THE TOAST.

if you can't make dinner - here is the kind of toast that will fill the room to get things rolling - it will be less cardboardy and pretentious when i shout it out to the room - i would love to have your digital submissions as well - creating a kind of digital bumbershoot table - add them as comments - or email them to hebberoy@gmail.com - we will add them to the site.

The kind of toast i might make on saturday, sunday, monday night:

greetings - you are here at one pot at bumbershoot so that i can feed you - but also so that i can get something from you - the basic request is one of reciprocation – I cook you dinner and you bring me something – it seems to be that this basic exchange is the root of most culture. money is an unfortunate substitution for basic reciprocity – it is silent, and generally rather dirty, "it don't sing and dance
and it don't walk" - many cultures have (had) great ritual in the matters of the table and the guest/host relationship – the greeks in the classical era were famous for long treatises on the importance of proper exchange – the table was central to this – the collapses of this code often resulted in calamity. take for instance when paris decided to take more than food from the the table of menelaus (he slipped helen of troy into his pocket) the result was the most mythologized war if all time. so don’t steel my woman – I will burn down your village.

restaurant tables do not offer this kind of currency. this table was built as a kind of modern agora for an exchange about a very important time – 68 changed our world – I don’t profess to be of high knowledge about this era – this year – in fact I wasn’t even born – but I launched this project to learn about how it came to pass that all the way around the globe thought and ideas turned into action – the world is filled with ideas – and yet the world has arguably never seen as much action as it did in 1968. why?


so you are here – I offer you a simple stew – and bread – a proletariat meal if you will – hopefully you drank heavily prior to arriving. clink your glass and tell me something about ’68, or civil disobedience, or social uprising, or the basic magic of thought turning into action… be it a song – a piece of writing, a reading from one of the texts that clutter our table, an artifact, a story, a sound. or just leave here and tell of the experience – in a manner that will be just as powerful.

(the sound of glasses clinking - and bowls filling with stew)

I WILL COOK YOU DINNER

One Pot will be "in residency" this year at the Bumbershoot Festival. We are taking one of the massive Northwest Rooms hostage for the entire weekend. The idea is rather simple - I will be cooking some very lovely, very simple dinners - you will be coming and bringing some very thoughtful words, songs, artifacts... you bring something - i cook food - you bring something. simple.

And something a little more specific than anything.

We are taking advantage of this amazing space - building a long gorgeous table from a tree that recently fell down in Marysville, WA - constructing a kitchen - and sharing food - in the honor of an odd but important anniversary - 1968 - a year that saw more riotous uprising than any other year in the history of man - or so they say. They also say 68 reshaped the world, they also say 68 will never happen again. 68 is the topic - but your contribution to the dinner could also have something to do with radicalism, uprising, rebellion, etc etc in any form. I wasn't even born when the trouble started in Prague in the springtime of '68 - so don't be discouraged.

So to recap - you come with something - literally - some piece of writing - some piece of music you want to perform - some piece of literature you found - some kind of artifact - to be shared at the table. dinner is free. bumbershoot is not.

email me if you would like to pre-reserve a spot. hebberoy@gmail.com

Dinner:

6pm Saturday August 30th
6pm Sunday August 31st
6pm Monday September 1st.