Magic happens easiest around food, community and laughter. Last night we managed to combine all three in the right proportion and we reaped handsomely from the efforts. It might be worth mentioning that I am referring to the word magic in a very specific manner. For a start, the dinner was meant to be a small impromptu gathering with @arnbjorgdanielsen at her beautiful house.
It turned out to be way more than I any one of us had imagined. The guest list appeared somehow as we all ran into other members of the community. In the end, we had an eclectic group that was just enough to fit the kitchen table. The number of guests and their respective backgrounds lent atmosphere to intimate conversations that were warm and flavorful enough to complement the food and to induce a slower heartbeat that seemed to slow time.
We all cooked together and ate together while the conversations went on without skipping a beat. Ideas about philosophy and the phenomenology of food, as well as the politics and the power of food marked the various topics covered.
It touched my heart to learn that @gudrun_soley had come to join us in cooking, but could not eat with us, as she had a prior commitment through her job. We got to see a copy of her cookbook, which she had brought as a welcome gift. I knew that Iceland is known for its high population of writers. I am glad to have met two of them personally during this trip to Iceland, both of whom are in fields that I am in: food and anthropology.
Yet it was the impromptu performance by three of the ladies present, with their beautiful voices, singing two lullabies, that almost brought me to tears at the end of the gathering. One lullaby was Swedish and one Icelandic. The lullabies touched on anthropology, food and politics. Arnbjörg's daughter whispered to me the story of the Icelandic lullaby after the performance. It was about a woman who was living in the mountains, outside of mainstream society—an outsider due to her crime. She was accused for stealing, and had to face the consequences of her act. She therefore had to throw her baby down the waterfall, with no means to care for the child, and no community to turn to for help.
Our resident Professor of Philosophy became the defacto director, and guided the after dinner conversations in a manner as smooth as a lullaby. We all left nourished in body and in ways of avoiding the big waterfall of fiat food.
Arnbjörg’s house is right by the beach. As the ladies were singing and the men were humming, I remembered our traditional lullabies, which, like the hungry waves of the ocean, were swallowed by colonialism. Nowadays, children in many African countries are growing up with western lullabies. I stared into the ocean as the ladies were singing. It was deceptively serene and calming. I wondered if like the ocean, could we be listening to a deceptive lullaby that has put our senses to sleep in the face of a huge catastrophe?