One
Last Note From The Poobah:
This is my last edition as Managing
Editor and Executive Poobah. I’m leaving Haute Dish
in the hands of Kristin, Nate and Suzanne. They have their
own visions of what Haute Dish will become, but no matter
what changes happen I hope that Haute Dish will always be
a forum for people to find their art. Secretly, I used Haute
Dish to help find my art – photography. All of the
photos from past year credited to “John Falstaff”
are mine. No one on the staff knew they were mine. I submitted
them under a pseudonym because I needed to know –
just like every other author and artist does – if
my work, my love, my art was good enough.
Haute Dish will change, and for the
better. Kristin and Nate are brimming with great ideas of
how to strengthen Haute Dish for future artists, writers
and staffers.
I think I’ve thanked everyone
I can think of at one point or another, but a few people
deserve it again: Anne Aronson, Suzanne Nielsen, Lawrence
Moe, Mark Matthews and Mary Kirk – I owe each of you
beyond my capacity for words. Kristin, Diane, Sara and Eric
– my original Piggies – thanks for accepting
my flaws and allowing me to use your strengths. Josiah,
Erin, Felicia and Nate – the new Piggies – thank
you for coming to work for us. You and everyone who submitted
their work are the ones who made Haute Dish great. Oink.
In the last issue, I asked for a gift
from you: “Something About Me.” Here’s
mine, to you.
I'd Like A Cheese
Danish and an Epiphany To Go
I found my art, waiting for me with
a double espresso and cheese Danish.
I was sitting in Panera over on Hennepin;
hiding from a summer day only the Heat Miser would love.
Sweaty and anxious and waiting for my first photo shoot
of the 2005 Fringe Festival to begin, I was plopped down
on the couch with forty pounds of photo gear jammed into
a black canvas bag. Across from me was a swishy blonde kid
in his mid-twenties decked out in Abercrombie’s latest
talking on a cellphone about the MFA program in theatre
he’d been accepted to. Animated and excited, he talked
about how theatre was his life and his art and his soul.
He was going to Lincoln, he said. He was going to completely
reinvent directing. I’m not normally the type to eavesdrop,
but he just poured himself into the phone and I couldn’t
help but listen. Over the next fifteen minutes I became
completely engrossed in what he was saying, even though
I could only hear his side of the conversation. When he
hung up and started to walk out the door, I literally stood
in the doorway to keep him from leaving. I had to talk to
him. I had to ask him one question:
How did you make the leap from your
craft (theatre and directing) being a collection of techniques
to it being art, which it obviously has just from hearing
you talk about it like you do.
He called his date for the evening,
and actually told him he’d be late because he wanted
to tell me about his art. I was flattered and amazed and
for the next half hour this kid spouted wisdom at me that
I’d been searching out for the better part of twenty
years. We talked about how photography and theatre can be
different but so similar, and as we wound up the conversation
he said this:
“Directing theatre –
or any art, I guess – is about just one thing: relationships.
When the actors stop focusing on the script, or their motivations,
or the blocking or anything else and totally focus on the
relationships between the characters and the relationships
of the characters to the audience, that’s when it
becomes art. You have to get everything else out of the
way. Until you do, nothing matters. When you do, nothing
else matters.”
I was so completely amazed by the directness,
simplicity and profound truthfulness of it that my eyes
got teary. As he got up to leave, he reached over and touched
my hand and said; “Now you know. You can’t ever
walk away from it now.”
And I can’t. Because I found my
art.
As an editor here at Haute Dish, my
goal was to find the visual and literary works that were
so authentic and so brave that I couldn’t tear myself
away from them. I know at last – at the very tail
end of my time with Haute Dish – that what I was looking
for were stories, poems, rhetoric and visual art that make
me care about these very same relationships. As a photographer,
my goal now is to produce images that reflect only the relationship
– the relationship between the photographer and the
model, the relationship between the people in the image,
the relationship of the image and the viewer. Everything
else is just a way to get me there. Lenses and lighting
and f-stops and fixers and everything else – completely
irrelevant.
Can I be completely honest with you?
When I first agreed to take on Haute Dish as Managing Editor,
I looked down my nose at artists and creative writers. I
thought of them all as latte-sipping, beret and turtleneck
wearing grant-grubbing artistes who cared more about pretension
and being trendy than producing anything great.
Man, was I ever wrong.
Over the last year, I found that Art
is that which allows us to transcend our flaws. Art is that
which allows us to be stronger than our weaknesses. Art
is that which gives us a glimpse of the greatness of the
Divine.
In the year and some-odd that I’ve
worked with Suzanne, Eric, Kristin, Diane and Sara here
at Haute Dish, they’ve all been so patient and so
supportive of me. Each of them has been a roadsign pointing
towards a me that I was unable to find on my own. Suzanne
has been especially wonderful to me. She’s been sweet
and kind and tough when I needed. She saw the art in me
and made me look it straight in the eye, never allowing
me to laugh it off or shove it back into a dark corner of
my life where it would collect dust. She forced me to show
her the same courage and authenticity that I demanded from
Haute Dish authors and artists.
At the age of thirty-seven, I found
my art.
I found my art in Sunday editorial staff
meetings over bagels, stories about jumping pigs, long hours
in my bathroom developing film, and freezing my ass off
shooting on Nicollet Mall in February. I found my art under
the hot lights of Fringe Festival stages, and in an overstuffed
chair at Panera listening to some kid tell me what really
matters. I found my art, and if I can anyone can.
Now you go find yours.
Clint Weathers
Former Managing Editor and Poobah Emeritus
Haute Dish Literary and Arts Journal
The Summer 2005 Issue is
dedicated to each and every one of you who has had to scratch
and claw to find five spare minutes or five spare dollars
or five square feet of space so you could pursue your art.
Fall
2005 
