BK and I headed into town tonight. I had my usual 5:30 am workout but BK waited until after work. We were both famished and headed to Medjool in the Mission. I've been there a number of times and always enjoyed it but always remember JK's less than glowing assessment. What the hell...the Belvedere martini is always hard to mess up given how dry I like them. The place was about 2/3 full and not as lively as I've seen it. The bar area was empty. There was a listlessness in the air. The food was good but the service was....well, it too was listless...and lumpy. Two dishes came together, we waited a while and a third came. We waited even longer and the fourth came. Desert came quickly. The initial two courses were the Tuna tartare with harissa, pinenuts and chili oil. At the same time we were served the Spanish cheese plate (cabrales, etorki, manchego and mahon). Odd pairing. The cheeses were good but not particularly pungent. The tuna was only decent; given the amount of tuna I've been eating over the last few months it would have to be spectacular to compare to the stuff at Canteen (or even Bacar). Next was the Lamb kefta (Lebanese Lamb Kabobs) with pine nuts and tahini. Very good but nothing I'll dream about and was done quickly. The final course was the Brined pork tenderloin on a bed of chorizo white beans. This was the star of the evening. The meat was tender, just the right saltiness and the beans were not too tender. It all worked. It was all washed down with a Marques de Riscal 2000. Desert was a Rosmeary olive cake with pinoli and lemon curd. They could have forgotten the cake and just brought the lemon curd.
One good thing about dining with BK is that we have a lot in common and discussion is easy. Since we usually avoid talking work, subjects range from women to relationships to music, art, cars, books, travel, sports, sex and eventually back to women and relationships. I mentioned my dinner with Lisa Saturday night. As we were discussing it I actually received an email from her saying what a nice time she had. She offered her cell number and suggested I call. Hmmm. This was real time...I don't believe in coincidence (the math doesn't work) but have no answer to explain such synchronicity. I moved on to my Friday night diner with ChP which was much more to my liking. I'd initially asked her out after watching her for a while in a restaurant. I'm not sure what it was. I was discussing this earlier today with SK, a smart woman who I really like at work. She and I have the kind of working/friendly relationship where we can talk about things that I really don't talk about much with other women. I value her opinion (she tells me when I'm getting a bit crazy). I explained my opinion of ChP was pretty much a Blink decision...that is, I knew instantly I was attracted to her. Her looks played a part but only a part. Her smile and laugh, her ease with herself and with her friends were parts as well.
The whole notion "blink" resonates with me. Gladwell describes..."(its) about rapid cognition, about the kind of thinking that happens in a blink of an eye. When you meet someone for the first time, or walk into a house you are thinking of buying, or read the first few sentences of a book, your mind takes about two seconds to jump to a series of conclusions." (Love at first sight is the ultimate Blink relationship.) Its the pre-cognitive or early cognitive state I find fascinating. I find commonalities with mind state required for creation...the creative act...especially in how in manifests itself in science via the scientific method. (Shameless namedropping - I was quite fortunate to have been able to discuss this with Malcolm at dinner last month. He is an impressively intelligent guy...an original thinker.)
While completing my undergrad studies in physics I happened upon Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Maybe it was the right book at the right time but I began a quest to "rebalance" my thinking...to move the center of gravity back toward the right brain. Mythology, comparative religion, number theory, literature, architecture, art criticism...classes, books, lectures...I devoured them all. The underlying stuff that I was drawn to was always the creative aspect. What is it that drove people to model, build, test...to paint, sculpt, edit, write, film, dance, compose...hypothesize. To hypothesize. This is the essence of the creative act in science. To guess...propose...take a leap. Anybody can guess, right? The point is that no...not anybody can guess...at least not with a hope of answering the big questions. To understand the big question you gotta think hard about it. Really hard. Like Einstein sitting in the Swiss patent office day after day thinking. Dreaming. (This is now part of dopey popular culture...the image of wild-haired Albert with a pipe nearby, staring off into space and pulling the answers from the cloud.) So too (though less Hollywood) Kekule's dreams of Ouroboros as his way out of the Benzene (ring) dilemna...or Poincare's discovery of the Fuschian function transformations during a daydream while stepping onto a bus while on a geological expedition. Poincare himself spoke at length about mathematical creation. He described the process as having four steps: saturation, incubation, illumination and verification. Illumination is the point at which the non-linear stage of perception takes over and god offers himself to those seeking hardest. (Note Poincare's saturation and incubation stages. Huxley may have seen gothic architecture in Bach's music but it was merely reportage of a different state of perception...he was unable to use it for anything.)
So the nexus of art and science is the creative act. This was the territory I sought to survey when I moved west. I'd heard about a special program in San Francisco funded by the NEH called the Nexa program. Every class was taught by two professors - one from school of sciences, the other from humanities. Classes included stuff like The Einsteinian Revolution taught by a physicist and a linguist. This was a rich time for me. I was intellectually challenged. I spent my off time reading contemporary fiction (a favorite of the time was Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow...loved his use of hard-core pornography as a metaphor for war). Nearing completion after 3 years, I realized I'd need to start looking for work. All this study set me up nicely for what was to come next. I quickly wrapped up a masters in communication and moved into an entirely different world...recording studios where the real creative shit was going down...art, science, music, film, orchestration, composition...actors, musicians, directors, videographers...it was a rich stew that I lived in for 20 years. That's a whole other story.
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