Elissa Altman on navigating the Motherland
The Wintering Sessions with Katherine May:
Elissa Altman on navigating the Motherland
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This week Katherine chats to Elissa Altman, author of ‘Motherland’ and more.
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Listen to the Episode
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Katherine:
I'm not sure if you can hear that. That's the sound of the dog galloping. I'm on a hillside near my home in North Kent. And I'm looking for winter chanterelles. I found a load of them here just a couple of weeks ago, which is late in the season, really. But it's been so warm. Oh, beautiful feather. I think that's a pheasant feather. That's in my basket now. I'm back to look, see if I can find more. This is a hill that me and the dog often climb because A, it's a hill. There's not many hills near me, really, not that you can walk on. I love a hill. But also, the woods are full of mushrooms here. Often not the edible ones like Porcini and things like that, the desirable ones that everyone's looking for. Well, maybe they are, maybe everyone gets there first, let's face it.
Katherine:
But it's full of really interesting ones. There's always something to see here, something to find. It has lots of the medicinal mushrooms like Birch Polypore and Turkey Tail, which I find fascinating. But anyway, in my experience, winter chanterelles like to grow on a slope. I think they like the drainage. I'm sure someone will correct me on this. And I don't know if this is actually a thing, but I always seem to find them near Sweet Chestnut. If I'm on a slope and I see the shells of chestnuts on the floor, the spiky kind of hedge-hoggy shells, I start to have a little look around for them. It's been so mild this year. I think they've really extended their season, but they're quite hard to spot. They're funny little things. They have a kind of brownish top, which looks, for all the world, like a leaf. So it can take a while to get your eye in with them really.
Katherine:
And then when you turn them upside down, they have veins rather than gills. And they're kind of an apricoty yellowy-orange underneath. And some people find that they smell like apricots too. Not everyone does. I've sometimes caught a whiff of it, but it seems to be strangely fleeting. I don't know. It seems to bring about the memory of the smell of apricots in your mind and then let go of it as soon as you start to sniff further. Maybe that's just psychological. I don't know. But the thing with winter chanterelles is if you find one, you're going to find many, there's always a load of them if there are any at all, and you have to shuffle about in the fallen leaves to really get to them. And that often means going off the beaten track because I think they're easily squashed.
Katherine:
I'm having a good look around here with no luck yet, but I'm by my favourite little bit of this hillside wood, which is a fallen tree, a big fallen tree. I'm not sure what kind it is, but it always has so many different mushrooms growing on it. I found all kinds. I found Jelly Ear Fungus. I found the white ones who I can't remember the name of at the moment. It'll probably come to me embarrassingly in about three hours' time. And yeah, this year loads of chanterelles. I'm going to keep looking. And actually, that makes a brilliant introduction to today's guest, the wonderful Elissa Altman, who I'm just so excited to have her on the podcast because I loved, loved, loved her memoir Motherland, which is about growing up with... Well, I'll let her explain it to you, but her very particular mother and the difficulties that brought about, but also the acceptance.
Katherine:
It's a really beautiful book, I think because it isn't a book about how terrible someone else was to her in a straightforward way. It's a book about understanding a character who also happened to be your mother and how you come to feel compassion about that and how that feeds into an understanding of yourself. But Elissa is also a tremendous cook and I often salivate at the things she posts on her social media sites. I won't be too ashamed to tell you that. She has a wonderful way with food and storytelling and how the two intertwine. Of course, they are inextricably linked. It feels very apposite that I'm here hunting for the last of the winter mushrooms in this rather bleak new year and about to share a conversation that I'm really proud of. And I really hope you'll love it too.
Katherine:
Okay. I'm just going to keep looking. I really feel like it would be for the narrative good if I could find some here that I could share with you, but you know, I may have to be sharing my disappointment in a minute. Or perhaps I can fake it really well. I think that's unlikely. All right. I'll speak to you a bit later. See you in a while.
Katherine:
Elissa, welcome to The Wintering Sessions. I'm thrilled to have you. I read Motherland. I was about to say The Motherland Sessions. I completely lost my mind. I read Motherland when it came out and I was just so taken by the story and by the interplay of you and your mother, but also just your wonderful writing that was so beautifully reflective and wise, but also just very poetic and lovely. I'm really, really chaff that you agreed to come on my podcast. Thank you.
Elissa:
Well, thank you so much. And I was so delighted and touched when you reached out because your work has meant so much to me and continues to mean so much to me. I have found it very affirming and healing and beautiful, beautiful language and beautiful words. I'm just delighted and honoured to be here. Thank you so much.
Katherine:
Well, that thrills me no end. And I wanted to start by asking how your winter is so far. It's pretty chilly here and I've got the fire on in my office for the first time today and I'm clutching tea with both hands to keep my fingers warm.
Elissa:
Well, we actually had our first dusting of snow the other day, which was really lovely.
Katherine:
Oh, wow.
Elissa:
I live in New England and where I am is not quite rural and not quite suburban. And it's sort of what they call exurban here. But I do live on a little bit over an acre. And if you look out my office window, there's this great expansive field and stone wall, and a lot of animals come through. I grew up in Manhattan and so that's thrilling to me. It's just astonishing to me every time I see a fox.
Katherine:
Oh, yeah. It sounds really beautiful. And for someone who is as into food as you, it must really keep you close to food production culture as well, I assume.
Elissa:
It does. And it's taken me a long time to realise that when I'm writing about food, I'm actually really writing about nurturing and sustenance, in whatever forms they come. And I wrote yesterday somewhere that it's not always about what's on the table, but who's around the table. But of course, we are lucky to live in an area where there are some really wonderful farms and organic farms and food producers and cheese makers and bread bakers. And they're all within earshot.
Katherine:
Oh, wow.
Elissa:
And that's such an amazing thing. We keep an oversized garden that's really beginning to just look like doom. It's just a mess. And we always overshoot in terms of our own time and ability. And it's just this massive, massive garden, but we're still picking hardy greens, which love frost and love cold weather. I find it very, very comforting and healing and, of course, I love to cook, so as you would think.
Katherine:
Yeah. It's one of the reasons why I'm always really drawn to you and all your feeds is I think we share a love of good food, but also of cooking for other people. That's one of my favourite things to do is to cook for a big table of people and to put big plates in front of them and feed them. I'm definitely a feeder. I can't stop myself.
Elissa:
Yeah. And I think that there's certainly a spiritual component to that. And nothing really gives me greater pleasure than to have people I care about and strangers around the table as well. We just had our Thanksgiving holiday last weekend. And now, of course, we're heading into Christmas and we have a very small family. My wife is an only child and I'm an only child and her parents have passed and my mother is still with us, but we have a limited group. And we're already talking about what will we do for Christmas and who will be around the table and what will be on the table. And we have a new, not so new anymore, cousin who is going on 20-months old. So he'll be at the table.
Katherine:
Oh, how lovely.
Elissa:
Yeah. And that just means everything to me, so that's great.
Katherine:
Everything gets invigorated again when new children come into the family, I think. Doesn't it? I found that it made me really reflect on what we are and what we want to pass on and what our traditions are. It makes you conscious of the things that you want to share with that new generation that's coming along.
Elissa:
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And he's a love. I think all little ones are absolute loves, but he's a special little boy.
Katherine:
Ah, that's so nice. And what did you cook for Thanksgiving?
Elissa:
I cooked the traditional turkey, which I know that in England, that's usually at Christmas.
Katherine:
Yes. Well, we don't have any opportunity other than Christmas, really.
Elissa:
Yeah. And it's the same here for Thanksgiving? No one I know cooks a turkey at any other time of year, but we had this massive Turkey that was 22 pounds and just a giant, like the size of Volkswagen, huge, huge bird. And we're kind of kitchen traditionalist and we like what we like and we like, I guess what's expected. And my wife is a really wonderful baker and pie baker specifically, so we had that. But where we're already on to... And after four days, you're thinking, "Oh God, what am I going to do with the leftovers? How much turkey pie can I make?" So we're on to Christmas and thinking about that now, so that's great.
Katherine:
Ah, that's so nice. I could sit and talk about food for ages as if... I just think it's really soothing. I want to know what everyone is eating and how they serve it and how they cooked it and if they've got any recipes to pass on to me, please. You know?
Elissa:
Yeah.
Katherine:
This is a really good moment to talk about your mom. Did she come for Thanksgiving and did she behave herself?
Elissa:
The answer is yes and no.
Katherine:
Oh, dear.
Elissa:
Yeah, she did come. And as long as I have Thanksgiving and she's here, she will be here because I feel a sense of obligation, a moral obligation, and I'm sure, certainly my therapist will agree that there is always a hint of a whiff of hope that things will be different this time. And of course, they really never are because that's just who she is. And I think that she enjoys the food. She enjoys being the centre of attention. And even if she's not the centre of attention, by the time the evening is over, she is. She did as well as she could possibly do given her issues. And then she was here for a couple of days, and then we brought her back to New York and she's fine, but she was here and it's complicated.
Elissa:
And as I said in the book, in Motherland that it's complicated and there really almost is no resolution with someone like her because we have to... I think writers as a rule, and artists, as a rule, have to be comfortable with the idea of writing about ambiguity. Our stories are not tied up with nice, neat little ribbons. Our people in our lives who are difficult will almost always be difficult to one degree or another. And we have to be okay to talk about that and to say that. Life is not, as we say, a Hallmark card, in this country, that's what we say here and-
Katherine:
No, we have them too, don't you worry. We certainly understand that.
Elissa:
Yeah. I've had to get comfortable with the idea that she has issues surrounding the table, that the table is quite threatening to her. And the fact of food is very threatening to her, even at 86-years old. And this was really the first visit where I looked at her and I could actually see how much she has changed over the last year and that things are going to be likely very different this year in the coming year. And I will be called upon to respond to her in different ways than I have before and that's complicated. It's very complicated-
Katherine:
Sure is.
Elissa:
But I love her and she is my mother. She makes me want to tear my face off half the time, but there it is.
Katherine:
For anyone on my podcast, or listening to my podcast, who's not come across your work yet, tell us a little bit about her because she's this central person in your life, obviously, because she's your mother, but also, she sucks up more of your attention than probably most people's mothers do for loads of very specific reasons. Right?
Elissa:
Yes. I think that the best place to start is my mother in the fifties and here in the States, she was a television singer and she was a performer, a featured performer at the Copacabana in New York and moved in the crowd that involved people like Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee and that was her world. And she left television and performance and became a model. And my mother is tall or was tall and lanky and thin and the kind of person you can drape a burlap sack over and it looks like she's wearing hot couture, very, very fashion-
Katherine:
She's incredibly glamorous, isn't she? I mean, I-
Elissa:
Incredibly, like how is this even possible? I don't know. She is very, very thin and really just a lot of makeup. And I call her sort of hyper heterosexual. She is just over-the-top glam queen. And the best way I think to describe my relationship with her is that she did not know that she was pregnant with me for six months and she is that disconnected from her body and the workings of her body. She's not a great lover of children, sadly. And here we were thrust into each other's lives. I was very, very close to my father. He and I were really foundational to each other's lives. And probably if it had not been for my father, I would be having this conversation with you right now. He was a great... He saved me in so many ways.
Elissa:
And then, of course, they divorced, so that was that. But she and I butted heads, I think, would be the light way to put it from the first time I was able to say the word no to her. And children learn to say no, usually in earnest when they're about 10 or 11 years old, certainly, girls do.
Katherine:
My one has done it much earlier.
Elissa:
Yes. My friends who have three-year-olds say, "Yeah, not really. It starts a little bit earlier." But we are absolutely as antithetical to each other in every way that a mother and daughter could possibly be. She is a hyper heterosexual glam queen. I am gay. I've been married to my wife for 21 years. We look at the world from different angles. And it's always been very, very, very challenging. And as I wrote in Motherland, when my mother's second husband died while I was living in New York City where I grew up. My mother is a quintessential New Yorker. My stepfather passed away and I became my mother's primary relation and primary relationship.
Elissa:
And she would do things like show up at my office and show up at my apartment unannounced. And it became very, very difficult. That was our surface story. But underneath that, there was a lot of enmity and anger and resentment because my mother felt and probably continues to feel that had I not come along, she would have continued on with her performing and her singing and her modelling and her acting. And that's probably right. That's probably accurate to some degree.
Katherine:
That's so tricky, isn't it? I think it's something that a lot of mothers feel about their children, but of course, the job is to get over that to some extent, I guess.
Elissa:
It is. I've written, I think it was in my second book that I was talking about Doris Lessing who famously left... She had, I want to say, three children.
Katherine:
Yes, she left her son. Yeah.
Elissa:
Yeah. And she left. And she was living in South Africa and she left two of them behind and took the third and moved to London where she felt that that was where her career was going to be. She was made a pariah. It's something that we don't talk about.
Katherine:
No.
Elissa:
It's something that we don't talk about. But from my point of view, I've lived with that sense of resentment for... I'm 58, so 58 years.
Katherine:
It's a long time.
Elissa:
Yeah.
Katherine:
But I think you're really strikingly compassionate to your mom in a way that loads of people aren't towards their mothers actually. It's really common for women to... Like women and mothers, and boys and fathers seems to still be the lines of tension that we find. And it's so common for people to be a lot less kind than you are to your mom. You take enormous responsibility for her and her wellbeing and you really seem to accept and understand her and her very particular ways in a way that other people don't for much model behaviour. I think it's so admirable.
Elissa:
Well, thank you. I know that my mother has... I suffer and I've written about this extensively and so I'm very comfortable talking about it, that I suffer from fairly significant clinical depression. And my father did, and my mother also lives with fairly severe mental illness diagnosed. And she's really incapable of self-care and proper decision-making when it comes to her own safety. Certainly, on the one hand, she's my mother, I love her. And I do feel a moral obligation to make sure that she's safe. But I also often say that turning my back on my mother would be like turning my back on a two-year-old child running into oncoming traffic. I couldn't do that. And she has no one else.
Elissa:
I have no siblings. She has no siblings. There is no man in her life or anyone in that romantic role in her life. Although she lives in Manhattan and she is surrounded by people, she lives a very isolated life. I'm two hours away from her and she is getting obviously older. She's 86 now. And we're just beginning to see some memory changes. And that's very jarring to see that for the first time, but I feel like it's my responsibility to make sure she's safe. I have a friend I've known for many, many, many years, I want to say probably 40 years, and she is one of four siblings. And she has a similar relationship with her mother. And she has been able to take a significant step back because there are other people there.
Katherine:
It's diffused. Yeah. I'm an only child. Well, I'm an only child from my birth parents' marriage, and then I've got step siblings. My dad has other children basically, but my mom doesn't. And that relationship, it's intense in a whole number of ways. The buck stops with me, doesn't it?
Elissa:
Right. It does. Absolutely.
Katherine:
But I'm okay with that. And what I find quite hard is I talk to other people about it and quite often people say things like, "Well, you can't worry about that. People have to sort themselves out." And like you, I really don't think that's the case. I think I am responsible for her as she ages. And I hope my son will be the same about me as another only child because that's what we do. That's what we're there for.
Katherine:
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Katherine:
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Elissa:
I think it is the human condition. I think that that is certainly... I've known people who've had to make the decision, make the very difficult decision to step away completely. I have to be completely honest and say that certainly, there have been times in my life where I have considered doing that. And in 2000, when I left New York City, I lived... I don't know how well y know New York, but there's-
Katherine:
A little.
Elissa:
Yeah, there's the Upper West Side and then there's the East Side and there's the massively beautiful Central Park that separates the two. I lived on the East Side and she lived on the West Side and that was the distance that we had between us was Central Park. You know?
Katherine:
Right. Quite a good barrier. It's quite an effective barrier.
Elissa:
It, it was because I knew that she was never going to walk through Central Park. She saw too many horror movies in the 1970s to walk through Central Park, but which is perfectly safe and beautiful and lovely. But as I had mentioned earlier, she'd get into a taxi and come over and I'd find her. I'd come home from work, my work as an editor, I'd come home and find her sitting in my lobby, waiting for me for five hours.
Katherine:
Oh, my goodness.
Elissa:
Because I had gone out with colleagues and friends. And in a relationship that is that codependent and that is that enmeshed, it's very hard to make a break at one's own life in terms of settling down elsewhere with someone else, which is, of course, the thing that we are meant to do. And I fell in love with my partner and I knew she lived two hours away. And in 2000, I made the decision to finally leave New York City, which is my home, and move to the country. I went from a city of 10 million people to a town of 3,500 people and a single stoplight, moose walking through my backyard, that kind of thing. And it was a very fraught decision that was filled both with love and excitement and looking forward to this next phase of my life, and also having to make such a radical change and a radical break from my mother who had always been primary relationship.
Katherine:
And has she forgiven your wife yet?
Elissa:
Probably not. I suspect-
Katherine:
Okay, yep.
Elissa:
I suspect not. My mother is not great with this forgiveness thing. She grits her teeth about people who have done her wrong 50 years ago. So probably not, although they have a very good relationship and my partner is... We call her Saint Susan because she has an enormous heart and is enormously giving and kind, and is very much that way to my mother. And whether my mother understands it, feels it, appreciates it, it's not irrelevant, but that's almost a different conversation.
Katherine:
Yeah.
Elissa:
Susan is there for her and has been very, very good to her. And that's something I'm very grateful for. Yeah, no, it's been an interesting time.
Katherine:
I am full of admiration. I really am for Susan because my husband's mother was quite difficult. She died actually, well, 15 years ago now, so quite a while, but I could not show her the same tolerance I must say. I really found it very unbearable, but actually, my husband ended up not speaking to her as well.
Elissa:
Oh, wow.
Katherine:
And they were estranged when she died. I think that was really a very untenable relationship, but I could not find the forbearance that I know I should have done while they were still in contact, because I was so shocked by the sort of manipulation that went on in that family. Really, it took me by surprise and I didn't know how to handle it. And I do wonder now if I could have handled it better at this stage than I did because I met my husband when I was 18. I was not a grownup really. But I don't know. I don't know if I'd do it any better now honestly. It was tricky.
Elissa:
I think that we can only do what we can do when we can and do it. You know?
Katherine:
Yes.
Elissa:
And we're very different people when we're younger than we are when we ourselves become parents. I'm not a parent, but certainly, with the passage of time and the benefit of distance and certainly a certain amount of therapy and a certain amount of meditation and connection to other things outside myself, those things have enabled me to see my mother in a very different way. When you're in the throes of it, of the manipulation and the acrimony, it's very hard to see beyond that. It's very hard to pull yourself... I call it the swamp. It's very hard to pull yourself out of the swamp while you're getting sucked into it.
Elissa:
When people are your parents, they know you and they know what your buttons are. And they don't quote-unquote fight fair. And that becomes very, very toxic and it can be very abusive and often is. I'm very, very lucky and very grateful that I have somebody in my life who is the quintessential calm, reserved, love-filled person that she is. I know that this is something that you have found to be the case. I take enormous, enormous pleasure in nature.
Katherine:
Yeah.
Elissa:
And while I don't love being outside in the bitter cold and I have not gone down the swimming in bitterly cold waters yet, which I know is something that-
Katherine:
Even I'm a bit scared this year, I have to say. It's got really cold really quickly. I'm a bit like, whoa, I don't know.
Elissa:
Yeah. I really want to try and do that, but being outside, being among trees, I know that you've spoken a lot about trees and I find those things to be very, very grounding. And when I'm really in a state or experiencing a lot of difficulty and sadness surrounding my mother and work. This past year has been a very, very complicated year. Things spinning beyond my control. Being outside and we have this massively large Oak tree on our next street. And it's probably 500-years-old. And I will walk past it with the dog every morning and just lay my hands on it and stop. And the neighbours are probably looking at me and I really don't care but I feel better. I feel better.
Katherine:
I think there are certain trees that you can really have ongoing relationships with, in a really healing and nourishing way. They just seem to invite it. I have certain trees that I like to go and have a chat with sometimes and they do seem to listen.
Elissa:
I agree.
Katherine:
I'm not sure if I'm very good at listening back. I don't know. Yeah. I think that's one of the wonderful things about you and your work is that, I don't know, broad-minded acceptance of somebody who's unashamedly difficult and there's no other way to put it, but who you still can love and care for. And I enjoy that.
Elissa:
Thank you.
Katherine:
I would love to talk to you about music.
Elissa:
Okay.
Katherine:
Because your mum was a singer is a singer. You posted a link to her on Instagram recently with her bursting into song in the most glorious way. But I wanted to ask you about your relationship with music, because I've seen little videos of you playing your guitar, and you're a beautiful musician.
Elissa:
Thank you.
Katherine:
But I get the sense, that's something you're beginning to reclaim after a long time of it being a hidden part of you.
Elissa:
Yeah. It's something that I, for a very long time, didn't talk about and buried. I began playing the guitar when I'm was four years old. And it was one of those things. Certain people are artists and they're visual artists and they begin painting when they're children and they take to it. And guitar was my thing. Music was my thing. I would spend hours every day playing. I studied for a while with Eddie Simon, who was Paul Simon's brother, who was from my town where I grew up in Forest Hills, New York, which is just outside of Manhattan. And I would get lost in it in a way that I can only describe as meditational. I would get lost in it. It nurtured me, it saved me, it rescued me, it did all of those things.
Elissa:
And that was all through my childhood and my teen years. And I grew up as a teen in the seventies in New York. And that was a very hard time. We had a lot of not terribly, not horribly violent, but we had some very significant events in my community that were really quite jarring. And then when I went away to college, I thought, "Well here I am in college. And there are coffee houses and pubs and that kind of thing." And I became friendly with some other people who were also musicians. They were really singers. They were not pianists or guitarists in any way. I started performing with them in various places. And one thing led to another, and I started opening for people, opening shows for people who were significantly better musicians than I, and who people, your listeners might recognise their names.
Elissa:
And then when I left college, I came back to New York and moved back in with my mother who had moved into the city with her second husband. And I started working as an editor for Random House. And I stopped playing. I played less and less and less with every passing year until I discovered that I had a family member, a young cousin who was... there's no other way to describe who he was beyond calling him a prodigy. He's 11 years my junior. He was a classically trained violinist, but anything that he touched that had strings, he could master in a way that was beyond my comprehension.
Elissa:
The violin became fiddle and that became... He loved British music. He loved, loved, loved British music. He played in Nashville. He became a studio musician in Nashville on the side. He had a full-time job, and that's what he did on the side. He and I became very close and he became my playing partner. And I started to pick up the mandolin and I started to pick up the banjo and we would get together and pass instruments back and forth. And we would, both of us, move into places that were sort of almost otherworldly. And meditation was really the only... It was just playing with him was a spiritual experience.
Katherine:
That total absorption and flow, it sounds extraordinary.
Elissa:
Complete absorption. And in 2008, he was very, very ill. And he took his own life in 2008.
Katherine:
I'm so sorry.
Elissa:
I put my instruments away and I latched the cases and I didn't go back to them probably for, I would say more than a decade. I couldn't look at my guitars. I couldn't look at the mandolin. I couldn't look at the banjo. And it's only been in the last year or so that I've returned to it or returned to them as really a part of the grieving process. I think that there was an enormous amount of shame in my family surrounding his health and his illness and how things unfolded for him. He was a wonderful, wonderful man, very kind, incredibly talented, very giving, emotionally giving. The message was, don't talk about it. Don't grieve. Don't just get on with your life and keep moving forward. And the way that affected me was I stopped doing the one thing that saved me over and over again.
Katherine:
Isn't that extraordinary? Don't we hear that story over and over again, how we so often let go of the thing that suits us in a shame? Or I don't know what, as adults, we so often lose those extraordinary talents we have and those creative practices that we need the most.
Elissa:
Yeah. And the things that will really ground us and rescue us and save us and nurture us. As a food person, and as someone who's written about food for so many years, I write less about the practical aspects of food and how to cook things. My friends Diana Henry and Nigella do that much better than I do. But I've realised all these years that I was really writing about nurturing and sustenance and the things that heal the heart and heal the soul and the spirit. And that's also what music did for me. And to have not had that for more than a decade since Harris died was enormously problematic for me and-
Katherine:
It's a huge loss.
Elissa:
Yeah. It was a huge loss. And the problems manifested personally for me in many, many other ways, including addictions and things like that, that are too complicated to chat about in one place.
Katherine:
Sure.
Elissa:
But little by little, I hear the phrase, "Something cracked something else open and the light came through." And it was really about a year ago that I realised with the pandemic and the quarantine that I could take advantage of my music again, to try and bring me through this terrible time. And it has, so I've returned to it in fits and starts. And if I close my eyes, I can hear Harris saying, "Yes, do it, do it."
Katherine:
I love the.
Elissa:
Yeah.
Katherine:
Is it coming back to you in the same form that it was before? Or are you a changed musician now? Have you moved on?
Elissa:
It is coming back to me in a way that I... I played a very specific kind of music back then, much more, like Harris was, inclined towards British music and folk music and American folk music. I have a natural ear for it. I don't know why, but I have a natural ear for it. And I find it very soothing and interesting and historical. We call it roots music in my country. It's something that I'm very, very connected to. That's really how it's coming back. I do love classical music enormously, but I don't play it. I do read music, but I've just never considered myself so technically proficient that I would go down that road. But I listen to music differently now. I hear music differently. I'm inclined to listen to things now that I never would've listened to back then. Things like John Cage and Philip Glass. I was talking to someone recently about the joy of making art for just the sake of it, making art just for the joy of it, rather than as a means to something else.
Elissa:
And I think that we are the making species, whether it's music or food or writing or poetry or sculpture or visual arts, and when we don't do that, that means that something's gone off.
Katherine:
Yeah. I think for people with a practice that becomes professional like published writers is a really good example of that. I think often we need an extra secret practice or private practice if you like that we're allowed to screw up in and that's less fraught than our writing becomes when we know that we've got to show it to an editor and we know that people have got expectations of us. It takes some of the joy out of that, I think after a while. I think it's really good to have an extra thing.
Elissa:
I think you're absolutely right. I think that we are a species of perfection. And certainly, when you're a writer and you're a brilliant writer and writing is something that I knew in somewhere in the recesses of my brain, that that was the thing that I was ultimately going to do, we have to have something in our lives that that is private, and that is ours. And that perhaps we don't have to be perfect at it. I think that perfection is the devil. As my friend Anne Lamott likes to say, "Perfection is doom."
Katherine:
As with many things, she's so right about that.
Elissa:
She is. She is, absolutely.
Katherine:
Also, I just think you have to keep something for yourself, something that belongs to you and that is, I don't know, it's almost like having a glorious affair with something and nobody else can interfere with that or intervene. It's none of their business to do that. It's you and your relationship with this thing you're passionate about. I think it's so important to have that. And if you don't have it, to find it. I feel like I could do it a bit more of that in my life right now, actually. I have to say, yeah, I need a thing.
Elissa:
Yeah. It's a funny thing. This is where issues of social media become murky because we're inclined, people who are in the public eye or who are writers or artists, and we have books and we have a presence, we want to share what we're doing.
Katherine:
Yes.
Elissa:
So how do you balance that? That's a question for me that I ask a lot.
Katherine:
Oh, it's such a big question. And I quite like the idea of leaving that open at the end of the podcast. Thank you. That seems like a perfect reflective note to end on. And hopefully, everyone will be tracking you down after this. I'll make sure that all of your links are in the show notes, but I just wanted to say, thank you so much for such a lovely conversation. It was brilliant to hear your thoughts about such a wide range of things and just such a pleasure to talk to you. So thank you.
Elissa:
Thank you so much, Katherine. It's really just a pleasure and an honor. I've gone through two copies of your book already. I wore them out.
Katherine:
Oh my goodness.
Elissa:
The first one fell apart. It's just your work has meant so much to me. And I know it means so much to so many. It's just been, The Wintering affected me in a way that few books really do so truly, truly grateful for it and for you and your story.
Katherine:
It makes me very happy to help.
Katherine:
I'm beginning to lose hope a bit. The chanterelles are not forthcoming today. There's a load of other really good things, though. There's some quite old Turkey Tail that's turned green and some full Turkey Tail. Look them up if you don't know them. Turkey Tail are really pretty. They're like these blueish fans of mushrooms that really do look like the tail of a turkey. And the full ones are orange, bracket mushrooms, both of them. And I just lifted up a log and found this amazing stretch of white mycelium underneath it, which is always such a thrill. I find it a thrill. There's some little tiny, tiny, fine white mushrooms poking up through the leaf mulch, like little ghosts. They're so bright.
Katherine:
And as I've walked, I remembered the name of the mushroom I was trying to think of earlier. I was trying to think of porcelain fungus, which I found on my favourite mushroom growing tree. They're these beautiful ethereal white mushrooms that grow out of... I can't remember which tree. I should probably know that. They do look like china. They look like bone china, pure white, but they're also a tiny bit slimy, which means I never much feel like eating them. I know many people do. I'm sure they're fine. I'm not the world's greatest mushroom hunter. And I'm not the world's greatest... I don't know what's being shot over there. I think they're scaring the crows away. Sorry about the noise. The countryside, eh?
Katherine:
But yeah, I'm not the world's greatest mushroom eater either because I don't like the ones that taste of almonds. I'm really suspicious of them. I know it's not reasonable, but some things just don't meet your palette. My lovely friend, Hannah, picked me a load of Hen of the Woods recently. And I couldn't eat it because it smelled of almonds. I didn't trust it as food. I told her that cyanide smells of almonds too. And she laughed at me. But maybe that survival instinct will save me one day or maybe I'm just missing out on some really good things. I don't know. Either way, I didn't eat them. I probably don't fully belong in the mushroom bro universe. But I do love looking. It's the looking that I do this for. But often yeah, you have to accept that you look and you don't find. That's part of the deal. Sometimes they seem to talk to you rather than you finding them, they seem to present themselves to your eye when you're not even searching.
Katherine:
Other times, they're so elusive. It feels like they're hiding today. Maybe they don't want to be picked, but there is something about that quality of attention that you sink into when you're hunting for food like this. I'm not hunting for food because I'm hungry. I'm hunting for food because I'm greedy. But there is a different way of being that you find when you sink into that level of concentration and just look gently walking all the while. It's very peaceful. I like to think that life was once like this for at least some of us, such a pleasure. Anyway, enough mushroom ramblings for me. I want to say thank you so much to Elissa for just such a wonderful conversation. I always want to sit at her dining table with her and yak for hours. That was just wonderful all.
Katherine:
And thank you to Buddy, my producer, to Meghan who helps to source out everything always for me. Everyone wonders how I get so much done. The answer is Meghan straightforwardly. And to Fraggle the dog who sometimes finds the mushrooms on my behalf. Has refused to do so today. We will be having words afterwards, don't you worry. And thank you to you all for listening. My Patreon community who have jumped into this space that I've made and just given me so much joy the last few weeks, I'm so grateful to you. Thank you. It's really brilliant to be making things, to share with you. Yeah. I'm optimistic about 2022 for all of us. There's good things coming. See you soon.
Show Notes
Welcome to the Wintering Sessions with Katherine May.
This week Katherine chats to Elissa Altman, author of ‘Motherland’ and more. Katherine finds Elissa in that pre-Christmas zone, which serves as the perfect jumping-off point for a very upfront, candid and fascinating conversation on family. Specifically, Elissa's relationship with her mother. Like every family, it's a relationship which is unique and comes with its own inimitable history, and as such, informs where the two find themselves this present day, and it's a wonderful thing to hear Elissa talk openly about all that is contained within this box of memories and present moments. In addition, Elissa catches up with Katherine about the New England Winter, being a feeder, her relationship with her father, mental wellbeing, getting out of the 'swamp' via nature and its grounding properties, rediscovering and reprocessing her musical proclivities, and all with a real glint and sparkle.
We talk about:
The New England Winter
Appreciating the art of gardening
Being a feeder of people
The joy of new relatives in the picture
Her intricate relationship with her mother
Her mother’s flamboyant performing past
How her wife fits into the greater puzzle
Grounding through nature
Learning guitar with Paul Simon's brother
Conflicted relationship with music, stemming from tragedy
Living with mental illness in family, and her own depression
Links from this episode:
Elissa’s website
Elissa’s book, Motherland
Elissa’s Twitter
Elissa’s Instagram
Please consider supporting the podcast by subscribing to my Patreon where you’ll get episodes a day early (and always ad free) along with bonus episodes and more!
To keep up to date with The Wintering Sessions, follow Katherine on Twitter, Instagram and Substack
For information on Katherine’s online writing courses, including her programme Wintering for Writers, visit True Stories Writing School
Wintering is out now in the UK, and the US.
