Derren Brown: Archive
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From: Blue Chip
Date: Tue Dec 3, 2002 8:29am
Subject: The Big Picture
Hi again,
One person asked "...if Derren is so sure of himself, why doesn't he go up
and say 'You're a journalist!'?"
Did you listen to the description of the bloke? This is not a guy who is
going to have any interest in getting involved with some guy on the street
with a camera. For a start he is taking the job of protecting his
girlfriend _very_ seriously, I mean she is so far in his armpit you would
be within reason to wonder if they were actually congenitally joined.
You can tell a lot about someone from a distance. I have a friend who is a
copper, we were driving along one day and he looked out of the car window
at some guy a said "so, what do you do for a living?" The window was
closed and the car was moving, so it had clearly been said for my
benefit. I looked at the guy... I looked at the spiked mohican and thought
"hmm, graphic artist?" then followed it down - no facial piercings - couple
of nasty scars though. His clothes looked like charity shop rejects - I
could almost smell this guy by now, and I tell you it wasn't pleasant, and
the thing he was smoking looked like it been rolled by a sheep! I
concluded he worked on a part time basis for the government. Signing on
the dotted line once a fortnight. The type coppers take note of, for some
strange reason.
Now maybe that was a simplistic example, but if you let the rule start to
unfold, it will happily take you on a journey around your mind, though a
list of all the people you know, Uncle Boris, Little Jimmy next door, and
Stinky Susan from school to name but three. Start with a big room, in the
middle is everybody you know, move some of them out to one side. Who did
you choose and why? Probably your friends, and probably because you like
them. That's good we have already got a big group of characteristics that
you like. Now divide that group into two or three smaller groups and again
decide something (no matter how ambiguous) about each group, "good
looking", "male", "weird" whatever you choose. Go back to the middle of
the room and pick at least one new member for each group. Now analyse the
groups again and find a commonality between this new person and the group
they have joined.
Don't try to remember all of this, just let it make sense as you go - this
is NOT a memory test. You may well find that the next time you do this,
that the groups form very differently. Why? Can you remember where this
person was last time. You won't remember for -everybody- but after a while
you will find that the important (important to you, that is) character
traits stand out clearly and after a couple of weeks, you will walk into
that room and four or five groups will have 'set up camp' in their own
little area, and above the will be the word "Friends" or "Lovers" or "Ugly"
or "Store Detective"
Derren's people watching piece was also done during an afternoon in
London. Well that kinda rounds it down a bit. I'm sure it would have been
very different in Toxteth, Liverpool, or in Solihull on a Sunday afternoon.
Start honing your skills now. See if you can pick out the homeless people
from the rascals. I saw a guy in a leather jacket last month selling "The
Big Issue" with one hand and chatting on his mobile phone with the
other. Now you don't need a permanent place of residence to own a mobile
'phone, but where do you think he hides it when he gets in his cardboard
box at night? And who was this friend he was laughing with that would not
allow a homeless mate to use his address for job applications? Maybe I've
missed the point completely and homeless just means something very
different nowdays?
I have a little test I lay down for myself...
Look the guy square in the eyes and say "Pizza Hut are hiring. <nod>"
If I look at the guy and think, you have no hope of ever getting a job,
even a crap one, not even if you had a bath and put on a suit, then I give
him a quid instead. Hey it's a can if coke to me - it's money towards a
meal for him. And if he wants a "special brew" dinner let him have it. I
still wouldn't trade with him, even if he does drink beer as a legal way to
try and escape his horrible reality.
I always know in a split second whether to put my hand in my pocket. And I
never walk away feeling that I might have been wrong. That's not to say
I've never been conned, but if I have been, he was good!
I'm making this sound easy aren't I? Okay pick a more difficult
example. Pick out the store detectives in the supermarket next time you go
shopping. When you find the middle-aged non-decript woman, with no company
and one item from each aisle. Check her clothes for sign or excess wear
and tear, scruffy maybe (if she's good), tatty certainly not (this is a
public facing job). Often you see them chatting with two or more members
of shop floor staff, or even funnier still is to watch them leaving the
staff room - but that kinda takes the challenge out of it!
Once you're pretty certain you've picked her out... examine her, as she
turns to face you, break eye contact abruptly, look at the floor, and start
to gaze aimlessly at whatever grocery items you are standing near, slowly
working your head back up. Once back up, keep glimpsing her in an 'are you
gone yet' manner, but try not to turn your head - make a real point of
trying to keep your head still as you look around (this is very unnatural,
and will draw her attention closer to you.) Hopefully she will cotton you
for a thief (especially if you DO have tatty clothes and scruffy hair.)
Now, when she is only HALF-watching you (notice when her head becomes
perfectly stationary) take something and smoothly, but obviously, put it
inside your jacket - she will be watching your hands so she should not
notice you glimpse at her on this occasion. Walk into the next aisle, and,
before she makes it round the corner, hide what you took back on a shelf
somewhere discreet. Continue to walk around as if you are keeping this
thing hidden (badly)... Now it's time for the frame breaker - she has
followed a hundred shop lifters before. Walk up to her as if to walk past,
and as you come in line with her stop and ask her where the frozen chickens
are.
If you chose wisely, you should be able to watch her eyes and hands as she
blindly panics with "what do I do now?" And you can walk away in the
knowledge that you were right. If she is not a store detective, she will
probably look at you blankly as a first reaction. You can walk away safe
in the knowledge that you have disproven your theories, but have not made a
tit out of yourself. Adjust your parameters and try again.
I often take great pleasure in walking them all over the store in the most
erratic way possible, then wink at them and walk out, see if they have the
balls to stop me, they normally just stand there dumbfounded or turn to the
nearest item and pretend to look at it. Never been stopped yet! Of
course, I always have the added confidence of knowing that I haven't
actually taken anything - and this confidence is probably what makes half
of it work. I have an, as yet, untested spiel waiting for the person who
does stop me to see if I can get them to apologise BEFORE searching me ;)
When I go to a local pub with a live band, I always try to pick out the
musicians from the rest of the unknown crowd, and then see who gets up on
stage. When I am in a strange family scenario (friends wedding for
example) I try to work out who is related to who and how. That kid just
flicked peas and looked at this guy for disapproval - father and
son. There are hundreds of places to practice and many of them give you an
opportunity to find out if you were right.
Progressing on a little. In more social situations try to read peoples
emotions. He's picking his nose, he is clearly more interested in the
crustacean up his nose than what she is saying. Think about it, the next
time someone is telling you something, stuff one of your fingers up your
nose and tell me what is more important at that moment, her words or your nose?
This technique works surprisingly well all round. Every now and then I see
someone and think "what the hell is (s)he thinking right now?" The first
(and normally last) solution I apply is to quite literally take their exact
body position and think "how does this make me feel?" When I feel
satisfied that I have an answer, I apply my guess to the situation I can
see (and hopefully overhear, I'd like some confirmation to see if I'm
right) and ask myself "does emotion X make sense in that environment" If
not I try again, and add a couple of other methods, I have rarely been
completely stumped.
The first few times that I was _utterly_ stumped were with drug users. The
guy in the bar "coming up on an E" just did not fit any model I had. They
all got dumped in the box labelled "god knows". Then one night a friend of
mine approached me in this state, my likkwle heart leapt as she said "Have
you got any chewing gum, it just that I took this E about 45minutes ago
and..." and I brashly slapped up a new shop in my brain and the sign over
the door read "Ecstasy User". "Druggy Alley" is a very interesting road to
wander down at night when I'm bored. I allow the people to come out of
their respective shops and mingle. You can start to imagine what would
happen if someone from "Dope'r'us" is allowed to interact with someone from
"Speedy Gonzales Old Age Emporium". I also like to walk down the road and
peek through the window and see what they're up to.
You will notice and remember anything of interest that you see in these
shops. The media has very kindly spend 30 years programming me with that
skill. If you read that first sentence again, you will observe that it
only claims to remember things of interest. So the next step is easy - if
you want to remember -everything- take time to be interested in
-everything-. If a friend is telling you a joke (presuppositions: you have
a friend; they know a joke) and you are bored by it (I normally find "An
Englishman, an Irishman and a Scots..." is about all it takes to get me
bored) then you are unlikely to remember it - it may still be present under
hypnotic recall, but you are unlikely to recall the joke randomly one
evening as you would do with many others. Problem? No interest!
There will always be things you just don't understand, as with me and drug
users. On these occasions just put the experience in one of the
interesting junk stores - whichever seems instinctively correct. If the
experience seems to fit in two or three shops, move their premises so that
they are all near to each other, there is likely to be a common thread that
you have not previously been aware of. By putting all the experiences
together, the 'big picture' will start to become more obvious. One day the
'junk' will acquire a sign, often reading "please ask Bagpuss for details
of our special offers"
A little humour for you. A sadist and a masochist in a room together, the
sadist says "hit me hit me", the masochist turns and says softly "no" In
my experience (and I really have tested this one to the hilt) women tend to
look blankly at me; I say "a sadist is a..." and get cut off with "yes, I
understand the words, and I see why it's clever, but it's not really that
funny." Blokes tend to fall about in hysterics. After (too) much
debating, we have drawn this conclusion: To a bloke it's a satirical look
at going out on the pull; to a woman it's a clever play on words. I will
suss the difference between men and women before I die, but for now this is
about as close as I have got. Next door to the nightclub "A night on the
pull" is another venue called "date rape"
You see how I have this town in my head and how it is built from every
experience I have - even something that seems at first to be just an
innocent joke. There are gathering points where these people will interact
at my will, pubs, clubs, markets, parks etc. You can even go into the card
shop and play cards if you like ;) Although I must say that this is a new
venue, and the theories that work in there are still being greatly
refined. My delay is that they are all developing at the same time, my
advantage is, they'll all come to fruition at pretty much the same time.
My theory of card memory is closely modelled on the system Derren mentions
in his programmes. With a chunk of grouping thrown in for good
measure. For example I have four sofas, two red, two black, each with a
family of three sitting on them; a father, a mother and a son - these are
real people that I know. Fat family on one black sofa; black (call a spade
a spade) family on the other black sofa; rich family and loving family on
the red sofas. They can stand up, sit down, hold numbers in front of them,
point at something or leave the room completely. There's a Christmas Three
in the corner with a Star on top, Baubles (and other decorations), a little
spade in the soil, and a present with hearts all over it. Again the star
can be switched on/off/removed/replaced with a number/beam of light points
to something. You see how the idea works. It is far more effective than I
originally suspected, and I plan to follow the idea through to completion.
I must say, that I can see how Blackjack is one of the easier games to
follow. Especially when 1 in 3 cards is worth 10. The aces count
themselves - you NEVER forget an ace coming out of the pack, that only
leaves 8 groups of 4 (times the number of decks you are using), they divide
nicely into LOW and HIGH {(2,3,4,5),(6,7,8,9)} Heck! that alone gives you
one hell of an advantage ;)
Well, I hope that some or all of this inspires a little conversation, it
will be nice to see how these ideas can be improved. Hope I haven't bored
you too much.
Bc
P.S. I really feel that somewhere should have been the words "The map is
not the territory" So here they are: The map is not the territory. You
can safely walk down Druggy Alley without being beaten up. But you don't
want to try that in Kings Cross at 02:00 on a Wednesday!
| Replies | Author | Yahoo! ID | Date | Size |
| 1763: Re: The Big Picture | gordo_ala_moore | gordo_ala_moore | Tue 03/12/2002 | 16 KB |
