5th October - I was Hypnotised

... Or at least, I think I was. As you know, I went to see Derren Brown's 'Showman' tour last night, and though I actually thought many elements of the show were a little underwhelming by Derren's own impeccably high standards, there was a particular segment which left both myself, and so many around me, astounded. The trick itself was building on something Derren demonstrated in the first half of the show, talking about suggestibility and our subconscious, proving how we can be manipulated into certain beliefs or situations if we allow our mind to go with the flow of his techniques... The lights, the music, the words he is speaking etc.

For fans of his work, this is certainly not a 'new' concept, and one he's been employing for years. But last night's theme urged the audience 'not to sleepwalk through life', and so, after manipulating large chunks of the audience into forgetting their own names, or being unable to unclasp their hands together (one woman was even made to forget the number '7' and kept counting 5, 6, 8, 9 in what was a pretty hilarious display if she was not indeed a stooge), Derren moved to a whole new task altogether... Hypnotising the audience into erasing time, or indeed a memory, from our mind completely. 

With one man on stage, with a card (the 8 of hearts) under his palm, on a table, Derren urged him to stand up and go place the card in a perspex box which was hanging from the ceiling, also on stage. He even asked a woman up from the crowd to stand in front of the box as the 'watcher' and inform us if she saw the man place the card in the box. When Derren would trigger the hypnotism of the man, he would indeed, in a trance like state walk over to the box and perform the deed. However, upon counting to 5, I - like many around me - just heard "1... 2...." and then the next thing you know, it was as if I blinked and the entire deed was done. I missed the whole segment, but as it was being filmed by a cameraman live on stage, Derren was all too happy to show us the footage back on the big screen that the man did indeed walk over to the box with the card.

The 'watcher' was then asked to open the box and confirmed that it was the card inside (it had previously been 'signed' by the man, to distinguish it from the rest), but she - like most of us - despite standing right in front of it, had no recollection of anybody approaching the box. A show of hands in the crowd proved to us that around 20/30% of the audience saw the whole thing, but 7 out of 10 of us felt like we could adamantly sit in a court of law and claim such an event had never occurred, despite being present in the room the whole time, and staring at the stage, like everyone around us. Brown claims that this is because he is capable of hypnotising those of us who allow ourselves to buy into his suggestibility tactics, to erase whole segments of time from our lives. Whether or not that's entirely true, I'm still trying to work out. If not, it was at very least, a marvellous display of misdirection, distraction, deceit, and showmanship. But if it was authentic, then yes, last night...

... I was hypnotised.