We were sitting at a tiny table in a dusky basement on the North Side. It was the third weekend since the reopening of our neighborhood joint, the former James Street Tavern reborn as Sassy Marie's Speakeasy.
We'd been listening for a quarter-hour already as Dwayne Dolphin and his band opened their first set in the downstairs lounge. They were playing with the passion and finesse you'd expect from such experienced jazzers, but during the third or fourth tune, something palpably shifted in the music.
Dwayne, on piccolo bass, started trading riffs with drummer Jevon Rushton on a funky original composition titled "Neo." The two men went back and forth, stretching the material, taking longer and wilder excursions without ever losing sight of their starting point or each other.
They may have temporarily lost sight of their audience -- that is, until some of us started laughing and applauding in amazement as we listened to these musicians move from the merely excellent into the so-great-it's-crazy.
They were doing the "Caddyshack" thing. Remember when Chevy Chase's character is trying to explain his mad putting skills to a younger golfer? He says, "Be the ball, Danny, be the ball."
Although it's hard to be serious within five lines of the word "Caddyshack," there's nothing quite like the sense of rightness you feel when you get to watch someone "in the zone." Serious laughter is how I respond.
It's a kick to see someone doing the thing he's meant to do and achieving so much union with it (being the guitar, being the ball) that the rest of the world falls away.
In Pittsburgh we're spoiled. We get to witness great musicians and athletes achieve this pretty regularly. Two nights ago I went back to the same jazz joint, this time to hear local but legendary drummer Roger Humphries, who apparently takes the zone with him wherever he goes.
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihaly was the first to identify and name this mental state "flow" -- the complete immersion in some activity well-matched to a person's skills, in which he loses awareness of self and of the passing of time.
Late last month I got to savor an odd example of this at a chef's table in Portland, Ore. A travel article I'd read before heading west had put Le Pigeon on a short list of must-visit restaurants, and sometime between that article's publication and our arrival, Food & Wine magazine gave Gabriel Rucker its Best New Chef award.
A small, old storefront on one of Portland's main drags, Le Pigeon holds maybe 40 people. When we walked in late on a Saturday evening, without reservations, the only available seats were at an L-shaped bar surrounding the chefs' main work area.
It was our lucky night. We got to watch the intricate rhythms of the chefs, eavesdrop on their screwball chatter and ask about dishes as they prepared them. It was cooking as performance art.
And then there was the food. "You know this is bad for you," Mr. Rucker said as he handed me my "PB&J with foie gras."
Turns out this appetizer was a sandwich of locally made white bread, toasted, slathered with homemade strawberry preserves and topped with a melting mound of whipped pate de foie gras.
I'm glad I remembered to swallow before bursting out laughing. It was insanely good.
"Look away," I said to the chef, "while I lick the plate." It was his turn to laugh.
I'm pretty sure that "the zone" is located at the intersection of hard work and inspiration. The luckiest people are those who know what they're meant to do and find a way to do it for a living. It's not really work.
Performers, by definition, have to be in the zone, or darn close, day after day, or someone with a hook pulls them offstage.
But the rest of us -- the less blessed or the more painfully self-conscious -- can find "flow" without paycheck or audience attached. We can become one with something -- the guitar, the garden shears, the golf ball -- and spend our time well because we're not thinking about time at all.
Isn't that pretty much what we're here for?
First Published: July 23, 2007, 3:00 a.m.
