You're wrong about me (and I'm right about you), part 6: Ah, the French! (Ah, the Brits!)

We have a guest blogger today: John, a Brit living in France who’s an expert on Brazilian music. His story is about assumptions,  perceptions, and convictions—and how they all lead you to being WRONG. Enjoy!

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I am in the midst of a community perceptual spectacle along the lines of your topic.

The building in Roubaix, where I am 5 days a week at Le Day Job, formerly housed on its 2nd floor a branch of Trésorier Publique, the public-treasury office that handles tax returns. They moved out in January, taking everything, including the door handles. They put a sign up indicating the move and took their own sign down. However, now not even the "We have moved" sign remains.

Not a morning goes by without someone in my company (or our neighbours) having to explain as calmly as possible to someone or other that the Treasury office is no longer here. Some of these people are so convinced that it is here (after years of knowing it really was here) that the "It's moved" possibility is not the first thing in their minds. The 2nd floor is totally empty and dark (they even took the light bulbs), there is no door handle or any indication that anyone has touched the place for close to a year... yet it is not uncommon to find people on the staircase who want to know at what time "we" open, since no one is there yet. No sign, no furniture, no lights, yet... the treasury must be here, as here is where it has always been! Sometimes their confusion is alleviated when you point to the envelope invariably clenched in their hands, with the new address of the public treasury printed neatly in the upper left corner.

But sometimes not. "Yes, but I am looking for the place to pay my taxes..." (“Well, sir, if you are making a cash payment I will see what can be arranged….”)

I make a game with myself, seeing if I can guess who is in the building, or approaching it, in order to make use of its former fiscal functionality. I count the points. Two days ago, not wanting to abandon my ipod in mid-song, I preemptively told a lady about to embark on the staircase that the public treasury was no longer here. I couldn't hear her response too well. She might even have been going to the dentist on the 5th floor... but sometimes, you just know.

Before you start thinking that I’m right all the time and enjoy rubbing it in, here’s another story. Yesterday I went to say goodbye to my mother at the station. I had even bought her train tickets for her, so I had already seen all the dates and hours. I panicked for most of the afternoon, realising I had told her to take a Eurostar that didn't exist at the appointed time, asking the check-in helpers to see if they could look up what time her train to London really was (had she left already? had she missed her train and panicked herself? was she on a later Eurostar?); I ran all over Lille looking for her and cursing my absent mindedness, why had I got the time of her train wrong??? I later realised to my horror that her train was not to London, but to Paris (and from Paris to the Eurostar). So I had doubly confused her: sending her not only at the wrong time but to the wrong station!

There is a tangible taste to this "inversion of the world" when we miss a set of circumstances that is not only possible, but probable, or indeed actual; it is disconcerting. Luckily, wise woman that she is, she got all of her trains, no problem. I am still feeling disoriented!

You're wrong about me (and I'm right about you), part 5: Seven Pointers

In this recent series of blog entries you’ve been finding out how easy it is to be wrong in assumptions, convictions, and perceptions. What can you do about it?

1. Give yourself little reminders of how you’ve been wrong in the past, better to soften your certitudes in the present. The Gauguin object that brought me around took on an iconic role: it became the embodiment of my misperception, and as such it held sway over me, made me a little more open-minded, invited me to approach things and people without an overly passionate or dismissive attitude. The syrup of prevention is better than the surgery of cure, or words to that effect!
   
2. Once you discover you've been wrong about something or someone, acknowledge your mistake, to yourself and to the public. I don’t mean quite to the whole world, only to the parties concerned: your wife, a friend, a shopkeeper with whom you picked a fight over a nickel. Acknowledgment frees your conscience and wins you a lot of good will.
   
3. Make amends. There have been many situations in which I became retroactively aware of being in the wrong with someone. I approach the person in question and offer him or her a small gift. I often choose to give a copy of my iconic Gauguin book, telling the gift recipient of how Gauguin had taught me a lesson or two about  being wrong. Books, cards, stationery, candy, flowers, CDs, DVDs, small objects, a bottle of olive oil... the possibilities are endless.
4. You’ve been wrong and you’ll be wrong again. Given that you can never be totally sure of a great many things, it may be useful to develop the mental habit of inserting a little doubt into your verbal interactions. Spice up your conversations with one of these formulations: " I may be wrong, but it seems to me that…" "As far as I can tell, I think that…" "I’ve been wrong in the past and I’ll be wrong again. Nevertheless, here’s what I think about this…" "I may be missing something here, but if I understand it right you’re saying that…" "I’m not sure about this, but let me say it anyway. I may need to retract it before long."
   
5. If you catch yourself engaging in fixed patterns of thought and speech, stop your statement in mid-flight and park it back at the hangar.
6. My wife sweetly allowed me to stay wrong about Gauguin for years, until I came around to the truth when I was good and ripe for it. You may be absolutely sure that someone close to you is terribly wrong about something. Well… you may need to give the person in question minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, or years to let go of his or her wrong opinion. Remember: facts don’t stand a chance against convictions.
7. To be wrong and learn from it is better than to be right and not learn a thing.

I have every intention of revisiting this subject in the near future. For instance, I'd like to tell you about the Brazilian who didn't believe I was Brazilian regardless of what I said or did. I'd like to tell you about all my ex-friends, the objectionable men and women whom I misjudged for much too long. I'd like to tell you about my ex-stepmother, who so liked picking fights she'd disagree with herself if you agreed with her. But I won't tell you any of these gossipy delights until at least THREE OF YOU READERS write in with stories of your own about being wrong. Capisce?

You’re wrong about me (but I’m right about you), part 4: Perceptions

Many years ago, during one of my summer visits to my family in Brazil, I went to visit my ailing, housebound grandmother. I took the bus to her neighborhood and walked from the bus stop to her apartment building. Way down the block I spotted my father, walking toward me.

Dad wasn’t very tall—about 5-foot-4, I’d say. His large skull was totally bald on top and scraggly on the sides. On this occasion was dressed in the garb he wore daily to his job teaching at the university hospital: grey trousers, white shirt, brown cardigan. His walk was endearing, somewhat ridiculous, and absolutely individual. He took fast, small steps, always looking down at his feet, lost to his inner world, thinking and thinking—that was his thing, thinking.

As he walked toward me, he ate popcorn out of a paper bag. In Brazil you can buy fresh popcorn from street carts, much as you can buy pretzels in New York or crêpes in Paris. I come from a family of popcorn fanatics. We eat a lot of it, we eat it often, and we eat it in public as well as in private.

Dad was so absorbed in his popcorn and his inner world that he didn’t see me walking toward him. I decided to play a joke on him. We got nearer and nearer to each other, and right when he were side by side I put my mouth practically in his ear and asked, “You enjoying your popcorn?”

Dad was totally freaked out, of course. He looked up at me with alarm in his eyes. It’s not every day that a total stranger invades your inner world for no good reason.

For a microsecond I was proud of my joke. Then it was my turn to freak out. The guy wasn’t my father at all! He happened to look like my father, dress like my father, walk like my father, and eat popcorn like my father. And he happened to be at my grandmother’s neighborhood, as my father was likely to be two or three times a week. But—he wasn’t my father.

I have no idea who that guy was or how he reacted to my assault, because I didn’t hang around to find out. When I realized I had made a mistake, I sped away without looking back. I rushed to grandma’s and sat at her feet for an hour, pretending that I was the angel she had long thought I was. Why spoil her illusions? That’d have been quite selfish of me.

The moral of the story is, “You can’t ever be totally sure of anything. It doesn’t matter how much evidence you have in your favor, you still risk being wrong. Everyone in this world has been wrong and will continue to be wrong from time to time, or often, or even always. DO NOT COUNT ON YOUR PERCEPTIONS AND SUPPOSITIONS ALONE TO NAVIGATE THE WORLD! USE YOUR DISCERNMENT TOO! AND THINK TWICE BEFORE PLAYING A JOKE ON YOUR FATHER!”

You're wrong about me (and I'm right about you), part 3: Convictions

I can date the onset of my interest in art to a precise date: the opening of the Museu de Arte de São Paulo in November, 1968, when I was 10 years old. The museum’s building was daring, floating on twin pillars way above ground. And the paintings in the main collection were displayed in a unique manner, intimate and immediate: each painting at eye level on its own glass wall, the collection a labyrinth of glass. My exploration of the art world at the time was like all adolescent exploration: disorganized, in fits and starts, incomplete. Nevertheless, I’ve been looking at art ever since, letting myself become excited by what I see—excited, enthusiastic, fascinated, but also bored, dismissive, and even angry.

Take Paul Gauguin. At some point I decided I hated him. His sense of perspective was so awkward, the bodies on each plane looking too big or too flat or too long or too short. His paintings of naked natives (which the white colonists like himself bedded and discarded, no doubt) struck a politically incorrect note. And the naked bodies weren’t even attractive. A thigh round and fat like a ham, fingers on a hand like so many sausages. As for Gauguin’s colors? Blah.

My wife would tell me, “You’re wrong about Gauguin.” I’d reply, “I know what I like and don’t like. And I have good arguments to demonstrate that Gauguin is no good.” “You’re not looking.” “I just told you, I looked, sensed, thought, and concluded. I don’t like Gauguin.” This went on for several years. One day my wife gave me a postcard of a Gauguin painting. “All right, it’s kinda pretty,” I said. “But it doesn’t change the basic problem.” And I meant, Gauguin was the basic problem.

One day I visited someone who had a little book on his coffee table. “Noa Noa,” it said on the cover. I leafed through it. It was a facsimile of one of Gauguin’s diaries. Watercolors, woodcuts, sepia photos, stories written in a flowing script… The watercolors alone were divine. The whole object and the author’s personality that shone through it blew me over.

My wife was doubly right: Gauguin was brilliant; I wasn’t looking at him properly. He had been inviting me to enter a certain world, and I was too close-minded to accept his invitation.

I bought a copy of “Noa Noa” and, for a long time, kept it within easy sight, the book’s cover facing me as reminder to myself: Despite strong feelings, despite apparently objective evidence, despite aesthetic convictions, despite everything that TOLD me I was right… I was in fact wrong.

Needless to say, I’ve been wrong about many things and many people besides my beloved Gauguin. In a sense that's a good thing: Changing one’s mind about something, and in particular changing one’s opinion from negative to positive, is a heady pleasure, a liberation of sorts. In the visual arts alone, I've had the experience of changing my mind from negative to postivie a great many times: about Andy Warhol, about Piet Mondrian, about Roy Lichtenstein, about Barnett Newman... I'm glad I hate a few things still, because they hold the potential to prove me wrong and to set me free.

You're wrong about me (but I'm right about you), part 2: Words

Recently I told an anecdote about how people assume I must love the heat simply because I grew up in Brazil. The moral of the story was, “Make no assumptions.” But we all do. We make assumptions about people, about things, about situations. We make assumptions without knowing we’re making them. Facts? Who needs facts when we have convictions?

Certain words and expressions are good indicators of a mind that may be looking at the world with preconceived ideas. But we won’t assume that the expressions below NECESSARILY indicate a closed mind, right? See if you recognize some habits of thought and speech in one or more of these statements. And try to suss out why they may reveal a prejudice or three.

• Always. Never. Should. Should not. Must. Must not. Everyone. Nobody, ever!
• As everyone knows…
• I’m sure you’ll agree with me.
• You and I are exactly alike.
• I know what I’m talking about.
• Absolutely. Absolutely not.
• It doesn’t matter what you say anymore. You won’t change my mind.
• I’m surprised you don’t see it.
• You, of all people?
• I was raised that way.
• Where I come from, we really respect other people. Unlike here, where there are so many morons.
• It’s always been that way, and it’ll always be that way. That’s just how it goes.
• I hate oysters. I don’t even have to eat one to know that I hate eating them.
• It’s so obvious.
• You’ll love it! Everyone does!
• It’s the most natural thing in the world.
• I know what you mean.
• Oh, yes, I’ve met many Israelis (or Nigerians, or South Americans, or weight-lifters, or any one group of people). At least five of them.
• It’s a well-known fact.
• That’s what they do, those people.
• You left me with no choice.

You're wrong about me (but I'm right about you), part 1: Assumptions

It’s a hot and muggy summer day, and like a million other people without air conditioning I’m sticky and fatigued. One of my students arrives for a lesson. “You must be very happy today,” she says.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re Brazilian. Brazilians love the heat.”

I can never resist this conversation, although I know exactly how it turns out. Here we go.

Me: “You’re wrong about it, and I’d be happy to explain to you why.”

Student: “Uh?”

Me: “First, look at me. Pink skin, shaved skull, blue eyes… From a genetic point of view I’m really European. The sun is very harmful to my biological type.”

Student: “Huh-huh.”

Me: “Also, I left Brazil 30 years ago. I’ve lived in Northern climes since. Brazil is history.”

Student: “Huh-huh.”

Me: “People have very different metabolisms, regardless of their national origins. That’s why on some days you see some people walking around in shorts and tee-shirts, others wearing sweaters and coats. Some people get cold easily, others not. I’ve always preferred cold weather. I was born that way.”

Student: “Huh-huh.”

Me: “Go to Brazil at the height of summer and ask everyone in sight, ‘Do you like this heat?’ Almost everyone will say, ‘No, it’s unbearable. I can’t wait until the summer is over.’ Rich people go to the mountain resorts during the heat waves, because it’s nice and cool up there. The poor suffer miserably. A lot of Brazilians in Brazil don’t like the heat.”

Student: “Huh-huh.”

Me: “So, you can see that I don’t like the heat, even though I grew up in Brazil.”

Student: “But... you’re Brazilian, you must love the heat!”

It’s funny and it isn’t funny. The truth is, we all have fixed ideas on hundreds of subjects. Instead of looking at people and things as they are, instead of learning from each encounter and each situation, we let pre-formed visions dominate our minds. Then we confuse the inner visions with the things and people in front of us. Not all Brazilians love the heat, soccer, and Carnival (although some do, maybe even many). Not all Americans like defrosted hot dogs and watery beer (although some do, maybe even many). Not all Frenchmen cheat on their wives (actually, they all do). (Just kidding!)

In this series of blog entries I propose to look at how we fail to pay attention and grasp reality, and the price we pay for being so sure that the mirage is the oasis. Can't you see it? It's right there, in front of your eyes! Dive in!

Make a fool of yourself

Today you’re going to make a fool of yourself. This will happen whether you want to or not, so you’re better off embracing the idea and going with it. If you’re a normal human being, you make a fool of yourself every day anyway. That’s the very definition of “normality.” Right now you’re going to do it for a specific purpose.

Meet Peggy Babcock. She’s not old enough to stop caring about how old she is, so she’s probably 57 or 60. But that's immaterial. I just need you to say her name out loud:

“Peggy Babcock.”

Now say it three times in a row, at a pretty fast clip.

“Peggy Babcock, Peggy Babcock, Peggy Babcock.”

Congratulations. You’ve just made a fool of yourself. You’ve become a babbling, incapacitated baby sheep. It happens to everyone. Your lips, tongue, and jaw couldn’t face the challenge of saying sweet ol’ Peggy’s name three times in a row. You tensed your neck and shoulders. You tried to use every last body part to compensate for the failure of speech—head, hands, feet, pelvis, everything. And you became frustrated and annoyed.

First and foremost, you’ve demonstrated that the physical and the emotional are so connected as to be inseparable. A tiny physical challenge gave rise to strong emotions. The relationship between the physical and the emotional may not be always so intense or unbalanced, but there always is some relationship.

Second, you’ve demonstrated that trying too hard to accomplish anything is kinda not very smart, if you know what I mean. You fell apart trying hard and still didn’t accomplish the task. Well, quit it. From now on, don’t try so hard.

Third, you’ve demonstrated that speaking clearly is a function of the whole person—not voice alone, not mouth alone, but the whole body plus the words plus the emotions.

Stop thinking about Madame Babcock for a moment. Calm down. Center yourself. Take those famous deep breaths you see in the movies. Now say “Bab.” It’s easy, right? You can do it without killing yourself, right? Now say, “BAB-Cock,” the Bab louder than the Cock. Lengthen the “a” of Bab: “BAAAB-Cock.”

Now say “Peggy.” You don’t need to stiffen your neck or go berserk. Say it slowly, repeat it a few times. Now say, “Peeeeggy… BAAAB-Cock,” lengthening the “eh” of Peggy, waiting between Peggy and Bab, and making BAB the strongest of all four syllables.

Now say it all a few times in a row, and then start speeding it up gradually, making the vowels not so long, making the separation between syllables not so big, making Bab not so loud.

Congratulations again. You’ve learned how to use inflection, timing, rhythm, organization, and a little self-awareness in order to speak beautifully. I propose you always talk that way.

Here are some more Tongue Twisters. They really ought to be called Person Twisters. Enjoy them.

• Seventy-seven benevolent elephants.
• Sheena leads, Sheila needs.
• Extinct insects' instincts.
• All rural girls will wear jewelry.
• Black background, brown background.
• Double bubble gum, bubbles double.
• Elmer Arnold.