The B Word

Words as Weapons and Triggers: Joni and Jasmine

I recently went to see an artist that I am working with play at an amazing small venue that I didn’t know about in Pasadena called The Healing Force Of The Universe. Aside from having an unusual and striking name, this is a wonderful venue for live music paired with an area that sells vinyl.

I had asked my friend Jasmine, who manages the artist who was playing this evening, to save me a seat, as the venue was quite a distance from where I live in Los Angeles, and the journey there involved the Harbor Freeway, which aside from being one of the oldest freeways in Los Angeles, is seemingly always packed with dense traffic. I anticipated being a bit late to get a good seat for the show.

When I concluded my arduous journey up the 110 and arrived at my destination, I walked in and, not immediately seeing my friend Jasmine, but seeing another friend who was seated by the door, I sat down with her. The audience seating area is quite intimate, so I was not bothered by the idea of just watching the show from that vantage point. (Trust me dear reader, there is a reason why I am regaling you with all of this detail regarding the seating situation). As I was talking to my friend by the door, Jasmine came up and tapped me lightly on the shoulder and motioned to me. At first I wasn’t sure what her gesture meant, so she clarified, “your seat is over here”, pointing to a spot on a couch by positioned in a straight shot, right in front of the stage.

As I sat down on the couch, I could sense that there was some kind of tension in the air. There was a gentleman seated on a pillow in front of a table that sat in front of the couch. He turned to us, and began to speak in an extremely derisive manner to Jasmine. This took both Jasmine and I aback, and we both wondered what the cause of this fellow’s burst of rage was. As he explained that the other pillow sitting near him had been moved somehow by Jasmine in the process of her creating an area on the couch for me to sit, the pitch of his anger gradually increased. “Oh, you think that you can just do whatever you want, right?….. You just don’t care about anything, do you…”. His eyes opened wide and glimmered with an almost homicidal and frenzied quality. “No, you’re just a bitch, aren’t you…. you’re just a bitch!” He repeated this phrase a number of times for maximum impact. I felt my pulse quicken, and an impulsive adrenaline rush welling up. I instinctively responded “Hang on a second, man….. just hang on there”, I felt myself sit up and my blood rush to my face. He continued, “You’re a bitch!!… You’re a bitch!”, he repeated over and over. As I began to warn him that he was crossing a line for me, Jasmine placed a hand on my knee, and whispered “Don’t Larry…. Just let it go…I’m becoming more of a stoic in these situations now”. This was an exquisitely timed gesture on her part, as I had, in the currently used syntax, been “triggered”, and was ready to further confront the gentleman, which would almost certainly have increased the intensity of the episode, and given the pitch of his anger, might have even crossed over into the episode getting physical. Nothing good or productive would have come of it.

In the aftermath of this, and thinking about the specifics of it, there was something familiar about it. I recalled a somewhat similar incident that occurred many years ago. I was in Edinburgh, Scotland with Joni; I don’t recall the specifics of what we were there for…. probably for a show of her paintings. We entered a restaurant with a group of people, I believe 7 or 8. The host guided us to a table, and we sat down. An additional person came into the restaurant to join us, and we grabbed an unused seat from an adjacent table. After seeing us add that seat to our table, the host came over to our table and admonished us in what felt like a very disproportionate way; “You can’t do that! We don’t allow that in this restaurant!”

Joni tried to speak sensibly to the host, explaining that nobody was using the chair, but he continued to increase the level of the conflict, coming up close behind Joan, and as he did, referring to her as a “bitch”. Before I knew what I was doing I sprung out of my chair across the table, and grabbed the host by the collar, yanking him across the table. As I did so, I remember the buttons on his shirt popping off, seemingly in slow motion. It was only after I had done this, and he was suspended in a somewhat cartoonish posture with his legs off of the ground, that I realized what I had done, and let go of his collar. It was a completely out-of-character response to a situation like this for me, as I am not the pugilistic or physically violent type at all. Though many of the details of the incident have faded with time, I distinctly recall the host calling Joni a “bitch”. That word, “bitch”.

The point of this little essay is the power of words. At the moment we are living through what feels to me like a time where brute force, cruelty, and abusive rhetoric have become normalized. For many reasons it is an era where there is a thirst for intense emotional confrontation. I believe that this phenomenon feeds on itself. The amygdala is a strong area of the brain. Anger, indignation and adrenaline are a cheap high, and in the present construct they are the drugs of choice. History feels to be somewhat non-existent to a great many people, and snap judgements and responses are based on the perception that people get of almost anything from their social media algorithm and the particular YouTube material that they are directed to and consume. Along with this ethos, it seems that the way that people communicate with each other regarding differences has devolved to an extent where the the norms of common courtesy and the thoughtful use of language have become an archaic rarity; a distant memory.

As for me, the recent conflagration that I described made me realize that I need to defuse the words that have the ability to inspire a loss of emotional control for me. I am deeply saddened and nauseated by so many things that are happening in the world. I firmly believe that the only way that this zeitgeist in the world can shift is by the small incremental interactions that we have. The emotional tone that we all come to charged situations with. This doesn’t mean that we relinquish our passionate dedication to that which is precious and true.