Banana Republic

A Provincial Snob

By on Saturday, October 30, 2010

Tonight I have just got back from one of those great moments that happen from time to time in the Banana Republic.

It was a fireworks show over the water, fired from ships lying straight off from the Wharf, and boy it was great stuff. We got to The Point in the rain, and stood for half an hour on the shingle, with the smell of the water and seaweed in our noses, and the shingle scrunching beneath our feet. And despite the rain and the chill, it was neither damp nor cold enough to dull my enthusiasm. You know, I have come to love the Island. I love the Banana Republic and all its foibles. Yes, I get frustrated and annoyed by it, but overall, it’s an honest sort of a city.

The Spinnaker Tower, at night
The signature of the city, in concrete

Waiting for the fireworks, I played on the shingle with Toby, a close friend’s son – cracking open glow sticks and pretending in the October night to be Darth Vader – swinging our light sabres and laughing as we duelled.

Then, as the time grew closer I fell into conversation with a pair of women – one of whom lived in Old Portsmouth. And it was then that I encountered the Provincial Snob.

I guess I should have known her from her aloof air as she stood beneath her brolly, frowning at us playing, rigid in her light blue jacket in the rain.  The Provincial Snob of this type is a very particular beast. Look at her now, with her mousey bobbed hair and the slight curl of the lip, so nearly a sneer. Notice the way that she looks around her with an expression of discontent on her face. But most importantly, listen to what she says.

This Provincial Snob says things like: “Yes, I live here, unfortunately,” and doesn’t have the self knowledge to know that she is creating her own unhappiness. A little moaner, always looking to find something bad to say about the surroundings that are simply not good enough for her, the Provincial Snob will not hear that the place where she lives has anything to recommend it. She is in her twenties and yet sounds like a long decommissioned battleship would talk. Living by the side of the sea, she is a sad old hulk, caught in the backwater and stuck in the mud. What a shame on her.

And of course, the thing that is so stupid about the Snob is that she lives in a lovely, picturesque part of Pompey.  A place where the old buildings were saved after the War.  A place where King Harry watched his ships from the ramparts, where “heroes innumerable” as the brass plaque tells it, sallied forth from the Sally Port, and where the body of General Wolfe was landed in a barrel of brandy after he was killed scaling the Heights of Abraham.

“I didn’t use to like Portsmouth when I was younger,” I told her. “I used to live in the country. But now I’ve moved here, it’s great. The characters are amazing. Some of them are nutters.”

“Yes, well that’s part of the problem, the people,” she says, the light in her eye the optical equivalent of chokedamp.

Aha! So, it would be a better city if it didn’t have people in it… Another part of the Provincial Snob’s mindset is that she doesn’t really know how to be comfortable around people.

And then there is the Tower. As the firework show starts up, the Spinnaker Tower begins to flash with all sorts of different lights. Looking at its pointy shape and the way it stand on two legs, I say: “Wouldn’t it be amazing if the Tower took off!? That would be one heck of a rocket!”

“That would be the best thing that could happen to it,” the Snob sneers back, that cynical look in her eyes, that flush of colour darkening her face more. This is something that she has wound herself up about, that’s for sure. “That shocking waste of money. And I paid for it with my taxes. It’s disgusting. I see it everywhere I go in this city, and it is the ugliest thing I have seen.”

Wow. She is so dark now. “Oh, I really love it,” I tell her. “It’s a great signature building. Like the Blackpool Tower it is instantly recognisable. It put Pompey on the map.”

“That put Pompey on the map?! You don’t think that anyone knew that it was here before?”

Oh, such stupidity. “Of course they did. But it now has an icon – a brand. It’s great fun. And people come here to see it, and enjoy it…”

But now the real fireworks start in earnest. A little dinghy is puttering around the harbour, and is firing a barrage of rockets into the sky. Screaming in pinks and whites and gold and blue from a big mortar on the boat. And this is just the prelude.

There it is. An amazing spectacle. Bright colours, explosions, the crackling of fireflowers burning for an instant in the sky, the gold explosion of the fire that bursts and rains. Then the embers hanging like stars in the rainy sky.

The fireworks burst over the Island.

Oh, wonderful city. Oh little Banana Republic that sparkles in the night, and fizzes and whooshes. This is the joy of the winter night, and little 4 year-old Toby sits on his father’s shoulders with his mouth agape. He’s never seen anything like it.

Behind it all, that remarkable Tower, lit up, drawing people to it, like a beacon.

And one Provincial Snob, not knowing that those little everyday decisions that she’s made about what to love and what to hate, she’s got the wrong way round.

Because if you choose to hate a firework, then it lasts for two seconds. But you choose to hate a building, or a town, and overlook what it has to offer… well, then you’re going to have to carry on hating it for a long time. It ain’t going anywhere.  And that little loop of reinforced emotion is going to carry on growing, under the skilled guidance of someone who really knows how to do misery.  Filling up your life with petty and useless distinctions which might well reinforce your sense of who you are but which, in the end make you this: a person less able to enjoy yourself.

Remember that, each time you are tempted to turn your nose up at whatever you choose to belittle; and when you are tempted to judge without first wanting to know and understand.  Remember this too: that knowing how to use your judgement skills to improve and delight in a thing can make you a person who can improve every day – and into a person in whom others can take true, pleasure – for the world expands as your love of it expands.

Why would you choose to do otherwise?

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Laughs

Signs and Wonders, 1: Rodent Racers

By on Friday, October 29, 2010
Red Squirrels: the shocking truth revealed in this investigative article by Matthew Wingett.

While driving in the Lake District last year, this little beauty of a sign caught my eye.

Although clearly not addressed to me, I did marvel at the intelligence of the Lakeland red squirrel; firstly at its ability to read, and then at its paw/eye co-ordination.

I decided to make further investigations, and contacted the Office for National Statistics regarding the number of red squirrels killed on the road in traffic accidents.

The results are shocking.

It turns out that a large proportion of red squirrel road traffic accidents are alchohol related, with dangerously high levels of blood-alcohol being detected in 45.8 per cent of red squirrel road deaths.

It is disturbing for nature lovers like myself to realise that the bucolic idyll of country life has such a dark underbelly.

Along with high levels of alcoholism in the red squirrel community are other addictions, mainly to nuts and acorns.  Squirrels have a tendency to hoard their nuts in all manner of places.  In fact, a recent survey revealed stashes of nuts in a field near Worthing, up a pig’s anus and in a cumulo-nimbus cloud.

The Red Squirrel Road Safety Action Forum, the Penge-based group of militant socialist squirrel-fanciers and road users also point out that the British red squirrel is in decline due to heavier traffic volumes in the last few years.

“The red squirrel has not adjusted to the new road conditions, and still imagines that we live in the England of the 1920s, when other furry British mammals, such as Ratty, Mole and Badger did not drive, leaving the roads open only to aristocratic, non-hopping amphibians, and squirrels,” he informed me, while fixing me with a slightly intense stare.  “But since rats, shrews and even immigrant gerbils have taken to the road, the high speed antics of the British red have led to just one tragic result: car-nage.”

In a secret location at the Dog and Duck in Penge, the spokesman also hinted at more sinister reasons for the shocking decline of the British red.

“Let’s be clear about this, apart from not being able to see over the dashboard and press the pedals at the same time, which makes driving inherently dangerous for the British red, we have to bear in mind that most squirrel mechanics are greys,” he hinted darkly.

“The American grey has the body mass needed to replace wheels, lift engines out of engine bays and service vehicles.  And…” he supped on his Babycham and checked over his shoulder to see if any rodents were listening before continuing. “They like to gnaw.  On brake pipes.  I bet that’s a statistic not held by the ONS,” he slurred as I plied him with more fizzy alcoholic drinks once fashionable in the 1970s.  “You know why?  Because the ONS is run by greys, too.  It’s a conspiracy.”

I was distracted from our interview for a moment by the sound of feet scurrying away from a table nearby.  Whoever had been sitting there had left behind no clue as to whom they were, except for an empty bag of peanuts and a copy of The New York Times, from behind which, the Penger assured me, “they” had been listening.

A call to the ONS asking for details on the amount of red squirrel road accidents caused by gnawed brake pipes received only a stunned silence at the other end of the line.  A query as to the species balance in the government-run organisation was followed by a high-pitched Texan rodent voice aggressively asking me for my name and address.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Grey Squirrel Mechanics Alliance was unavailable for comment.

ADDENDUM:

Last night, I was awakened by the sound of the clinking of tools outside, and I looked down from my bedroom window to see small, furry movements underneath my car. It was clearly a dream.  I will be taking a drive in the country later today.

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Paul McKenna and Me

Paul McKenna and Me 9: Constellation

By on Tuesday, October 26, 2010

The day went a darn sight better after that encounter with Roy. But I still felt as if I wasn’t quite in my body. Later in the day, I was sitting in the audience when Paul was discussing a particular NLP technique, and he came over to me and asked how I felt.

“I feel like my head is fucked,” I commented in front of the 400 or so people on the course, into his microphone.

He looked at me with a steady gaze, and then instead of interviewing me began to basically future pace me: that is to set out how it was going to be for me over the next few days. How I was going to learn this and do this, how I was going to feel better. He only pointed the microphone in my direction in order for me to agree with him… which was a good idea because I didn’t have anything coherent to say.

We pushed on, through the day. I was in this little whirl, inside myself – doing the NLP exercises, calmer now than I was before, but still confused, and still with that strange sense of not really knowing where I was or who I was. It was extraordinary.

Then, later on in the day, something unusual happened.

Michael Neill was on stage in the morning, teaching us about a type of hypnotic metaphoric approach called “constellation hypnosis”.

The constellation.
Constellation hypnosis: how to create a new picture of the future by joining the configuration of situations, events and desires in the client's life in a different way...

Essentially, in constellation hypnosis, the hypnotist finds out what the client’s current situation is, and then what result the client wants.  Then he asks what  things are getting in the way of the client getting those things and are preventing them from achieving their wishes, and finally asks what resources the client might have to help them get to what they want. This is the constellation of the client’s life – the inter-relationship between the different elements of their personal story.  It is the hypnotist’s job to take this information and distill these various elements down and convert them into a fairytale.  The purpose of the fairytale is to help the client realise that by drawing the relationships between the different elements in the story in a different way to the one currently experienced, that the client will begin to see a different picture – one of overcoming and empowerment, rather than helplessness. Thus the power of the story.

It was the strangest thing. As we were told what we were to do, I began to feel a sudden sense of panic rising inside me. Here I was, on this course, on which I had hoped to rediscover my writing ability, my sense of play in creativity – and now my bluff was being called.

I interviewed the woman I was working with, and then completely lost my nerve. We were working in threes, and when we sent Hazel out of the room to discuss what we were going to do next, I said the guy that I was going to work the ideas of the story out with: “James, I’m sorry, you do it. I just don’t think I can do this.”

James looked at me in surprise, and then began to sketch out some ideas. But even as he did so, I began to feel a sort of spin of excitement in my body. A completely new feeling, as something light began to move in my head. Hazel walked back into the room, and sat down. And then James moved to do the hypnotic induction.

I couldn’t help myself.

“James,” I said. “Let me do this…”

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Pleasures

I’m back.

By on Tuesday, October 12, 2010

It’s been a little while since I wrote my blog, for a pretty good reason.

I’ve been away. I’ve got a lot to tell you about the things that I’ve been doing, but as a starting point, let me give you an overview of some of the great things that have been going on in my life.

Firstly, discovering France.

Okay, so I didn’t discover France; there are tens of million people there already. But really I discovered that France is okay. In fact, better than okay, it’s stupendous. I have become a Frogophile.

Then there was going up mountains, and jumping off them, and jumping into glacial meltwater and bobbing down rapids without any boat, and avoiding the rocks, and swirling in eddies and feeling the delicious joy of just cutting loose and finding out where the current takes me.

Cooking breakfast at the top of Monte Rose
Breakfast in high places

I found out more about the joyous sunshine that is caught in bottles of wine – and seeing how the genies that live in them grow on mountain slopes, on hills, in valleys – fattening in the summer sun, before that sunshine is trapped in a bottle and stoppered up with wood.

I ate snails before a thunderstorm and the next day watched others  promenade with their shells in the rain, and I stood eye to eye with oxen so big and so beautiful that they looked like drawings of animals; as if a cartoonist had thought: “Now, how do I make this creature look big, soft, huggable – and powerful all at once?”

I climbed into a volcano, and watched a silent sea of ice in its frozen flow down a mountainside. I saw the specks of mountain climbers and walkers moving beneath me on the ice as I hung from a cable above them.

I saw the palace a postman built straight out of his imagination, and the palace a river built from rain and lime, hidden in the darkest, clearest caves.

I have got so much to tell you about how life is amazing. And in due time I will do, now I’m back from my travels.

Thanks for bearing with me!

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Paul McKenna and Me

Paul McKenna and Me 8: The Filters of Perception

By on Tuesday, June 22, 2010

The confusion I felt on that day continued into the evening.  The night floated by like a dream, and I felt a sense of dislocation from my body, as if I was newly fitted into this flesh, and didn’t quite know how it worked yet.

Perceptions and Perspectives...

And so it was, in this little dream that I found myself meeting up with friends in a little restaurant in Chinatown, and sitting having a meal.  I was off my head, it seems.  The evening floated by and I struggled to engage with my pals. It was as if, as the old phrase goes, the lights were on but noone was home.  The thing is, it was as if I wasn’t even in my own home.  I felt as if I had woken up and I was in a house that someone else had been living in for a long time.  I wandered around, wondering who had moved the furniture round, who had been using the place for so long.  The sense of alienation was quite strange.  Metaphorically, it felt like my body was heavier than I remembered it when I last used it, and whoever had been in here had not really looked after it.  I had muscles that I hadn’t used for ages, that I didn’t even know how to work any more.  Potential lurking. A swirl of uncertainties, as the old story I had told about myself for so long had gone.

Again, I felt how I imagine a prisoner might feel when released on to the streets after a long stretch inside.  The hometown is the same, but that house has been knocked down, this one has been extended, another one has a tree in the garden that has grown and grown.  It was familiar territory, but all new at the same time.

And the same was true of my friends.  For a while I felt as if I wasn’t really connecting with them.  My mind was filled with the trainings I had had with Paul, Richard and Michael – and I seemed to not really “get” what these guys were telling me.  We sat and had our food, and the evening drifted by before I said goodbye to these dear friends and made my way home.  It was my first journey out in public after the hypnosis, and it felt weird.

I slept at Nicola’s house that night, who had been acting as my host for the week.  And I slept lightly, with my mind overwhelmed.  And I woke up troubled and highly sensitive and went back into the training across London, bemused.  Moving in a dream.  Confused.

Back in the training room on the Thursday morning, people came up to me and asked how I was doing.  I felt shaky and uneasy.  People speaking to me was a kind of a pain, and I told them in no uncertain terms that I needed to be left alone.  Someone even, bizarrely, asked me for an autograph, saying that their kids loved “The Bill” and they wanted to give them a little keepsake.

A friend in the room, George, came and sat next to me.  He looked at me in concern and I answered his questions in a desultory and staccato manner.  After a few minutes, as the lesson started, I realised that I couldn’t go on.

I slipped out of the room and disappeared into the streets of Earl’s Court, down through the market on a bright sunny spring day, the air bright and fresh and cold around me.  The sounds on the streets, the rumble of the buses, the squeak of the taxis’ brakes, the press of people with their beating hearts and the patt-patter of their feet on the concrete, the reflection of early morning sunlight off the deep red edifices of London buses, swinging by in a golden arc on the walls, the cracks in the paving slabs, the succulent flesh of brightly glowing oranges like balls of flame on the market stalls, the soft yellow of bananas, the mangos with rich and sweet pungent smells, the people all around me: Lebanese, English, Arab, African, European – moving like ants, like the swirl of water, like air, touched with fire, alive, shining, bright.  I was overwhelmed with a torrent of impressions and sensations, as if someone had torn off the filters of perception into my mind and the whole, rich world was pouring in one single, sensuous, crazy hit.  I was going mad.  The world was brighter, and brighter still, and the sharp edges of buildings, of cars, of people’s faces seemed to have been drawn with the finest pen, or engraved in the air – hard – sharp – clear – more real than I had ever experienced before.  The world was pushing in on my senses, moving closer and closer, and I felt myself struggling to breathe.

I pushed on down the streets, my movements jerky as if I was a machine.  The soft machine, the blood-filled, heartbeating, airbreathing, lifetasting machine with a driver at its top.  It was a dream and hyper-real.  It was everywhere and nowhere.

I walked the streets a while longer and then returned to the Ibis Hotel. I remembered that I had tried to write a letter to Paul McKenna that morning, telling him that something had gone wrong with what he had done. Telling him that I felt weepy and weird.  But I had not been able to string a sentence together.  I was sure, so sure, that something had gone terribly wrong.

I was pale and drawn in the mirror as I got back into the hotel.  I then went and spoke to one of the assistants – a guy called Roy.

“Something’s gone wrong,” I told him as I sat in a chair and snivelled. “It’s gone wrong.  I feel weird.  Really weird.”

Roy looked at me with kindly eyes, but maintaining a calm sense of detachment.  “Nothing’s gone wrong,” he said. “You were on stage yesterday with two of the greatest hypnotists in the world.  These things don’t happen for no reason.”

“But my head.  My head.  I can hardly think.”

Roy blinked at me from behind his glasses.  He wasn’t warm or overly kind, but just straightforward matter-of-fact.  “This happens with clients from time to time,” he said.  “I get people call me up after they have seen me.  They tell me their life is all messed up and they’ve been hit really hard.  Then it all calms down after a day or two and they are so much better.  You need to understand that your unconscious mind has been given a task to do by Paul.  It’s telling your conscious mind to shut the fuck up while it gets on with it.”

Somehow, that helped.  He looked at me with intention as he said it, and somehow it helped.  My mind quietened down a little, and I felt myself submitting to the process going on inside me.  It was strange.  A little piece of reassurance was growing, right there in the heart of me.  Like a little star coming out at night.

The first one.  One to wish on.

The confusion I felt on that day continued into the evening. The night floated by like a dream, and I felt a sense of dislocation from my body, as if I was newly fitted into this flesh, and didn’t quite know how it worked yet.

And so it was, in this little dream that I found myself meeting up with friends in a little restaurant in Chinatown, and sitting having a meal. I was off my head, it seems. The evening floated by and I struggled to engage with my pals. It was as if, as the old phrase goes, the lights were on but noone was home. The thing is, it was as if I wasn’t even in my own home. I felt as if I had woken up and I was in a house that someone else had been living in for a long time. I wandered around, wondering who had moved the furniture round, who had been using the place for so long. The sense of alienation was quite strange. Metaphorically, it felt like my body was heavier than I remembered it when I last used it, and whoever had been in here had not really looked after it. I had muscles that I hadn’t used for ages, that I didn’t even know how to work any more. Potential lurking. A swirl of uncertainties, as the old story I had told about myself for so long had gone.

Again, I felt how I imagine a prisoner might feel when released on to the streets after a long stretch inside. The hometown is the same, but that house has been knocked down, this one has been extended, another one has a tree in the garden that has grown and grown. It was familiar territory, but all new at the same time.

And the same was true of my friends. For a while I felt as if I wasn’t really connecting with them. My mind was filled with the trainings I had had with Paul, Richard and Michael – and I seemed to not really “get” what these guys were telling me. We sat and had our food, and the evening drifted by before I said goodbye to these dear friends and made my way home. It was my first journey out in public after the hypnosis, and it felt weird.

I slept at Nicola’s house that night, who had been acting as my host for the week. And I slept lightly, with my mind overwhelmed. And I woke up troubled and highly sensitive and went back into the training across London, bemused. Moving in a dream. Confused.

Back in the training room on the Thursday morning, people came up to me and asked how I was doing. I felt shaky and uneasy. People speaking to me was a kind of a pain, and I told them in no uncertain terms that I needed to be left alone. Someone even, bizarrely, asked me for an autograph, saying that their kids loved “The Bill” and they wanted to give them a little keepsake.

A friend in the room, George, came and sat next to me. He looked at me in concern and I answered his questions in a desultory and staccato manner. After a few minutes, as the lesson started, I realised that I couldn’t go on. I slipped out of the room and disappeared into the streets of Earl’s Court, down through the market on a bright sunny spring day, the air bright and fresh and cold around me. The sounds on the streets, the rumble of the buses, the squeak of the taxis’ brakes, the press of people with their beating hearts and the patt-patter of their feet on the concrete, the reflection of early morning sunlight off the deep red edifices of London buses, swinging buy in a golden arc on the walls, the cracks in the paving slabs, the succulent flesh of brightly glowing oranges like balls of flame on the market stalls, the soft yellow of bananas, the mangos with rich and sweet pungent smells, the people all around me: Lebanese, English, Arab, African, European – moving like ants, like the swirl of water, like air, touched with fire, alive, shining, bright. I was overwhelmed with a torrent of impressions and sensations, as if someone had torn of the filters of perception into my mind and the whole, rich world was pouring in in a single hit. I was going mad. The world was brighter, and brighter still, and the sharp edges of buildings, of cars, of people’s faces seemed to have been drawn with the finest pen. The world was pushing in on my senses, moving closer and closer, and I felt myself struggling to breathe.

I pushed on down the streets, my movements jerky as if I was a machine. The soft machine, the blood-filled, heartbeating, airbreathing, lifetasting machine with a driver at its top. It was a dream and hyper-real. It was everywhere and nowhere.

I walked the streets a while longer and then returned to the Ibis Hotel. I remembered that I had tried to write a letter to Paul McKenna that morning, telling him that something had gone wrong with what he had done. Telling him that I felt weepy and weird. But I had not been able to string a sentence together. I was sure, so sure, that something had gone terribly wrong.

I was pale and drawn in the mirror as I got back into the hotel. I then went and spoke to one of the assistants – a guy called Roy.

“Something’s gone wrong,” I told him as I sat in a chair and snivelled. “It’s gone wrong. I feel weird. Really weird.”

Roy looked at me with kindly eyes, but maintaining a calm sense of detachment. “Nothing’s gone wrong,” he said. “You were on stage yesterday with two of the greatest hypnotists in the world. These things don’t happen for no reason.”

“But my head. My head. I can hardly think.”

Roy blinked at me from behind his glasses. He wasn’t warm or overly kind, but just straightforward matter-of-fact. “This happens with clients from time to time,” he said. “I get people call me up after they have seen me. They tell me their life is all messed up and they’ve been hit really hard. Then it all calms down after a day or two and they are so much better. You need to understand that your unconscious mind has been given a task to do by Paul. It’s telling your conscious mind to shut the fuck up while it gets on with it.”

Somehow, that helped. He looked at me with intention as he said it, and somehow it helped. My mind quietened down a little, and I felt myself submitting to the process going on inside me. It was strange. A little piece of reassurance was growing, right there in the heart of me. Like a little star coming out at night.

The first one. One to wish on.

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Pleasures

A Little Moment of Delight In Darkest Africa…

By on Thursday, May 27, 2010

Surfing the net a few days ago I found this video of Damian Aspinall and his reunion with a long lost friend with a difference.  I don’t really have anything smart or witty to say about this.  It’s a definite “Aah” moment that I wanted to share with you.  You know, I’ve seen a lot of bad news come out Africa over the years, and it’s just great to see something a little more uplifting.  Okay, it plays to one of the stereotypes of Africa: big jungles and gorillas.  But then why not?  Africa does still have, thank goodness, both of those things.

And it has something else, too.  A certain amount of magic in its wilds that you won’t encounter anywhere else.  A little moment of honest feeling between two friends, no matter what species they are.

That’s enough to remind me, and I hope you, that yes, life really is amazing!

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Paul McKenna and Me

Paul McKenna and Me 7: Confusion Is The Doorway To New Understanding

By on Wednesday, May 26, 2010

I returned to the NLP session in the afternoon, and continued feeling pretty much overwhelmed.  Richard was demonstrating different techniques of hypnosis in the afternoon, and I sat in my chair like a zombie.  People moved around me during the breaks and practice sessions, and I joined in – but it was as if the whole day was now no longer real.  My consciousness had completely altered.

People seemed like projections on a wall.  My body felt distant, heavy and numb.  I was on the outside of it trying to get back in.  It was a feeling I used to get when I was a child walking with parents in crowded places: a sense of dislocation from the flesh, as if somehow I was not experiencing the world with my nerves and all the clunky machinery of the body – but more like I was a ball of air and that my sensations and thoughts moved through it unconstrained, without making any reference to the body whatsoever.  I was giddy at times, at others confused.  People flitted around me like shadows, and I didn’t who they were or what they looked like, but only what emotions they caused in me.

At times I even lost sight of who I was and where I was.  Richard was demonstrating a particular hypnotic technique at one point in the afternoon, and he stood with his back to our part of the room.  I craned to see what he was demonstrating.  Without thinking I called out: “Richard, I can’t see.  This whole half of the room can’t see.”

He looked up surprised, clearly himself surfacing from a trance.

“Huh?  What?”

“This part of the room – we can’t see…”

“You want to see?” he answered straight away.  “Then come up here.”

I felt a shock suddenly as the real world seemed to rush in on me.  “Oh shit,” I said under my breath.  The last thing I wanted was more of what I’d already experienced.  I went on to the stage with a real sense of nervousness.

The World Stopped Making Sense...

As I climbed the steps, Richard reached out his hand.  I was ready for him.  As he tried to do the handshake interrupt hypnotic induction, I kept aware of what he was doing, watching him lift my hand up in front of my face.  My defences were up.

But not for long.  Richard adjusted immediately, and with a deftness of movement he brought his fist down dramatically but very gently on my forehead.  “Sleep!”  And with the gentlest and most precise placing of thumb and forefinger, closed my eyes.

I felt myself drifting again.  I was pleased to block the world out – after all I was now standing at the front of the stage facing the audience again.  I dropped down, content with knowing that I needed to do nothing.  The world could just get on with whatever was happening in the NLP class, without my conscious input.

And so Richard demonstrated on me the hypnotic induction he was thinking of.  It was performed by moving the arms of the client in a particular series of points and withdrawals, moving first the left and then the right arm like pistons.

“You’ll see from this close, that’s for sure,” said Richard before he did it.  That was no lie, even though my eyes were shut.

Once it was done, Richard told me to make my body go stiff.  I felt myself tense a little, but that was all.  He placed his hands gently on my back and on my chest and push, testing to see how compliant I was.  He could clearly tell that there was something not quite as responsive as he wanted in me, and so he just seemed to fudge a few lines:

“When you open your eyes, you will go back to your chair and do whatever you need to do to learn as much as you can, and to bring more joy into your life.”

And then he sent me back to my chair.

The rest of the afternoon slid by in a dreamlike series of images and sounds.  At the end of the day, Richard performed a final trance on the whole group.  I can’t remember much of it, but when I came back from it,  I was a wreck.

I didn’t want to step outside the room.  I felt lost again.  An assistant approached me and took me to a side room, where there was a big leather sofa.  I lay on it and sobbed for about three quarters of an hour, completely at a loss as to what was going on in my head.  I wanted to just roll up and sleep for a hundred years, so it seemed.

But that wasn’t possible. After all, it was my birthday.  I was due to meet friends in the middle of town.

And the fact was that I had no idea how I was going to handle it.

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Paul McKenna and Me

Paul McKenna and Me 6: Birthday Tears

By on Monday, May 10, 2010

I sat there on the stage as Paul continued to move fast.  He asked me, while I was in this strangely heightened state, to run a series of visualisations.  In one, he told me to pick a writer that I really admired.  To look at that writer and see how they moved, see how they talked, think about what I admired of their work.  When I had done so, and had a clear image of what that writer was like, he told me to step into that writer and experience the world from that writer’s point of view.

He told me to notice really clearly what it felt like to be that writer, and to notice what learnings I could take from the experience.  I remember I chose Graham Greene.   Paul asked me to allow the learnings I could take from being that writer to “encode into my neurology” so that I could take those learnings with me into the future.

I did the same with another writer.  Who else should I choose but William Shakespeare, this time?  And finally there was Louis De Bernieres, whom I have admired for years.

The next part of the trance had me visualising sitting in a room with a script that I was working on, and finding that I was with the agents and editors of writers that I really admired.  We were all sitting and watching a movie of something I had written, and I found myself entering the minds of those agents and editors, to get a sense of what it was that they really wanted.  Again, I was invited to take these learnings and “encode them into my neurology”.

Then Paul asked me to visualise myself writing.  “Do you work with a computer or a pen?” he asked.  I opted for the computer, although I told him that I work with a pen as well.  Paul told me to see myself working at my desk, or wherever it is that is most comfortable for me, and feeling how easy it is to write.  To experience the feeling of ideas coming to my mind easily and quickly, and seeing myself enjoying writing a wonderful piece of work.  He told me to see myself day after day, and then week after week far into the future as I built up the experience, noticing how each day seemed easier than the one before.

Then he took me through the process of working the manuscript up, correcting it, tidying it, submitting it – and finally having it published.  He asked me to take inside myself and keep it there, so that I always held a clear expectation of what the future would bring.

Next, he asked me to visualise the cover of my book, and to imagine holding it in my hands. What colour, he asked, was the book?  Then he asked me to imagine, as I held it in my hands, seeing the title page.  And there it was: my future work in my mind and in my hands.

And that is about as much of the trance as I remember.  He did, at some point tell me that I should integrate the changes into my lfe only at the rate and speed that was appropriate for me.  Then he put me down deep again at some point, and finally, after much intense imaginative work, the session was finished, I was blinking at the crowd, and Paul was saying to me.

“So, there, how does that feel?”

I was out of my head.  I could only think of one thing.  The question he asked me, I ignored, because what struck me now was that this had happened pretty much as I had imagined it would happen, now, on this day, with Paul.  It was, I realised, a really significant day for me.

“Today is my 40th birthday,” I answered without answering his question.

The audience looked surprised and confused by the answer.  Paul gestured to give me a clap, and suddenly he was announcing with a whirl of friendly patter and talk that it was time to break for lunch.

I stood on the stage, not knowing what to do as a swirl of people started to move by me.  It seemed as if I could feel all of their eyes on me, as if my consciousness had somehow been massively expanded or as if I was hallucinating on some wonderful and terrible drug.  I saw someone come from the back of the crowd and shake my hand, and say he was Ben, and I heard him ask me how I was.  But I just wanted to pull away from everyone, but didn’t know what to do or what to say.  It was all so intense, and the room seemed to be a nightmare of overwhelming sensations, sights and sounds.

Then two faces appeared from the crowd and two arms seemed to gather me up.  The pair were a blonde woman called Wendy, and a bald man called Stephen.

“We’re going for lunch. Do you want to come for lunch with us?” They asked.

I felt like a child or an animal.  My brain wasn’t functioning how it normally did – and I went on an instinct that it was okay to trust them.  I wasn’t processing information, analysing and responding as I normally would.  It was as if I was a savage, a creature of little understanding.  So I followed them along like the little animal or the lost child I had become, and we went to a restaurant at the far end of a long road.  And all the while I could hardly say a word, and I looked around me with eyes that seemed to be seeing the world for the first time. There seemed to be no comprehension in my mind.  Just an overwhelming sense of confusion, and grief and pain and anguish.

A little later I was sitting in a cafe with them drinking some fruit juice.  And I wept and grizzled like a child as I drank it through a straw.

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Paul McKenna and Me

Paul McKenna and Me 5: Birthday

By on Tuesday, April 27, 2010

By the time I got to the Ibis Hotel on my birthday, I had a really strong sense of expectation going through my body.  I was wired, and I wasn’t sure why.

A friend had given me a little cake with a single candle in it for me to have that day, and I had brought it with me, a little physical reminder that life is sweet. There was a bustle around me of people, and that strangely growing sense of excitement that was inside me was starting to bubble up. My senses were all switched on in a way that I hadn’t had since maybe I was a kid.

The training started in the usual way – with a lot of joy.  Paul did his thing on stage. Getting us to laugh and enjoy ourselves. Getting us to deal with stuff, and telling stories about treatments he had done on people. Then he demonstrated a technique called swish patterning and asked us to go ahead and perform it on each other.

I’d had a little nagging voice in my mind that had started to tell me that I was going to speak with Paul that day.  That I was going to make a change. And so it happened that when we broke to do the exercise, I went over to him and said:

“Paul, can you use this technique on creativity? Because I’ve had writer’s block for 13 years and it’s been a complete fucking nightmare.”

“Yes, yes, absolutely,” he said. “I’ll get you up in the next session. Great stuff.”

What was weird was that it was like I had stepped out of myself when I asked him. It was as if I was now entering a different reality, by simply seizing a moment and acting on it. I went and did the swish pattern exercise we were shown with a growing sense of anticipation. There was a weight of expectation pushing me from the inside. Paul’s reputation, the changes he was able to make in people, the results he got. My remembrances of seeing him on the box, of considering writing to him to see if he could help my mother, all of that history of being aware of him as a public figure – likeable but aloof – seemed in that moment to crystallise.  Wow. He was going to do some stuff with me.
When we resumed our seats he started a preamble in which he explained that the technique he was demonstrating could be used for all sorts of applications. It could certainly be used with creativity. As he spoke, he gave me a friendly and reassuring smile, I remember clearly his pale face, and the eyebrows raised, the head nodding slightly, a friendly smile on his face.  And then he called me up on the stage and asked me to sit next to him.  He was on my left hand side, and he began to ask me what it was that I used to write.

I told him that I used to be a scriptwriter for The Bill but that things had fallen apart and I had stopped writing.  He talked a lot about tv shows and how he loves police dramas.  He told me one of his favourite cop shows was The Shield, and I found myself, as he talked, becoming slightly disoriented.  He wasn’t particularly doing anything, it seemed to me, but the unfamiliar experience of being on stage, his talking, the bright lights in my face seemed to make me glaze over a little.

“Tell me, what do you do when you sit down to write, now?” he asked.

“Well, it’s like I can’t make a decision.  I start to write a word, and before I have even got to the end of the word I ask myself should it be this word or this word. Why this word? And I start again.  I never get anything done…”

He told me about the Walt Disney creativity strategy. He said that it was vital that the Creator should be allowed to create without any intervention. Walt Disney had a special room for being creative where anything was allowed.  That is the room of dreams and invention. Then, when the Creator was finished for a while, he would take the work to another room, which was the room for the Realist, who would sit and work out whether or not the story hung together and had a realistic chance of working. It might then go back to the Creator for more work.  Only when most of the work was done, would the script be taken to the room of the Critic.  The Critic was there just to make sure that all the edges were rounded off, and that everything work properly.  Once again, the Critic might send the work back to the Creator.  But in the creative room the Critic was not allowed.

I nodded, seeming to understand what this was about.  It was about switching off critical voices.  Then he asked me if there was a particular event that had really caused the whole block to happen.

“There is,” I said. “I had an argument with a girlfriend,” I lifted my hand as if to gesture that there was an image of her there, in front of me.  He put his hand exactly where I had just put mine and said:

“Just there?”

I nodded, and he quickly pulled “the image” away towards the far end of the stage.  It was deeply disorienting.  It really was as if the picture I held of her in my mind was shrinking down.  He quickly asked me if she had said anything in the argument.  She hadn’t really said anything special.  She was Spanish, and she had just shown disapproval. But the sentiment I had got from her was that my work was complete crap.  I told him: “She said my work was a load of shit.”

He mimicked the sentiment in his comedy voice over and over again. It was utterly ridiculous to hear that sentiment said in that voice, and I laughed out loud.

Paul then walked back to me across the stage and got me to perform an NLP swish pattern on my belief in myself as a writer. There was a thing I was certain about, like the sun would come up tomorrow, right?  Where, he asked me, in my field of vision did I experience it. I pointed straight ahead.  And when I saw myself as a successful writer, where did I visualise that? It was in another place.  He quickly got me to fire the image of me as a writer off onto the horizon, then brought it back in right in front of my eyes.  We repeated the exercise several times, and then, again, he moved me on to more of the process.

Then he told me to go into trance quickly. Relaxing down. I was pretty disoriented at this point, and I found myself gladly going down at speed.  He was acting with real pace, now.

He told me to take myself back to a time when I was really deeply creative, and to go inside and really experience that memory again, now.  To get the feeling from the visuals, to make it real, and to experience it all over again. Then, when I had built up that creativity in my mind so that it was strong, he asked me to do the same with other memories.  To build up the creative feeling so that it was really strong inside me.  I can remember, in my heightened consciousness, doing the classic squeezed finger anchor so that I could get this feeling back when I wanted to. It was weird though, because my head was spinning like mad at the same time.

Then he asked me to go down deeper in my trance, and to go along a corridor in my mind, until I found the door marked “Control Room”.  I opened the door and went inside, and he told me to find the control panel marked “Creativity”. I found it, and it was covered in dust. There was a dial on it, that I could turn. He asked me what level my creativity was at now, on a scale of 1 to 100, where 1 was low and 100 was high.  “About five,” I replied.

“Okay, so I want you to turn it up.  Turn up the dial, keep it going.  Keep it building up and up.”

It was weird, it was like I could hear machinery starting to turn.  After a while he asked me:  “What level is it at now?”

“About 15.”

“Okay, well I want you to double it.  Got that?”

I nodded.

“Now double it again.”

He walked away from me, I could hear him going down the stage, giving the audience the show that they wanted, too.

I visualised lights stacked one on top of another in two square columns on either side of the control panel – like something out of Star Trek.  Each square light lit up, one after another and I seemed to be in a room of utter stillness, while at the same time I was on stage in a hotel conference room in London.  I could hear Paul’s voice in the distance…

Then I felt something start inside me. A great big welling up of grief that rose up through my body, flooding my mind with despair, pain, anger, frustration and hatred.  I tried to control it and push it down – but it rose up and up – higher and higher until I let out a lonely, desperate cry  and opened my eyes a little to see a tableau: Paul, whirled around on his heel staring at me, leant forward, watching my face, and out, beyond the lights, the audience in utter silence, some with their jaws dropped.

I wept, loudly and uncontrollably. The anger, the hatred I had nursed for the deal I had somehow got out of life, the broken dreams, smashed aspirations – all of this now surfaced – everything I had ignored for so long as I coped with life. My dreams. My hopes. They were twisted things, it seemed – crushed by life and by my own mistakes.

Paul moved quickly.  “I can see this means a lot to you,” he said and then came in close.

“I’m going to tell you how to get rid of this once and for all,” he said.  “Here’s how to do it.  I want you to hold out your hand and visualise all the bad feeling coming out of you and gathering in a ball on your hand. Do that now.”

I did as he said, imagining all the badness coalescing there, on my hand, a great swirling mass of malice.

“What colour is it?” he asked.

“Black,” I answered.

“Well, keep it coming.  And don’t you dare stop until every last piece of bad feeling is on your hand.  And when you feel the last piece of badness come out from you, I want you to nod…”

I sat there for what seemed an eternity, visualising all this ill feeling coming out of me.  I was desperate.  I felt so deeply alone on the stage, and utterly miserable as more and more of this blackness gathered itself in an imagined ball on my hand.

Meanwhile, another part of my mind was saying: “This is bullshit.  This is complete bullshit.  Utter bollocks.”  And still the blackness swirled.

Then, Paul asked me again: “Is that all of it?”

I nodded, and before I could think of anything else, he knocked my hand so that the ball fell to the floor, and then he stamped where it fell.

And it was then that I knew that something strange was going on in my head.

Because as he stamped, at that very point, I saw a huge pool of black ink splash and then spread across the stage.  The hallucination was so powerful that I blinked two or three times to make sure that my eyes weren’t deceiving me.  And it was still there, but overlaid on it was the real stage, the blue floor and Paul, looking at me.

I sat back in my chair, as if I was exhausted, wondering what would happen next.

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