of one of the phrases in a book I published
in the spring called "Get Real: a tough love
guide to the gentle art of working with others"....
When my Muse and I first started sparking, we lived in a couple of huge rooms in a warehouse. These weren't lofts - just huge rooms with high ceilings, ancient wiring and a warehouse bathroom shared with our neighbours - a cover band, a photographer, a painter from Transylvania around our age - and a young poet/producer/printer who my muse adopted for a time. Let's call him John.
John was passionate, provocative and energetic in the way one can be with only a few decades under one's belt. He was literate in prose, poetry, design and music, and yet strangely naive about life day to day. In short, exactly the kind of person any sub-cultural scene needs to catch a fire, and when it does, will be among the first to get burned.
He was, and is, a good man. Depending on the day's blood sugar levels, rate of hydration, ingestion of stimulants and/or depressants, phase of the moon and all those other little things that make us who we are, he could be a delightful companion or an incredible pain in the ass. Like all of us, he had some ideas that were good and some that weren't so good... all of which he would expound upon at the drop of a hat and which he would defend with all the fury momma grizzlies display in protecting their cubs.
As I came to know him better, I noticed a pattern in John's life that troubled me. Every few months, at some bar or art opening or wherever, he would get into a discussion with a fellow poet or other bohemian about whatever that would escalate into a fight. Not yelling, not pushing and shoving, but an honest to god punch-your-head-in-man, fight club kind of a fight.
These he would inevitably lose, and the next day he would turn up looking like a poster boy for victim's rights. Though in obvious pain, he would be completely unrepentant and just as certain he'd been right about whatever, as he would be a few months later when it happened again.
It was difficult enough to watch this happen, but to be honest it was his need to share the play by play of these bizarre events that really set me to thinking of how I could possibly disrupt this pattern in his life. I had just started writing a few short thinking points in an effort to change some of my own behaviours and they seemed to be helping, so I sat down and tried to think of one for John.
"Practice this simple phrase: 'You know, you could be right about that'" is what I came up with, and passed along to him...
I don't know if it was these words in particular, or in combination with improved eating habits or what... but he did start coming home less beat up and ergo, fewer 'got beat last night' monologues. I don't know if he even remembers these words anymore, but I do know that it caught on pretty quickly between my Muse and I.
We still say it now, years away from that warehouse and John. We use it entre nous, and out in the world. Where one might once have been an enabling co-escalator in a discussion, or tempted to act out some drama moment over some tiny thing, it can sometimes get us both to step back to a wide shot and see that tiny thing in the context of how much we agree on...
And yes, on some level, it absolutely is a "Duh moment", but in my experience, that's no warranty against forgetting, and saying or doing something that will pain you later.
Just an idea..
-30-
