Fanny Singer, ALWAYS HOME
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[2:17]Fanny Singer is the author of Always Home, a daughter's recipes and stories with a forward
[2:21]by Alice Waters, her mother.
[2:23]She is the co-founder of the Design Brand Permanent Collection, quote, timeless objects and
[2:27]garments for a modern lifestyle, unquote.
[2:30]Fanny received a PhD on British pop art from the University of Cambridge.
[2:34]In 2015, she and her mother, Alice Waters, published My Pantry, which she also illustrated.
[2:39]After more than a decade in the UK, Fanny recently moved back to California.
[2:43]She currently lives in San Francisco.
[2:45]Welcome Fanny.
[2:46]Thanks for coming at Momstone.
[2:47]Have time to read books.
[2:48]Thank you so much for having me, Zimmy.
[2:50]Your book has been like the talisman for me.
[2:52]I've been toting it everywhere because it's so perfect for right now called Always Home,
[2:57]which is so fitting.
[2:59]Tell everybody about your book and congratulations on having it out there in the world.
[3:04]Thank you.
[3:05]And thank you so much for your advocacy.
[3:06]It's been an amazing thing to have people speaking about this book and the way that you
[3:10]have and with so many other authors because it is a very strange time to be bringing
[3:14]out a book and not be able to go out on the road and talk about the book and shake hands
[3:19]and sign books and do all those things that I've been looking forward to for pretty much
[3:24]since the beginning of the writing process, which was, I guess about three years ago.
[3:28]It was coming off of doing this little book with my mom that was more of a cookbook that
[3:32]I co-wrote and it was straighted called My Pantry, I'm almost Alice Waters, Chief
[3:36]of Chef.
[3:37]I might have heard of her.
[3:39]And this book was a way to think, look at that relationship.
[3:44]I was still living in England where I'd been for actually about 11 years until about
[3:49]two and a half years ago.
[3:50]And it was a way to kind of, I don't know, think all over that relationship.
[3:54]I think about what gave it so much substance.
[3:56]My mom and I are very, very close as anyone who reads this book will immediately surmise.
[4:02]So I'm sure it would say dangerously close, but I, you know, I've never felt, it's never
[4:06]felt that way.
[4:07]It's always felt like a healthy but very loving relationship.
[4:11]So it kind of fuses a lot of different things.
[4:13]I mean, I'm a writer foremost, but I really love to cook and I came up in a family in
[4:18]which that was just an assumed pedigree.
[4:22]So it fuses, recipes, with stories about food, it's definitely not an autobiography.
[4:27]And I always hasten to say that because I think when you're 36, it's a little bit of
[4:31]an odd thing to begin writing the story of your life in a one-minute year, factual
[4:36]way in this felt like a fun way and also very focused way to talk about a relationship
[4:41]and also a very specific, you know, perspective on my life.
[4:46]For anybody who might not be as in touch with the food world as you and of course your
[4:52]mom, could you explain why is Alice Waters a famous chef?
[4:56]Like why do you assume everybody knows who she is?
[4:58]I know, of course, because I like love the food world and whatever, but just give a quick
[5:02]background of what makes your family so unique if you don't mind.
[5:05]No, of course.
[5:06]I mean, I always, it's true, especially with an American audience, I sort of assume a certain
[5:10]amount of familiarity, but it's also because I'm normally introduced as, you know,
[5:14]fanny singer, comma, Alice Waters of daughter.
[5:17]But my mom is a coque who's had a restaurant for close to 50 years now called Shafanese,
[5:22]which is in Berkeley in California.
[5:25]And even though it was started, I think we can be ideas, a very humble place where a friend
[5:30]could gather and it was in the middle of the free speech movement and still in the middle
[5:35]of the Vietnam War.
[5:36]And so the idea was to create a place with a very familial place and very good food that
[5:40]was kind of in the hippie revolutionary spirit, but the food was very much not hippie
[5:46]food, you know, is the kind of food that my mom had eaten and experience when she was
[5:51]in her 20s and had gone to France in the 60s.
[5:54]And so she was trying desperately to bring this aesthetic and also palette back to California.
[6:02]And so Shafanese was founded in 1971 and yeah, it's very instantly sort of established
[6:07]itself as the place to be and because the pedagogy around sourcing and what's now called
[6:15]farm to table was like something that hadn't existed before.
[6:18]At least it hadn't really existed in industrialized America, you know, I mean, of course
[6:24]pioneers were doing a very, very farm to table style eating in America, but this was something
[6:30]that had been lost, you know, post-war.
[6:33]And so yeah, Shafanese, I guess is a kind of pioneer of farm to table and my mom has become
[6:38]a really vocal advocate also for feeding children sustainable lunches in schools and she
[6:44]has a wonderful project called The Edible School Yard, which is now 25 years old and has
[6:49]thousands of affiliate schools around the world.
[6:51]So she's kind of, I started out as actually a Montessori teacher and then became a restaurant
[6:58]her and is now kind of the restaurant or activist and mom.
[7:03]And then you took all of the things that were going on at home and in the restaurant and
[7:07]just applied them to normal life and then didn't even realize they weren't so typical
[7:11]until you were the only one, say, digging your hands into like a huge vat of food or like
[7:15]having these, you know, cloth lunch boxes that other kids weren't having and of course now
[7:20]everybody's doing all of the stuff you were doing back then, but what I think is really
[7:24]wonderful though about people adopting it now is like it is the quality of the experience
[7:30]of those things.
[7:31]It'd be more sort of sensuously acquainted with your food and also and cooking more
[7:35]or doing everyone's doing now and sort of realizing how much pleasure there is in it
[7:40]and how I'm sure also it's feeling like, you know, a lot for people who are not used
[7:46]to cooking maybe three meals a day and especially for families.
[7:49]I mean, my friends are like, how are we making so many dishes?
[7:54]Like, wow, is this possible?
[7:56]This is just an inhuman tortoises.
[7:59]And I do feel like I work dishwashing constantly, but it's, you know, getting back into
[8:03]the kitchen and really, you know, using your senses too, I think gives you this reprieve
[8:09]from especially like in this moment, all the anxiety and all the other preoccupations
[8:14]around work or tone schooling I can imagine and all those things.
[8:18]So I'm happy that this book comes at it.
[8:21]A lot of people have been telling me that it feels like a very sense-activated kind
[8:25]of text and that there's a lot of sensory material and it's easy to go into this other place,
[8:30]like not just travel to some of the destinations that are spoken about in a book, like,
[8:35]you know, there's other friends who are used to go and there's a kid, but also just traveling
[8:40]through the sense descriptions around food or around smells and flowers or nature or whatever,
[8:46]which is one of the nicest things I've heard about the book, so it's too happy.
[8:50]It is immersive in that way.
[8:52]From every sense, even how you have a whole chapter on color and, like, your mom's favorite
[8:57]color.
[8:58]You know, it's great.
[8:59]It's very visual, but also, you know, a lot about the relationship between a mother
[9:03]and a daughter, which is really important.
[9:05]So you said briefly earlier that usually you refer to as fanny singer, comma, Alice Waters
[9:11]is daughter, and you said it's so in such a glib sort of happy way, how do you feel
[9:15]about that?
[9:16]Like, how do you feel about that becoming a part of your identity?
[9:18]I know people who have prominent parents have all different feelings about that and you've
[9:22]like leaned into this whole piece of yourself.
[9:24]Well, you can either be disgruntled about it or you can lean into it.
[9:29]You can't change it.
[9:30]It's always going to be there.
[9:32]So it's not even like this new part of my identity.
[9:35]It's been part of my identity for my entire life.
[9:38]You know, and I think, you know, I was very conscious of making sure that I went out into
[9:44]the world and studied what I wanted to study and pursued the things that were interested
[9:48]in and didn't feel, and actually, to my mother's credit, given how sort of single-minded
[9:54]she is, she applied no pressure to me whatsoever around, you know, taking on over the
[10:00]strung our taking it on or continuing her work at all.
[10:04]And so I didn't feel I felt neither her pressure nor did I feel there was no imperative
[10:09]to go and refine my skills in that.
[10:11]I was like, I could go out and do what I really wanted to do and I mean, not that I knew
[10:16]exactly.
[10:17]So I spent a lot of time figuring it out.
[10:19]When I had up going to England to study artistry and I did a PhD in artistry and I lived
[10:23]in England for a long time and I think the living in England for a long time was a part
[10:28]of being able to come back to California and feel like I had created enough of a sense
[10:35]of self and also both spiritually and professionally.
[10:39]And at that point, by the time I came back, I had a career as a writer, as a writer
[10:45]around cultural stories or our criticism and I didn't feel as sort of wobbly, I guess.
[10:51]And my mom is, you know, I talk a lot about what a gravitational force field she is,
[10:55]by people who are around her, a lot of them end up working with her or sort of conforming
[11:00]to some idea that she had for them because it's a very seductive notion or proposal
[11:05]or whatever.
[11:06]And it's part of the beautiful thing about this community here is she has so many collaborators.
[11:12]And I was always happy to be one, but I also felt like I needed to be very certain of
[11:15]what I was doing on my own.
[11:17]And it's okay that I feel totally fine that she doesn't have access to certain aspects
[11:22]of what I do and that I don't need her approval for that.
[11:26]But it took, you know, it took a long time, I mean, I'm 36, like, you know, it's not like
[11:30]I figured it out in two years and, you know, it took me a long time.
[11:33]I had to suffer in the English weather for a decade to be able to come back to the
[11:39]Clement little town of Berkeley or to the area.
[11:43]You and your mom have such a special relationship and you could just, in every part of this
[11:47]book, you could just sense it and feel it and the respect that you have for her and
[11:51]show her not everybody famous or not, right?
[11:54]The mother daughter relationship can be so fraught and so complicated.
[11:59]Do you have any idea why yours is not or am I wrong?
[12:04]Maybe there's things that you just don't write about is openly and, you know, I'm not saying
[12:07]you're conflict free.
[12:08]But what do you think it is?
[12:10]Is it that base level of respect?
[12:12]Is it what do you think?
[12:13]It's a good question.
[12:14]You know, I have, I mean, I definitely have an unusual relationship with my mom.
[12:19]I don't have any friends who have this sort of level of proximity with their parents.
[12:24]And even like, you know, I love my dad.
[12:27]I'm so close to my dad.
[12:28]I mean, just don't have the same type of relationship at all.
[12:31]But I think it's, you know, I mean, it's not to say like it didn't go through kind of
[12:35]quasi rebellious spaces.
[12:36]The teenager and my parents were divorced when I was 13.
[12:39]So it was a bad time for that.
[12:41]And I, you know, it was confusing and upsetting and, you know, it's not a perfect angel.
[12:48]But I also, I think, I really think that it was not respect so much as love.
[12:54]It was a sense of being very unconditionally loved.
[12:58]And she found good ways of telegraphing that to me without having to tell me.
[13:02]So when I was a teenager and you sort of have wax in your ears, like you just can't listen
[13:07]to or hear anything your parents say, it's all anathema, you know, like you're just
[13:13]fight at all.
[13:14]I just, you know, she found a way to tell me whether it was, you know, sort of non-language
[13:20]form like cooking, you know, which I feel like cooking something for making special food
[13:25]delicious things for people as a way of telegraphing love, making these little bouquets that
[13:30]she would put into my lunchbox, making me lunch every single day through high school, you
[13:34]know.
[13:35]It's something delicious that I wanted to eat.
[13:37]So I never really, you know, I didn't, I was, I was a bit of the odd kid.
[13:42]You had this lunchbox, but it was still something that other people also wanted to taste
[13:46]and eat from.
[13:47]So it was never really stigmatized, but that level of care.
[13:50]And then also finding other adults that I really, that I've grown up with and trusted who
[13:55]could also support me and sometimes I think she'd filter messages through them or figure
[14:01]out what was going on with me through them.
[14:03]So that was what saw us through about hardest period, but now I think it's just, you
[14:08]know, it's that that foundational sense of unconditional love.
[14:13]I mean, it sounds sort of cliche and yet I think there's just nothing that is more sustaining
[14:19]over a long period of time than a feeling like your parent just loves you no matter what,
[14:25]you know.
[14:26]It's so nice.
[14:27]All right, I'll try to make sure my kids know that.
[14:31]This might be too personal a question and we can skip it if you'd prefer not to answer,
[14:35]but I'm just wondering if you grow up in a restaurant culture, a mom who's so devoted
[14:39]to food, you're obviously so passionate about food.
[14:42]Did you ever have like any eating issues or body image, anything?
[14:46]Or did you just have like a really healthy relationship with food and body because of like
[14:51]the wholesomeness of the food that you were eating?
[14:53]Yeah.
[14:54]Well, I know I never, I really never had any issues around.
[14:57]I mean, like I had the normal sort of like, I feel so fat or like, you know, the kind
[15:02]of normal grievances about one's own body image, but I played soccer avidly all through
[15:08]high school and then into college a bit and then also at Cambridge.
[15:12]So I had, there was a period where I was saying like, I want to say 20 hours of soccer
[15:17]a week or something.
[15:18]So I was not, there was never a period in which I was particularly static, you know, so it was
[15:25]a very active kid and then my mom is in terms of what we ate at home.
[15:30]I mean, it was portions were small.
[15:32]We're actually so small sometimes when I was playing that much soccer that I would have
[15:35]to eat some cereal like after, you know, I was like, I never, it didn't even occur to
[15:42]me that there was a caloric correspondence between like, you know, you eat food and then
[15:47]those calories somehow corresponded to weight gain.
[15:51]I mean, there was my mom never, the word calorie didn't enter my lexicon really until
[15:55]college.
[15:56]You know, like it just didn't, and I don't think I had much of a sense of the correspondence
[15:59]between like what you ate and whether you would gain weight at all.
[16:03]I mean, in what for one, I was working out so much when I was like, I got to Yale and
[16:08]I was like, okay, I now have my own granted limited bank account and can eat carrot cake
[16:14]whenever I want, you know, and like throw you and I was like, oh, that's, oh, I see.
[16:19]this is why I'm right jeans, I mean, don't fit, but no growing up, it was an unbelievably
[16:24]wholesome relationship to between body, image and food and it's consumption.
[16:31]We never ate in excess, we never had unhealthy food, shape and use is a much more
[16:35]Mediterranean approach to cooking.
[16:37]There's just not that much better in things, always very all-oiled, driven, you know,
[16:42]dessert was limited to fruit, namely, and then sometimes at shape and easy to have share
[16:47]a galat, a piece of galat, so there wasn't really even the possibility, I think, of getting
[16:52]to sort of dangerous over indulgence with food, but yeah, no, I mean, I think being involved
[16:58]in cooking and cooking healthy food, but delicious food, not worrying too much about what
[17:03]you're making, you know, calorie-wise and just being, just eating mostly vegetables, which
[17:09]is what we did anyway, was a way to have a pretty well-adjusted relationship to eating.
[17:15]I mean, I got to it, when I did get to college, eating disorders were rampant, you know,
[17:19]in the dorm rooms that were all girls, you know, it's just kind of crazy, but, you know,
[17:25]I also understood it more in relationship to that terrible food that we were eating.
[17:28]It's like, you didn't really want to have that in your body, you know, but still, I was
[17:33]like, that was a hard gear shift there, and like almost immediately figured out how
[17:37]I could like date an older guy who had a kitchen off camp, like a apartment off camp is
[17:42]so I could cook and it's kitchen.
[17:44]I went to Yale also, but when I got there, I actually, for the first time, lost weight
[17:48]because all I ate was cereal.
[17:50]I ate like tiny little salads in cereal, and I didn't like any of the food that they
[17:54]made in like the hot dinner line, and I was like, I mean, when I moved off campus, finally,
[17:59]I could buy some regular food, but the first year I was like, huh, okay, it was really
[18:03]grand, it was pretty good.
[18:06]But I did discover, and I mentioned this in the book, I did discover frozen yogurt, and
[18:10]I was like, that was dangerous, and then I used to use a yogurt as a misnomer, like
[18:14]that weird frozen stuff, and I was like, I ate so much of that in my freshman year.
[18:19]I do.
[18:20]We like lived at Darfies.
[18:21]I have like all my pictures were at the frozen yogurt place.
[18:23]It was amazing.
[18:24]Yeah, that was like my sustenance.
[18:26]I think that time of life too, like everybody was eating frozen yogurt, it was like
[18:30]the thing.
[18:31]No, I don't, anyway, yes, but I listened to you talk about your relationship to food
[18:36]as so normal, and it seems so obvious, and yet so many people struggle with not only
[18:42]themselves, but how to teach their children to eat, and just the manner you were talking
[18:46]about, which is essentially not really thinking about it that much, right?
[18:49]You're focusing on the good ingredients and the food and the rituals, but not the fat-inducing
[18:54]part of it, which is so key.
[18:55]Anyway, I don't know.
[18:56]I mean, my mom was really not freaked out by fat, you know, she, and it was before we
[19:03]embraced, well, actually she had a funny little paradoxical, but like contradiction
[19:07]and how she would provision.
[19:09]Because on the one hand, she was feeding me non-fat milk and non-fat yogurt, which was this
[19:14]weird holdover from, or like backlash from, I think, at kind of 50s high cow, like high
[19:20]cholesterol diet, and she thought like non-fat milk was the healthy thing, which is, which
[19:24]meant that for years, I'm like, milk is disgusting.
[19:29]Is the worst substance?
[19:31]I remember protesting once, like, you know, my dog, my pediatrician, told my mom that
[19:36]I needed to have more calcium, and I was like, I had this little protest when the morning
[19:40]was like, I am insisted on eating my dry cereal flakes with like a handful of tons, because
[19:45]I didn't want the milk on my cereal.
[19:48]I like subsequently discovered whole milk, and it's, you know, it was amazing.
[19:52]And that happened a long time ago, but in my childhood it was, it was non-fat milk.
[19:56]However, when we were sitting down to the table, you know, she would happily eat a
[20:00]kind of, you know, fat off of steak or there wasn't like,
[20:03]she wasn't trying aggressively to stay like, you know,
[20:07]to not eat carbs or not eat fat.
[20:09]And she just had a very, you know, measured,
[20:11]she never ate a huge amount.
[20:13]She just was really measured in that,
[20:15]but not in this calculated sort of anxious way,
[20:19]you know, and I think that the energy, her energy
[20:21]and love around food meant that I had just a very
[20:24]unvexed relationship to it myself.
[20:27]It's awesome.
[20:27]Feel very lucky.
[20:28]Just being a part of a team, like playing soccer
[20:31]for that much time.
[20:33]Oh, no, not really not in that sense.
[20:36]I mean, my body is definitely my two broken
[20:38]from that to like indulge, even consider indulging
[20:41]and even the most modest pickup game, I know.
[20:44]I just, my knees are not not having it.
[20:48]But I also, you know, I've always been a very,
[20:51]very social person and I kind of,
[20:53]my new soccer team is my dinner table, you know,
[20:56]so like I get to have all these wonderful people over.
[20:59]And it's the thing I'm missing most right now
[21:01]is I usually cook for people a couple times a week.
[21:03]And sometimes, especially, I mean, I don't live in Berkeley
[21:06]within San Francisco and our apartment's not that big,
[21:08]but we'll still come over to my moms and make,
[21:10]like a massive 35% dinner parties in the back garden
[21:14]and just run tables.
[21:16]The house is sort of, you would never know it,
[21:18]but down in the basement, there's like enough tables
[21:20]and table clubs and chairs for, you know, 40 people,
[21:23]because there are occasionally sort of catering things
[21:25]that happen here, big dinner parties
[21:27]that require all those things.
[21:29]So I'm missing and having, you know,
[21:31]especially with a garden and full bloom with spring.
[21:35]So I feel sort of for Lauren,
[21:36]but I, you know, that's how I've gathered people
[21:38]in my adult life is around the table,
[21:41]which of course, like, absolutely part of my childhood
[21:44]and how my mom thought of, I think, raising me
[21:47]was just having other people around too, you know.
[21:49]Maybe you could do a series of dinners in the garden
[21:51]and call it like dinners in the garden
[21:53]or something and then invite like 40 people
[21:55]over Zoom and then like recorded or something.
[21:58]I mean, that would be so neat to see like get a whole bunch
[22:01]of interesting people and like have your parties
[22:03]and just like put them all around and cook.
[22:06]I don't know.
[22:08]I mean, I just miss humans.
[22:11]No, I know, that was a poor substitute.
[22:13]I miss humans too.
[22:14]I really do.
[22:15]We have been doing really sweet, like more
[22:17]intimate and zoom dinners with friends
[22:20]where we've like, I've had a friend.
[22:21]I'm like, what do you have in your fridge?
[22:22]And we're both like, both got cabbage
[22:25]and I'm like, I've got some salmon in the freezer.
[22:27]I'm like, we've made sure we've had more or less
[22:29]the same ingredients and then we've cooked the meal
[22:31]together.
[22:32]Oh, that's so nice.
[22:33]On FaceTime and then like sat down and prop the computer
[22:37]and like our partner's joy and we sit down and have my friend
[22:40]Satya who's an actor, we did a hilarious thing
[22:43]where we had, it was like, let me hand you,
[22:45]I think we had the same type of water glass
[22:47]or plate or something.
[22:48]So he's like, here, here's some water
[22:50]and then he's like, pull it away.
[22:51]And we're doing this sort of illusionistic sharing
[22:55]through it was, it was good fun.
[22:57]And it was, it did, it was like a little band-aid
[23:00]for the long game, but I mean, again, though,
[23:04]I mean, I just feel so lucky to be where I am.
[23:07]I don't, I can't.
[23:08]I mean, as much as I miss my friends,
[23:10]like I know it's temporary and I feel lucky to have
[23:13]the community even if it's just the body
[23:15]that the moment and yeah.
[23:17]And how do you feel?
[23:18]So you worked for a long time on the book, right?
[23:20]Tell me about the process of writing the book
[23:23]and like, did you write it in your apartment?
[23:25]Where and when did you write it?
[23:26]How long did it take the whole like backstory
[23:29]of your right hand?
[23:30]So I started, yeah, I started with about,
[23:33]I guess about the year's going to be a little bit longer
[23:36]and it was very sort of in bits and pieces
[23:39]because I had a still kind of multiple jobs really.
[23:43]I think of myself as having three jobs,
[23:45]one of them is running a design brand called
[23:48]Permanent Collection, which has a very small team.
[23:51]It's pretty much just me and my co-founder
[23:53]and then one woman who is our director of operations part time.
[23:56]So we're like a really small little company
[23:59]which means those tens of work there.
[24:01]And then the other strand is sort of art criticism
[24:03]and freelance journalism around arts and culture
[24:06]until recently on the masthead at WSD magazine.
[24:09]And then this other strand would like,
[24:11]and now I have a book deal that I need to do,
[24:13]I need to create a book.
[24:14]So it was always a little bit of a juggle
[24:17]to find the time I was in like sitting down weeks on them,
[24:21]just working in a single-minded way.
[24:23]But I'm kind of my brain kind of works like that
[24:25]where I'm actually pretty easily able to shift these gears
[24:29]between the things.
[24:30]So if I had an hour or a day that I could really
[24:34]concentrate to the book, I could get into that mind
[24:36]that pretty quickly, thankfully,
[24:39]which maybe was just an adaptation to the necessity
[24:42]of having to do that.
[24:43]But by far, the best periods were when I was able
[24:46]to have like a few weeks at a time.
[24:49]And I did go up to Olina's,
[24:51]which is one of the places that ran about in the book.
[24:54]Just a little beach town is north of here
[24:56]where I grew up going when I was a kid.
[24:57]My god, mother has a house there.
[24:59]And I actually had almost a month
[25:02]where I was just like turned off all my other requirements.
[25:04]It did nothing, but just sit and work on the book.
[25:08]And I really don't have much of a sweet tooth,
[25:10]but one of the things like sort of sneaky things
[25:13]that I discovered about when I'm really writing
[25:16]a folk in a focused way and moving my body very little
[25:19]is like, all I want is to eat sugar.
[25:21]It's like a unbelievable unquench.
[25:24]Like I didn't really think about sugar otherwise.
[25:26]And I was like, I wake up and be to my boyfriend.
[25:29]And I was like, can you make pancakes for breakfast?
[25:31]And then my two hours later, I'm like,
[25:32]well, can we brownies for a long time?
[25:35]You cake for dinner.
[25:37]It's like, it must be something about the way
[25:38]the brain burns energy where it just
[25:40]wants like very available glucose or something.
[25:42]Like this is my theory.
[25:44]So of course, it's like completely not scientifically
[25:47]it's substantiated.
[25:48]But because I just don't ever want to eat that way otherwise.
[25:51]And then as soon as I stopped the project,
[25:53]because it was similar during my PhD too,
[25:55]the last like home stretch is like,
[25:56]I ate unfathomable quantities of chocolate.
[26:00]Just and then the second I submitted the thing
[26:02]like no more desire, just like dropped off a cliff.
[26:06]You know, it was like a very specific thing I think.
[26:09]Anyways, lots of brownies were consumed
[26:11]in the making of always home, which is not intuitive
[26:14]when you read the content.
[26:16]I speak very little about baking
[26:18]and also generally not being very good at baking.
[26:21]And the fact that sugar was something
[26:23]I was like, largely deprived of when I was a kid.
[26:26]But yes, and then I also worked.
[26:27]My friend has an amazing commune app in Mendocino
[26:30]and Albion, which is kind of,
[26:32]I mean, it was a commune from the 70s.
[26:34]All these little hippie cabins spread out for the woods.
[26:37]And he's been, it was sort of quasi derelict
[26:39]and he's he bought it and has been rehabilitating that.
[26:42]And he's an artist and architect.
[26:44]He's named Fritz Haig from LA,
[26:46]who moved up to Mendocino that to undertake this project.
[26:49]And the cabins are so beautiful
[26:51]and they're very isolated and the one that I was in
[26:53]had no internet, which is highly recommended for writing.
[26:57]And I just, I spent a couple of weeks there to working.
[27:01]And it was those focused periods of writing,
[27:03]even though I managed to do it throughout
[27:06]that really felt like I was able to see the whole
[27:09]of the book because it is a vignette structure
[27:11]where they're sort of somewhat chronologically
[27:14]or organized, but not explicitly.
[27:17]And some are definitely not even really rooted
[27:19]in one moment in time.
[27:20]They're more impressionistic.
[27:21]So spending more time with a book being able
[27:23]to sort of spread everything out
[27:25]and actually see what territory it covered
[27:28]was invaluable.
[27:29]And so there's more like protected period of time work rate.
[27:32]Has this inspired you to write more books or are you like,
[27:35]that's it, I've had enough?
[27:37]No, not at all.
[27:37]I don't know what the next book is about yet.
[27:40]And I would like to, I mean, for me,
[27:42]I really, I take a lot of pleasure in writing about art,
[27:44]especially in like, it's, I mean,
[27:47]in most possibly unremanorated work on the planet
[27:50]is to write art reviews.
[27:52]But it's still something I really like to do
[27:54]and write in a very succinct format,
[27:56]but I discovered that, and maybe this is just like,
[28:00]you know, it's doing a PhD in England
[28:02]where I think there's a certain appreciation of a more
[28:06]like distended, loquacious way of writing
[28:08]or thinking through subjects.
[28:10]And it's, you know, at its best,
[28:12]it's like, it's so lexically dense,
[28:15]but it's also really good.
[28:16]You know, it's like not hopefully too hypertrophy.
[28:20]But this was like a wave like letting myself kind of ramble
[28:24]and then I mean, tighten up.
[28:25]Like being in that, like, I just,
[28:28]I don't know if you know the books
[28:29]but I Gerald Durrell about the book called
[28:31]My Family and Other Animals.
[28:33]He was Lawrence Durrell's brother
[28:35]and he was a, he ended up being a zoologist
[28:37]and that he was a fabulous writer.
[28:40]And I, that book is the one that I had most in my mind
[28:42]when I was writing this kind of just like rambling story
[28:45]of childhood, all these eccentric characters,
[28:48]like, you know, being curious about nature
[28:50]and really plugged into the natural world.
[28:53]Anyway, sorry, this is a run on set.
[28:54]This is the most fun answer.
[28:56]Hey, this is form and content.
[28:57]Just mirroring that.
[28:58]I love it.
[28:59]I love it.
[29:01]No, it's great.
[29:03]Do you have any advice to aspiring authors
[29:05]having completed this project?
[29:06]And now, you know, ushering it into the world?
[29:09]That's a good question.
[29:10]But yeah, I think right, right,
[29:13]the book that you need to write, you know,
[29:16]because for me, this is the book that I needed to write
[29:18]and that was the obvious subject for right now.
[29:21]I knew, you know, there's some things I'm interested in
[29:24]and there are other things that other people would,
[29:26]I think, like, need to write about them.
[29:28]They're the things that are really an authentic need
[29:31]because you can't, I think with all,
[29:34]I mean, I hesitate to call this art,
[29:35]but I think with all art,
[29:37]for artists to make good art,
[29:39]you have to be led by some kind of compulsion.
[29:42]You know, there has to be a feeling of necessity.
[29:46]Like, if you don't write that thing
[29:47]or you don't make that thing or paint that thing,
[29:50]and maybe you don't even know what it is,
[29:52]that it's just like going and doing it
[29:53]and honoring the process.
[29:55]But it's like, it's a feeling of being driven
[29:58]that makes, I think.
[29:59]Usually.
[30:00]like something could come out of it or hopefully, you know?
[30:02]And even if not, it feels rewarding.
[30:05]It feels gratifying to make it.
[30:08]So yeah, just keep at it.
[30:10]Yeah, yes.
[30:12]Well, thank you so much for coming on mom's time
[30:14]to read books and look forward to having you in our book club.
[30:17]And thank you for your fantastic stories.
[30:20]Thank you for the such a pleasure to talk to you this morning.
[30:24]Thanks you too.
[30:25]Thank you soon.
[30:26]Okay, let's see if you can bye bye.
[30:28]Thank you for listening to mom's and have time to read books
[30:30]with Zippy Owens.
[30:31]Please make sure to sign up for my newsletter
[30:33]at zippyowens.com to get more updates about episodes like these
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[30:40]Again, today's episode has been sponsored by my collaboration
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[30:46]Please check out the book box bundle
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[30:51]on my website zippyowens.com.
[30:53]Please check it out.
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[30:55]We found time.com for this week's five new essays.
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[31:03]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at TextureSound
[31:05]for the sound editing.
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[31:08]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.
[31:11]Thanks for listening.
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[31:15]Have a great week, everyone.