Pivot from Portuguese Purgatory

My waitress was slow bringing the migas and potatoes to accompany my fish. It happens. But the restaurant's wizened, cranky Portuguese owner went berserk, screaming at the kitchen while pointing at The Customer (me), who'd been forced into a low-carb lunch here in the land of starch.

At meal's end she handed me—like a smuggler proffering diamonds—a glistening handful of freshly roasted chestnuts and—as if my shocked gratitude needed another kick in the gut—a moist/crispy slab of cinnamon toast (rabanadas). It was her apology. I didn't realize the word was even in her vocabulary.

We have a history, she and I. Even stout-hearted Portuguese tremble at her notoriously brusque command, and I've never seen another foreigner in the place, which is (like every tyrannical perfectionist operation) perpetually mobbed thanks to sky-high quality. On my third visit, I pointed at a photo on the wall of a terrifying-looking day-glo orange fish, and asked if it was good. "Ah," she sighed, briefly waxing slightly less ball-busting, "Rascasso! Delicioso!"

This was where I messed up. I asked if she'd have any tomorrow, and she nodded affirmatively. Then a series of oblique signals and punishments, fanning out over the subsequent 24 months, made it clear that:

1. She'd reserved one for me, which had required breaking character and
2. I'd failed to show (I was still fresh from New York, and hadn't realized that, here, an idle few words to a restaurateur can ensnare you in a Whole Thing).

This was not a person to piss off, but I somehow endured my lengthy sentence of purgatory. And today I was granted clemency when she needed to wash her hands in the sink near the front door next to the fish tank after hawking a vat of dead sea creatures out to to the charcoal grill manned by her husband just outside the restaurant in the street. Waiting to be seated, I was blocking her way, though attempting to reduce my 6 foot bulk to an inconspicuous singularity to avoid making trouble. But before she could ask, I executed a pivot more elegant that one would ever imagine possible from someone of my age, height, and timidness. She freely waltzed to the sink, washed her hands, and began screaming at the wait staff to set a place for me. Normally she makes me wait 20 or 30 minutes even amid a glut of empty seats, but the Baryshnikovian pivot had redeemed me. I was back in good graces. And this is why she'd been particularly galled that my carbs were delayed.

Groaning painfully after ingesting an entire charcoal-roasted sea bream, a large platter of migas (sautéed bread crumb stuffing), boiled potatoes, boiled sweet potatoes, salad, and wine (16€), she demanded I consume the chestnuts and the cinnamon toast, together, and stood over me gloweringly awaiting my reaction. When I convulsed in pleasure, she nodded authoritatively and strode away. Shortly after, I paid the bill and told her, in my unreliable Portuguese, “Estou matado de alegre.” (hopefully "I've been killed with pleasure"). Apparently I nailed the Portuguese, though the syntax was just off-kilter enough to provoke a semi-grin. I think.

Her tray of rabanadas, which only emerged once nearly all customers had left. Like the chestnuts, it was staff-only. I've won at Portugal.

Peace and Quiet

In my previous post—a meditation on creativity titled "Steve Jobs' Black Turtleneck"—I proposed a cure for the age-old problem of fickle muses and erratic inspiration. I suggested giving in to monotony. Tolerate a static backdrop to focus creative attention on a foreground pursuit.

Creative people feel omni-creative—and are!—but creativity comes in spurts if you don't focus it. You've got to let go of creative control of practically everything else (including, ultimately, The World) in order to stabilize your backdrop and seal off potential creativity leaks. "The more chunks you background," I wrote in that post, "the more propulsive you'll be in the foreground." Yielding to monotony is the ultimate counterintuitive move, but the rewards can be heady.

Perhaps an example would help.

Me, For Example
In my 20s and 30s I aimed for, and achieved, an extremely varied life. The facade seemed richly dynamic to outside observers, but I was oppressed by remaining chunks of monotony. One can't jazz up every aspect, though I damned well tried. The result was rollickingly interesting...but also out of control.

I don't mean grown-up control—well-pressed wardrobe, neatly-potted plants, and each bite of food chewed 27 times. I had no control at all, including any basic ability to take care of myself. Or to concentrate. Or to apply discipline in a sustained manner. Such things desperately evaded my grasp. Naturally, my output suffered, but I could easily jump from failure in one sphere to a happier position in another. Or simply create a whole new sphere (Chowhound was one).

I did retain one baseline for a while that provided some gravity: music. I'd aggregated enough effort, technique, and commitment to sound reliably impressive. But I was shooting for better—for greatness—and it was frustratingly elusive. It was, as artists have complained through the ages, unpredictable. It never arrived on command, so I was inconsistent. It was torture.

I had the exciting life I'd hoped for, but paid a high price. No control of basic functionality, plus a juicy inner ribbon of artistic torture. But it sure looked exciting from the outside!

At this moment in 2025, my life has switched from one end of the telescope (The Andromeda Galaxy) to the other (a single skin cell). I live a teeny life of monotony. But I've given myself up to that monotony. There was one optional chunk: I swapped in a fresh backdrop by moving overseas. As I recently wrote, we can't determine our dramatic arcs, but a new backdrop can be swapped in. I like this one much better. Though, really, any will do (that’s why it’s “optional”).

I've achieved a static backdrop with little dramatic variation, and while that should be tough for someone of my temperament, I was lucky enough to notice the reward, which is subtle but awesome.

Convoluted Reassembly of a Previously Common Phenomenon
All this talk of "backdrops" feels convoluted. It used to comfortably boil down to a familiar concept. There was a time when it was taken for granted that artists and mystics required "peace and quiet" to do their thing.

The phrase turned archaic without our noticing. Today, it's almost meaningless. Within our hyperstimulated inner and outer lives, what would "peace and quiet" even look like? We imagine dressing in cotton tunics and moving languorously. Lots of smiling, and nary a glowing screen. A weekend fishing trip. Reading in bed all day. A (jesus christ) spa day. It's never conceived as a way of being; more of a stop-being before resuming real life. Walden's pond is a nice view to grab on our smartphone and upload to Insta.

"Peace and quiet" wasn't supposed to be a pose to strike, but now we can't conceive of any other use for the phrase. So I talk about backdrops, hawking the virtues of "monotony" out of recognition that anything not sizzlingly hot seems frostily frozen. You don't need a cotton tunic, or to act a certain way, or to give up your iPad. It's just a matter of willingly sinking into static backdrop while keeping one chunk sizzlingly super-heated.

Small or Large?
I spent over 30 years as this disease's poster child, aiming to tinker busily with busy backdrops while also hoping to play and write at a high level. It left me haggard, frustrated, and bereft of control. I enjoyed little consistency in any context, but, man, my backdrop seemed exciting!

Now—unbelievably for those who knew me then—I've got a daily routine and the only variation I permit myself are choice of lunch venue and film to watch. I don't wear a black turtleneck, but that serves as metaphor for the swathe of volition I've foresaken.

Here’s the reward: now, when I focus on some mystery or curiosity, I find, with gleeful delight, that I can slice through it like butter—and explain it cleanly to others. It's consistent now. A steady flow. No more torture.

Is this a small life or a large one? It frames either way, but it's best to simply keep going, rather than mire with backdrops. Gifted with a really nice pair of red shoes, one is compelled to dance.

Steve Jobs' Black Turtleneck

Nothing is the womb of Something.

No one seems to properly understand why Steve Jobs wore black turtlenecks. Even Jobs was vague about it. He said it was “one less decision” to make. That answer points toward the truth, but not the full truth.

Creativity needs a backdrop—a static, solid framework—to work against. Static backgrounds itch. They can't help but coax action, motion, change, dynamism.

The usual backdrop is convention. We skew creative results so they grind provocatively against expectation. Other backdrops—authority, momentum, our own habits and inclinations—work the same way. You can’t skew without a fixed reference point.

If you roil in constant motion—because you live a richly varied life—solid ground appears only when the gears momentarily align. This explains the notorious fickleness of inspiration. Creativity waits for perfect gearing. But if you stabilize yourself—simplify and ground—creativity flows freely. Hence the black turtlenecks. Less moving parts, more static backdrop.

The problem is that creative people feel compelled to fight monotony in every aspect of their lives. They want all gears spinning. But the effort absorbs creativity, so when you pick up your violin, creative flow may not be available. Inspiration hasn't run dry; it's been diverted into a swarm of mundanities.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. Applying creativity to daily mundanities is its own art form. But if you manage innumerable processes, don't expect the Muses to appear the moment you decide to write a poem.

For creativity to flow consistently, that wild spurt must be controlled and channeled. It's a matter of accepting the backdrop (daily routine, present circumstance, "lot in life", etc). Having eased into the poise of monotony, sizzling creative flow becomes available on demand. That's how you bottle lightning.

It's not about "fewer decisions". No matter what, you'll be deciding whether to drink coffee now or in some other moment. We decide something every second. Rather, it's a matter of backgrounding all gears but one, which is deliberately left to spin freely. Magic happens when the only conspicuously moving part absorbs all available creative intensity.

Simplifying—or backgrounding—your wardrobe would be one part of that. Wearing only black turtlenecks takes a process off-line, helps stabilize the backdrop, and seals a potential creativity leak. The more chunks you background, the more propulsive you'll be in the foreground.

If your world appears to spin, you'll remain fixed. Affix your world, and you'll be compelled to dance.


Followup posting: "Peace and Quiet"

The Right Hands

"Tesla shareholders have voted to approve a plan to motivate Elon Musk with a bonus of as much as $1 trillion in additional stock. Musk had threatened on social media to leave the company if the measure was rejected. He claimed he wanted a big enough ownership stake in Tesla so that he couldn't be fired, so the 'robot army' he is developing doesn't fall into the wrong hands."

The proper reaction is "'The wrong hands'? So Elon Fricking Musk represents the right hands? He's Mr. Reasonable?"

But it's broader than that. It's always broader than you think. The escape route from this stifling box is to train oneself to fan out one's attention. Resist the contagious urge to simply fixate on the "proper reaction."

In this case: do you know anyone who'd never question whether they truly know best? Or consider whether they're truly deserving of the responsibility, trust, and acclaim they thirstily seek? Me, I hardly know anyone not like that. In fact, I can't name a single person who'd lightly challenge a daffy notion randomly wafting into their mind. The contents of our minds feel pre-approved. Their mere existence in the most vaunted vault in all creation makes them inherently, unimpeachably, solid gold.

We're all Elon Musk on this bus.

The Dubious Proposition of Human Communication

It's a foregone conclusion that human beings communicate. It seems obvious when we emit stylized vibrations at each other and outcomes (sometimes) imply that parsing and coordination were achieved.

On that level, yes. But that's not much different from shoving punch cards into a mainframe. Or sparrows squawking to attract other sparrows. Or a water glass breaking, signalling via its alarming sound to the floor below that a drench of water and hail of shards is incoming. It's hardly communication at all. Mostly just signalling, a far more primitive thing. If you closely observe human beings, you'll find that they exceed this only with vanishing rarity

The capacity dried up at some point, and no one noticed. More on that in a moment.

We've managed to maintain our suspension of conversational disbelief because, as with punch cards, sparrows, and water glasses, the repertoire is extremely limited. Even a gorilla can be trained to signal if you keep things very simple.

The shortfall is readily apparent to those who think and speak differently. If you impart some spin—subtlety, recursion, reframability—to your throaty vibrations, communicating more richly than coaxing your dog to fetch a toy, you will hit walls. You'll confuse people. By disrupting the process, you break the channel.

I spent many years assuming it was my fault—that humans communicate just fine, it's just that I do it funny. But highly fragile communication that only works when everyone stays on-script is more akin to punch cards, sparrows, and water glasses than to anything real.

Humans are not so different from stock characters in a computer game. "Hello, friend!" greets the ruddy bartender in the village inn. "What are ye having?" We overlook that this is his only line. Hello, friend! What are ye having? Hello, friend! What are ye having? Hello, friend! What are ye having?

Say "Gin and tonic" and he nods, fetches the drink, and likely tries to sell you a treasure map. But if you answer "A mid-life crisis!", he’ll freeze, requiring a reboot, or else groan "Reply non-parsable!" That's the only response to the vast universe of utterances that don’t meet the prompt straight-on, failing to insert the expected punchcard.

There was a time when "A mid-life crisis!" would have comfortably parsed for most people. People actually spoke like that back in the 60s. Fewer in the 70s. Almost none by the 80s. Unscripted types—"characters"—strode the human landscape speaking nothing like corporate support agents or middle managers, yet communication channels didn't break. Until fairly recently, we possessed a genuine faculty of communication.

In fact, go back further and consider how the hoi polloi comfortably processed—enjoyed, even!—the dense intricacies, subtleties, and sly semantic playfulness of Shakespeare in real time. Can you imagine such a thing? Ponder it to understand what’s possible, and what’s missing.

Hello, friend! What are ye having?

Off the Scale

I don't show up with "do you know who I am?" gravitas. Maybe I'm doing something wrong—I honestly don’t know—but I never saw the point of trying to seem like someone like me, whatever that would even mean, so I just act...regular. Which suits me to a tee, though I do have certain faculties and bona fides which occasionally leak out. And when they do, it's not like in the movies.

God, is it ever not like in the movies.

A few months ago, I told a tale of meeting a local jazz musician in small town Portugal (newcomers: I was a respected world-touring jazz trombonist for a couple decades):

We played together for a few minutes, and I coaxed him into swinging a little harder, and he managed not to stumble on a few of the easier chord changes (by local standards, this constitutes jazz mastery). The song ended and he looked up at me, thoroughly unsurprised, and asked where I'm from.

I said "New York". This is like an Okinawan showing up in a Dutch karate dojo, but he wasn't visibly affected. He just coughed and told me about the jam session every Thursday which I might sign up for a week ahead if I'm aching to play. Perhaps they'll let me, because I sound pretty good. Then he very politely and courteously told me that he needed to practice, and sent me on my way while he resumed the karaoke.

Strange as it was, that was a clean example. It's not always clean.

The chef in the little joint where I eat most lunches has no idea that I'm a nationally-recognized food authority. For her, I'm the hapless American who shleps in and eats with extra gratitude. If I told her—and on the remote chance she believed me—she'd stop short, offer some vague words of confused quasi-admiration, and immediately forget all about it, because it's simply off her scale.

When things go off one's scale, one instinctually pulls back to normalcy. This is understandable. Efficacious. Evolutionarily adaptive. Whatever was just said or done might be politely acknowledged, but previous assumptions quickly snap back. It's exactly like getting past a brain fart.

This reaction—vague acknowledgement followed by amnesic re-composure—is bumpier than anything the Portuguese jazz guy experienced. He placidly absorbed my words like chatter on a radio across the street. He didn't blink. But I'm pretty sure the chef would blink. For a moment.

With the blinking, a whiff of emotion is often out-gassed. Whichever is that person's signature. Effusive people might enthuse "That's so GREAT!" while distracted eyes reveal they're mostly thinking about their expiring parking meter. Paranoid people will contemplate how this piece fits the nefarious puzzle. Insecure people will shield their inadequacy. And jealousy is far more prevalent than we realize—it may even be the default. Highly sexualized people will ponder how this involves getting laid (if you're a promising candidate, chops will be licked; if not, you may be snidely spurned, even though you'd never offered).

The emotionality rarely builds to a rip-roar. Just a visceral belch of disruption before returning to the previous comfortable framing. Back on track. Back on the scale!

This is all extremely strange from the viewpoint of the surprising person (longtime readers have watched me straining to puzzle it out for years now). But this is the only way it could possibly work. The world is the Scale. To go off the scale is to slip well and truly offstage for one's audience. There's no familiar role to play as "That Off-Scale Person." You're off the show.

Edge cases of all sorts are outcast.


See also:
Lost Perspective, explaining how we instinctually normalize anomalies.
Fans, explaining the weird dynamics of meeting people who profess to admire your work.

---

After selling Chowhound, I relayed the news to family members.

(I'm not respected in my family. I'm the troublesome, nonconformist cousin with the oddball career as some sort of horn player or whatever. They speak slowly to me so I can understand. I'm a bit of an embarrassment.)

They were aware that I was running some kooky little web site, and when I mentioned that I'd sold it to a major corporation, response was oddly uniform: "That's nice..."—followed by a swift, eerie change of subject.

Why?

Off the scale! He's not that guy!

Now, where were we? So how are your parents...?

Noticing

A friend speaks nine languages with great ease and perfect accent. It comes easily to him, and he has also played very fluent jazz trumpet since he was a teenager, though he's from a place with little tradition of it. That, too, is a learned language.

His explanation is that he's a genius. But I see the actuality of it: he has a gift for imitation, allowing him to effortlessly sound Italian or Brazilian or French, and the same gift helps him ape the sound of a jazz trumpet player. He doesn't have anything interesting to say in those languages—or on his horn. But he seamlessly recreates the superficial sound. A neat trick!

I explained this to an acquaintance, who asked a perfectly reasonable question: "How do you know all this?" Had I read a lot of psychology books? Had I extensively "examined" this guy? Did I have a shred of factual evidence for my assessment? He wasn't quite accusing me of glib bullshitting, but he certainly wasn't taking my explanation at face value. He knew the guy, too, and he hadn't reached these conclusions. 

My first impulse was to doubt myself. But I do feel certain about this, and at age 62 I have a great many data points from times where I turned out to have been provably right. This has raised my confidence, though confidence was a very long time coming. When younger, *I* was the guy asking *myself* "But how did you know this?"

I'm loathe to call it "intuition", because it's a much more educated assessment. But, no, I'm not a shrink, and I did not put him through a battery of personality tests and cranial MRIs. So how do I account for it?

I actually pay attention to things outside my own head.

People think they already do this, but watching strangers walking around, it's obvious that they're completely zonked out, enslaved to their internal monologues. "Be here now" is too much to ask in a world where "Look around for half a second" is an impossibly tough ask. It's really that bad. I first noticed this as a child, and 50 years later I'm still finding that I've underestimated the problem (lingering effects of COVID quarantine have made it far worse). Opinions spew so freely that real knowledge and insight read as opinions with extra attitude (explaining why facts these days often lose in a clash with mere opinion).

At some point I started paying attention to the world outside my roiling mental narrative. Also: thinking about what I've seen, using bandwidth freed up by not ceaselessly obsessing (everything sucks; I need more money and power and sex; that awful thing my eighth grade teacher said; the president's a racist, etc).

Between my attention-paying and my thinking about stuff beyond gripey bullshit, things get figured out. Not per sassy opinion, nor magical intuition. Just a normal brain doing what it does when processes aren't hijacked by endless loops of peevish dissatisfaction.

I "know", in other words, because, having decided that four million mental go-rounds of my litany of dissatisfactions and resentments were sufficient, I turned my attention elsewhere. And began noticing stuff. That's all it takes.

Shielding Inadequacy

Someone observed that I'd done something very skillfully, and immediately—and not at all amiably—complained that I'd made them feel inadequate.

I didn't take the bait, having been entirely weaned off bait. Instead, I briefly surveyed this person, realizing they've never done much of anything or been good at anything. And it's no crime. Accomplishment is merely a side dish (perhaps a sauce?), not the real meal. But it seems odd to go through life shielding inadequacy—so accomplishment must be terribly important to them!—without ever bothering to get good at anything.

And then I realized they didn’t have time. They were too busy shielding inadequacy.


See also "Billions, Millions, Thousands"

Yoga Asanas

Asanas are to yoga what mise en place is to a fine meal.

The Sticky Wicket of 90% Rightness

I once offered this accounting of intuition:

People often confuse it with hunches - i.e. random guesses we make about the state of something. But while hunches make you think, or worry, real intuition makes you act. The brain does not intermediate. You don't feel a suspicion of something, you feel the actual thing.

If I slow down my car while passing a restaurant and remark that it looks good, it probably is good. A good hunch! But if my car suddenly screeches to the curb and stops and I find myself getting out, without actual thinking, then the restaurant will be great. It's always great. It's never not great.

A long curve of diminishing results trails those rare peaks of certainty. When less confident intuition arises, one cannot distinguish good chunks from flotsam. All you can do is to take a playful stab, knowing you might come out looking silly.

That's what happened yesterday. I offered someone a mildly audacious intuition. I packed it with disclaimers, because while I trust my certainties, I am, per above, vaguer on my vagaries. And this time I was wrong. And my friend micro-smirked. I'm not sure she even noticed. An internal shift of perspective registered externally—which I spotted, and couldn't blame her for. "Ok, this person shoots wild." (I suppose this, too, was intuition on my part, but it registered as such certainty that I knew to accept it as truth—plus, I've seen that look before).

I reserve a standard statement for situations where people catch me misfiring and lose faith: "I'm not always right, but it'd be a mistake to bet against me." It's not a boast, just a level observation. But it's always better to bake fresh than to keep reusing a line. Canned lines lose their power. And this time, the following came out:

"I'm right 90% of the time. Which is a horrible stat, for two reasons:

First, it's high enough that people come to expect perfection, so when I misfire, I seem like the wrongest wrong-o who ever wronged. I drop all the way down.

And second, it’s high enough that I might build up pompous confidence which would be nauseatingly challenged every time I fail—and 10% is a lot of failure!

I've ensured, on my end, that #2 is not an issue—I've built no self-image around being right—but #1 is beyond my control."


See also:
The Subtlety of Truth
Intuition