"Music & Culinary - My Connection", an open letter by Erich Mrak
I started making music as a fan. I started in the service industry because I needed a job.
I was 7 when I wrote my first verse, and I has just turned 20 when I started working in kitchens.
I got fired from my first kitchen job as a dishwasher after a few weeks.
On the surface they don’t look the same. My motives for both were completely different, one was a creative outlet to keep me relatively sane, and the other was to keep afloat. I’d always enjoyed and shown interest in cooking, but had never done it professionally. At the time, I figured if I was going to be putting my energy towards something for an extended period of time in the form of work (10 - 14 hours per day) it should also be something I’m interested in.
Being someone with no experience or education in culinary prior to working in a kitchen, I thought the best way to learn would be to start from the ground up as a dishwasher. All the while, I had just completed my first EP, “V”, and had withdrawn from Ryerson University in my third year, coming to the realization that I’d rather invest my time into the outlets I love. I was leaving class early to show up early to my kitchen shifts, and going home after work to do mix notes for songs I was working on for upcoming sessions during my days off.
When you withdraw from University at the age of 20 to do music and culinary, it can be nerve-racking. At the time, I didn’t know that the leap of faith I’d just taken was one of the milestone decisions in my career. I would end up meeting and working with incredibly talented people in both music and culinary.
The longer I spent focussed on two professions, the more they became interconnected. From a technical standpoint, both require unrelenting discipline to continue to provide quality output, consistently. Neither provide quick success either, especially when the idea of “overnight success” is a lie. I worked as a dishwasher, a prep cook, and went to culinary school while working as a line cook in order to further my knowledge in culinary, and also have money to pay for music over years.
Years that blur together.
As someone who’s always leaned towards more creative tasks (originating from painting miniature figurines when I was very young) the interest in the idea of adding elements to a song or composing a dish is habitual to me now. Attempting to add chords to a song and create new melodies to beat your existing ones is the same process to me as working with ingredients and plating food. It’s always about creating an experience for the audience, whether that is the listener or patron.
Throughout any industry there are connections, interests and pitfalls. For me, I found unconditional love in connections I discovered in both music and culinary, which is necessary for creativity, discipline, consistency, and understanding how to provide a specific experience.
- Erich