PARTY TIME WITH JC

 Let’s have a belated celebration of John Cage’s birthday, September 5^th, though frankly I’m prepared to celebrate him any day of the year.

 

And I did see the above photograph on Gary Leonard’s Instagram feed, taken on September 5th 1987 at a party given for Cage at the Triforium in downtown Los Angeles. (He was born in 1912 – looking good, John).

 

The Triforium is a piece of public sculpture in downtown LA created in 1975 by Joseph Young, made from concrete and illuminated Venetian glass prisms and connected to a programmed sound system.  Music and lights moved in harmony. This is a picture I took in 2022.

 

It was silent for quite a long time but thanks to the folks at the Triforium Project there were live performances in 2017 and 18.  And I was at one of them, though as I recall they didn’t play any John Cage

 

I was there with my psychogeographic pal Anthony Miller, who knows all and sees all, and he said, ‘Isn’t that Gary Leonard over there taking pictures?’ Gary Leonard is a legend in LA, having photographed the great and the good and the deeply obscure, from LA punks onward.

 

And indeed it was Gary Leonard, and we talked to him a little bit.  Now Gary Leonard did a great book, also now a website, called  ‘Take My Picture’ and it took a certain amount of will power not to say to him, ‘Take my picture, Gary,’ but we managed it. Sometimes I think that was a mistake.

 

Anyway, now in further celebration of John Cage and acknowledgement of his status as foodie, mycologist and wit, here is a ‘story’ from his work Indeterminacy.

SIPPING WITH CAITLIN (THEORETICALLY)

 You know, if I didn’t read Caitlin Moran’s Celebrity Watch column in the Times every Friday I’d be even more out of touch with the modern world than I currently am.

 

Thanks to today’s column I’m now aware of something called The Broctail, the invention of one Jack Sotti who’s sometimes described as a London cocktail guru, which is apparently a thing.  The Broctail looks like this:

 

It involves blanched florets of tenderstem broccoli shaken with tequila, lime juice, olive oil, sugar syrup and ice, so it’s basically a magararita with a bit of veg in it.  Why not a Brocarita? 

 

Caitlin who refers to me (and a few others) every week as her ‘dearest reader’ suggests a development of her own – the cabbagetini. A bunch of booze with some cabbage in it.  And I tried to think of what might be usefully added to a cocktail, any cocktail,and I thought whimsically and improbably that maybe some mushrooms would do the job.  

Man, am I late on the scene.  The internet is awash with mushroom cocktails of one kind or another, most of them involving some fairly run of the mill concoctions with a slice of shiitake or lion’s mane tossed in, but this one in ‘Barrows’ Intense’ actually uses cognac, orange liqueur, lemon juice and savory mushroom syrup.  The Mushroom Cognac Crusta.

 

   I didn’t know there was anything such thing as mushroom syrup although I was well aware of John Cage’s Mushroom Dogsup: as opposed to catsup – get it?  His recipe involves mushrooms, ginger root, mace, bay leaf, cayenne and black pepper, allspice and brandy and should apparently be kept a year before using.

 

You might think the presence of brandy would indicate that it’s some way towards being a cocktail already but Cage’s recipe only calls for one teaspoon per half pint, which is not going to get the job done.  But put it a dirty martini or a Gibson, and you’d definitely have something worth drinking.

 

John Cage obviously regarded mushrooms as a serious business

 

Though he could see the funny side.

CAGE AND CAKE

          Do you want to see a picture of John Cage feeding Peggy Guggenheim?  Well, it could do no harm, could it? 

 

The picture comes from the website of Northwestern University with the caption, ‘In 1962, composer John Cage made his first trip to Japan on a month long tour sponsored by the Sogetsu Art Center in Tokyo. He was accompanied by a few friends including Peggy Guggenheim. The two had been close for years by the time of the 1962 tour, and Cage invited her because she had always wanted to visit Japan. In this photo, the two are seen sharing a bit of cake.’ —Greg MacAyeal.

 

The implication is that they’re in Japan but it doesn’t actually say so, and for that matter I’m not 100 per cent sure that’s a bit of cake - that glass looks wrong for cake.  Could it be the sponge at the bottom of a trifle?

 

No such ambiguity here:

 

Or here.

FORAGED FROM THE HEADLINES

Maybe you saw some headlines, such as the one in the Evening Standard:

 

And below it a story about mushroom foragers who’d been collecting fungi in large  quantities from Epping Forest, then selling them to fancy London restaurants and markets.

The legality, or otherwise, of this was pretty straightforward.  Foraging is generally legal on public land in the UK, but only if it’s for personal consumption and if you don’t collect more than 1.7kg. 

 

But the professional foragers of Epping Forest were taking much more than that, and they’ve now been stopped.  Some of them have been given fines, and foraging has been completely banned in the forest.  There are wardens to enforce it apparently.

 

Of course John Cage made a significant income from selling foraged mushrooms to fancy New York restaurants, but there was only one of him.

As for that headline, you could argue about whether mushrooms have anything to do with the ‘green lungs’ of London or anywhere else.  Obviously mushrooms are not green because they don’t contain chlorophyll and in most circumstances they ‘breathe’ much the way that  animals and humans do - oxygen in and carbon dioxide out.  You might also note that significant amounts of Epping Forest are not in London.

 

         When I’m out walking I’m always fascinated by mushrooms growing wild and often I take a picture or two and when I get home I try to identify the specimen. I find this incredibly difficult, and I would never dream of eating something I’d foraged.  There’s a reason for this.

 

I used to share a flat with a man who was a hospital administrator in London.  One day, he told me, a family of four pitched up in A & E at the hospital complaining of stomach pains.  They’d been out foraging wild mushrooms, eaten them, and then come down with terrible stomach pains.  The hospital was eventually able to sort them out – a process that involved giving all four of them liver transplants.  A cautionary tale.  

 

According to that Evening Standard article there are over 1,500 varieties of mushroom in Epping Forest. I hope those foraging lads knew what they’re doing.

 

THE SHROOM AND I

I went to the exhibition at Somerset House titled: Mushrooms: The Art, Design and Future of Fungi curated by Francesca Gavin, which according to the publicity is celebrating ‘the remarkable mushroom, and all the progressive, poetic and psychedelic wonder it evokes’ – i.e. it seemed to be heavily directed towards fans of ‘shrooming, though in fact when I went there quite a few mothers and children, ‘Oh yes, little Fiona just loves psilocybin.’  For obvious reasons I didn't photograph the children.

         The exhibition also, and I’m quoting here, shows ‘ground-breaking experiments in design, textiles and architecture that utilise mushrooms in exciting new ways – from upcycled agro-waste to sustainable shoes made with mycelium.’ I’m no fashion maven but if the shoes in the exhibition are anything to go by, it may take a while before they catch on.

         Fortunately there was art too, lots of ‘emerging artists’ I’d never heard of but also work Cy Twombly, Beatrix Potter, Carsten Höller (who made the mushroom suitcase above), and quite a few others including Takashi Murakami.  



Want to see a picture of me standing next to Takashi Murakami?  Of course you do.  I'm the one on the left.

There were also books in display cases which I always like, 

and this included a copy (actually an artist’s proof) of Mushroom Book, actually more or a folio, by John Cage, Alexander H. Smith, and Lois Long.  Since it was only an edition of 75 this is, as they say, ‘a rare chance to see.’

And frankly I was glad for the presence of Mr. Cage, (I pretty much always am) because given the rest of the exhibition you might never have known that mushrooms were things that people actually eat for food.  Cage used to forage for mushrooms and sell them to fancy New York restaurants.  He even appeared in Vogue with his recipe for ‘dogsup’ – a version of ketchup with mushrooms (type unspecified) brandy, mace, cayenne, allspice and other good things.

I came out of the exhibition wanting to have my consciousness expanded but more urgently with the urge to buy and cook some mushrooms; which I did.

Now mushrooms, as you probably know, are low in calories and fat, and cholesterol-free, they’re rich in copper, potassium, magnesium, zinc and some B vitamins, and antioxidants such as selenium and glutathione. Now I’ve never met anyboy who said, ‘Mmm I’ve really got a hankering for selenium and glutathione,’ but possibly such people exist.

I bought some brown and white shimeji, they were from China, and enoki, they were labeled ‘product of Korea’ - south, I’m assuming.  Did I feel guilty about their lack of localness, well of course I did.

I fried ‘em up with garlic and rocket, and stirred in some cooked gnocchi and a bit of grated cheese – and they weren’t bad at all, though when I do it again there’ll be a LOT more garlic, and perhaps a splash of psilocybin

THE SILENCE OF THE MUSHROOMS

If you do an image search for ‘world’s biggest mushroom’ you come up with a lot of pictures that look like fakes, though obviously not all.

This one seems real enough and the feet belong to Gina Gershon – helluva gal! 

Mushrooms have been on my mind since I bought this substantial, though hardly record-breaking, mushroom in the Co-op in Manningtree. It’s a locally grown Portobello mushroom from Suffolk, and record-breaking or not I do believe it’s the biggest mushroom I’ve ever used in cooking.

But we need to go back before this, when I saw and bought this packet of mushroom sauce mix in the Co-op:

It’s Polish-ish (in fact made by Nestle) and contains, in powered form, four kinds of mushroom: boletus, champignon (which, essentially monoglot as I am) I thought was just the French word for all mushrooms but maybe not), suillus, and xerocomus.  Xerocomus looks like this (not the world's biggest):

I did wonder whether adding mushrooms to a mushroom sauce was a mistake – and on balance I think it was. I should have added chestnuts or sprouts or at the very least lemon juice, but we live and learn.

Here’s John Cage doing stuff with mushrooms (note the lemon):