Tales Of The Mind And Body: Illegal Songbirds, Things Like That

We spent the weekend in Ann Arbor with good friends B and E who have made my life better by being born, I am so grateful to them. We did many things, including eating a lot and napping and watching Mr. Show and playing “What Were You Thinking” at a bar and exploring the burnt-out husk of Detroit and meeting a weird neo-conservative African American “birther” who hates Obama and who used to jump out of airplanes with his eyes closed in the Air Force and now likes to make jokes about the diaper he wears. He was pretty cool. He said Obama’s not an American, because his dad is African, but that I am an American, even though my dad is German (a lie I made up in order to argue with him). He said it would be fine for Schwarzenegger to be president now because we’ve “opened the door” with Obama. I was like “but isn’t Arnold Schwarzenegger’s dad literally a Nazi?” This led to a long discussion (ok monologue) about the Third Reich and how Hitler was Austrian and then we were all like “it’s too fucking hot to deal with this person,” so we went and ate at a cafe where there was amazing supportive Lady-Graff that I will post for you soon!!!!!! Let me just give you a little teaser and say that not only does one of them literally say “my vagina rocks,” but one of them also says “I HEART NPR, NPR 4EVER”

Speaking of NPR (lately I am all about the elegant segue), on our drive to Detroit we listened to this insane This American Life episode, or rather just the second part of it, which is about ortolan, this completely insane fancy dish that was once eaten by decadent French kings but is now illegal, not only because the dish in question is endangered but also because there’s something so terrible about the dish’s preparation that it somehow transcends even other horrible evil foods like veal and foie gras, such that it sickens the strongest chefs in all the land, etc.

What this dish is, is an Ortolan, who is a teeny tiny songbird the size of your thumb. You capture this songbird in a delicate net and then poke out both its eyes and put it in a cage. For some reason being blind makes it eat constantly, so it gets nice and fat. Then you take this blinded obese enslaved songbird out of its tiny delicate cage and you DROWN IT in a fancy heavily perfumed type of cognac. Then the bird is roasted, feathers bones beak and all. Then the bird is served on a beautiful white plate and you are given a big white cloth napkin, which you drape over your head while you eat the bird. The napkin captures the aromas of the meat and scorched feathers and cognac and makes a kind of Ortolan Food Sauna for your face, BUT CRUCIALLY it also hides you from the sight of God while you eat this ludicrous thing, which you recognize as evil as you simultaneously revel in its decadence and what it teaches you about life and death and suffering.

This is all very strange!

But the best part is that when François Mitterrand was dying, he decided he wanted his final meal to be this horrible Ortolan thing. So even though it was illegal, he found a chef who would make it, and he invited 30-odd guests to his last meal, and they ate this huge enormous many-course dinner, which closed with the heavily-choreographed production and consumption of the Ortolan. I like to imagine the guests being like “oh shit, tonight I have to go eat this horrible thing with a dying man, CALGON TAKE ME AWAY.”

Mitterand, dying, sat at a separate table from the rest of the guests, eating with super-human concentration, tasting every flavor, savoring every moment. Between courses he would apparently “pass out” and sort of lay there on his table basically dying while his guests presumably tried not to notice? Maybe this kind of thing is more normal in France.
Then the Ortolan was served. Many of the guests couldn’t eat it, due to how horrible and upsetting it is. But Mitterrand ate his. He was so filled with the beauty, tragedy, joy, and shame of the world, his napkin over his head hiding his final act of human evil from the sight of God. Then the meal was over, and he refused to eat or drink anything after that, and he died 8 days later.

This guy on This American Life got interested in this admittedly amazing story, and decided to try to experience this final meal. He called chef after chef after chef trying to find someone who would make him an Ortolan. They all refused. It’s illegal! It’s horrible! Forget it! Domage! Finally he found a chef who agreed to it. The chef recreated the entire final meal of Mitterrand. It was delicious! Every dish so amazing, so beautifully prepared, so thoughtful.

And then, the Ortolan! This guy was filled with trepidation. Would he be able to eat it? Would he vomit, thus sullying this sublime experience with his all-too-human frailty? The chef brought it out on a beautiful white dish. He draped his white napkin over his head, enveloping himself and the tiny bird in pure, pristine whiteness. The bird was laying on its back, tiny charred feet curled up, tiny charred beak perhaps open in a final cry of anguish, snuffed out by cognac. The odor of the cognac was heady, intoxicating, filling the space underneath the napkin. Our hero bravely placed the bird in his mouth—traditionally the entire bird is eaten in one bite, and you chew it all up and then swallow it, bones and all. He said the first crunch into the bird was upsetting and he thought he would barf and then he thought he might faint from sensory/emotional overload. But then all these amazing flavors and odors and sensations filled his mouth. The juice from the meat. The smoke from the charred feathers. The crazy liquid of the cognac filling the bird. It was perfection, it was beautiful, he would sob with joy! But then the second bite–oh, the feathers. Oh, the internal organs, the blood and guts. Oh, the suffering, the pointless death of this small innocent creature. The awful, awful bones, ground between the teeth. The feelings of nausea and horror return; one must grimly keep chewing. At this point the faint of heart spit out the masticated chunk of bones and feather and tiny claws, but this is, how you say, trés gauche! To complete the poetic arc the whole thing must be swallowed and incorporated into the earthly body. Our hero swallows. He has finished. He feels equal parts disgusted, horrified, ashamed, exalted, exhausted.

And that’s something that happened to that guy, I guess.