three words

bread. butter. radishes.

best. sandwich. ever.

i learned about this here.

i thought it sounded a bit wack.
but it won me over with the simple.

try it. now.

we served them at our salon evening this evening. it helps if the bread is homemade, freshly out of the oven, still slightly warm. chives should probably be from the garden and include a few blossoms, which are in their glory right now. but if you have other herbs, they're ok too. plenty of flaky salt is essential. and good, organic butter. the elements are simple, but you choose them wisely, they just work. 

and about those three words, we ended our salon (the theme was reflections, just like our spring exhibition) by asking everyone to describe themselves in three words. it isn't easy. you should probably just say the first three words that come to mind. and what was weird was the ones i was sitting there, thinking up, weren't the ones that came out my mouth when it was my turn. the words i actually said were: relaxed, creative and honest. the words in my head were: funny, laid-back, creative. at least creative was on both lists and arguably relaxed and laid-back mean the same thing, so maybe my lists weren't that different. i also added, when i said it out loud, that i was more of an introvert than i seemed. a good friend nodded at that.

what are your three words? are they different on a given day? or a given hour? or a given minute? who are you anyway when it comes down to it?

if i had to say them right now, they would be: nightowl, electric, awake. 

wonderful wonder woman

in our second of a series of salons i've been co-creating at our local library, the theme was wonder woman. but not only the comic book character wonder woman, but the wonder woman in us all. this year is the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage in denmark, so we brought in that aspect as well. we didn't get the vote in the US for another 5 years! afterwards, i looked up when women got the vote in countries around the world and there are some pretty surprising facts on that list. like that switzerland, which i would have thought was a pretty progressive place, didn't allow women to vote until 1971! appalling! and turkey gave women the vote in 1934, but france didn't follow suit for another 10 years in 1944. also appalling.

we prepared two rounds of questions for the tables to discuss. my thought was to start it off a bit lighthearted in the spirit of wonder woman and ask people what they thought their super power was. or what they would want it to be if they could have one. the age range at my table went from a bit younger than me (early 40s) to 60s, so approximately a 20 year span. and i quickly realized that aside from one (my partner in the arrangement), they actually didn't know what was meant by a super power. and they definitely didn't take the question in the lighthearted way it was intended.

i came to find out that they actually had no idea who wonder woman was at all! they weren't familiar with the cartoon, nor the fabulous series from the 70s starring lynda carter that so defined how i jumped out of the swingset for a good portion of my childhood. so, they looked a little blankly at my superman socks and wonder woman converse. they just didn't get it. and i have to say that it made me feel so sorry for them! but then, it hit me that they felt sorry for me for knowing about a comic book heroine. it was just another example of those shallow americans and their lack of culture.

they obviously didn't know that jill lepore (a harvard scholar, no less), recently wrote a history of wonder woman and the story behind her debut in 1940 as well as her place in feminist history. they didn't know that the book just beat out 132 other contenders to win the american history book prize. wonder woman is huge and awesome and a feminist icon. she is not merely a cartoon character, she is so much more. she is strong and brave, a real amazonian princess. and it was funny, because several people mentioned that they wished they could be more like those amazon women of legend. they just didn't seem to realize that wonder woman was the best known one of all!

next time, i'll not assume that everyone is on the same page and prepare a bit more explanation so that we all start on equal footing, or at least that we understand where we're all coming from.

in all, tho', a very interesting evening anyway.

moving (literally and metaphorically): a salon evening

on tuesday evening, i co-hosted a salon evening for the first time. it was in cooperation with our little local group of creatives - called creagive - and our local library, so it involved some of my favorite people. the theme was "moving" (at flytte (sig) in danish). we chose this theme because we recently had to move out of our local kulturhus so it can be renovated into a new library and creative space, so moving referred both to physically moving, but we also talked a lot about things which have moved us in a more metaphorical sense over the years.

how it went was that when people arrived, they got a little glass of fernet branca and a name tag with a symbol and a color on it. we had jazz playing and the locale was lit primarily with candle light and we had even burned a bit of lavender incense, in order to set the scene. the tables were set with various fun dips and snacks and a bowl of edamame. we wanted people to expand their horizons and move their boundaries a little bit, so we chose foods that they may not have tried (like edamame) and in combinations that they may not have tried - so dipping carrots in pesto and bread sticks in ajvar. the fernet branca was a bit too much of a leap for some and they immediately asked for a glass of wine instead. we allowed that and didn't push them.

on the tables, we had a little sticker that matched the different symbols we had chosen (a martini glass, a tree, a house and a heart), so that you went to the table that had your symbol in the first round. this way, people wouldn't just sit with the people they came with, but would mix and mingle a bit. 17 people came, so we had three groups of 4 and one group of 5. for the second round, we switched places and you had to go to the table that matched the color from your name tag. this way, we mixed things up a bit.

we had prepared some conversation-starting questions for each of the rounds - 5 for each and we gave a half an hour for each session. both times, we extended by 5-10 minutes, because people weren't done discussing. as we had pitched it as an art salon, we linked some of our discussion questions to art. the first round questions were: "which artist has moved you the most?" "which place did you most recently move from?" "how many times have you moved in your life?" "which country would you like to move to?" and "how old were you when you moved away from home?"

to warm everyone up for the questions, two of us told short stories related to moving. i told the story of the time i touched matisse's goldfish painting at the pushkin museum in moscow. there was, in those days (20 years ago!), no security and there was also no glass on the painting, so i touched the actual surface of the paint that matisse himself brushed to canvas. it was a defining moment for me in relation to art - and the first time i felt a personal relationship with an artwork. my co-host told a tale of moving rather spontaneously to paris to work and study painting in her youth. she found an art teacher through an ad and was ushered into a funny little apartment by a funny little man and ended up studying with him for a long time. our stories and our questions really opened everyone up and we had a lively discussion, people remembering their first apartments away from home or all of the places they had lived along the way. it was actually quite difficult to stop the discussion and take a break before the second round.

our second round started with a wonderful poem that at the base of it was about being human and fickle and never satisfied and ever searching for spirituality and love and companionship. the poet herself presented it and it set a fantastic stage for the second round where we had come up with some deeper questions: "what advice would you give to your 18-year-old self?" "what moves you most? travel? people? thoughts? work? experiences?" "what stops you from moving?" "what was the first artwork that meant something to you?" and we had a selection of different artworks, from danish artist kvium to picasso to malevich, which we asked, "does this work move you?" what was interesting was, at least with the groups i was with, the first round, which i had seen as easier, more superficial questions, was much livelier and people were more engaged and actually dug a bit deeper than it seemed with the second round. but it was also perhaps the group dynamic of the second round. it was also great, but it didn't feel as deep. that was interesting because we thought the second round questions were deeper and more philosophical.

we will be doing another salon in february. in celebration of 100 years of danish women having the vote, we have given it a wonder woman theme (i might have had something to do with that). we want to discuss the pressures on women today to be wonder woman - having the perfect career, children, home and life. are we all wonder woman? or should we be? and who expects it of us? what are our super powers? these questions and more will be discussed next time.