Right will satisfy you.

I am a changed man.  I have been "working on a post" for months, but the work has been scrapped.  Feelings have been mulled over, insights have been gleaned, lost, and gleaned once more.  My life has changed.

I am a changed man.

Since my last post, I have made some of my life's biggest accomplishments and endured some of my life's biggest trials.  The accomplishments are mostly career-oriented, and they have to do with being a lawyer, currently in my third position, and walking bravely down a path I have feared for a long time.  I am not supposed to be a lawyer forever; I know that.  The practice of law is black-and-white, it is formulaic, and it is notable in its specificity.  Artistic expression is not usually the friend of a lawyer.  To practice law, I put the artist in me on a shelf in my heart, where he sits--quietly, patiently--waiting for me to feed him the fruit of love: music.  To practice law, I wear a suit of armor, protecting my feelings, projecting my prowess, and repressing important parts of myself.

I don't mean to say that practicing law is misery; it isn't.  I have fun at my current job. I work hard, and I laugh hard.  I work long hours, take long train rides, write long briefs, and I fill myself with knowledge I couldn't find anywhere else.  I am grateful for the law, because it has brought me to this point in my life.  There are tools in my toolbox that are only there because I am a lawyer.  Those tools will be with me forever.  Moreover, being a lawyer has helped me encounter people in this world who I would likely have never seen elsewhere, and I love people.  Being a lawyer pays my bills.  Being a lawyer gives me a career I can talk about with strangers.  But I am not supposed to be a lawyer forever.  I am supposed to use music in my life and my profession.  Music is the thing that wakes me up in the morning--literally and figuratively.   Music gently lays my head to rest at night.  Music is my life's passion and my heart's voice.

Music is what I will do forever.

Almost six months ago, while on my way to court, I severely broke (and left wrist) my back by falling down the subway steps.  My broken back is still an issue, and it will be with me forever.  I have surgery coming up to potentially fix the latent, chronic pain that I feel at all times, but I will always carry with me the increased likelihood of reinjuring my poor spine.  I laugh now when I think about my surgeon coming in after reviewing my scans, a mere week after my accident.  He remarked, off-handedly, that I had "pulverized" my L2 vertebrate.  At the time that word knocked the wind out of me, and understandably so.  In a matter of seconds, I went from a chubby, young lawyer, stuck in a dead-end associate position, running around New York City like a crazy person, making 5 court appearances per day, to a chubby, young lawyer, stuck in a dead-end associate position, who was crippled.  I couldn't shower, I couldn't walk, I couldn't wipe my own ass.  My entire world changed in a split second.  It is a funny coincidence that I write on this blog, again, about my world changing.  When last I wrote a post like this, my dad had just gotten diagnosed with what turned out to be terminal cancer.  Yet again, my world view shifted, my eyes grew wide, and I surrendered to the inevitability of my circumstances.  Where my father's diagnosis left me emotionally crippled, my back break left me physically crippled.

As if to offset the tragedy of my injury, my dear friends allowed me to stay with them for the two weeks proceeding after my fall.  I slept on the couch of two of the most wonderful human beings who I know.  During the day, they would sit with me, talk with me, let me rest, reassure me, and advocate on my behalf with medical professionals.  I was shown love in every way that I could imagine.  Hell, at one point, one of my closest friends had to literally wash me in the shower.  (As an aside: true friendship might be when somebody says to you "can you lift your balls, please? I need to clean them.")  Despite the beautiful showings of compassion around me, I sunk into a deep and dark depression. It took months before that same close friend had the compassion and courage to tell me that I needed therapy.  She was right, of course.  Thankfully, my therapist, Bob, is only ever a phone call away.  He got me back on the right path, gave me some new tools, some old insights, and a healthy dose of reality.  But through breaking my back, I really broke my "self," and I used the opportunity to rebuild the "me" who I had lost.

What I found when I began the painful, and still incomplete, process of rebuilding is that I want music in my life again.  My career should fulfill me, because I am a workaholic.  When I am at a job, I will stay until it is complete.  I work long hours at my current firm not because I have been directed to stay (although it is strongly encouraged), but because there is work to be done, and it is mine to do.  If I am to spend most of my life at a job, that job needs to be my passion and at least part of my life's fulfillment.  Thus, I am not supposed to be a lawyer forever.

I am not completely positive on what path music will lay before me, as I write today, but I am entirely assured that music is the key to my future.  I happen to have the great gift of close friends and loved ones surrounding me who understand that my soul resonates in music, so no matter the course I take from here, I will never be far from a supportive word or needed hug.  Regardless, music is my future, and so is writing.  I could, but won't, count the number of times I've made some grand pronouncement on this blog regarding my new-found passion for filling it with my own musings, but this time it is different.  The quote that titles this entry is from the recently departed Maya Angelou , whose passing has greatly affected us all, including me.  I know that music is my path because it satisfies me to know it, and that satisfaction grows as I continue to emotionally accept music back into my life.  As I accept music, so to do I accept writing about it.  Thus, writing on this blog satisfies me anew, as well.  Writing here is "right."  Expressing myself in writing is "right."  And so this blog has found new life, just as its author has, in the rebuilding of what was broken.  Music and writing are back for me, and it's right.

Right will satisfy you.

What about love; don't you want someone to care about you?

When is a meal not a meal?  Prior to yesterday, I might have said when it consisted of trash food, chain food, macaroni and cheese from a box, or only alcohol.  Now I know, however, that a meal can be an experience, thanks to Blue Hill at Stone Barns.  Aside from being a five-star restaurant with an award-winning chef/owner, Blue Hill is renowned for its farm-to-table approach to cuisine.

Arriving in Tarrytown along the Hudson was only the beginning of my bourgeois experience.

The evening began promptly at four o'clock, and our party of seven was seated at a round table near the entrance of the dining room, next to a beautiful--and large--table display of fresh greens.  Our drink orders were placed, our "menus" were perused, and conversation began as a dull murmur.  As expected, our party quickly became the "rowdy table," so you can image our surprise when we were treated like royalty, rather than the heathens we actually are.

Social lubricant; we needed this about as much as Richard Simmons needs caffeine. 

The entire experience seemed to happen in the most surreal ways possible.  To begin, we were sitting at an active, working farm, wearing suits, and about to pay entire paychecks for a single meal, and the anachronisms only continued from there.  Our server was the most incredible woman named Christine I've ever encountered in person.  She knew every ingredient put before us, she was able to keep our attention despite constant interruptions from the uncouth peanut gallery (us), and she smiled the whole time.  Oh, and did I mention that she was cool as shit? Because she was cool as shit.  Because the menu--pictured above with the plant on the cover--is actually just an almanac of month-by-month harvest cycles that explained what ingredients we could encounter during the day with no mention of actual courses, Christine had the nary-impossible task of explaining each course to us.  The questions that she fielded from our table were ridiculous.  "Is this actually charcoal?"  "So wait, do we eat this?"  "Did you know that Tebali Wheat and Barber Wheat ring particularly well with music people because of Renata Tebaldi and Samual Barber?"  The last question pretty obviously came from me, but as a shock to all of us, Christine seemed to be charmed by our particular brand of rambunctious.

"I don't care for shellfish." - Karla.  "Well, the shellfish trees aren't really blooming this time of the year." - Christine
Then came these "Farm Tacos" with lobster knuckle.  This was just one of many time Christine caught us off guard.

It is impossible to count the number of times that a person at our table looked around the restaurant, realized that nobody else was as loud as we were, and tried to shush our group to no avail.  Naturally, when Christine came to us between courses to tell us that we had to get up from our tables, we presumed that we were being escorted from the premises.  None of us could really blame her.  Instead, we were brought to the most beautiful scene that I've ever been given.

My friend's reaction is pretty appropriate in describing how we all felt.

I say without hyperbole that the beauty of the table combined with the shock of our own private dining experience moved a couple people to tears.  Humorously enough, the room was originally the manure shed for the farm (the land was originally owned and operated as a farm by the Rockefeller family; you may be familiar with that name), so the building was designed to access the farm as easily as possible.  Thus, looking from the table, we were treated to the natural beauty whose bounty had been feeding us for two hours by this point.

This is the side of the manure shed.  Shit has never looked so glam.

At our private table (which we coined the Obama suite, as this is surely where the First Family would have dined at this restaurant), we enjoyed fresh bread, homemade butter, lard and honey, and a wonderful summer soup of fresh vegetables.

There was also a pigeon there, just to remind us that we were still in New York, not the English countryside.

After a few more courses in the shed, we were escorted back inside to our original table which was cleaned, freshened, and reset for our arrival.  It is important to note that we were probably ten or eleven courses in at this point, and Christine was kind enough to inform us that we still had a long way to go.  But stalwartly we continued on our merry journey to culinary nirvana, telling tales of diarrhea, vegans breaking their veggie vows in epic ways, and one particularly well-time Karen Carpenter joke; it may have been too soon.  Also in typical "us" fashion, we continued to be the only table seeming to be having any fun at the restaurant. Christine's visits became more frequent than normal, we laughed ourselves to tears in between courses of amuse-bouche-sized tomato burgers, and a particularly tasty combination of grilled watermelon, proscuitto, and cold cantaloupe soup.

This was just one of many times that I took a bite and could only utter: "Holy. Shit. You guys, what is happening in my mouth?!"

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that at this point Christine started to actually show us the freshest ingredients of the day, so as to let us decide whether we wanted to eat them later in the meal.  Obviously we always did.  I didn't use the phrase "culinary nirvana" lightly.  Shit was real.

This is a chicken mushroom, or known by it's street name: "the vegan panty dropper."  Its name is derived from its color and the shape of its growth, however, it actually tastes like chicken.  As the only vegan at the table said: it was a "game changer."

Soon we began to get full.  In our defense, we had been eating for over three hours, and every bite was the best bite that we had ever tasted.  It was like what I imagine would be marathon sex, but with foodgasms every five minutes.  Also, I was regularly laughing myself to tears because we are pretty stellar at amusing ourselves.  Soon the comedy revolved around how much more food they could possibly put in front of us.  Were they actually just fattening us up to slaughter as us the next dish?  As we pondered the potential reality of that scenario, Christine came and took us on another adventure.  This time, we were escorted to another private table on a beautiful stone patio.  I was too overwhelmed to take a picture, apparently, but we were treated to a few more courses, then dessert courses and coffee/tea.

There were TWO of these at the table.  Like a trooper, I ate some other people's shares for them.

It was on this patio that our party's humor gave way to an overwhelming sense of appreciation.  We appreciated the company of one another, the food that we had all been sharing, and the incredible kindness shown to us by our wonderful Christine.  We all came to this dinner with something to celebrate: new jobs, new homes, new prospects, new schools.  What we really got, however, was so much more than a celebration.  We were treated to a perfect storm of food, love, and kindness.  Suddenly my summer of sending our hundreds of resumes and never receiving word back on any of them didn't sting so harshly, and all of those hours I spent working a crappy retail job to just get by while I had two law licenses gathering dust in my proverbial trophy case weren't a huge waste of a summer.  This meal--no, this experience--rejuvenated our souls.

Money couldn't buy what we got at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, but they brought us a bill anyway.  We paid our tabs, and Christine baited us with a final "adventure," which she led us to believe was time and/or light sensitive.  So, after we wrapped up our coffees and teas, we got up from yet another beautiful table and were escorted once again past the same jealous tables of stuffed shirts who got to go on exactly ZERO adventures during their meal...

And then a miracle took place.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!?!?!?!

A door opened ahead of us, and a bright white light illuminated the kitchen of the restaurant.  This was like Dorothy seeing the Wizard for the first time, except there was not man behind the curtain to ruin the magic.  There was just a kitchen full of some of the brightest young culinary talent in the United States, and one very famous, very accomplished, James Beard Award winner who greeted us with handshakes and a smile.  For some perspective here, Dan Barber is a god.  Getting to go into his kitchen and watch him work is a really big fucking deal.  It would be watching Warhol do screenprinting or Beyonce twerk in a mirror.  For the second time, members of the group were moved to tears.  I, myself, almost cried when an entire hollowed out log was placed in front of us with various chocolates and truffles spread on it.  Chocolate makes me feel things.  Oh, there was also fresh fruit prepared just for us, and those flowers visible in the picture above.  All of this was done just for us.  Nobody else in the restaurant got to see the kitchen or chat with the cute sous chef or SHAKE DAN BARBER'S HAND.  I can't properly explain the magic that took place in that kitchen.  We watched the chefs prepare all of the incredible food that had just delighted us for the previous four hours of our lives, and then we posed for pictures, including one with Christine, obvs.  She is probably the coolest person at that restaurant, and if you have the pleasure of going to Blue Hill at Stone Barns, you should definitely look her up.  She's the bomb.

The evening ended soon after that, but the feelings that our group shared, and the experience of the afternoon/evening was once in a lifetime.  The impetus for going there in the first place was at the recommendation of Robyn's late-sister, Jamie.  Although I never had the pleasure of knowing her myself, I am eternally grateful to her for Blue Hill.  She claimed that it was the best meal she had ever eaten, and I am absolutely sure that I feel the same way.  The food was perfection, the ambiance was beautiful, but the experience was utterly overwhelming.  I challenge you to recall a single meal that you shared with friends which resulted in mass emails between all of you the next day thanking one another for the shared experience and commenting on how unreal it all still seems.  (Please don't actually take my challenge.  It is rhetorical.)

I guess that is really the answer to my original question, though.  Like I wrote, a meal isn't a meal when it is an experience.  We had a meal last night, the seven of us, and it was delicious.  But more importantly, we had an experience last night, the seven of us, and it was epic.

One more piece of food porn for your palate.  This was one of the vegetarian alternatives that came from Brianna while the rest of us devoured our veal like ravenous carnivores.