Many of the best cold readers (fortunetellers and the like) have an armoury of all sorts of cool transparent concessions to achieve their magic - a lot of it is dependent on the understanding of unconscious communication through subtext. Several years ago, a friend of mine named Belinda, who'd been enjoying frequenting speed dating nights in the town, was berating the fact that every single guy every single night would ask the same fucking questions, top of the list being 'what do you do for a living?', or words to that effect.
A good cold reader will know that the wording of an answer reveals much information. If the answer is in the format 'I'm a (name of job)', then it's a sign that the person's identity is closely knitted to what they do, whereas 'I (do activity)' shows that the focus of identity is elsewhere.
Belinda asked me if I had any ideas about how she should best respond to this oh-so-inevitable question. Knowing that it would seem better to be seen as passionate about one's chosen work, I suggested the first formula - with an added subtlety. Kind of. 'I'm a kind of cleaner' - which sounds pretty damn mysterious and fascinating to me; and even more when the guy with increasing curiosity asks what she means. Belinda just smiles, shrugs her shoulders and says 'hey, I'll tell you later, let's not talk about that now, what do you do in the real world?'
I'm a kind of musician. But let's not talk about that now.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
4 comments:
If that title has anything to do with the thoughts it evokes in me then i'm totally against it!
Interesting post.
I work as a computer programmer but I don't really identify myself as such.
So, I find myself saying that "I'm a programmer" without any qualifier.
Perhaps subconsciously I'm attempting to add intrigue to something banal.
Well, now my comment above looks pretty silly and out of context. The content and the mentioned asociations is not coherrent, even if i'm against dating as well. There's few activities that are as tedious as that.
And actually the "stragedy" that you mention here i think would have the opposite effect on me (even if it might be genereally true and fulfill it's goals) an answer like that would make me think that here's someone trying to make himself more interesting than he is and no more a turn-on than an expensive car or wrist watch...
But then again i'm more interested in hearing why people like/dislike the things they do and how they come around to doing exactly that, than the actual job-discription...
I'm a disposable lighter repairman
I'm a footwear model
I count earwigs in a lab for a living
I'd love to tell you, but I can't
and so on.
Post a Comment