Monday Musings…
Something about chefs… I think?
I’ve always liked cooking programmes. It’d be more compelling if I thought it was a window into culture or that chefs had a great charismatic draw, but it’s not, there’s just something comforting about watching people prepare and eat food.
Recently though, it’s been ruined for me. I had Great British Menu on the other night and the surreality of it is something else. So there’re a lot of chefs all from different regions of the UK, and they have to make a dish inspired by the people that the final banquet is being given for. About 30 rounds of this to get your winning dish through.
I’ve seen previous episodes where the banquet is in aid of The Royal British Legion or something, military veterans and they’re doing things like making a steak look like a severed leg. This series though it’s about ‘celebrating British invention’ so the things that won are stuff like an egg, served in an egg shell to ‘celebrate’ IVF pioneers.
There’s another article on the triteness of all that, but what really annoys me is that people have really convinced themselves that chefs are artists. It just sucks the joy out of the cooking, makes it all seem academic and thoughtful when it’s literally a frying pan.
I’m lazy and am going to call this ‘artistification’, but you see it everywhere now. Even jobs like accountancy or law require you to go into an interview and purvey yourself as someone who genuinely brings the artistic passion to the role. I’m sure neoliberalism is to blame somewhere down the line but I think it builds a kind of doublespeak into everyone's lives.
Anyway, music, music is the worst at this. Play a small gig in South London and people will start to talk to you as if your mind works differently, like you’re a visionary spirit who sees through the prosaic into the meaningful. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy too because as soon as someone tells you that you start to live out the role. Outfits and bars and people to make you fit into it.
But I think it makes music worse. I’ve heard an old interview of Lennon and McCartney talking about how they wrote music, ‘just a couple of tins of lager in their living room and 2 guitars’, no pretence to be anything coz I guess popular music wasn’t so ingrained then. But they certainly didn’t consider themselves artists, they were just a group of mates who got on stage every night and enjoyed playing songs together.
So here’s a poorly thought out idea, if you want people to make more entertaining, more innovative music, stop valorising musicians. We’re just a group of mates trying to entertain you. You don’t owe us anything.
