Speaker 1: Pop culture gives us a particular idea about the celebrity chef,
Speaker 1: a whole lot of shouting and machismo. Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen
Speaker 1: Confidential comes immediately to mind, obviously, But maybe you're a
Speaker 1: fan of the US TV show The Bear Gripped by
Speaker 1: the frenetic, constant simmer of anxiety. I dare say, at home,
Speaker 1: pottering around the kitchen, a fair few of you are
Speaker 1: happy to have a partner refer to you with a
Speaker 1: sultry yes, chef, as you live out your fantasies as
Speaker 1: some kind of culinary rock star. Well, it turns out, well,
Speaker 1: there's something to that toxic picture of professional kitchens. It's
Speaker 1: also not the whole story. Take instead the case of
Speaker 1: the genuine, rigorous, generous approach of Attica head chef and
Speaker 1: author Ben Suri.
Speaker 2: When you live in a country with such an incredible
Speaker 2: history as we do here with Aboriginal ontorist rat islander history,
Speaker 2: all of those years of development of culture and love
Speaker 2: and eating and languid, there's just such an incredible depth
Speaker 2: here that there's just no need for me creatively to
Speaker 2: ever go anywhere else, because here we have really the
Speaker 2: world's largest collection of native foods. You know more than
Speaker 2: six thousand, and they speak of this place and of
Speaker 2: this country more profoundly than almost anything. And as you
Speaker 2: start to work with them, you realize that you know,
Speaker 2: humans and food can never ever be separated.
Speaker 1: There are few people in this country is obsessed with
Speaker 1: the cultural and social potential of Australian cuisine as New
Speaker 1: Zealand born chef Ben Shuri, and let's face it, there
Speaker 1: are even fewer who managed to combine that kind of
Speaker 1: passion with the highest echelons of success. Ben garnered a
Speaker 1: reputation for pushing culinary boundaries, creating unique dishes that tell
Speaker 1: a story and a vocal sense of place. It was
Speaker 1: at the age of ten twenty seven that he took
Speaker 1: on the position of head chef at renowned Melbourne institution Attica.
Speaker 1: Under his watch, it's grown and grown. But for Ben,
Speaker 1: it's not about the accolades. It's about food, It's about people.
Speaker 1: In his new book Uses for Obsession, Ben shares this
Speaker 1: different philosophy and the stories of how he got to
Speaker 1: where he is, from a used bookstore that changed the
Speaker 1: course of his career, to the fight against misogyny and
Speaker 1: restaurants to even such weighty topics as why hot chips
Speaker 1: might be the best food ever. It's part memoir, part
Speaker 1: manifesto or Ben Schuri, there's no little Parisian rat sitting
Speaker 1: on top of his head ghostwriting this memoir. It's an
Speaker 1: insight into one of our finest chefs, into his creativity,
Speaker 1: his passion, and his obsession. I'm Michael Williams and this
Speaker 1: has read this and show about the books we love
Speaker 1: and the ingredients behind him. Uses for Obsession is an
Speaker 1: excellent title. It conjures up what we imagine we might
Speaker 1: want from a chef. Uses for sleiriac or uses for
Speaker 1: a mandolin, or uses for marjoram, something grounded and relatable
Speaker 1: that translates a familiar but intimidating milieu into a space
Speaker 1: we think we might navigate. The achievement of this book, though,
Speaker 1: is that Ben Shuri understands that the intellectual, philosophical, creative
Speaker 1: facets of life can be equally served by the methodology
Speaker 1: of a chef. After all, what is a great chef
Speaker 1: if not a storyteller. For Ben, the spinning of a
Speaker 1: tale is central to how he does what he does.
Speaker 2: It's probably more influenced by oral storytelling actually, and that
Speaker 2: comes from my earliest memories, my childhood, which was about
Speaker 2: making the most of what you had and getting on
Speaker 2: with things. One of the main family traditions for Shuries
Speaker 2: and the Turners form of entertainment as a family and
Speaker 2: our extended family was around a fire or around a
Speaker 2: dinner table telling stories.
Speaker 3: And my aunties and uncles and my.
Speaker 2: Mother and father would tell these tremendous stories about overcoming odds,
Speaker 2: and often they were very funny, and it was how
Speaker 2: we kind of made sense of the things that were
Speaker 2: hard that were happening in this time in the seventies
Speaker 2: and eighties and rural New Zealand. Often they were against
Speaker 2: the odds, stories of going up against the man. You know,
Speaker 2: that was always the counsel, which I think is hilarious.
Speaker 2: But there was always humor, and there was always heart,
Speaker 2: and it was always truthful.
Speaker 3: And so as a child, I just loved sitting there.
Speaker 3: I lapped all of this.
Speaker 2: Up, and eventually, when I was old enough, I was
Speaker 2: able to become a part of that. And so in
Speaker 2: a lot of ways in this book, I'm actually honoring
Speaker 2: my own family's history of storytelling, even though it's not
Speaker 2: a written history.
Speaker 1: But the oral tradition. Like, part of what's so lovely
Speaker 1: about this book is structurally it has an episodic energy
Speaker 1: where it's not a linear narrative. It's not a conventional
Speaker 1: this then this, then attica, then you know, misfortune and
Speaker 1: then triumph over adversity.
Speaker 3: You know, it's not that.
Speaker 1: It's a book that draws deep from your personal philosophy
Speaker 1: and from anecdote and kind of moves between them freely,
Speaker 1: like all the best fireside chats.
Speaker 3: I think, well, thank you.
Speaker 2: I was well aware of the pitfalls of writing a
Speaker 2: memoir as a well known person, and I just didn't
Speaker 2: want to add something else bland to the market. You know,
Speaker 2: whenever I do anything, I think about that product and
Speaker 2: the need for it, And so it's.
Speaker 3: No different with a book.
Speaker 2: If I'm going to write a book and use those resources,
Speaker 2: you know, how is my book going to be meaningful
Speaker 2: and useful to people?
Speaker 1: This book does many things beautifully, and it has all
Speaker 1: these kind of parallel tracks going on, but one of
Speaker 1: them is about your journey from not knowing to knowing,
Speaker 1: and a journey that is a constant and ongoing one,
Speaker 1: and that's part of the joy of it. But when
Speaker 1: you write about those early days. You know, when you
Speaker 1: write about the certainty of knowledge that comes from a
Speaker 1: French cooking tradition, and then there's certainty of knowledge that
Speaker 1: comes from getting access to a tie cooking tradition. One
Speaker 1: of the early engines is a book. Is you going
Speaker 1: into a second hand bookshop and finding a book that
Speaker 1: tells you that the stuff you've learned before then might
Speaker 1: not be adequate for the task. Can you describe that
Speaker 1: for us?
Speaker 2: It's a rather beautiful moment. I'm living in Wellington, New Zealand,
Speaker 2: and not long before had completed two years of rigorous,
Speaker 2: brutal training under French chefs. It was two years of
Speaker 2: formal training at Waikato Politic and the one thing that
Speaker 2: I took away from that I was really young, I
Speaker 2: was sixteen to eighteen. And the one thing I took
Speaker 2: away from it was, yes, there's a level of mastery
Speaker 2: these techniques, and there's a history, but that history does
Speaker 2: not feel like this place. It does not feel like
Speaker 2: anything that I know. In fact, it seems from a
Speaker 2: world far away from us in New Zealand. And so
Speaker 2: whilst I didn't really know what my cooking would become,
Speaker 2: I did know that that didn't feel like home. And
Speaker 2: so several years later, I'm in Wellington and I go
Speaker 2: to this bookshop which is still there to this day
Speaker 2: called RTBS, and it's the second Hand Bookshop. It's a
Speaker 2: really great second hand bookshop. And I'm in there flicking
Speaker 2: through the covers of the cookbooks that are around, you know,
Speaker 2: and this is a moment where there's a very very
Speaker 2: famous French chef called Thomas Keller, and he has a
Speaker 2: book out about his restaurant called The French Laundry Cookbook.
Speaker 2: And this book is just looming larger in the chef land,
Speaker 2: in the culture, and it just didn't speak to me
Speaker 2: either with the most respect to him. But what landed
Speaker 2: kind of in my lap in that second hand bookshop
Speaker 2: was the small, thin paperback cookbook with hand drawn pictures,
Speaker 2: photographs which sort of seemed to be exuding in internal confidence,
Speaker 2: saying something to me like this is a bastion of
Speaker 2: unheralded recipes and ideas and thoughts on Thai cuisine that
Speaker 2: cannot be found elsewhere. And I opened it and I
Speaker 2: began to read it in the books store, and immediately
Speaker 2: the author, David Thompson's words transported me to another place,
Speaker 2: and I remember kind of buying it and clutching it
Speaker 2: and sort of skipping home excitedly to begin working from it.
Speaker 2: And what I discovered from working within this cuisine ty cuisine,
Speaker 2: classic Tae cuisine, or dishes that are hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 2: of years old from the Royal Thai court, is that
Speaker 2: one Tay cuisine is one of the world's greatest cuisines,
Speaker 2: right up there with more celebrated cuisines like French cuisine
Speaker 2: or Italian cuisine. And two more importantly, Thai cuisine is
Speaker 2: a cuisine of the mind. And by that I mean
Speaker 2: following recipes is foolhardy on a lot of levels.
Speaker 3: You can follow a French recipe.
Speaker 2: You and I could follow one today, Michael, and to
Speaker 2: be completely honest, we'd get a pretty similar result. But
Speaker 2: if we both tried to follow it an advanced Thaie
Speaker 2: recipe would get incredibly different results. Now that's cool, because
Speaker 2: you know ties the way that they seeson is personal.
Speaker 3: That's correct as well.
Speaker 2: Some people like it's sweet, as some people like it
Speaker 2: more sour, more spicy. But I was I became transfixed
Speaker 2: by this book, and it would actually be you know,
Speaker 2: the factor That would mean that I would leave my
Speaker 2: home country. I would move to Australia in pursuit of it,
Speaker 2: and eventually London. It would consume my entire life for
Speaker 2: six years. I would be largely owned by It would
Speaker 2: drive me to the edge of madness because it is
Speaker 2: so complicated and complex that it's impossible to have any
Speaker 2: level of mastery over it.
Speaker 3: Well, it was for me.
Speaker 1: But one of the things I love about that is
Speaker 1: you know, you say at the point at which you
Speaker 1: read that book and you went home in Wellington and
Speaker 1: you decide, Okay, you're going to try and master this.
Speaker 1: Not only had you not eaten typhood. I think you
Speaker 1: said in the book you might not have even met
Speaker 1: a Tye person.
Speaker 3: And that's true.
Speaker 1: This is entirely an abstraction that you're trying to make real.
Speaker 1: And when you get to Sydney and you eat your
Speaker 1: first proper Thie meal, the thing that hits you is
Speaker 1: you can't learn this from books. I can't do it
Speaker 1: for you.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: And the thing that I write about that meal was
Speaker 2: that it was the most ruthlessly beautiful meal that I'd
Speaker 2: ever eaten. And it destroyed me in the best way
Speaker 2: because I learned that I knew nothing, and so I
Speaker 2: love this feeling of being humbled. You know, this is
Speaker 2: incredibly powering and compelling to human growth if we choose
Speaker 2: to see it in that way. But at some stage
Speaker 2: I realized, really what Thaie Cuisine didn't need.
Speaker 1: Was me creativity and the twin engines of creativity. It
Speaker 1: seems to me that you kind of tease out in
Speaker 1: this book, both in the book itself but also in
Speaker 1: the way you talk about cooking and you talk about food,
Speaker 1: and they're on the one hand technique and precision and
Speaker 1: learning and those very possibly rigid things, and then on
Speaker 1: the other hand, there is joy and there is discovery,
Speaker 1: and there is play, and there's those things, and they
Speaker 1: seem to me to be potentially intension in any creative process.
Speaker 1: Where do you sit on that spectrum?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I think they serve each other in
Speaker 2: so many ways, I guess as a part of the
Speaker 2: book which says that before you can subvert something, you
Speaker 2: must completely submit to a rigorous understanding of it, and
Speaker 2: the ways in which people go wrong in all kinds
Speaker 2: of context in human life when they race in to
Speaker 2: change something, and if you haven't humbled yourself by absolutely
Speaker 2: committing to a complete and utter focus on that subject
Speaker 2: for a sustained period of time, You've really got no
Speaker 2: business mucking around with it.
Speaker 1: I love that idea of humility in the face of
Speaker 1: something that matters to you. You know, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: If this matters, you have to be humble. You have
Speaker 1: to concede what you don't know. And I think as
Speaker 1: a society, as a culture, we're very bad at saying
Speaker 1: I don't know, or I can't or I need to learn.
Speaker 2: Well, I think you're right, and I think as a
Speaker 2: society we would benefit from more thinking along the lines
Speaker 2: of we're all just making this up as we go.
Speaker 2: When I cook, I don't have a n time left
Speaker 2: on this planet to really have any real understanding of
Speaker 2: what is happening and what this is about.
Speaker 3: And I've been humbled.
Speaker 2: Time and time and time, particularly in this country with
Speaker 2: sixty five thousand years of continuous cooking and cuisine by
Speaker 2: Aboriginal people and tourist out land people, because There'll be
Speaker 2: moments as a highly creative chef where I would have
Speaker 2: thought that I've reinvented the wheel, was some concept or
Speaker 2: some dish that I've made, I've brought two ingredients together,
Speaker 2: and there's a great story about bringing nerdy Gigoni word
Speaker 2: for green ants together with raw fish. And there's a
Speaker 2: synergy between these two ingredients in my mind as I
Speaker 2: developed this dish, and I'm like, hmm, you're pretty damn good,
Speaker 2: you know, like it's like that feeling of like, well,
Speaker 2: I've discovered something here. And then six months later, being
Speaker 2: in man greda Union, arnham Land and sitting down for
Speaker 2: a coffee with an elder with Auntie, Lila and Nimbaja,
Speaker 2: and Auntie starts telling me this story about how her
Speaker 2: mother that couldn't always get fish and she had an
Speaker 2: appetite for fish, that she would try to quench her
Speaker 2: thirst for fish, if you like, by eating green ants,
Speaker 2: and green ants is a medicinal and.
Speaker 3: Culinary food from that area. And she said, we always served.
Speaker 2: Green ants with fish. And I was like, oh, my goodness,
Speaker 2: how little do you know?
Speaker 3: You know, it's absolutely remarkable.
Speaker 2: You're just a speck of sand in the desert.
Speaker 1: A gettling. Again, the culture tells us that professional food
Speaker 1: culture isn't open or generous. It's aggressive. It's a particular
Speaker 1: kind of matcho. It's a particular kind of self aggrandizing.
Speaker 1: The prevailing pick sure in pop culture is that someone
Speaker 1: who devotes themselves to restaurant excellence at the highest level
Speaker 1: is inevitably some kind of monster.
Speaker 3: That's an unfortunate truth.
Speaker 2: As an industry, we've been incredibly cruel.
Speaker 3: We've had our.
Speaker 2: Whole mindset around the wrong way, and many of the
Speaker 2: people that we've looked up to and admired and celebrated
Speaker 2: haven't deserved it. And for me, coming into this world
Speaker 2: as a sensitive young man from the back country of
Speaker 2: New Zealand who'd barely been around large groups of people
Speaker 2: in his life, I thought, as an outsider that I
Speaker 2: would find a home in professional kitchens. But I was
Speaker 2: quickly taught that because I didn't fit into the status
Speaker 2: quo that quite often kitchens were an incredibly unkind and
Speaker 2: unfriendly place for me. And if it was bad for me,
Speaker 2: it was devastating for women. So for me, that's always
Speaker 2: been through line. Women have been held back by men,
Speaker 2: have been treated appalling by men in kitchens, and for me,
Speaker 2: when I had the chance to run my own place,
Speaker 2: that's something that I wanted to stamp out immediately to
Speaker 2: the best of my ability. Knowing that I have many
Speaker 2: blind spots as a man, but listening to women, making
Speaker 2: sure that there were women in possessions of power making
Speaker 2: decisions at the company. I've wanted to prove in my
Speaker 2: career when I had the opportunity that it could be
Speaker 2: done a different way, that this is not actually connected
Speaker 2: to any thing good. You know that yelling and shouting
Speaker 2: and matro behavior and the abuse of drugs and alcohol
Speaker 2: are not things to be celebrated in the book, You know,
Speaker 2: I write about the influence of certain parts of Anthony
Speaker 2: Bourdain's memoile Kitchen Confidential. You know that book and parts
Speaker 2: of that are incredibly sexist and incredibly damaging, I believe
Speaker 2: to our industry because generations of young male chefs have
Speaker 2: looked at that book and looked up to it and
Speaker 2: worshiped it, and still to this day.
Speaker 1: I think it also valorizes a particular kind of not
Speaker 1: just agro, but ego. I think, and I'm curious about
Speaker 1: that relationship between creativity and self belief. You know, to
Speaker 1: be a creative person, to be making things that you
Speaker 1: put in the world, you have to believe that your
Speaker 1: voice is worth hearing, or people should come and eat
Speaker 1: the thing that you make, or they should come and
Speaker 1: invest in the thing that you are creating. And so
Speaker 1: inevitably there's a requirement for a bit of ego. But
Speaker 1: why does that ego in the context of restaurants, in
Speaker 1: the context of chefs, why does it curdle in the
Speaker 1: way that it does into something so ugly.
Speaker 2: Because that kind of ego and that kind of behavior
Speaker 2: has been rewarded time and time again. You know, it's
Speaker 2: been glamorized, as you point out, by books, by movies
Speaker 2: right through the culture and still ongoing to this day.
Speaker 2: You know, largely these stories are told by other people.
Speaker 3: They're not actually told by chefs either.
Speaker 2: But I think that you know, that is all just
Speaker 2: a way of men controlling the industry. You know, there's
Speaker 2: still a huge imbalance in industry between men and women,
Speaker 2: and of course there are other groups of people who
Speaker 2: are also affected in various ways, but most restaurants are
Speaker 2: still owned by men, and the legal and the moral
Speaker 2: obligation for this behavior to stop begins and ends with them.
Speaker 1: When we're returned. Ben shares the risks of writing a
Speaker 1: tell all food memoir and reveals the one thing that
Speaker 1: he allows himself to be a little bit shit at
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. You are someone who has a
Speaker 1: deep awareness of your responsibility to others, and I'm curious
Speaker 1: about what effect that had on the writing process, because
Speaker 1: this is your story, but it's a story about many
Speaker 1: people in your life, and your awareness of the ways
Speaker 1: in which putting it down on paper, you know, has
Speaker 1: has repercussions that has rippled. Was there an anxiety about
Speaker 1: that for you?
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, there's stories of others that I've shared.
Speaker 2: I've always thought that there's an incredible and grave responsibility
Speaker 2: for writers to consider when sharing other people's stories.
Speaker 3: So that weighed.
Speaker 2: Heavily on me in the writing about others or the
Speaker 2: sharing of other people's stories. And then kind of too
Speaker 2: other point to reconcile the risk involved, you know, long
Speaker 2: and hard conversations with those closest to me, you know,
Speaker 2: and none more so than my wife Kylie, who has
Speaker 2: bravely encouraged me to write this, you know, and at
Speaker 2: every stage even you know, her own frankly brutal story.
Speaker 2: But also the immense amount of peril and risk that
Speaker 2: we've potentially put our company in. I think that we're
Speaker 2: very resilient and I am not somebody that.
Speaker 3: Gives up easily. I also don't mind a fight.
Speaker 1: It seems important and not as a sad thing, because
Speaker 1: it does tap into the recurring thing through this book,
Speaker 1: which is the relationship between the art of what you do,
Speaker 1: the business of it, the life that you live when
Speaker 1: you're doing it, and what those relationships look like that
Speaker 1: come out of it, and how we extra meaning I
Speaker 1: guess from what we do. Are you at a point
Speaker 1: in your career where you feel happy with where you've
Speaker 1: landed between those different imperatives.
Speaker 2: I'm made a point in my career or where I
Speaker 2: feel like letting it rip. I feel like we all
Speaker 2: have limited days on this earth. And there was probably
Speaker 2: some questioning about whether or not I'm too young to
Speaker 2: write this book, but I thought, if I don't write
Speaker 2: it today, if I don't take this risk, and if
Speaker 2: I don't face up to these truths, both my own
Speaker 2: failings and the failings of others, I might not get
Speaker 2: another chance.
Speaker 1: I want to talk for a bit about obsession. Because
Speaker 1: you are an incredibly driven human being, and you were
Speaker 1: driven by a desire for excellence. You hold yourself to
Speaker 1: a standard, you push yourself to that standard again and again,
Speaker 1: and I'm interested in how hard it is to both
Speaker 1: honor that on the one hand and not let it
Speaker 1: descend into something corrosive on the other What do you
Speaker 1: let yourself be shit at?
Speaker 3: Ben?
Speaker 2: Sure, well, I love skateboarding, but I'm not a great skateboarder.
Speaker 2: You know, It's been something that I've done my whole life.
Speaker 2: It informs the work at att Curate and even the
Speaker 2: writing in the book there's references to skateboarding. But the
Speaker 2: thing that I loved about skateboarding was the skateboarder doesn't
Speaker 2: just sort of fall off and then give up the
Speaker 2: first time they try a trick. You know, they get
Speaker 2: back up and they try again. And so that's very
Speaker 2: compelling to me. And it also offers up a level
Speaker 2: of kind of pain and intensity and suffering, which I
Speaker 2: think is not necessarily a bad thing. I know we're
Speaker 2: going to try to avoid that in the future, probably,
Speaker 2: but I don't think we should. I think there's a
Speaker 2: level of going through stuff that's healthy for humans. On
Speaker 2: being obsessed with things, I think, you know, anybody of
Speaker 2: power or anybody of influence needs to be really mindful
Speaker 2: of their ambition, especially when that person works into and
Speaker 2: so I've always had the ability to kind of consider
Speaker 2: the people that I'm working with and ask the question,
Speaker 2: in which ways do these affect our team? And it
Speaker 2: is it negative or positive? Or is it some positive
Speaker 2: or negative? And by that I mean there's a lot
Speaker 2: of people in the world that are perfectly happy to
Speaker 2: show ten thousand babypas or pick twenty thousand lemon time leaves,
Speaker 2: both insufferable jobs. I would analyze whether or not it's
Speaker 2: actually worth it, does it actually make an impact on
Speaker 2: the plate, or is it pure ego, Because if it's ego,
Speaker 2: then it's kind of cruel, and if it's not ego,
Speaker 2: if it's necessary. Look, let's be frank, it's never necessary
Speaker 2: to pick twenty thousand lemon time leaves. But if it
Speaker 2: is necessary to do there's menial, mind numbing task, then
Speaker 2: work out a way within the team to make it fun.
Speaker 2: And so that just means that the whole team does it.
Speaker 2: Maybe there's twenty cooks on a shift at Attica, and
Speaker 2: all twenty will shell the peace and therefore this job
Speaker 2: that would take somebody, you know, eight hours, which I
Speaker 2: would say is a bit soul destoring if you're a
Speaker 2: qualified chef for eight hours is shared by a team
Speaker 2: of twenty and it's done in twenty minutes and you
Speaker 2: listen to music and you can have a conversation.
Speaker 3: So it's just.
Speaker 2: About a reframing kind of a lot of the times
Speaker 2: of that ambition and how we'll get there in a
Speaker 2: better way that doesn't break people down.
Speaker 1: Part of what I like so much about the book
Speaker 1: is that you are very honest about those personal eccentricities
Speaker 1: and peccadillos and the ways in which obsession can be
Speaker 1: such a personal thing. And so they're navigating a personal
Speaker 1: obsession through the world is its own kind of set
Speaker 1: of challenges. And I'm curious, when are the moments when
Speaker 1: it all feels worth it to you? When are the
Speaker 1: moments when you feel like you've made a perfect thing,
Speaker 1: or you're proud, or it's enough.
Speaker 2: First of all, being with this tremendous group of people
Speaker 2: at Attica every day, it feels like it's worth it,
Speaker 2: you know, having the privilege of cooking for people every night,
Speaker 2: and then you know, fighting for your creative freedom on
Speaker 2: a daily basis, pushing against the market sometimes, you know,
Speaker 2: but ultimately there's this one thing that happens, and it's
Speaker 2: sort of this pursuit of the completion of a dish.
Speaker 2: So I'm working on a lot of different dishes at once,
Speaker 2: and daily we're working on something and we're trying to
Speaker 2: bring a group.
Speaker 3: Of ideas together. I've had a.
Speaker 2: Vision for a dish or an idea for a dish,
Speaker 2: and when we're working on it, it's a process that
Speaker 2: goes for really for months and occasionally years, depending on
Speaker 2: how big the concept is. And we're working, and we're working,
Speaker 2: and we're failing, and we're failing, and that's completely utterly normal.
Speaker 2: But we keep working. We keep honing it, we keep
Speaker 2: tweaking it. We learn what we learn, and we make
Speaker 2: notes and we come back to it, and we keep
Speaker 2: going and it gets closer and it gets closer. And
Speaker 2: then there are other people coming in. There's makers and artists.
Speaker 2: They're making plates or they're making baskets or cutlery, and
Speaker 2: they're designing things for this project as we're going. So
Speaker 2: we're getting the dish ready, and then there's a moment
Speaker 2: when all of a sudden it clicks into place and
Speaker 2: is a moment of clarity. And this moment is the
Speaker 2: moment I live for.
Speaker 3: This is.
Speaker 2: Standing in the kitchen and plaiting that dish for the
Speaker 2: last time and taking a spoon and bringing it to
Speaker 2: my mouth and realizing that it's that it's there, and
Speaker 2: there's this euphoric hit that shrieks through my body and
Speaker 2: I beam and everybody knows, you know, and this is
Speaker 2: the sort of end of this journey. And I've said
Speaker 2: often if I couldn't feel this feeling, that I'd hang
Speaker 2: up the knives, you know, because this is actually the reason,
Speaker 2: feeling this sense of joy from following an idea through
Speaker 2: to its completion and then just being so excited to
Speaker 2: share it with other people.
Speaker 1: Have you felt the equivalent feeling as a writer on this.
Speaker 3: Book multiple times?
Speaker 2: Writing this book has been one of the greatest joys
Speaker 2: of my life. It's also been one of the hardest
Speaker 2: things I've ever been through in my life.
Speaker 1: I get the feeling been true that if it wasn't
Speaker 1: one of the hardest things, you couldn't find the joy
Speaker 1: like that joyful experience, That beaming moment that you describe
Speaker 1: almost needs the pain and the journey to get there
Speaker 1: to be fully realized. Is that fair?
Speaker 3: I think it is.
Speaker 2: And I think it's kind of a well known fact
Speaker 2: that that exists within creativity, and I'm not talking about
Speaker 2: the tortured Hartist try.
Speaker 3: I don't believe in that, you know.
Speaker 2: But I do believe that anything that's truly worth doing
Speaker 2: entails some level of suffering at some point. And there
Speaker 2: were moments in the book.
Speaker 3: That were incredibly joyous to write.
Speaker 2: The chapter Chipgate. I wrote it in response to coming
Speaker 2: out of a really dark time from writing and being
Speaker 2: affected heavily by writing writing about the stories of survival
Speaker 2: during COVID, for example, which is something that I hadn't
Speaker 2: really wanted it to do, but something that I decided
Speaker 2: to do as a sort of a man in the
Speaker 2: whole narrative structure of the book. But it was too
Speaker 2: soon to revisit that struggle for me, and it depressed me,
Speaker 2: and I didn't realize it went on for a couple
Speaker 2: of months and I wrote Chipgate, which is absolutely silly
Speaker 2: and hopefully funny.
Speaker 3: It's important.
Speaker 1: It's a manifesto for outside well it is, And I mean,
Speaker 1: you know who doesn't have a hot ship?
Speaker 3: Is that not just the best food ever?
Speaker 1: Look, it's on the list. And I do like that
Speaker 1: when you acknowledge that love, you also have to you
Speaker 1: pay a little apology to the Lasagna because you're like, well,
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm playing away here that you know
Speaker 1: I'm being unfaithful.
Speaker 3: I'm holding two thoughts at once.
Speaker 1: I think it's possible to be to love both hot
Speaker 1: Chips and lasagnre. I embody that idea.
Speaker 3: Me too, Me too.
Speaker 1: Venturi's memoir Users for Obsession has just hit bookstores and
Speaker 1: it's available now. Before we go, another book I've enjoyed
Speaker 1: this week, and it's Virginia Trioli's new book, which is
Speaker 1: kind of a great companion piece to Venture's memoir. It's
Speaker 1: called A Bit on the Side and the subtitle is
Speaker 1: Reflections on What makes Life Delicious, part memoir, part SA
Speaker 1: part recipe book. It's about food and conversation and good
Speaker 1: company and it is delightful. That's it for this week's show.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed it, please tell your friends and rate
Speaker 1: and review us. It helps a lot. We're in an
Speaker 1: Apple store the other day and my fourteen year old
Speaker 1: went to all the devices in the shop and subscribe
Speaker 1: to read this on the podcast app on them and
Speaker 1: did automatic download just to get the numbers up. That's
Speaker 1: what he's done for me. What have you done lately.
Speaker 1: Next week I'm read this. We're chatting with Robbie Arnott
Speaker 1: about his latest novel, Dusk, which he began writing during
Speaker 1: the first sleepless.
Speaker 3: Year of parenthood. So I didn't plot Dusk out. I
Speaker 3: didn't don't plot any of my novels out.
Speaker 2: And that probably sounds a bit crazy to some people,
Speaker 2: but maybe normal to others.
Speaker 3: It makes sense.
Speaker 1: You weren't even conscious for that, No, no, yeah, I
Speaker 1: it was kind of, you know, waking dream the whole time.
Speaker 1: Read This is produced and edited by Clara Ames. The
Speaker 1: show is next by Travis Evans, with original comment positions
Speaker 1: by Zolten Fitcher. Thanks for listening, See you next week.