Introduction
This sound is water. Is it boiling water, steaming from a cooking pot in a warm, family kitchen as the video above suggests? Is it water rushing down a bed of rocks cut through a sylvan glade scarcely known by humans? Or does it gush from a chrome faucet into the cracked enamel of a clawfoot tub, ready to clean behind a new generation's ears and wash away the sting of shampoo? Is this the sound of the stream left behind by the tempest that has just destroyed the midwestern family's home—their hopes, their dreams?
We call all of these things water, and if pressed we would identify each of the sounds above as water. Yet, we have no need to dip our hand into a swirling pot of cooking pasta to know that the searing pain we would feel from that action is vastly different from the sensation of dipping one's hand into a bath prepared with parental care.
I thought of this recently while cooking pasta, an act that always brings me to a place of comfort. Cooking reminds me of weekends spent in my grandmother's kitchen, watching her strong, though aged, hands clean vegetables, chop cuts of meat, wash pans, and perform the work of nourishing her family. It was in these moments that I first learned both the art and its purpose, and I've spent the following decades of my life improving my craft. In this, as with many facets of my life, my grandmother remains with me—a part of me. But just like water, there are many differences between the simple rural woman who raised me and the English doctoral candidate I've become. A whole lifetime of differences, really. This project is an attempt to understand those differences, to map them, and at the same time to understand how the tools which my craft gives me are inadequate to the task.
This page has paths:
- Différance Sean Gill
