’s eye.
Such dim-conceived glories of the brain
Bring round the heart an undescribable feud;
So do these wonders a most dizzy pain,
That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude
Wasting of old time—with a billowy main—
A sun—a shadow of a magnitude.
Letter From a Stranger: I recently reached for an old book on Gauguin that I found on my shelves and yet have no recollection of ever buying. As I opened it, a treasure trove of items fell out which led me down a rabbit hole of investigation. A tiny pressed flower next to what appears to be the name “Christoire”. Six different pamphlets from exhibitions at a gallery in San Francisco called Cory Galleries. Cucaro, Dali, and four other artist’s I’d never heard of and about whom there is little to no information online. The gallery was owned by a man named Edward J. Cory who seems to also have been an artist. I think these two mixed media collages (pictured below) were done by him. Among the pamphlets was also an old postcard from the Pickwick hotel which immediately reminded me of a postcard I bought last year in San Francisco of the Palace hotel. So many images. So much color. I feel like the richness of a whole era of the San Francisco art scene just flopped into my lap from where they had long been nestled between black and white reproductions of Gauguin paintings.
Below: 2 collages by an Edward J. Cory, stranger’s postcard on the left, my postcard on the right
Food: Clafoutis Aux Abricots.
When I saw apricots at the grocery store I knew it was time to make the first clafoutis of the year. I got the recipe from a woman named Sally who runs an artist residency in France. Every evening she made us a delicious meal and dessert and the clafoutis was my favorite. This time I added some allspice dram and nutmeg.
Much love,
I’ve been on a banana pancake kick and don’t foresee it ending anytime soon! It’s become a running joke; when I tell people I’m going home for dinner, the reply is ”banana pancakes!?”. Banana matcha sounds incroyable
PS I forgot to say how I love the Louisiana Channel video...... the artists speaking feel that energy of Soutine in his paintings, and I like how they express that so well in words. Listening and watching made me want to rush into my studio and start painting...... and then my inner naysayer came up. I envisaged what I'm currently working on in my studio and how hesitantly and non-energetically I'm approaching it. I'm doing a course and trying to learn something new, and that raises the challenge of my not pouring my energy forth in my usual way, but going slowly and trying to learn a different way. It feels very unenergetic.