Hypnotism

I've written an article or two about hypnotism in the past. It rarely felt right to me.

A lot of people who write about hypnotism start by grappling with this fundamental question that goes --

"Why would you hypnotize someone?"

There is some attempt at an answer:

In that answer, there is some attempt to speak for me. I rarely feel good being spoken for -- especially not with such clinical language.

It feels terrible to be described adequately-but-poorly. I can't imagine it feels better for other people when I speak for them.

I want to propose that I hypnotize you because I'm made to do so. We exist to end up in a certain configuration where I'm at your neck and your blood is dripping from it --

At least that's a departure from the bland lifelessness of the word "kink."

Nosferatu's behaviors could be described as kink in the sense that they are deviant, but we would not call him a "kinkster." He does not fit the profile.

Many terms have a positive guise and a negative one. "Nonbinary" used to mean -- not pink, not blue. Negative -- "here's what I'm not." Now, for lots of people it means "purple." Positive -- "here's what I am."

That catches on, to the great dismay of people who are orange.

As for me, I am not biting you because I want to gratify you. I am not biting it for the purpose of a social transaction called "kink." The contact I seek would nourish me without your consent -- even with your explicit objection. I am biting you because I need the blood in your veins.

What I do to gratify you is a narrow subset of what I'm capable of doing. The fact that I can make you do anything I want, and yet I choose only specific things that suit my preference, is part of my identity as a vampire.

Let me take the mask off for a second.

I'm not really a vampire. If I can be said to be a vampire at all, I am a vampire in an inferior mortal body. This stupid body doesn't even come with hypno eyes.

To the extent that I can hypnotize people, I'm probably better at it than you. It has to do with -- something.

What?

Like I said, there's no vampire in this body, no real one. It can't have anything to do with that.

If it's nothing to do with the vampire in my body, then it has something to do with the human. What does it have to do with the human?

Well, to engage with such a thing would be painful --

I am going to talk about it now.

When I am being a human I am thinking very hard about how to make other people do what I want. When I am a vampire, other people are doing what I want.

The truth is, for a very long time I've been obsessed with controlling people. Controlling people is the most situational thing ever, and it's all denial and double bluffs. And "don't remind me it's working, or it won't work."

This is an enormous amount to process and it has a sense of effortlessness for me even though it is actually very difficult and I fail more often than I would like.

What I have takes the form of technical skill -- I cannot readily transmit it -- and it is a part of how I talk and how I think, whether or not I am doing it. It is a sensory process.

The people who are the best in the world at being hypnotized will tell you similar things. They will tell you pat little homilies and they will tell you that if you do your best to think about it, that won't help.

People with advanced technical skill nearly always communicate like this.

A baseball player who says "swing at the ball and don't miss" is telling you very little. They may be great or they may not, they'd still tell you that.

People, even geniuses, tell you the bare minimum to pick out the technique they use from a category of similar techniques they used before they were skilled. The content of the technique is impossible to transmit.

I can't make you good at speaking to someone.

Now the human has been of no use to you. You want to speak to me and to learn my system --

I'm licking my fangs, not because I'm hungry. Only to make you feel something.

Now I'll tell you something. Every system works, none works especially well. Half the people will tell you that.

They will preach the System of No System. "Hypnosis is just communication."

I will not condescend to you by pretending we are equals.

Nothing you do can bring you close to my level of ability, I tell you.

(I tell myself.)

It's validating, as a hypothetical vampire with mind control powers, to be untouchable. Existing in the fantasy of being that thing is very satisfying -- it's threatened by the process that is harmful to many kinds of art of turning technical knowledge into verbal facts.

And, feeling the sweat on my face, aware that vampires are not supposed to sweat, I tell you one other thing. That if you happen to see the human straining, you should ignore that creature and focus on my gaze.