Nothing brings a smile to my face quite like the smell of coffee brewing. There's something earthy and deep about it that literally goes right to my soul and sits there, making me feel all warm and fuzzy and happy. My friend David is a wine connoisseur; he belongs to 'Wine O' The Month' clubs (not to be confused with Wine-o The Month…ahem) and knows all the 'rules' about what wine goes with what kind of food, and at what temperature the wine should be served. I can barely separate good wine from bad fruit juice. However, I told David once that I am as offended by bad coffee and he is by bad wine, and it's true. My point being, I am quite serious about my coffee. Anyway, since it was early and the house was quiet my mind started to wander. I accessed that part of my brain that I have dubbed The Archives of Useless Information (because as some people will tell you, I am a cornucopia of useless information) and did a quick run-down of everything I know about coffee. I came to the startling conclusion that being a coffee farmer and a creative person are not at all dissimilar. Why? You wonder. Well, of course I'm going to tell you. Read on…
The best coffee beans grow in ancient, dangerous places – rain forests, soaring mountain ranges, even the sides of volcanoes. It takes years before a coffee plant (it's a shrub, actually; there's a piece of useless information, to you from me) will start producing its full crop. Even once it does start producing, all the fruit (the coffee beans are actually hanging out inside a berry) does not ripen all at once, so it's necessary to return to the same plant several times in order to get all the coffee the plant has to offer.
Once the berries have been picked, it's on to the roasting process, which is, in and of itself, a monumental pain in the ass. These little suckers have to be roasted at low heat for a specified period of time, until all the hull and berry parts burns off (I'm told this stinks to high heaven, BTW). Then the beans have to be stirred up, the heat increased and the beans babysat until they get to a specific color and texture. There's no set list of times for any of this, because outside temperature, humidity and altitude all play a part in how long it takes to roast a bean. There are fast, cheap, easy ways to do this (I will not entertain any comments regarding fast, cheat and easy people), and there is the expensive, time consuming, labor-intensive way to do this. Take a guess at which one yields the best cup of coffee.
What I'm saying is, creating anything-art, music, literature-is just like harvesting coffee. If it's really good art, it comes from a place inside that may not be easy to get to; hell, it might even come from a spiritual or emotional place where we don't like to venture too often. It's never realized in just one trip to this dark place – we have to keep going back in and picking around until we are able to extract exactly what we need (which may not be what we WANT – but that's another blog entry entirely) in order to make whatever it is we are creating come to life. But even once we do pull it out of ourselves, we still need to work it over, turn it this way and that, and sometimes beat the snot out of it until we're able to use it in our art. This process is not fast. It is not easy. It is sometimes not the least bit pretty. We get dirty and we get tired. But when it's all said and done and we're sitting there, admiring the pretty thing we've created, it makes us smile. It's like breaking that vacuum seal on the bag (or can) of coffee, that instant when it hits you and you think "This is gonna be good!"
I'm just sayin'.
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