Advice in a Koltbord

Following this post on the advice we’ve been getting recently about Indyish, I was still thinking about where I get my info and perspective from..

I think sometimes really good advice is sitting right in front of you, buried in your family rituals.

Last weekend Elran and I visited my aunt and uncle for the annual Dickens family reunion. This is an epic affair, full of my countless wise and wicked female cousins and our out-numbered but still scrappy boyfriends (and hopefully someday, when everyone’s finally cool about it, girlfriends too!)

Family gatherings of this scale prompt collective mythmaking and year-in-review vibes. These are the people most of our stories come from - our families inherited and chosen. Ours may be especially intense in this way, as the family has a lot of writers and performers and the gatherings always include a traditional(ish) Danish meal called a koltbord, where we sing a Finnish drinking song and consume pickled fish and shots of the no-longer-available-in-Canada Akvavit.

We love the slow courses, and the careful delicacy of the open face sandwiches, and we all tell stories and laugh through them and remember things. And we watched our parents at these things while we were growing up (sometimes from underneath the table) and from experience we know how to survive them.

The trick is not getting sooo caught up in the whole gorgeous collectivity of it all that you drink more then the careful balance of smoked fish, liquor and beer will allow. When everyone sings the rousing singalong song then takes the shot of Akvavit, you don’t HAVE to do it all. Nor do you have to drink half a Tuborg to chase it. You choose.

That, I think, is the metaphor lesson embedded in the ritual: you must be able to take care of yourself, and watch your own weaknesses and make your own choices, because any group, even the most loving, can make you deliciously drunk or suddenly sick if you are not careful. Keep hold of your own self and perspective during the consumption of the fun. Humm. Our grandmother was the one to insist on keeping up this tradition. She was in the Danish resistance from the time she was 12 and saw first hand the dangers of abandoning yourself to a simplifying collectivity. Looking back I think almost everything she tried to teach us related to those dark times, when they tarred and feathered girls who dated Nazis, rowed boats in the dead of night to help people escape, and you lived or died in general by your choices.

With a koltbord of advice and wisdom and gurus out there, lots of fun to be had and different ways to make yourself (body or soul) sick, the challenge I think is to balance the collective wisdom with your own instincts and ethics.

Chart a course between the indie and the ish, as it were.

And remember to pay careful attention to that rumbling in your stomach..

What about you, do you have any kind of family ritual like this? sing songs in languages you don’t understand and wonder if there’s hidden wisdom in ‘em?