I’ll Take a  Pound of Memory Sausage, Please.

by Elizabeth Formidoni
 

        Some memories should be savored.  The first bite of foie gras, the first kiss.  Some memories bring pain, some are better off lost.  Some memories should be shared.  And while you’re sharing, why not grind them up, stuff them into a pig’s intestine, and dry them for posterity?  At least this must have been the thinking behind Mimi Oka and Doug Fitch’s Orphic Memory Sausage event at April’s Umami Food and Art Festival, billed as a “a meeting ground to people who use food as a medium and who present their audience with a multi-sensory experience in the dining room or gallery space.” 

        The orphic memory sausage event was preceded by a water tasting that left at least one attendee feeling like a bumpkin with an undeveloped palate.  After this indignity, Fitch and Oka gave a brief introduction and encouraged their guests to begin demolishing their memories. The brochure had encouraged participants to “bring anything that evokes a memory of place or time or experience that you wish to transform into sausage….an  old CD, a cracked plate, a worn-out article of clothing, a broken chair, an old shoe, a bouquet of wilted flowers, a diary, a telephone book, photographs of old lovers, harvested hay, dried fish, yesterday’s newspaper…”   I brought a train ticket from a journey across Norway.  When I saw that my beloved little memory was about to spend eternity crushed up with old letters and sweaty socks from some angry French woman’s first lover, I slid it quietly back into my pocket.
 

        Scattered around the room were tools of memory destruction – paper shredders, blenders, food processors, knives, and even a hatchet.  The hosts thoughtfully provided extra memories in case participants failed to bring mementos bulky enough to sustain an entire sausage.  Some extras included wet paper matted with real human hair.  Squeamish guests recoiled at the thought of hair in food, others fled from the splashing that ensued when the damp paper was hacked to bits. The hosts wore white coats, but the guests did not, and many were spattered in memory detritus by the end of the night.  One woman, wearing protective safety goggles, carefully and thoroughly demolished a brick painted with a location and a date long past.  Ambient music played in the background as another woman earnestly destroyed her child’s Pokemon figure.  Some guests chose to write their memories on the memory scroll, or record them on video in the memory chamber.
 

        Once sufficient memory pulp was accumulated, the stuffing began.  Volunteers sat on a platform and crammed memories through a tiny funnel into lengths of intestine.  Wiser attendees, knowing that the unsavory smell of pig intestine can linger on a sausage stuffer’s hands for days, stood quietly on the sidelines.  After the sausages were tied, links were given to each participant as lumpy memento, lest we forget the evening’s events.  Now at least I know what to bring to my next orphic memory sausage event. 5-29-2008