The difference between discerning and difficult and the sudden realization that I’ve never been low-maintenance
I have never thought of myself as a difficult man. I supposed that’s to be expected, given that even evil men are the heroes of their own epic tales, no matter how sinister they appear to the outside world. Rare is the man who clearly sees his own faults or makes much of an effort to correct them. We are mostly blinded by our own rationalizations and content to remain delusional about who we truly are.
I’m not aware of a single successful artist who hasn’t, at one time or another, been described as difficult, demanding, and narcissistic. It’s more the rule than the exception, in my experience, because artists are all tortured souls and deeply flawed human beings. Leonard Cohen said it’s the cracks that let the light in. Maybe being broken is part of what makes us artists.
No amount of rationalization can excuse poor behavior, but I believe that a natural balance exists within nature, and that equilibrium suggests that those with artistic gifts come with some otherwise troubling attributes. Only that may be inverted. We don’t have flaws to balance our natural gifts. We are bestowed with gifts in order to help offset our incontrovertibly flawed selves. Nature seeks balance by design.
In the classic film “When Harry Met Sally,” Harry tells Sally that she’s someone who thinks of herself as low-maintenance but who, in fact, is actually quite high-maintenance. She defends herself by saying she simply likes things the way she likes them, and there’s nothing wrong with having strong opinions.
“Exactly,” he says. “High-maintenance.”
Much ballyhoo has been made of this concept as being sexist towards women who demand more than they are given or are opinionated about the many deficiencies in the world. There’s no doubt that women have paid a heavy price for our collective misogyny throughout the ages, but I don’t think being high-maintenance is a gender issue at all. It’s merely a matter of having the gift of discernment, a critical requirement of all artists, and for most of history, women were simply not afforded that small luxury.
Years ago, I met with Gustavo Serbia, who at the time was the head of Human Resources for the Mandarin Oriental, an ultra-luxury hotel in New York City known for its impeccable service and celebrity clientele. I had recruited him to talk to a group of my clients about customer service in the field of luxury hospitality. We met in a suite on a high floor overlooking Central Park.
The crux of his presentation came down to teaching staff to distinguish between two types of guests: the discerning and the difficult. The discerning guest was one who wasn’t receiving the level of service they wanted but recognized that it was available if only they spoke up. By raising an issue they found problematic, they were simply trying to help the staff better address their needs. They knew what they wanted and were asking for it. The discerning guest made you better at your job. They were an invaluable guest.
The difficult guest, on the other hand, had no such compunction. They were complaining for the sake of complaining. Either they wanted to wield personal power or thought this was the way to get something extra without paying for it. You were never going to make them happy because they were complaining for completely reasons unrelated to getting better service. It was a fundamental lack of understanding of how the hospitality business worked. The difficult guest made everyone’s lives miserable, including their own. They were never going to be satisfied, and you were better off without them.
I have often thought of myself as low-maintenance. I told a nurse as much just the other day. I was getting an iron infusion and had come prepared with AirPods, iPhone, and iPad. She concerned herself whether I needed anything. I needed nothing. I was completely self-sufficient.
“I’m pretty low maintenance,” I explained.
“Oh, me too,” she said. “I just go with the flow.”
This stopped me short, because the one thing I have rarely, if ever, done was go with the flow. If anything, I’m usually pushing against the tide, swimming upstream, or otherwise bucking the system. That is not going with the flow and is probably the furthest thing from low maintenance. So, what did I think I meant when I said I’m low-maintenance?
I used to work for a guy who insisted that I was a combative contrarian who would disagree with whatever he said, presumably for my own ego or entertainment. “If I say black, you say white,” he would say.
The reality was that he was a compulsive liar and a monumental fabulist, so the idea that I might question much of what poured out of his mouth is probably not that unrealistic. He would make wild, unsubstantiated claims that had no basis in reality. He would lie to my face about things I knew to be false and would get irritated when I refused to go along. I didn’t call him out for his blatant falsehoods or accuse him of being a serial liar. I would just say I disagreed with whatever narrative he was trying to push.
What I had discovered, after years of dealing with him, was that if I let a lie pass without contesting its veracity, it would soon become canon, and I would have to deal with the fallout from that lie forever. Better to nip these things in the bud, I surmised.
I got a reputation for being argumentative and combative, mostly because I refused to suck up and tell him what he wanted to hear. Never having put much value in what other people thought of me, this didn’t bother me so long as I was successful at my job, which I was. I let my work speak for itself. I talked a lot of shit but backed it up with results. I was always more than willing to put up or shut up.
The irony, at least for me, is that I think of myself as specifically non-confrontational, routinely avoiding conflict and drama wherever and whenever I can. I have no interest in arguing with anyone, but unless you’re going to go through life being steamrolled by others, that is not a realistic expectation. If you’re going to have principles of any kind, you’re going to have to stick up for yourself and what you believe in. Depending on your appetite for being in the minority, you might find this daunting all on its own.
The gift of discernment allows the artist to make the decision to walk a path that has not been well-traveled with confidence in their own ability to navigate. It’s critical to innovation and creativity and is the foundation for all creative talent. That’s mostly what talent is: the ability to understand the difference between good and bad. Everything else is craft, which you can learn. Talent is the ability to see how things should be.
Once you know right from wrong, and if you’re being true to yourself and what you believe in, eventually, you’re going to be forced to defend yourself. Discernment, in essence, can make you difficult.
One of the tricks I’ve learned in life is the ability to admit to things that don’t matter, to let things slide that you don’t care about, and to be magnanimous about shit that doesn’t bother you. The clear upside to being solipsistic is that you’re not paying that much attention to what anyone else is doing. But it also helps not to get too bogged down with the troubles of others. Empathy can be just as destructive. You have to learn to pick your battles and only fight for the things that are important to you.
My own self-righteous outrage over common injustice has not always been a positive approach to life. But you have to ask yourself what your goal is. Are you fighting to change things or to punish those you disagree with? Are you standing up for yourself alone, or are you attempting to represent all those who can’t afford to speak out? How far do you go before you’re fighting someone else’s battles?
It was the screenwriter Dalton Trumbo who, in his effort to explain a lifetime of personal conflict, argued that while he never viewed himself as particularly combative, once he had taken a principled stand, he found that the initial dispute spiraled outward, encompassing nearly everything in its path. After a lifetime of thinking he had been waging all these various battles with an endless stream of combatants, he concluded that it had been one long conflict and not an endless string of conflicts, after all.
“Since all men have at least one fight in their lives,” Trumbo wrote, “and are not considered professional troublemakers because of it, the longer view reveals in me a citizen no less peaceful than his neighbors.”
The difference for me is that while I have no interest in looking for a fight, it’s not often that I back away from one I know is inevitable. I have always believed that the best defense is a good offense. If you know you’re going to get into a fight, your best plan of attack is to punch first, punch hard, and don’t stop punching until the other person relents. In a street fight, things are over in seconds, not minutes. Most people, having been punched in the nose, want no further part of it.
Life is a bit different.
As I grow older, the concept of winning has become less captivating and even a bit preposterous at times. What is there to win, exactly? What is the goal? To die with the most toys? To amass the most wealth?
They say that knowledge is power, but I have begun to think that’s only ever true if you’re willing to use that knowledge to oppress another. I have no less desire to be right than I once did. I just have less desire to prove that I’m right to anyone. I know, and that’s all that matters.
Over the years, I have been slowly downsizing my creative endeavors in my effort to be downwardly mobile. I feel bad that I didn’t achieve the financial goals of my youth when I thought that financial security was the mark of success. It can bother me, at times, that I am not at the top of the heap, lording it over everyone. But I also feel like my soul is intact, never having sold it for profit. It’s a strange conundrum.
I have no interest in being difficult or unlikable. But neither am I willing to tell you what you want to hear to make myself more popular. There is a price to pay for everything of value in this life. Nothing good comes free. You must establish your own set of principles that guide you, and you should be as critical of your own ideas as you are of the ideas of others. But if you believe in yourself, you can be an island of one and no worse for the wear.
“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority,” wrote Mark Twain, “it may be time to stop and reflect.”
I have often found myself seemingly alone in my position, only to find hidden among the crowd other would-be insurgents. Sometimes, all it takes is one lone voice calling out from the wilderness.
Trumbo wrote, “When one man says, ‘No, I won’t,’ Rome begins to fear.”
I am Spartacus.