Media Tip

I'll offer you a critical bit of media coaching that's little-understood because no one ever spells it out: When you're asked an interview question (particularly on "live" media, e.g. radio, podcast, streaming, etc.), do not sweat your accuracy.

Unless you're important. Which you're not, even though you feel super important because someone with a microphone is asking you questions. Uh-uh. You're not important, nobody cares, and nothing you're saying matters. Be very clear about that.

As you consume media, I've just killed you a little (sorry/not sorry) by making you aware of an annoyance that hadn't previously annoyed you. It's everywhere.

Here's an example:

"So, Vincent, when did you first start playing the cello?"

"Ah, let's see. It was the early 80s. I want to say......1981? 1982? No, wait. Actually, it wasn't until 1983. September 1983, when I began seventh grade."

No one cares, Vincent. Those 20 seconds served no one. Not you, not your interviewer, not the audience. This isn't, like, a deposition.

Understand the proposition. For an interviewer, you are (hopefully) lively airtime fodder. For the audience, entertainment. For yourself, marketing and influencing. But you've just failed at all those things.

If you're genuinely important, by all means, take pains to get every bit of it right.

"Condoleezza, how many days notice did we give our Saudi allies prior to the Iraqi invasion?"

Ms. Rice should do what's necessary to cough up a correct answer, because it's a genuine matter of historical record. Vincent's stupid cello, not so much.

I'm not quite saying it's ok to lie and skate through interview questions—though if you did, no one would notice and it wouldn't matter. My point is that you're just pretending to answer questions. You are a dancing monkey, so invest all effort in presentation. It is incumbent on you to understand your role. This is not a police interview where someone's filling out a report with your replies. You are there to inject style, pacing, and delivery.

I never lost track of this in any interview—live, print, or otherwise. It was my magic trick, making me a sought-after interview subject and go-to for blurby quotes. It wasn't just my wit, it was my understooding of the basis. I went through the motions of answering questions while concentrating on giving the interviewer lively fodder, audiences provocative entertainment, and myself message amplification.

Roused from numb zombie mode, you will now constantly notice the problem everywhere, and groan whenever an interviewee imagines you giving a fraction of a fuck about when he started cello lessons, or where she met her ice ballet partner, or how old they were when they realized bagel holes could be filled with stuff.

We'd Rather Suffer than Suffer

I've got a thing with my ankle. The ligament is overstretched from too many sprains over the years. So as I walk, the ligament may unpredictably slip out of place and, BAM, I essentially have a sprained ankle. Amid a nice stroll, or while hurrying to an appointment, walking suddenly becomes impossible, passersby assume the poor man has Tourette's, and I need to figure out how the hell to get home.

I've avoided surgery, managing via physical therapy plus a bag of tricks for resetting the ligament on the fly. It's shakily under control. But this is not a posting about ankles. It's about framing. About perspective. About attitude.

This morning, as I took a walk, I suddenly realized that I've enjoyed several days of uninterrupted, easy, pain-free walking. And I felt a shower of gratitude, tinged with irony over how easily we forget to proclaim small victories. It's comically hard to celebrate what passes for normality.

A dissenting voice piped up in my thought stream. "Don't say that! You're inviting problems!"

This, for your information, was the voice of my Jewish ancestors (after all the pork, I'm amazed they're still speaking to me), delivering a core tenet of Judaism. Nearly everything you'd imagine fundamental to Jewish life—bagels, beards, black hats—evolved 55 or 60 centuries into the timeline, but this trope goes back practically the whole way: Don't clock your luck! Don't note your success! Don't proclaim happiness or victory because you're only inviting problems!

And it's unimaginably stupid and counterproductive. I struggle to understand how it's lasted all these centuries. The upshot—and I'm Mr. Upshot— is that when it's bad, you suffer. And when it's good, you suffer. All this to avoid suffering. Suffering's so bad that we'd rather suffer than suffer.

As I strode along on a lovely late-summer day, my ankles didn't hurt a bit. I was completely free to walk for miles. Delicious liberation. And if my very next step were to bring agony, so what? I'd try to readjust the ligament, perhaps devising a new move to add to my repertoire. And I'd take a taxi home if necessary. The fate my ancestors would have me avoid at all costs is a mere stumble, while the capacity to walk is a small miracle fit for celebration.


The idea behind ‘Don’t clock your luck/Don’t note your success/Don’t proclaim happiness or victory’ may have been more like karma-yoga before it calcified over time into small-minded superstition. Do what you do full-heartedly, without wasting effort on credit or status.

More on karma yoga here, or via postings with that tag.

Uncommon Terseness

I'm replaying this posting from April, 2014.


A Slog reader who prefers to remain anonymous was kind enough to share her favorite pull-quotes from past postings. I honestly can't recall writing more than half of these (I remember more clearly the labored overlong ones!):

Most singers become singers because they want to be singers, not because they want to sing. That's why most singers are so awful. (link)

Admiring and supporting unheralded greatness is what the universe wants us to do. The angels swoon when we discover their hidden treasure - their fiendishly clever and luminously beautiful Easter eggs. (link)

We over-emphasize first-movers, crediting them with creating waves when, truly, they're just surfing them like everyone else. Causality has nothing to do with it. The first popping kernel doesn't make the other kernels pop. (link)

I wouldn't want to return to 1973. We went too far. You could feel society slogging and smell the rot (and pay a tax rate north of 90%). 1973 could have made a Tea Party partisan out of any but the most fervid of current liberals. (link)

When people are determined to misunderstand, misunderstanding's unavoidable. Per Maslow's hammer, if all you have is snark, everyone looks like an asshole. (link)

Billions of people yearn for greatness. Millions of people do things they hope will make them great. Thousands of people do great things with nary a thought about where it will leave them. (link)

Richard Scarry was right: it takes all kinds, and by contributing our respective expertise, we create a utopian whole (which liberals romanticize as cooperation and which conservatives theorize as competition - a false dichotomy that was the "original sin" of political theory). (link)

The opposite of being a discriminated-against minority isn't becoming an empowered minority, it's pluralism. Boring old pluralism. The reason gay rights have transformed with such miraculous speed is that this is exactly the tack they took. "We just want to love who we love, like any American." Not 'a gay thing', just an American thing. The message was delivered by boring, well-dressed, reasonable people, not dudes defiantly flaunting their nipple clamps. (link)

Why on earth would I want a female presidency, or a Jewish presidency? Administrations aren't like novelty flavors of KitKat bars. I don't want some glorious rainbow, I want smart governance. (link)

I've never met anyone who's consistently lived with integrity and who regrets it. (link)

The miracle of human beings is that we're finite - i.e. limited - in every respect, yet we're capable of infinite love, infinite creativity, infinite joy, and infinite wisdom within those limitations. (link)

The really good stuff arrives via epiphany, eureka, and inspiration - "out of nowhere" and hard to claim credit for. (link)

I never understood how anyone could experience transcendent greatness and not want to devote their lives to it. (link)

If you love transcendence, you've got to cherish the obstacles which spur it; the necessity which mothers the invention. (link)

Anxiety is the bain of deep-carers. (link)

The care, the love, the discipline and thoughtfulness we invest in our most prosaic actions changes absolutely everything. That's how the future is perpetually created. (link)

If you simply sweat the small stuff, sans self-consciousness or aspiration (just "because!"), angels will sing. (link)

While the present day feels like a new corporate era - one where a CFO might play bass in a punk band and vote Democrat, and the encubicled set deems themselves cool and creative - make no mistake about it: corporate attitude remains 1956ishly square. Deep-down, these guys are all still crewcuts-and-tie-clips. (link)

Just because people keep proposing really bad solutions doesn't mean there isn't a problem! (link)

Quality oughtn't be a side effect. (link)

You have no idea how disorienting it is to spend your life plying an art form that's so extraordinarily marginalized - even ridiculed - when that same art form is the unanimous commercial choice for setting a tone of hip urbanity. (link)

Racism, sexism, classism, etc. are nothing more than the incomplete registration of a perfectly appropriate misanthropy. (link)

As a member of five or six minority groups, myself, I find myself cringing whenever I see groups to which I belong depicted or discussed with anxious care and glossy patina. What awful thing, after all, are they so carefully dancing around?!?"(link)

If you've got a zit on the tip of your nose, all injustice appears to stem from that. (link)

I no longer plug mishaps into my narrative of woe. And without that, it's all just stuff happening. (link)

Qualities such as kindness, intelligence, generosity, and a sense of humor are of service to others. Beauty, by contrast, serves only its possessor. (link)

I like to be told that I'm being an idiot. This helps me be less of an idiot. By contrast, most people recoil quite strongly from acknowledging to themselves any idiocy in their thought or behavior. They'd much rather be idiots than feel like idiots. (link)

Nationalism is always a noble-seeming mask for xenophobia. Show me someone who loves "Us", and I'll show you someone who hates "Them". (link)

History always unfolds via a succession of immoderately reactive pendulum swings. Will we human beings ever learn to react to extremism with enlightened moderation rather than with reciprocal extremism? (link and another)

Scientists say it's very difficult to learn new skills after one's mid-twenties. I think they're slicing that wrong. What happens is that it becomes very difficult to imagine (and to tolerate) change as one's self-image solidifies. And learning is change. (link)

America is so rich that we mistake mere discomfort for bona fide poverty. (link)

Anyone in the first world yearning to get rich is really just dreaming of getting richer. (link)

Better to be a hapless shmuck who occasionally surprises than to be a hero who inevitably disappoints. (link)

Hell is a place human beings voluntarily condemn themselves to. (link)

The real secret is not to learn to get what you want. It's to learn to want what you get. link

The Hardest Ask

The problem with wisdom is that, if it doesn't completely confuse us (because we've been looking the other way for so long that a fresh framing leaves us as overwhelmed as newborn babies), it feels so natural—so tuned to body temperature—that we're not at all stricken. It digests so easily that we needn't chew or swallow. It merely metabolizes, vanishing without a trace.

I know a person who has remained a sulky, superior, utterly non-productive adolescent for nearly 70 years. Risking her snarling wrath, I once spoke the words she most needed to hear. They were her missing chunk, like oranges to a scurvied sailor; like a simple key to a seemingly intransigent lock. It's a maxim I've repeated here several times:

Registering stupidity doesn't make you smart; it just means you're observant.

Her reply was "Yeah, of course."

And...cut! Oranges: flippantly tossed overboard. Key: melted in the heat of the lock. Tableau: untouched. The answer blew in the wind, but who clocks a light breeze?

That self-vanishing snippet of breezy nothingness (along with its equally disposable corollaries, below) may be key insights for averting the clash we all feel coming, but I already know the response: "Yeah, of course."

Yet let's continue. Here are the corollaries:

Registering evil doesn't make you good.

Registering authoritarianism doesn't make you democratic

Spotting immorality doesn't make you virtuous.

The hardest ask in all creation is for narcissists to examine themselves first.

Our ancestors toiled and bled to push us, their spoiled children, into a paradise of wealth and comfort, never seeing that a society of narcissistic aristocrats will inherently be doomed.

Addendum

I've added a new closer to yesterday's posting, "Pancakes; Divorce; Pancakes".

Pancakes; Divorce; Pancakes

I once wrote about the clear-headed, peaceful state yogis call satchitananda, often translated as "equanimity", though I prefer "bulletproof". It's a state of undisturbable and ineffable peace, non-reactive yet empathically engaged, and utterly tolerant even upon choosing to argue. Lots of paradoxes make it notoriously slippery to describe, but, again, "bulletproof" gives the right idea. And I'd like to offer some thoroughly enjoyable homework for those curious for better understanding.

Watch "Pancakes; Divorce; Pancakes", season 1, episode 3 of "Review", available on Amazon for $2.99.

Reality TV host Forest MacNeil is challenged to eat "an upsetting number of pancakes" (like a dozen), and he barely accomplishes it with histrionic displeasure. Then he proceeds to ruin his marriage for the stupidest reasons. And then, as the third act of his busy day, he's challenged to eat 30 additional pancakes...and does so post-haste and without complaint, in a state of numbly crestfallen indifference.

You really need to watch it. Not only is it entirely hilarious, but the ancient saintly authors of the Hindu Vedas would have tossed flower petals at creator Andy Daley's feet. Watch it, enjoy the hell out of it, and then ponder the power of framing.

Satchitananda is like the high indifference of Forest's third act, but without the needless overlay of disgust, negativity, and numbness. Indifference need not be negative. One can poselessly eat the damned pancakes, in one's raw state with nothing left to lose, but (this is the essential part!!!) without making it dramatic just because drama's the normal move.

Indifference sans drama is freedom. Blissful (yes, blissful) stresslessness. Days that should feel horrible are still nice days. Emotions happen—you don't numb yourself—but there's no suffering. You're bulletproof.

This isn't repression, denial, or dissociation. Those things inevitably generate even more stress. We're talking about real happiness—the stuff we find innumerable clever ways to suppress. We're talking about Forest MacNeil's third act but without the gratuitous self-torment.

"Freedom" is a state of infinite potential, which feels exactly like "having nothing left to lose." It's easy enough to get there. In fact, you've surely been there! But you need to decline the conditioned reflex to find it lacking, or infuriating, or devastating. That's an effortless opt-out, but you need to remember to do it, and remembering is as common as quintuplets all winning the lottery.

It took me years to settle into recognizing the necessity of this laughably easy step. But now, as I presently deal with profound loss, and am sad and shakey, I'm not suffering. Rather than hunker down into self-care, I've hastened (yesterday and today) to my keyboard to channel the wrenching into an attempt to be helpful. Not as some noble aspiration; just a frame of mind. Satchitananda compels helping rather than bewailing. One's settings toggle to "useful ingenuity", rather than "dramatic performance".


Addendum:

Some people are hell-bent on descent because they innately sense the liberation that comes with having, again, NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE. The problem is that they don't know quite what to do with it, so they spin it into drama. They don't know to opt out of that part.

What can you do with freedom? Anything. I mean it literally when I say that freedom means infinite potential—even while buck naked and penniless. You can even eat 30 pancakes, no problem.


I made the same point, much more tersely, here (and this is a helpful offshoot). Numbly, glaringly giving up is kissing cousin to blissful spiritual transformation. You merely have to decline the numbness and glaring—and it's a surprisingly easy opt-out, if you can just remember. The ease of it is perhaps the single biggest and most ironic surprise in the entire human experience for the handful per generation who are sufficiently playfully nonconformist under enormous pressure to try it. But you don't need those unicorn attributes, because you've just been handed the secret on a platter. And you can remember more easily because you've just been reminded.

Lifebuilding

Someone in my circle has been swallowed by the fate I’m about to warn you about. Perhaps my harshly-awakened perspective might help a reader or two escape the trap. Urgent work is required. Clocks are ticking.


Hardly anyone plans for old age in non-financial ways. We count on momentum, supposing our 70s will be like our 60s, only slower. Loving spouse, dear friends, and adoring children will encircle us, like in a movie, and we'll venture forward as the culmination of a lifetime of general effort.

But that's cinematic baloney. It never works out that way. You may be forced to move. Your spouse might leave you, or get sick, or die. Such dark exigencies seem too horrid to contemplate, but that's the point! We avoid level-headed calculation, resorting to pipe dreams about momentum pulling us through old age. It's the height of foolish complacency.

When has life ever gone exactly as it did in your cinematic mental projection? How could you possibly think complacency would be a smart strategy on this planet?

Movie moments don't last, and you've had a lifetime to notice this and to plan accordingly. We're relentlessly and violently pushed toward that realization. Youth and middle age are brutal training grounds. At some point, we're supposed to stop engaging in childish dreamy fantasy and get real.

When things fall apart in our 20s or 30s or 40s or 50s—as they do with frequency—we have the energy, flexibility, and initiative to regroup and pursue new directions. But that's much harder when you're older. And by late middle age we should see that coming and finally internalize the boy scout credo about being prepared. If your "preparation" consists of imagining yourself sailing on easy momentum, a healthy IRA, and an upbeat attitude, you'll have doomed yourself to misery.

But it will not be the misery you imagine. I don't mean the moment of frozen horror when the bottom drops out. Hell, that's the easy part! The real problem is the day after fragile plans are dashed. And the day after that. And thousands more empty days, still here, with dwindling energy and diminishing options.

That's what you need to avoid, with all your might.

Don't rely on fragility.

Build solid footing for yourself. Internal solid footing!

If you don't, you'll have decades to rue your failure to conjure raisons d'être. You will back-load via regret what should have been front-loaded via careful planning. And, chillingly, I don't know a single person who's doing—or done—any such prep work.

Let's build the list. You need pursuits that bring satisfaction, and more than one, because if it's bird watching, you're screwed when you lose your vision, and if it's sports, you're screwed when you develop arthritis, and if it's joking around with your longtime buddy, you're screwed when he moves or gets sick or dies—or merely decides he doesn't like you anymore. You need multiple outlets and avenues and contacts. You need richness, and that's on you to accumulate over the long decades. That's what that lifetime was for!

And it all must be real, not just propositional. We can all produce lists of pseudo-hobbies, pseudo-passions, and pseudo-friends, but often they're placeholders. The karaoke machine you rarely set up but have wonderful memories of using once or twice will not cut it. You ought to have been building an actual life all this time.

You might have imagined family would be your grounding center, but if you really expected grown children to be constant presences, investing your day-to-day life with energy and meaning, you've contrived a movie moment, not a life.

You need friends...at least if you're not a serious introvert (in which case you'll have even greater need of things that bring you satisfaction, as well as backups). If you reach age 70 without everyday friends, you'd better have backup plans to your backup plans, because your friend-making muscles will have atrophied, and old people are not easily befriended.

Another addition to your to-build list: the ability to reframe. You can develop a facility for shifting perspective, making your mind an interesting and useful place rather than a torture chamber once things turn quiet and you find yourself marinating in your thoughts. This is more advanced than building social networks and interest palettes, but the return on investment is enormous.

YOU NEED A LIFE, and will no longer have busyness, buzzing alarms, and due dates to hide behind. No one will provide you with a life, nor can you buy one. You and you alone are responsible for building a life full of rich options and fallbacks and friends and outlets and perspectives. You had decades to do so, but, wherever you're at, you can start RIGHT NOW! Today!

Very few people seem to enter old age with A Life. They've merely navigated the obstacle course, ticking off to-dos and acquiring abstract rewards. It all feels like you're building momentum, but if you've built upon fragility with mere abstract notions, so it's all propositional, you'll have many years to bitterly recognize your failure. I know one such person who, being an introvert, was reasonably ok sitting in a chair in an empty silent room for twenty years. But I know another who, alas, was not.

Get going like your life depends on it. For further inspiration, this Slog has spent 17 years essentially gaming it all out. It's full of encouragement and perspectives on building an inner life and a lithe re-framing faculty.


Addenda:

1. Here's an example. Say your mom dies in your 60s (which is typical) and she was your confidant (reasonably typical). A few years later, your husband develops Alzheimer's (not uncommon). You flail for support, but you've neglected to build any. Your children love you, but, unlike the Hallmark ads, they're not perpetually right there with you, because they have busy lives, themselves. You never bothered to make close friends, you never had real hobbies or passions, and, in your perennially busy and numbly distracted younger years, you never learned to pliantly shift perspective. Unable to choose your own framings, you must passively accept how it's all been placed by circumstance. So you're looking down the barrel at 10 or 20 years as a wraith in a silent house where the phone rings once or twice per week. You recognize that you failed to build an inner life for yourself, and are too fraught and aggrieved to imaginably start doing so at this late date.

I'm truly sorry to foist you so viscerally into this frightful scenario. But the tough love is well-intended. I want you to avoid this.

2. The "momentum" I'm talking about—the false notion that your long track record of busyness and asset acquisition and networking will compile into a solidity you can hold onto and live off of in later quiet moments—is identical to what I described—prophetically last week—as the horribly wrong notion that being the irrepressible "Aunt Marge" in some narrow setting spares you from needing to ever be just plain Marge for a world at large—and for yourself.

3. I will never understand why people think immortality would be a good thing. I suppose that would be the hail mary play for a race of people who cannot, for the life of them, stop kicking cans down the road. Homes will get infinitely large to store our garbagey bullshit, and lifespans will get infinitely long to provide more time to finally get around to really living.

Why Aunt Marge Can't Be Just Marge

Aunt Marge has lost a step or two, but that's fine. Everyone loves her, and we're just so glad she's still here with us!

But here's what you don't know.

Assuming Aunt Marge isn't demented or wholly incompetent...

And she just gets a little feisty when things don't quite go her way...

And drops sullenly out of conversations...

And is stuck in her ways due to a comfort zone the size of a cherry pit...

And speaks her salty mind a bit, heh, forthrightly...

...the unrecognized truth is that none of this is inevitable.

Aunt Marge isn't helplessly dragged into this behavior by advancing age. You might not want to hear this, but she's doing it because she can get away with it. We celebrate Aunt Marge for simply being Aunt Marge, and she spends extravagantly from that immense credit. Older people grow lazy because we let them get away with it, respecting them—or, at least, the proposition of them—regardless.

You'd do the same if those around you celebrated the mere idea of you without expecting you to prove yourself. If you could get away without earning the attention you expect from others, you'd stop making the effort, too. Not trying feels like a vacation!

But then, what the hell am I supposed to do?

Just as young people wind up at the kid's table, people my age find themselves bundled with the Olds. And it has puzzled me profoundly that they have so little to offer. I don't ask much—and I'm not relentlessly judging—but very few people over age 60 seem the least bit interesting, smart, funny, kind, generous, or even just pleasant to be around. I have better conversations with my rhododendron! And I'm not talking about decrepits. I mean people as strong as bulls who talk a blue streak—but have nothing to offer. Nada. Zip. It's so strange.

It's notoriously hard for old people to make new friends. We chalk it up to age discrimination or general "marginalization". But, no, that's not it. It's because Aunt Marge is so used to coasting on being Aunt Marge that she has no idea how to be just Marge. And there's no self-awareness, just confusion, leaving her feeling oddly entitled to engagement, friendship, and eager ears for her low-effort blandness.

Nothing is offered and everything is expected when you imagine you're seen as That Person, obliviously coasting on canned personhood. But the magic doesn't work with newcomers, and it's been a long time since you earned your way. Or made the slightest effort to be interesting or pleasant. Or, really, anything.

So I keep finding myself saddled with Just-Plain-Marges who expect to seem compelling because they're That Irrepressible Person. But, outside one's musty, established circles, effort is necessary. Rise from complacency, constrain stridency, and try to follow conversational context (i.e. don't just blurt out the stuff you usually say)!

Uh-uh. I've rarely met a senior the least bit interested in pulling off that baseline trifecta of everyday solicitude. And, dear God, I hope I'm not obliviously falling into the same trap.


Why do seniors repeat the same stories endlessly? It's not memory loss. It's that they feel entitled to inflict this on you if they bloody well feel like it. It's so much nastier and more callous and self-indulgent than you'd ever imagined. The truth is an absolute horror.

All posts tagged "Aging", in reverse-chronological order.

Fixing a Bad Back

This is part of a series of postings on self-healing, which you can access via the "Self-Healing" tag which appears in the Slog’s left margin below "Popular Entries".


After twenty years of very avid work, I've developed a remarkably easy fix for a bad back.

It's mostly preventative. It might help during a flare-up, or might not. But if you'll practice it once or twice daily (it takes about 10 seconds), it can help inoculate you from the problem.

Let's talk about The Problem. In my case—and, I'm told, most people's cases—the issue is an asymmetry, aka pelvic torsion, which temporarily causes one leg to extend further than the other. It doesn't show up on MRIs or x-rays, and orthopedists don't have it on their radar. It's the "x factor" behind many mysterious back problems, and conditions like sciatica are often "downstream" from this, so it might help there, too.

Physical therapists and good massage therapists know about this issue, and can offer temporary help. But there's no cure for it beyond their ongoing involvement. Until now.

The Technique
Lie down on top of a foam yoga block laid flat and rotated like a "|", not a "——". It should extend from your sacrum to support the buttocks.

Gently shift your hips left and right over the block about ten times. It's fine if they shift off the block at the extreme of movement, but your feet and chest should stay relatively still. You may hear or feel a "pop" as the structures realign, and it shouldn't hurt.

If I don't do this twice daily, I'm vulnerable. A heavy lift or sudden turn can trigger crippling back pain. But if I keep up the practice, I'm golden.

Add-Ons
1. Try a forward bend first.

This helps prepare the area for adjustment. If your hamstrings are tight, stretch forward over a bed, arms extended forward onto the mattress. Try to relax your abdomen, which will probably be tensed. That may help you descend further, but depth doesn't matter. Just give yourself a good stretch.

2. Heat Helps

A heating pad, hot bath, or even a warm shower will help loosen the lower back and buttocks so realignment happens more easily.

3. Ungrip Your Glutes

Tight glutes resist realignment. A tennis ball can help. Set one on the floor and sit on it—cross legged or with legs extended—avoiding the dead center of your hip socket. Gently work the ball to and fro, paying extra attention to tight spots, gradually tracing a circle around that midpoint. Then repeat with a wider circle, and then work the other buttock, and then try the yoga block again.

Done right, this should take about 15 minutes, and you may need to repeat it once/day until the area permanently relaxes. From that point, you'll only need occasional maintenance.

Caveats
I've done yoga for 45 years.

This may not work as well for you right away. But the motion is gentle, the effort is minimal, and it takes just 10 seconds. So long as you follow caveat #2, it's certainly worth a try.

Consult a professional.

If you’ve had spinal surgery, structural abnormalities, or conditions like degeneration or stenosis, you should be under medical care already—and you should definitely ask first.

If you just have a "bad back", this may work well for you. It has limited usefulness during an acute flare-up, though. Try it if you want, but you may get better results by seeing a good massage therapist or physical therapist, and then try this once you're feeling better.

Eddie Palmieri

The great Eddie Palmieri, one of my musical heroes and a formative superstar of Latin Jazz/Salsa/Whatever You Want to Call it, died yesterday.

I'll offer two stories:

Fumigation
I'm at the bar of Blue Note nightclub in Manhattan, circa 1987. I'm an insider there because I play almost nightly at the late after show with trumpeter Ted Curson. Michel Camillo, the latest big-publicity jazz star, is in residence, and he's busily and smilingly outgassing the smoothest and show-off-iest latin-ish jazz imaginable. A friend of mine refers to this style of playing as "Show You My White Teeth Music". The tourists are eating it up, but we musicians at the bar, seeking any possible relief, begin drinking with determination.

The set ends, thunderous ovation, and we eagerly await the second half of the show, featuring Eddie Palmieri's Orchestra. It's a bit like Sandra Bernhardt following Jennifer Lopez. Eddie was not dentally impressive, and his music did not drip with showy glissandi. No smug rich guy suntanned sambas. Eddie was the apotheosis of soulful grit. Eddie was antimatter to Camillo.

The mangy musicians from Eddie's group finally took the stage, tuned, and sat placidly waiting for the drugs to wax or wane, per individual preference. Then Eddie came out, and, as he often did, launched into an extended solo piano intro. Eddie can get quite "out", making Thelonious Monk seem songful by comparison. He always had the soul of an avante gardist, though, unlike just about every avante gardist I know (and I knew many), he could also swing his ass off. But on this night, he played 20 minutes of impenetrable, maddening solo stuff, giving the tourists nothing to hang their ears on. Nada. On and on it went, featuring repeated piddly hammerings on the highest piano key, making the dressing room cat mew loudly in consternation. A number of audience members walked out, though no one in the band could give less of a crap. They just sat there mopily with misaligned pupils, waiting.

Finally—FINALLY—Eddie stands up (adding maybe four inches to his seated height) and screams "ONE TWO THREE FOUR!!!!" fast, and the band just roars into a montuno from a dead standing start that's so instantly swinging and wailing and exasperated (by Camillo) that the entire room forgets to breathe for a solid minute. Whatever it is that metal heads get from having their ears blown out by garish rednecks and their overclocked guitar amps, this was the platonic form of that. This was the mythical Wall of Sound.

The interminable solo had been fumigation. And then the heavy roller machine had gone into overdrive, laying down fresh, inexorable pavement. I actually teared up a little from the emotional release. If only orgasms offered such catharsis!

Dominican Humiliation
My one gig with Eddie was a catastrophe (more for him than for me). We were playing in a brand new Dominican nightclub in Washington Heights, and while you might imagine The Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico as geographic and cultural twins, their musics are like oil and water.

Dominicans dance to merengue, an easy 1-2, 1-2, 1-2 like polka. It's fast and furious and sexy and exciting, but not the least bit sophisticated. Puerto Rican salsa (which derives from Cuba, and, before that, Africa) can be furious, sexy and exciting at times, but it abounds with sophistication and subtlety.

Those not born into it (or made it their lifelong study, as I did) wouldn't be able to even clap their hands to it. Imagine that! Popular music—dance music!—you can't clap your hands to! It's not 1-2, 1-2, 1-2. Instead, it's two short claps and three long. Or three long and two short. And even knowing which is which is a move for insiders only. The difference with Dominican merengue was yet another matter/anti-matter contrast.

So I'm gigging with the greatest salsa band in the world, hideously misplaced in a Dominican nightclub (hey, a gig's a gig, you know? It's not like Eddie's manager would ever say "no"!) and no one is dancing, or applauding, because this crazy Puerto Rican stuff is happening which none of the Dominicans can parse. It's like trying to play a Windows game on a Mac. One of the greatest moments of my life is an abject humiliation for all concerned.

There had, however, been a high point the week before. The rehearsal for this gig marked the first appearance of the young conga player Giovanni Hidalgo, who'd arrived with a reputation as a genius. As he and I both warmed up across the room from each other, separated by over a dozen other honking horn players, his complicated hand slaps suddenly and improbably began to encompass my warm-up. Not that he was tuning in to me, specifically, getting all up in my stuff. it's just that he was a Big Ears Guy, never not listening to—and never not encompassing—Everything. I was the same (most players wouldn't have noticed they were being encompassed). When I engaged back, it was like Fred Astaire cocking an elbow at Ginger Rogers. He complied instantaneously and sumptuously. Beautifully. The back/forth continued for a couple minutes until Eddie hollered to start the rehearsal. Giovanni went on to become a major star, and we'll leave it at that because his story became too sad to contemplate. Best damn warm-up I ever had, though.

Back to the Dominican club, it's intermission and I'm standing in a stairwell, playing long tones to keep myself in optimal condition, when Eddie walks by and offers me a hit off his joint. I refuse with a smile, saying I need to keep my head straight on my first gig. Eddie shrugs amiably and walks away. God, I'm an idiot.

Rest in Peace, Eddie.


Are you noticing a pattern?