On Saturday morning, passing through Woodstock Lower Main Road, I saw a bustling space. It was the first time in many years I was on this road again. I remembered it as run-down and seedy. The hazy stories that populated my memory contained drugs, prostitutes, danger and risk.
The place in my memory had disappeared, however and I took the flowing crowd of urban elites[i] streaming in and out of the entrance to a courtyard to be indicative of an urban hotspot. Of course, I went to have a look. It was only as I crossed the road that I noticed the signage and realized I was at the Old Biscuit Mill.
I’d been told about this market and the words that were used to describe it were organic, recycled, vintage, traditional and food. Everyone raves about the food (rightly so, as it turns out). I was surprised. There was a market inside reminiscent of the traditional flea-market. But all resemblances ended there. The clothes were designer, the home-ware was designer, the food was designer, and the old and recycled kitsch was called vintage. The food was hand-crafted and the exotic produce was organic.
And the people, well shall we say consuming the rustic and traditional is a costly business and stepping out of the crowd requires a cosmopolitan’s discernment. It requires understanding the values contained in things and desiring things whether it is to be eaten, sat on or drunk out of to have histories. Within this tradition, aesthetics alone do not create value and therefore the crowds in this space of High Neotraditionalism collect stories through which to make their free choices and craft their individuality.
You know the kinds of people I mean, they are found the world over [ii]. They are always gushing about the authentic experience. How fortunate they were to experience things the way the locals do. Invariably, they consider themselves connoisseurs of the traditions of others and yet, seem without any traditionalisms of their own.
That is, until one remembers that the liberal practices of choice: experiencing the traditions of others and consuming authenticities, is a tradition. It's been fashionable for a while to devour traditions. This liberal, usually elite and often colonial tradition has its own rules, its own patterns, its own ideologies, its own functions, its own internal coherencies, resistances and refigurations.
It makes its own communities: we call them/us liberal, foodies, greenies, locavores, etc. but mostly we call them middle-class with the luxury of choosing their ideologies to show how individual and conscientious we are about how we spend our mass-disposable incomes. At any rate, we recognize each other the minute we say “oh my I saw the most beautiful vintage butter dish, it so much better for the environment to spend more and recycle other’s discards,” or, “You just can’t get good food anymore, that’s why I buy organic, its expensive but what can you do?”[iii]
As for some of our traditional practices, they/we hunger to know the special history of their/our food: how the bread was hand-knead and the producers learned the recipe from their grandmother/ grandfather/ great-aunt or uncle who taught them to knead the bread in the traditional way with love and thus insert themselves into the thing that will be consumed by strangers. Or maybe the maker of authentic, traditional bread woke up one day and realized they no longer wanted to be alienated from their labor and so they gave up their corporate lives and decided to live simply and make really expensive bread (sometimes known as trying out tradition without sacrificing toilets and hot baths). Of course, mass-consumption is out, so the wheat you know comes only from that tiny mill that hand-grinds all their flour. And on and on, the stories go.
The spinach, the artisanal cheeses, the walnut, the dates, the special food thing that is not like the passé store-bought mass-produced industrial food things. Its individuality is all mine, yours, theirs if you have enough money to pay for it and enough time to pause for the endless chain of unique little stories in gentrified Woodstock at the once-was mill …
[i] Yes, affluence has a certain look and is instantly recognizable.
[ii] Shall I shamefacedly admit that I have my days where I revel in being one of them? Naaah, chances are you have your own version of this and like it too. Let’s not feel too bad about it, but hey no self-congratulatory pats on the back either.
[iii] All of this is usually accompanied by knowing, reverent and slightly mournful nods. And because you are part of this tribe, you don’t need more than the wink and twitch to finish the triumphant, thank God we can afford organic misshapen individual carrots unlike those poor people who have to buy their standard, uniform buncha carrots
No comments:
Post a Comment