Meet Dinah Lenney, and read an excerpt from "Coffee"
Interviewed by Ari Saperstein
Editor’s note
Dinah Lenney is one of our favorite multi-hyphenate creatives. She’s both an accomplished actress and writer. She earned her Bachelor’s at Yale and a Certificate of Acting from the Neighborhood Playhouse School and went on to star in the long-recurring part of Nurse Shirley on NBC’s critically acclaimed series, ER. Dinah is the author of the memoir Bigger than Life and memoir-in-essays collection The Object Parade. Dinah’s latest book, Coffee, is a collection of essays reflecting on her relationship to the titular beverage. Coffee came out on April 16th and we spoke to DInah all about the book (in addition to getting a little sneak peak at one of the stories -- see the excerpt below):
Q) Coffee is part of a series of books called Object Lessons, by Bloomsbury, all centered around the hidden lives of ordinary things. Did you know from the outset that you wanted your book to focus on coffee, or did you initially consider other objects? Was coffee something you had already been thinking about or writing about before starting to put the book together?
I hadn't yet written about coffee, not in a starring role anyway. What happened is I pitched the press four or five things (I could have happily written about any of them; I'm the queen of attachment), one of which was coffee. And that's the one the editors liked best.
Q) In the excerpt below, you talk both about making coffee and buying coffee. Does the process of making coffee bring you something?
Yes, I think it does. I look forward to the ritual—filling the kettle, grinding the beans, watching the pour. It takes me exactly that long to re-enter my life in the morning. Or, if I brew a little pot later in the day, it's a way to switch gears, or make myself buckle down. It's not that I won't let someone else do the honors—but if that's the case, if I'm going out for coffee, I could just as easily drink tea or lemonade.
Q) Does coffee have one main singular effect on you, like making you present? Or increasing your awareness of the world around you? Or something else entirely?
No, yes, all of the above. This is counter-intuitive, but coffee—making it, drinking it—slows me down. Otherwise I'm a gulper—I'm always in a hurry, I do everything too fast. But with coffee, I take my time. So it grounds me in the moment, which then allows me to purposefully pause to dream...
Q) While writing the book, what did you learn about your relationship to coffee? And has it changed at all since finishing the book?
Well, writing—the act itself—helps me to think and remember and connect. I consequently found out that coffee is more important to me than I'd originally supposed. Also, though, I actually learned a lot about coffee; that it isn't just strong or weak, bitter or sweet, depending how you take it. I mean, who knew? Who knew coffee could be so tasty? So various! Since finishing the book, I very often drink it black. Which I never would have done before.
Q) Has writing this book sparked conversations with others in your life about their relationship with coffee, or routinely used objects?
Definitely. Turns out, almost everyone has an opinion about coffee if not a whole story to tell. And our associations with the drink—even for people who don't especially like it—are usually intimate. Familial. Revealing. But this isn't my first go-round with an object. (I even wrote a book called The Object Parade.) So people—especially colleagues and students—are bound to chat me up about "stuff." Objects make great writing prompts.
Q) FInally: I’m not --and have never been-- a coffee drinker…. sell me on why this book is still for me!
Well, see, that's just it. Coffee is only the prompt, the tip of the berg, the excuse to wax on about work, play, family, home, travel, marriage, growing up, growing old—time. I hope COFFEE-the-book is about time of day, time of year, time of life, keeping time, marking time, making time, passing time—time passing—somehow coming to terms with all that. Accepting it. Loving it. At least as much as coffee.
excerpt from COFFEE DIARIES #10
My favorite time of life? Can I even say? Wouldn’t it have to have been when I wasn’t thinking along such lines? When I was smack in the middle of — of living? When — immersed as I was in living, it didn’t occur to me to wonder if I were living well? Easy to claim from here, that life used to be better; or else that it wasn’t, but might have been, if only; that we would have done something different (better) with life, if only we’d known: this is the very best time. But what a terrifying thought — to decide at the best of all moments that that’s what it is — that things won’t continue to get more and more interesting. Who could live with such an idea? Who could accept it? We can’t, we don’t, we shouldn’t — if we did, we’d have to lie down and die right then, wouldn’t we?
See, the thing about a favorite time of day? You can have it all over again tomorrow. But to choose a favorite time of life — way to undermine who you are, who you love right now. So I’m saying: none of those other times were my favorite — or else they all were. That’s what I’d have said if you’d asked me, and that’s what I’m saying now. This, this is my favorite time, it has to be — not that the past is dead or even past (h/t William Faulkner) — but what it certainly is, is mostly evaporated, static, backscatter: as for what’s to come, I can’t possibly count on that — on anything to come at all — I’m old enough to know better by now.
This morning while making the coffee (waiting for the water to boil), I peered into the almost dark in the valley below and a light in a window snagged me. I was curious. And comforted, too — someone else was awake before dawn. In my case it’s because I’m on east coast time, just back from ten days of teaching in Vermont, ten days of institutional coffee. So of course I was looking forward to getting home to mine, to ours — to the Trystero’s — but somewhere between Chicago and Nevada I caught the most awful cold. The upshot being I can’t taste anything this morning, not really. Delicious, Fred will say when he wakes (as always), but I wouldn’t know. A pleasure necessarily deferred. Otherwise, though — here’s the question I’ve been asking myself — why defer pleasure? Who would? For what? You get to a point in life (you have blue hair, this is what it’s come to), you want what you want and you want it now: not because you suppose you deserve it; not because you’re entitled or spoiled, though incredibly fortunate you certainly are — rather because you realize anew, for real, you won’t be around forever, you really won’t. I really won’t.
But from here arises another question: what is pleasure? From whence does it come? If you believe that pleasure, joy, happiness, a sense of well being, goes arm in arm with anticipation, well then, all right, deferral turns out to be not so unpleasant — not an ordeal. All the better, though, or possibly equally gratifying to think that embracing your certain demise might allow you to accept that whether or not you have anything certain to look forward to (other than death), look around: you actually have what you have, you are what you are right now. In which case, there’s pleasure in just making the coffee in your own little house, in your own little kitchen, with a view that includes a little square of window below, a stranger’s window, where, you imagine, the stranger is also straddling the past and the future to imagine herself into this moment now.