Inspired by the dark brew

By Ramil Digal Gulle

TO those of us learning how to write at least passable poetry in English?this was during the dark ages of the early 1990s?it was quite hard to understand why our teachers kept harping on T.S. Elliot.

Maybe it was because our teachers all grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, when the influence of Elliot on the era?s poets?in English poetry, at least?was supreme. And so, inevitably, the poetry workshops we had touched on a discussion of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.

And if there was one line in the entire poem that jarred my lazy brain into getting interested in Elliot?s poetry, it was this line: ?I have measured out my life with coffee spoons?.

Being a pure-blooded Filipino (with maybe wee bits of Chinese, some Spanish thrown in the DNA mix) and with both parents coming from the Visayan region, I had totally no idea about Western society. And so, many of the sources of neuroses in England and the rest of Western civilization that were detailed in Eliot?s poetry were lost on me.

But coffee and coffee spoons? No problem. Both my parents were avid coffee drinkers and coffee spoons, still hot and stained from their contact with the brew, were a regular sight at the dining table.

So looking back, a supposedly universal art like literature was in my case, bridged by perhaps the more universal experience of coffee. Eventually, of course, when I began to take the writing of literature seriously, coffee became a constant before, during, or after the writing process.

Over the years, I found that I am not alone in my high regard for coffee as a way to jumpstart the brain?s neural network; or coffee as the warm black rain that ends one?s intellectual and creative drought.

One of my favorite quotes about coffee comes from the legendary 18th century French diplomat Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord. He wasn?t known as a literary figure, but he certainly raised to the level of art his aptitudes for conversation, for gourmet food and wine, and for diplomacy as well as politics.

Talleyrand is quoted to have once said: ?Black as the devil, Hot as hell; Pure as an angel, Sweet as love? when asked how he liked his coffee. And certainly it does not surprise us that a man with Talleyrand?s great appetites, talents, ambition and success would like his coffee (his fuel source, we might say) in such intense and robust terms.

Still, there are artists who describe their experience with coffee differently. The iconic, enchanting, lyrical and crystalline-voiced Judy Collins, for example, started her career surrounded by coffee. In one interview she revealed: ?I sang in the coffee houses of the country in the early ?60s with no idea of success in terms of records or television. I just thought I was a storyteller. I didn?t even think of myself as a singer.?

And yes, coffee does bring out the storyteller in all of us. Of course, some of us are better storytellers than others. The effect of coffee on a literary genius like French novelist Honore de Balzac, for example, was prodigious?a burst of creativity that came on like a nuclear explosion, if de Balzac?s own description is to be believed:

?This coffee falls into your stomach, and straightway there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move like the battalions of the Grand Army of the battlefield, and the battle takes place. Things remembered arrive at full gallop, ensuing to the wind. The light cavalry of comparisons deliver a magnificent deploying charge, the artillery of logic hurry up with their train and ammunition, the shafts of with start up like sharpshooters. Similes arise, the paper is covered with ink; for the struggle commences and is concluded with torrents of black water, just as a battle with powder.?

Of course, there are those of us who are not literary geniuses but still benefit from coffee?s effects, whether the task at hand is a letter to a loved one, a report for the office, a manuscript for a magazine, an audio-visual presentation for a client, or some computer graphics for a TV network.

What is it about coffee that stimulates the brain and opens up human creativity? Of course, from time to time, we encounter new research about coffee. We?re told that coffee isn?t just about caffeine (after all, other drinks have caffeine too but we don?t hear positive feedback about them as creativity stimulants) but anti-oxidants and other amazing substances as well. But how many of us think of coffee this way once a piping hot, steaming cup of coffee is in front of us?

The magic, the art is best enjoyed without much contemplation. Like love, like romance, like a lovely memory out of childhood or your wedding; or some other milestone in your life?coffee is best enjoyed by being fully present and open to its ministrations, its grace, right at that moment.

If you think about it, coffee is one of the few beverages in the world that are made like a work of art: from the picking of the right coffee beans, to the blending of bean varieties, to the roasting and final preparations before it is transformed into the perfect cup of splendid brew. No wonder that we imbibe this artistry in every cup.

I?m sure that as this century rolls on and moves into the next one, there will still be novelists, poets, conversationalists and other communicators (artists or not) who will continue to create, to tell stories. And coffee will continue to be with them.

That?s because each human life is, by itself, a story. You have a beginning, middle and an end?an ultimate purpose that you are journeying towards. And so we love to pass on stories to one another: to pass the time, as a way to get through tough times, as a source of learning and wisdom. Without stories, how can any life have meaning?

The storytelling gets even better when fuelled and stimulated by a delicious cup of coffee.