Nova Ahead 8

Are you watching cooking shows and thinking, “maybe this is what I should be doing?” And I do not mean this as an affront to chefs out there, or even more practiced amateurs; I’m actively avoiding delusions of trying to get into food professionally. Cooking is a wonderful way to set a goal, focus, and then to look back to see how you might improve what you have done. These thoughtful actions have been imperative to my processing this tumultuous year, but I’m not at the point where I am going to try to go to culinary school or anything. It started with the Great British Bakeoff and is rumbling through Ugly Delicious, Chef’s Table, and Salt Fat Acid Heat, and I think really it’s all about joy. That has always been something I have chased, not that this is some unique attribute or journey; it’s not just to taste something or see something or to reach a place, it really is each part leading up to those moments. If I bake a cake, tasting it is the culmination of the entire process from recipe selection and research to seeing other people tasting it, and no matter how good it might be, there are often tweaks that I can see making it better. At the same time though, I usually don’t want to make the same thing again for a while, then it feels too much like work; one of many reasons why I would not be a good chef. Is it weird that during a global pandemic I can be curating ingredients and tastes in my house and building fires as a philosophical pursuit, raising columns of smoke and aroma into the air like a mad shaman? There is definitely a disconnect that allows some people to use the distancing and cleared calendars as a means to create and pad around, but maybe this very inclination is why we’re still in the middle of this mess; the distractions abound, and it is terrifying to dwell on the ineptitude of our government and the loss of life that has resulted from it, to be so viscerally aware of the privilege of space and time, and so the gravity hovers peripherally. 

Sometimes it takes some restructuring of expectations though to make oneself ready for change. Could hip hop be where it is now had MF Doom not worked his way into the narrative one stuttery, uncanny verse at a time? When I first heard him it was to double take with a stink face; this was not the steady beat and coolly delivered sound I had come to expect from rap. I had to keep listening, keep deciphering the references, becoming addicted to the joy that was so obvious in this music’s construction. Before I knew it, he was my favorite MC, and I was listening to and reading everything I could get my hands on; there is a substantial amount of output, though sadly, unless there are some unreleased things in the vaults, that will be it for Doom, passing away as part of our huge collective losses of the past year. There are thousands of lines, verses, and ideas that were game changing parts of his art, delivered via his masked alter ego, but if I could pick one thing that will tear you up, listen to Born Like This, one of his many masterpieces. The way he uses words completely redefines language and its use in hip hop, the only person I can really equate him with is ee cummings, flipping meaning and rhyming iambs, inside out, alliteration, consonance, falling in love with syntax and pause, manipulating tempo and pattern in ways that will leave you laughing in awe. Oh, and sampling Charles Bukowski himself reading the poem “Dinosauria, We” will scare the hell out of you for both its prescience and the sheer harmony of both artists’ vibes.

Thinking further about joy, Rick Rude comes to mind. The seacoast’s gem of a band, comprised of at least four killer songwriters (drummer Ryan Harrison has not yet released a solo album, but the dude is for sure capable; he has the heart of a lion), has given NH something to take pride in. The band’s inception felt like a means to electrify longtime duo Tell Stories but has since become more than the sum of its parts, riffing on any genre they please, filtering it all through a collective lens of struggle and friendship. Every live performance conveys both a tight musicianship and an “aw shucks” delivery that is endearing and satisfying; you’re rocking out and falling in love at the same time. I met Jordan Holtz, Rick Rude’s bassist and increasingly emerging songwriter, at some point after the band took shape. She writes her own songs, and performs her Rick Rude tunes, as a bass and voice solo artist, painting with powerful strokes in two distinct sounds. I’ve been lucky enough to work with her on music and the generosity she shows as a collaborator comes through in her stage presence. She’s confident, but not overly so; I always find myself either trying to ignore an audience or nervously apologizing my way through a set. When we perform together, I always let her do the talking. Jordan is doing a live streamed set from the Nova stage on Friday January 15th; be sure to check it out and get a Rick Rude merch bundle while you’re at it. Though you might not put Doom and Jordan Holtz together in a normal conversation, each of their work is a joyful rearrangement and reimagination of the sounds and resources they encountered when they were hit by the world, which you know, can really pack a wallop.