He Bluffed His Way Through Every Chat. Then He Said 'I Don't Know.'
Hugo spent years nodding along to things he didn't understand, hoping it made him sound impressive. One honest admission got Saoirse talking for an hour.
Long one tonight. Three bands, one stage, and the headliner wants a wedge mix that physically cannot exist
Okay, honest answer: I have no idea what a wedge mix is. I've been nodding along for two days.
HA. Right. So the wedge is the speaker on the floor pointing at the singer
Go on. I'm genuinely asking, not being polite.
Oh you've done it now. I'm going to explain monitors to you for an hour and you have nobody to blame
“Okay, honest answer: I have no idea what a wedge mix is. I've been nodding along for two days.”
- first dateSide of stage, Whelan's, earplugs she brought for him
He understood maybe a third of it. He asked about the other two thirds afterwards, over chips.
- month threeHe learned to coil a cable properly
She filmed it. She still shows people the video. He is not ashamed.
- month nineA flat in Stoneybatter with far too many speakers
One room is hers. He's allowed in if he doesn't touch anything.
- nowTwo years, and he still asks
She says the questions never got less annoying. She says it like a compliment.
“I spent about a decade trying to seem like the most interesting person in the conversation. The second I admitted I didn't know something, she got interesting instead. That's the whole trick. I was doing it backwards the entire time.”
Hugo had a habit he wasn't proud of. Somebody would mention their work, or a band, or a book, and he'd nod. Yeah, mad. Ah, class. He'd absorb just enough to keep up and steer the conversation somewhere he sounded better.
It worked, in the sense that nobody caught him. It also meant that at 31, he'd never once had the kind of conversation where the other person forgot to be self-conscious.
Two days of nodding
Saoirse, 29, mixed live sound at venues around Dublin. Her messages came in late and slightly wired — load-ins, soundchecks, a drummer who kept moving his own mics. Hugo understood almost none of it.
So he did what he always did. Sounds intense. Nightmare. Two days of that, and the thread was going exactly the way his threads always went: pleasant, thinning out, headed nowhere.
Then she mentioned a wedge mix, and something in him gave up. Instead of the usual nod, he typed the true thing:
"Okay, honest answer: I have no idea what a wedge mix is. I've been nodding along for two days."
Not clever. Not charming. Just true, with a small confession attached.
What honesty actually unlocked
She replied in about forty seconds, and then she kept replying. Wedges, in-ears, why a room sounds different once four hundred bodies are in it. She sent a voice note. She apologised for the voice note and then sent another one.
Somewhere in there she wrote: most people just say "cool" and change the subject.
That's the part Hugo thinks about. He hadn't given her anything impressive. He'd given her permission to talk about the thing she loved to someone who actually wanted the answer — which, it turns out, almost nobody does.
The lesson he'd have paid money for at 25
Being interesting is exhausting and it doesn't work. Being curious costs nothing and it works nearly every time. The line that changed it wasn't a good line — it was an honest one, sent at the moment he'd normally have bluffed.
That's the kind of line hintder is good at finding: not a clever performance, just the true thing you were already thinking, phrased so it lands. It drafts it. You still have to be the one brave enough to hit send.
Hugo hit send. Two years on, she's still explaining things to him, and he's still asking.
Your turn to write the next one.
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