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My favorite moment in a documentary that’s screening at the Northwest Film Forum:

[T]he architect Kevin Roche describes having dinner with the famous modernist designers Charles and Ray Eames (most famous for their space-age, form-fitting chairs) at their home (the eternally beautiful Case Study House No. 8). After the meal, which one gathers was not filling, dessert was served. It turned out to be bowls containing flowers. Each person received a bowl and was asked to look at and contemplate the forms and colors of the flowers. It was a “visual dessert.” Roche was pissed because he was still hungry and wanted the satisfaction of a real dessert. “What kind of people are these?” he thought. Later, he went to the Dairy Queen and enjoyed a dessert that filled the belly and not the eyes.

Also, please watch last week’s Short Film Friday. You might enjoy it.

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...

2 replies on “And What Is a Visual Dessert?”

  1. When I read Mona Simpson’s moving elegy for her brother, Steve Jobs, that described Spartan dinners of a single vegetable – perfectly prepared – a part of my soul died.

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