"They like hot coffee, a fried steak with plenty of salt and pepper and meat sauce upon it, a piece of apple pie and a chunk of cheese. They like the feeling of a full stomach. They resemble those myriad souls who say, I don’t know anything about music, but I love a good rousing military band.”
Let the listener to Sousa hear such music. Let him talk to other music-listeners. Let him read about music-makers.
He will discover the strange note of the oboe, recognize the French horn’s convolutions. Schubert will sing sweetly in his head, and Beethoven sweep through his heart. Then one day he will cry. “Bach! By God, I can hear him! I can hear!”
That happens to the taste-blind in just some such way. He eats apple pie, good or bad, because he has always eaten it. Then one day he sees a man turn his back upon the cardboard crust and sodden half-cooked fruit, and eat instead some crisp crackers with his cheese, a crisp apple peeled and sliced ruminatively after the crackers and the yellow cheese. The man looks as if he knew something pleasant, a secret from the taste-blind.
“I believe I’ll try that. It is – yes, it is good. I wonder——“
...this sent me straight to the bookshelf :-)
"They like hot coffee, a fried steak with plenty of salt and pepper and meat sauce upon it, a piece of apple pie and a chunk of cheese. They like the feeling of a full stomach. They resemble those myriad souls who say, I don’t know anything about music, but I love a good rousing military band.”
Let the listener to Sousa hear such music. Let him talk to other music-listeners. Let him read about music-makers.
He will discover the strange note of the oboe, recognize the French horn’s convolutions. Schubert will sing sweetly in his head, and Beethoven sweep through his heart. Then one day he will cry. “Bach! By God, I can hear him! I can hear!”
That happens to the taste-blind in just some such way. He eats apple pie, good or bad, because he has always eaten it. Then one day he sees a man turn his back upon the cardboard crust and sodden half-cooked fruit, and eat instead some crisp crackers with his cheese, a crisp apple peeled and sliced ruminatively after the crackers and the yellow cheese. The man looks as if he knew something pleasant, a secret from the taste-blind.
“I believe I’ll try that. It is – yes, it is good. I wonder——“
excerpt from chapter 'Pity the Blind in Palate'
'Serve it Forth"
- M. F. K. Fisher 1937
Thanks for your good work,
JS
Schellville, CA
Absolutely wonderful from MFK. And thank you!
A delicious ABC, thanks Jeremiah. Your post makes me hope that a trip through the alphabet may in the offing.
Working exactly on that, as well as an audio book.