In the latest chapter of OBSERVATIONS… - and the final instalment of Travel Week - Richard Neat travels to Russia where he cooks up a storm and gets thinking about creativity. When challenged by one of Yeltsin’s nouveau riche about Western consumerism, he is forced to reflect. Are the economics of scale really leading to innovation —-or rather beigeness, plagiarism and unoriginality? As an artist in the kitchen, Richard, here, lays down the stake for human creation. - Daniel Clarke-Serret (Editor)
Introduction:
Chapter 1: Ambition
Chapter 2: Faith
Chapter 3: Loyalty
Chapter 4: Struggle
Chapter 5: Sovereignty
OBSERVATIONS FROM THE KITCHEN by Richard Neat
Chapter 6: CREATIVITY
Snails with Morilles and Asparagus
“…the creative man has no choice but to trust his inner command and place everything at stake in order to express what seems to him to be true” Milosz.
The onion-shaped cupola of Christ the Saviour dazzled in the morning sunlight, winking conspiratorially at the other basilicas of the town as they deceptively radiated messages of warmth and comfort beneath a wintery sun.
The Cook and Nikola Vsevolodolvich sat huddled on the terrace above the restaurant, alternating between greedy mouthfuls of nicotine and vodka in a hopeless effort at alleviating the pitiless chill, fetched by the icy winds that swirled around them.
Stalin’s nineteen-fifties gothic masterpieces lay menacingly around the town, the eerie wedding-cake-shaped tiers, a sinister testament to the troubled times of their construction. Towards the west, the Kremlin walls sagged heavily under the burden of its wintry load —or maybe its troubled conscience.
The other Travel Week instalments can be found here:
Moscow was an architectural gem and while other European cities had their share of memorable buildings, Moscow’s monuments alone displayed an air of culpability having been crafted upon an anvil of misery.
Dostoyevsky wrote:
What makes matters especially desperate is Russian naiveté, the native genius for belief and enthusiasm, which causes Russians to carry out in action what the West with its coldness and caution only conceives in art and abstract thought.
Russia was a nation of victims - long before the word ‘victim’ had been expropriated by shameless celebrities and unscrupulous politicians- and the cruelty and bleakness of their winters merely heaped further suffering upon them. Bitter cold gnawed at their exhausted bodies while cavernous snowfalls made a simple walk to the shops a painful exertion.
