Aesthetical Action: A Madeline Moment

She sent out for one of those short, plump little cakes called ‘petites madelines’ which looked as though they had been molded in the scallop of a pilgrim’s shell. And soon, mechanically weary after a dull day with a prospect of a depressing morrow, I carried to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had let soften a bit of madeleine. But at the very instant when the mouthful of tea mixed with cake crumbs touched my palate, I quivered, attentive to the extraordinary thing that was happening inside me. A delicious pleasure had invaded me, isolated me, without my having any notion as to its cause. It had immediately rendered the vicissitudes of life unimportant to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory, acting in the same way that love acts, by filling me with a precious essence, or rather, this essence was not merely inside me, it was me.

Marcel Proust

I am someone who will stand in line for a bagel, a piece of pizza, a taco.  Even surrounded by influencers and tourists, nothing makes me feel more like a New Yorker than a bite of L’Industrie pizza. It takes just one bite—on a street corner, while my dog looks up at me expectantly—to have a fleeting but elegant and aesthetic experience.

 Often, when considering aesthetics, we tend to privilege visual and auditory sensations. The far more intimate sensations — those requiring proximity, such as touch, scent, and taste — somehow don’t provide the distance we often associate with aesthetic experiences. We like our aesthetic experiences where we can see them. It’s why we get excited about Danish restaurants where the meal looks like the forest floor or the bar that serves cocktails that are—literally—smoky. 

What if, instead of trying to orchestrate elaborate aesthetic experiences around food, we tuned into the singular aesthetic note of a fleeting flavor or a quick bite? What might be the minimum aesthetic boost that can get you through a rough moment?

Yesterday, a friend who had spent a few months in Paris was getting ready to leave and return to the US, shifting dynamically between stress and desolation. As I thought about what I could do to ease the anxiety and sadness of her return trip, I found myself at Union, our local bakery, staring at a platter of lemon madeleines. I suddenly thought of the quote by Proust and found myself buying her a bag of 6  madeleines (one for every hour of her flight). I gave her that package of pastries and the Proust quote as a means of instructions for how to heal a mourning heart.

Full disclosure, I’ve never read Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, but I have often read about it, and I’ve read the Madeline quote above many times in my life. Only recently, however, did I read it and realize how much it captures that moment, standing on the street with a slice of pizza. It is about the power of deep attention to the particular flavor of tea and Madeleine as a way of reorchestrating an emotion and feeling a whole vibe. That one tea-soaked bite of madeleine that transposes Proust into a different state, clearly it brings pleasure, he is fixated on it, has given it his attention, it is this one bite, an aesthetic experience. 

I don’t know if a bite of madeline fixed my friend, but I do know that she did eat them on the flight, possibly even sharing them with the person in the seat next to her, which most likely made them feel even more precious and richer.

So…Make a Madeline Moment. Think for a moment of something you have eaten, tasted, or sipped that has, in your experience, changed your mood for the better, rewired your vibe, and made you less wary of “the prospect of the depressing Morrow.” Reflect on what that madeline moment was for you and savor it again. What are the qualities of that food that consistently work for you? For instance, I find that my madeline moments are simple, savory, and often times things I can eat standing. Not elegant, but they're mine. Keep a record of these moments, sort of a recipe book of moods and the flavors that accompany them. Share them with the people you love or just hold them close. I promise it will come in handy sooner than you think.