The two men were a study in contrasts.
One wore the attire of the edgier side of academia, with his dark suit jacket and jeans. The other was bedecked in a white chef’s jacket.
However, both men spoke with a passion and confidence about their respective areas of expertise — meat sausage and the English poet T.S. Eliot.
By the end of the evening, the audience at Belmar’s Mixed Taste lecture series began to come to the conclusion that maybe the two men maybe weren’t that different after all.
Jake Adam York, assistant English professor at the University of Colorado at Denver, and Pete Marczyk, owner of Marczyk Fine Foods in Denver, were the speakers July 7 at the Belmar lecture series, now in its second summer.
The series, dreamt up by Adam Lerner, executive director of the Lab at Belmar, a collective of arts galleries, pairs two experts on wildly unrelated subjects. Each expert is given 30 minutes to speak. The lectures are followed by a 30-minute question-and-answer session from the audience.
“The only rule during the 30-minute talks is that the speakers are not allowed to make any connections,” Lerner said. “The last 30 minutes are rock ‘n’ roll. Anything can happen; it can be a profound, subtle, even humorous connection between the two.”
Since the program began last summer, attendance has built to a near packed-house crowd every time.
As the Hollywood box office moves into a record slump, the attendees of the lecture series said they are finding an entertainment outlet that is fun, educational and a little unexpected.
“Get your mind out of the mud and come experience something fresh and new,” said Ray Mountain, who attended his first lecture July 7. “The juxtaposition of opposing viewpoints is rich, and it’s good.”
Marczyk used his time to explain how sausage is essentially spoiled meat, rail against factory agriculture and espouse the glories of slowly prepared meats.
Conversely, York told the audience he would help them operate on a higher level at their next cocktail party by enhancing their Eliot knowledge. He focused primarily on “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” relating how the narrative concerned a woefully wishy-washy man who was forever trying unsuccessfully to, “in the words of Al Green, ‘Get it on.’”
So, what do sausage and T.S. Eliot have to do with each other? Really, nothing. Nonetheless, the audience took pleasure in the zany question-and-answer segment.
The closest correlation was a broader analogy, posed by York.
“They’re made slowly by ancient principles, and they’re made well. They’re complicated, but they’re enjoyable. There’s no reason you shouldn’t enjoy them everyday.”