Erik Eckel

I have a great idea for a photo exhibit. The problem? I’m not a very good photographer. Simply setting a Nikon to automatic won’t quite work for this idea. The prep work alone would be challenging.

However, I can tell you about my idea. I’m a better writer than I am an artist. Trust me, there’s a difference.

The installation would consist of three images. Artists describe such a piece as a triptych, but I don’t want to predispose you to feeling any specific way about the project other than to say I think you’d like it.

Everyone with whom I’ve shared the concept finds the theme compelling. One associate, someone I respect and whose name you might know, encouraged me to proceed. A film producer who also serves on numerous arts boards, he passed me a personal contact for a professional photographer who, among other accolades, served as an official White House lensman back when adults were still in charge. But I digress.

The idea came to me one evening while visiting an upscale restaurant. I mean, as a kid, a night at the neighborhood Mexican restaurant was a treat. We didn’t go for fine dining. But as musician Ben Folds describes within his memoir A Dream About Lightning Bugs and corresponding interviews, living different lifestyles led to his feeling he’s a social-class tourist: “I watched all these people. I sat staring at them. Where do I put my fork?”

The same proved similar for me. As my exposure grew to new privileges, luxurious experiences and the exclusive trappings typically limited to the wealthy, I felt amiss. Entitlements resulting from professional success increasingly felt foreign, even absurd.

As Folds noted within an interview, “It seemed too convenient to brag that I pulled myself up by the bootstraps, and that seemed like a fucking boring story, even if it was true.”

Maybe imposter syndrome is a real thing. Or maybe we’re just who we are, regardless of the circles within which we ultimately travel.

While I was grateful to enjoy extravagant dinners at trendy restaurants, elegant trips to exotic locations and luxurious automobiles, the experiences felt somehow artificial. So it should be no surprise that, when dining at a hip restaurant that attractive trendsetters regularly celebrated on Instagram, I found myself viewing the menu and its sophisticated appetizer and entree descriptions with skepticism and, dare I say, disbelief. Yet, everyone was taking this stuff seriously.

It reminds me how I felt when eBay first hit the scene. I discovered you could peddle old music CDs and other crap for good money, so much so I joked you could probably sell lint collected from the corners of your closet. It didn’t seem real. The experience was both unsettling and disconcerting.

Reviewing this restaurant’s menu offerings felt comparable.

Were these people serious? Was this popular new American bistro, complete with a range of extensive cocktails, bespoke whiskey bar and creative cuisine, legitimate? Many of the menu items—premium Chebooktoosk Oysters, refined Duck Liver Toast and artisan Roasted Bean Marrow—were entirely too preposterous for my palate.

Two twenty-dollar items, the charcuterie and cheese boards, seemed safe options, though. Certainly the quality of meats and cheeses served at such an establishment would prove robust and flavorful. The charcuterie description read reasonably if a little ostentatiously: pork terrine, chorizo ibérico, pork rillette and accompaniments and fresh-made French bread.

The cheese board, often a reliable go-to, warned of its own potential pretentiousness: Kenny’s Farmhouse Ted cheddar, Tomme de Nena goat cheese, Roth Cheese’s Moody Blue and assorted accompaniments and the same bread. Maybe because it was a Saturday night and I’d had an Old Fashioned, I suspended disbelief and chose the cheese board.

Don’t get me wrong. There are many wonderful cheese and charcuterie boards. Not all prove contentious.

The St. Louis Art Museum’s in-house restaurant, known as Panorama, offers a wonderful fourteen-dollar Cheese & Charcuterie. The appetizer consists of a selection of cured meats and cheeses, grilled toast and seasonal accoutrements that will power you through walking the museum even when you’ve skipped lunch.

New York City’s Museum of Modern Art, typically known by its MoMA moniker, boasts several restaurants offering cheese and meat boards. The Modern’s “Selection of Good Cheese” is yours for twenty-four bucks, while the Terrace Café’s fourteen-dollar Cheese Plate boasts two cheeses, candied pecans and apricot chutney.

All well and good. Who doesn’t enjoy a sampling of soft, smooth and hard cheeses? Add some ham and salami to the mix and you’ve got a winning combination even those unfamiliar with fine cheeses and hearty meats will appreciate.

But the board received that night, in addition to carefully curated, refined cheeses, also included an immediately objectionable pickle relish. Maybe the accompaniment had turned. It’s possible. More likely, considering the bistro’s pride of craftsmanship and farm-to-table dedication, the pickle relish was just an ill-conceived and unnecessary addition intended to demonstrate ingenuity and creativity the so-called experts accepted as artistic and inspired.

Seemingly, we’ve been warned: what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination. Certainly, such guidance proved prescient, in this case.

The relish was vile. The accompaniment neither enhanced any of the cheese’s flavors nor added an elegant or complementary texture. The addition was similar to a warm and acidic salty slime.

Regardless, my wife and I scraped the plate clean of its decent if unremarkable cheeses. The pickle relish, though, essentially remained untouched.

That’s when the idea came to me. The moment wasn’t necessarily profound. I don’t claim the occasion approximates Robert Plant reportedly spontaneously recording the lyrics to Stairway to Heaven.

I did feel instant inspiration, though. I had a vision. And the vision was this.

Were I a gifted photographer, I’d create an elegant, nicely lit and tastefully-composed collection of three photographs. The first image would showcase a beautifully prepared and inviting charcuterie board. Maybe I’d include a small garnish or similar plating element to add a spot of texture and color. The second would feature my fifty-pound black lab mix, who unreservedly loves meats and cheeses as much as anyone you’ve met, joyously and excitedly lapping up the board’s contents with abandon. The third would prove a little darker. The photo would feature just the wooden board, with all the meats and cheeses picked clean. Only the pickle relish would remain, besides a few traces of bubbly white dog spittle giving evidence the dog had devoured most of the selections.

There is no sin here. This is not sacred. As photography obsessive author Susan Sontag once wrote, “whatever the camera records is a disclosure.”

The triptych’s final image confirms even a dog knows to reject silly, aristocratic and ostentatious finery. Such efforts to separate classes and discriminate by taste and culture are fraudulent and, examined in the proper light, surface hints of desperation even a mutt knows to skip.

Don’t be fooled. Believe your instincts. Even if CEOs earn three-hundred times that of rank-and-file workers and the top one-tenth-of-one-percenters possess essentially the same wealth as the bottom 90 percent combined, they don’t get to define and dictate what constitutes art, luxury or select, exclusive delicacies. They don’t really know what they’re doing, it turns out. But, before the eyes of God, a dog does. And you can trust man’s best friend.

In hindsight, I probably should’ve chosen the Roasted Beet Salad. The combination of lettuce, tart goat cheese and earthy beets is a winning recipe. At least, that’s what I learned from my grandmother who grew and prepared many such ingredients from her own garden by hand.