Was home a place of solace and comfort? Do thoughts of home comfort us now? This is a state to which we aspire.
For some of us, the answer to these questions is yes. Like John Denver, I am a country boy, at least by background, having grown up on a dairy farm in Michigan, a mile from Saginaw Bay, the son of two of the sincerest people I have ever met. John Denver’s country music album “Back Home Again” captures that spirit, especially for someone like me who grew up in the country. Its images are so powerful that I chose my son’s name as a reflection of the experience I had growing up, and my wish for my son to have memories like that. The night Matthew was born, I told my parents, who were staying with us, why we had chosen that name; I never saw such a look in their eyes as I saw that night.
That joy has returned to me as a parent. When our daughter was preparing for a trip back to Michigan – a place she only visited on holidays – she posted John Denver’s “Country Roads” on her Facebook page. (A memory of returning home one Thanksgiving with that song on the car radio remains vivid today. It was playing just as I approached the dirt road where my parents’ home was. Crops had been harvested from the fields, and there stood our house, just like always.)
Not everyone is as lucky as I was. But then, we can choose what to make of our past. My hope for everyone is that you will know the sense of homely comfort I have known.
Real
True Narratives
How people create their home environments - how we decorate our homes and how we eat - is a living narrative about the comforts of home.
- Cheryl Mendelson, Home Comforts: The Art & Science of Keeping House (Scribner, 1999).
- Eliot Coleman, Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long (Chelsea Green, 1999).
- James Oseland, Saveur: The New Comfort Food - Home Cooking from Around the World (Chronicle Books, 2011).
- Julia della Croce, Italian Home Cooking: 125 Recipes to Comfort Your Soul (Kyle Books, 2010).
- Jean-Georges Vongericthten, Home Cooking with Jean-Georges: My Favorite Simple Recipes (Clarkson Potter, 2011).
- Poopa Dweck, Aromas of Aleppo: The Legendary Cuisine of Syrian Jews (Ecco, 2007).
- Joseph E. Dabney, Smokehouse Ham, Spoonbread & Scuppernong Wine: The Folklore and Art of Southern Appalachian Cooking (Cumberland House, 2010).
- Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China (Artisan, 2008).
- Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, Mangoes & Curry Leaves: Culinary Travels Through the Great Subcontinent (Artisan, 2005).
- Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, Hot Sour Salty Sweet: A Culinary Journey Through Southeast Asia (Artisan, 2000).
- Bill Buford, Dirt: Adventures in Lyon As a Chef in Training, Father, and Sleuth Looking for the Secret of French Cooking (Knopf, 2020).
- Betty Liu, My Shanghai: Recipes and Stories from a City on the Water (Harper, 2021).
- Bryant Terry, ed., Black Food: Stories, Art, and Recipes from Across the African Diaspora (4 Color Books, 2021).
- Gesine Bullock-Prado, My Vermont Table: Recipes for All (Six) Seasons (Countryman Press, 2023).
Technical and Analytical Readings
Photographs
Documentary and Educational Films
Imaginary
Fictional Narratives
Novels:
- Dana Czapnik, The Falconer: A Novel (Atria Books, 2019): “The basketball grows into a metaphor for the universe: ‘I bounce the world hard on the blacktop, and it comes back into my hand covered with a fine layer of New York City diamond dust.’ The entire novel is indeed cloaked in just such a glimmering film, and Lucy’s love-hate relationship with her roiling city reflects her changeable hopes for herself and others. ‘I guess New York is like that, in that what you mistake it for matters as much as what it actually is.’”
Poetry
Music: Composers, artists, and major works
Albums:
- John Denver, “Back Home Again” (1973) (45’) is an iconic musical take on life on the farm, or wherever home is or was.
- Peter Ostroushko, “Heart of the Heartland” (1994) (53’) “will whisk you away to another place far beyond the frustrations and anxiety of the day.”
- Fred Hersch, “Songs from Home” (2020) (57’) is “an album recorded at the pianist’s Pennsylvania residence and inspired by our shared predicament of social isolation. The idea was, he said, ‘to play some music that would make people happy.’ And as such, the emphasis is strongly on the tuneful and familiar.”
- Owen Spafford & Louis Campbell, “You, Golden” (2022) (40’) conveys a deep longing for home, and an unsettled sense of belonging. “Best known for their work with Sam Sweeney and Cosmo Sheldrake, the duo intend this album to authentically express their varied musical backgrounds, not hiding for the sake of trad. authenticity. Influences come in via Owen's interest in contemporary classical, Irish and old time music or Louis' background in post-rock, alternative and bluegrass music.”
The soothing sounds of the African stringed instrument, the kora, meld with Djeli Moussa Diawara’s plaintive tenor to evoke gentle images of Africa. Here are links to his playlists, and some videos.
Compositions:
- Joseph Canteloube, Chants d’Auvergne (Songs from the Auvergne) (1923-1930) (approx. 85-104’) (lyrics) consists of traditional folk songs gathered over the composer’s many years of travels around his native region. He explained: “I was living in the countryside at the time, in a region where peasants still sang readily. I started going around farms and villages to listen to the peasants’ songs, having everyone sing: old men and women, shepherds and shepherdesses in the pastures, ploughmen and harvesters at work.” Top recorded performances are by Davrath (de la Roche) ca. 1960; von Stade (de Almeida) *** [Album 1 (1982); Album 2) (1985)]; Te Kanawa (Tate) in 1984; Upshaw (Nagano) in 1996; and Sampson (Rophé) in 2022.
- Vítězslav Novák, Moravian-Slovak Suite for Small Orchestra, Op. 32 (1903) (approx. 27’)
- John Carbon, “Small Town Memories” (2010) (approx. 14-15’)
- Christian Lindberg, “Liverpool Lullabies” (2015) (approx. 17-18’)
- Avril Coleridge-Taylor, Sussex Landscape, Op. 27 (1940) (approx. 13’): “Avril Coleridge-Taylor followed in the footsteps of her father, the British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, who died when she was just nine years old. In a career spanning the twentieth century, she wrote chamber works and several shorter pieces for full orchestra which include her tone poem Sussex Landscape, inspired by a place familiar to her and where she was to spend the final years of her life.”
- Edward Elgar, In the South (Alassio), concert overture, Op. 50 (1904) (approx. 20-21’)
- Kevin Puts, Home (2019) (approx. 17’): “The refugee crisis in Europe, documented in recent media by horrific stories and photos of displaced families, led me to compose Home.”
From the dark side:
- The piano pieces that comprise Michael Finnissy’s English Country-Tunes (1977) (approx. 50-53’) are not the idyllic works the title suggests. On the contrary, Finnissy draws his title from the first syllable of the word “country,” as it is pronounced. The work reflects the composer’s ambivalence toward his native England, particularly its attitudes toward sexuality.
Music: songs and other short pieces
- John Denver, “Back Home Again” (lyrics)
- Phillip Phillips - "Home" (lyrics)
- Carole King, "Home Again" (lyrics)
Visual Arts
- Anna Mary Robertson (Grandma Moses), My Hills of Home (1941)
- James Tissot, Return of the Prodigal Son (1862)
