I Salute All Bears

What images do you love of honey?

The images I have of honey inside my head are of the energy of a landscape or place, turned into a golden substance that flows gently almost in slow motion, catching the light. 

Tell me about the queen bee.

The queen bee is quite selfish and unrewarding, it seems to me. She is the ruler and centre of the hive and I guess that makes for a great kingdom. I do not think the queen bee is probably happy, as she has no one to rule with and it is a lonely job. Her subjects are loyal until she is weak and then they turn on her, and on occasion another queen bee is born and she may leave taking half the hive with her. My guess is that she does not have this much on her mind, but she knows what to do when the situation arises.

I would rather be a worker bee than a queen bee, roaming around beautiful meadows, bathing myself in nectar and telling the others where to go to help them.

Why do bees make honey?

I do not care why bees make honey, but I am very glad they do. It is a question that does not really have an answer. Not being a scientist or an intellectual I do not enjoy challenging questions that have no answer.

What do you think of raw honey? 

Sometimes I stay the night in a really nasty hotel where they give you a plastic cube of honey in a little basket for breakfast and I think how lucky I am that I really love honey and that I do not think that is really honey. I feel sad for the bees who have their work traduced by this industrial honey. I guess some people feel the way I do about honey about wine, which is a lot more complicated. (Raw wine is not very nice) Raw honey, which is the only honey I give to my children and which is the only one I eat, is real honey. Sometimes it is not that nice, for example  the white cactus honey that I have in my cupboard at the moment, gathered during a short season of flowering cacti at the second largest cactus reserve in the world in Bolivia, was a honey I was expecting to love, but in fact it tastes of cardboard. I have been collecting honey since I can remember and I am a great lover of delicious things and nice people. This is another reason why I like honey, which is that I can share it with my friends and it is something special which means a lot to me. It always feels miraculous.

Who are honey’s champions?

I do not know who the champions of honey are. I think immediately of bears, who love honey, and who have given honey a very good reputation with children and adults alike. I salute all bears.

Tell me about…honey and the brain

Honey stimulates all the sensations at once. Taste, colour, feelings, memories, the imagination. From all the people I have talked to about honey they all have their angle on honey. In my case it is this unique and wonderful means of communication. My love for honey has led me to all sorts of conversations and creative projects which stimulate every part of my brain, soul, and spirit. 

…Honey as time travel

Honey can transport a person to other places. You can go back in time and remember the feeling as a child of a teaspoon of honey or giving some honey to your children or just having it on your own. It can easily transport you back in time and in my case it is leading me into the future, which is a place I can envisage clearly for myself and my family at least.

…Honey as a family bond

I think for my family at least honey is a means of expressing love and affection. I am always giving pots of honey to my children as I honestly cannot think of a nicer gift most of the time. And they give me the gift of seeing their face light up when I give them some $10 pot of honey that I lugged about in my bags from some far flung part of the world because I love them.

…Honey in history, in war and peace

Honey is famously produced by bees who the Egyptians thought were in direct communication with the gods. The Pharaohs had the bee as their symbol and bees have been important to most cultures since the beginning of time. I am interested in John the Baptist going to live in the desert and living off the bounty of God which was locusts and honey. 

What is your favourite description of honey?

All the descriptions my children gave to me when we used to eat honey after the main course at whatever meal and they would tell me what they think. We also had honey at breakfast when their head was still full of dreams and I cannot remember what they really said actually but I remember the way I felt about them when they said whatever they said.

In Henry V, Shakespeare describes the English economy as functioning like honey bees in their hive. He says that the king is easily persuaded by his advisors, just like the bees who follow their queen. I cannot see that Shakespeare’s observations about bees were probably very accurate but since I love Shakespeare so much in every way whether he is wrong or right factually is immaterial to me 

In Romeo and Juliet, Friar Laurence compares honey to love, saying that too much of either can be unpleasant and ruin your appetite. He says, “The sweetest honey is loathsome in its own deliciousness. And in the taste destroys the appetite. Therefore, love moderately”.

That is nonsense I personally try to give as much love as I am able to.

Honey bees are a part of the extraordinary figurative landscape that Shakespeare provides his audience. They are a link for him between the natural world and the human, and like many elements of nature in the early modern period, a glass reflecting and commenting on human society. I too am using bees and their honey as a medium through which to discuss human society not only in the past but in the present day.

Is there a way to find out what honey sounds like?

Yes, my friends George Lewis and Miya Masoaka are giving me electrodes and I will install them inside honey at the IRCAM in Paris later this month so that I can record the sounds the different honeys make on their own and in reaction to the things that go on around them. I will compose sound works with the elements of recording from each honey and also film honey inside weightless vacuum boxes which recreates the conditions of outer space. I think this will be a good representation of the inner world of this natural product and give us a new perspective on our own being which is neither more nor less important in the general scheme of things than a pot of honey. I am a big fan of Alois Riegl and he compares the tendrils of a plant curling around the balustrades of a public garden to the work of Leonardo da Vinci who he considered to be a genius, observing that the plant and the creator of masterpieces are simply expressing their own truths in the most pure way and this is what binds all of creation. 

Have you ever wanted to swim in honey?

No

Bathe in honey?
No, but I do have honey shampoo and body lotion and stuff like that as people give it to me because of this project. It is very good. 

Might you have yourself embalmed in honey?
Absolutely not but I admire Alexander the Great. Very chic to be embalmed in honey and a golden coffin the shape of his body. I wish it had not been lost. I love funeral masks made of gold which look like honey, and the great treasures of the Middle Ages like the treasure of Sainte Foye de Conques. I see gold and honey as being very similar. 

It was funny this morning I realised my daughter had eaten a whole load of different honeys in my kitchen cupboard here in Paris: white cactus honey from Bolivia, 150 year old black honey from Normandy, a whole pot of coca honey, a whole pot of wild orchid honey and I said, “did you at least realise how wonderful all this honey was?” and she said, “well I just had it in my tea.”

She is blasée about honey. I find this very wonderful.

Are you a Melophile?

Yes I do like music 

How often do you use the word *mellifluous*?

Never 

Is there a dark side to honey?

Some people are allergic to bees, and being stung by a bee could actually kill them.

My friend Niki is very allergic and so I was worried about her when we went to visit so many bees all across Bolivia together in November.

What is the global future of Honey?

The global future of honey: it is the same question for all nature. It needs to be cared for.