In the Kitchen with Brother Mark: The Craft of Baking

Baking bread is a practice. Inspired by brother Mark's hearty yet soft dark brown loaves dotted with raisins, and feeling confident in my baking skills, I decided to try making bread when I returned home after an early field research visit. My first loaf was a brick with a clump of raisins in the middle. “You just know when it's right,” brother Mark told me. I did not know, and it was not right.

Several months after my failed attempts at bread baking, I was back at Weston. Brother John, brother Michael, and I had recently been discussing the practical work of creating new music—how they decide to write a new song, how they create the lyrics and melodies, how they introduce new music to the community—and the topic prompted a wider discussion of craft. Brother John explained that he finds it helpful to think of music as a craft in the monastery and the brothers as craftspeople, not artists. Brother Michael agreed; even though he currently does a lot of the practical work associated with creating new music, he eschews the label “composer” because it singles him out for special attention as an artist.

When the brothers said I should think about music as craft, I thought I understood what they meant. I nodded along as they spoke. But the more I considered it later back in the guesthouse living room, the more I realized how tricky the word “craft” really is. It is a multitasker in the English language, to say the least. Craft is a noun and also a verb.