Cleopatra’s Pink Slip

I haven't exactly been a soaring addition to the Portuguese jazz scene. In fact, I haven't played a note outside my apartment. The best players in the country - themselves only barely okay - assure me that there's no musical interest here, an hour from Lisbon.

And how! The live music (besides fado, the hyperdramatic singing tradition which is its own thing) has been muddier than the local espresso.

But wandering around my town's center this week, I heard a guitarist struggling through a Charlie Parker song, accompanied by a play-along record. And for some reason I clicked into form, like a punchy old boxer hearing a ringing bell.

It took me a moment to locate him in an imposing nineteenth century building, which turned out to be the Musician Society. I snuck into the impressive interior, entered the salon, and effortlessly slipped behind a piano to accompany him. I was, at least, sparing him from the karaoke approach - the last resort of musicians with no one to play with.

I play professional level jazz piano. Not good professional, or top professional, like my trombone playing, but reasonably solid by New York standards, which is needle-busting for small-town Portugal (imagine a Broadway actor swapped into your kid's middle school play). In my milieu I'm merely okay, so that's how I frame myself. But everything's relative.

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.

I was not terribly disappointed by the sudden end to our brief collaboration, but considering it from his perspective, it was like Cleopatra materializing in the bedroom of a frantic masturbator, and having him tell her, as she peeled off her clothes, “Not now, I’m busy.”

This happens a lot, in different realms, though polite courtesy isn't the norm. But I'm okay with it. I view the world with blithe amusement and low expectation, immune from the entitlement epidemic. Enjoy a brief montage of typically surreal experiences:

Two food obsessed guys at my gym were weighing local dining options, and I piped up, shyly, to ask if they'd heard of Chowhound. They replied, with suspicion, in the affirmative, so I introduced myself and offered tips. Without a word, they moved to treadmills at the far corner of the gym.

Upon moving to small town Connecticut, immediately after leaving CNET, I introduced myself to a neighbor, explaining that I'd founded a nationally-known web site. He told me how his nephew, Petey, had a web site selling lawnmowers he'd refurbished, and that, if I'd like, he could put me in touch, so Petey could offer me some wisdom.

There are loads more. Back at the dawn of this Slog, I wrote a posting titled "Kafkaesque", recounting other bizarre tales. It's amusing. Check it out.

A major breakthrough finally occurred some years ago when someone posted a plea for help to a general interest forum where I participated under alias. They wanted advice on launching an online community to cover a specific topic, hoping to attract a particularly expert and passionate usership. My previous replies there had seemed smart to me, but rarely rated a thumbs-up. Mostly just contemptuous snark. But for this, I was uniquely qualified. So I dove in, whipping up 500 words of pure distilled hard-won Truth…which drew nary a thumbs up (there was, however, an errant "go fuck yourself").

This time seemed different. It was a unique circumstance where I could be 100% certain the problem wasn't on my end, being pretty much The Guy for this particular query. I've always suspected that I might be far less clever than I sometimes dare to imagine, but this time my confidence was bulletproof despite having drawn the usual result.

I finally allowed myself to acknowledge the gaslighting, and to muse about how I'd been operating under a "curse" of some sort. I've written several postings trying to account for it, finally explaining it as a hairball of edge-case factors, though I've been unsure of what to do about it.

None of this depresses me. I'm pliable; comfortable being reduced to vapor in anyone's esteem. I don't need to be recognized, much less appreciated, let alone respected. As a karma yogi, I'm fully invested in what I do, not who I am. I used to live on the flip side of that, and, believe me, the weather here is much much better (in Sanskrit, it's called satchitananda).

The Curse makes it hard to feel useful - a conundrum for someone with an irrepressible helpful streak. I've resolved it by realizing that no one actually needs help. It's all aristocrats amusing themselves with theatrical exasperation over Rich People Problems, and the last thing anyone wants is for some janitor to turn up the glaring house lights, spoiling the fun. So, really, it's all going smashingly. And here I am in Portugal eagerly scarfing my nth lovely plate of codfish. Plan A! 

Plan B (let's call it the "Jim Leff project") never happened, despite decades of straining to make it happen, and then coming to grips that it would never happen, and then accounting for why it never happened...and why it's perfectly okay that it never happened. All that meta work was a ridiculous Plan C, leading nowhere, so I've completely stopped Jim Leffing and embraced the cod.


See also "Seemers Always Win: Posing as Someone Like You"