Saturday Garden
Saturday Garden
An Other Than Conscious performance script
“This is so weird, we might like it,” Dannielle said.
About a decade ago she brought home some self-hypnosis recordings under the heading of “Other Than Conscious Communication”, created by a certain Dr. Dave Dobson. I knew nothing about Dobson, nor, for that matter, about hypnosis in general; the subject has nonetheless and always of interest to me as well as artists who are practitioners of hypnosis (most notably Matt Mullican; Dannielle is currently working on an exhibition on that subject as well).
Our mutual interest at the time was not artistic; it merely felt like an opportunity to explore the subconscious. The two mysterious recordings Dannielle obtained were labeled “Induction Recordings”, with one titled “House Cleaning” and the other “Beach Trip”. The only instructions on them was for one to lay in bed, preferably at bedtime, put on a sleep mask, headphones and start the tape, which I did one night. I turned on “House Cleaning”.
Right away I was startled by Dobson’s voice. It is the voice of an older, seemingly large man, with a weird baritone intonation, eccentric turns of phrase, occasional mumbling, groans, and giggles, whispering to your ear. The voice is at first slightly creepy but also weirdly seductive, only inasmuch as it generates enough fascination for you to want to keep listening, as if he were a charismatic character actor. He cracks weird jokes, as if to only make himself laugh, but his conversation immediately connects you to him and he establishes that you are completely safe with him, because he is only a recording, but he nonetheless will try to “barely, barely” get in touch with your “other than conscious”. “We are sitting in this room”, he starts describing, as if he were Alvin Lucier and we are amidst the beginning of a performance piece. He asks my mind to pay attention to my surroundings in the room, and start imagining walking out of it with him. Before I know it, we are walking down a beautiful gravel path, where he tells me “your cares are concerns are not important right now; you can simply enjoy.” As we go through that beautiful path under the shade of leafy trees and I can almost hear and feel the sounds of gravel under my feet, he skillfully directs me to a large, abandoned office building where I will encounter aspects of my childhood and where my “house cleaning” process will begin.
By the time I am in the building (which I am imagining as a huge 1950s factory with cream-colored walls) I am completely addicted to Dobson’s figurative handholding, and am doing exactly what he asks me to do. Everything he asks me to imagine — an elevator with one hundreds floor buttons, pressing the one that goes to floor 60, my earliest childhood memory, and so forth— I do so with great dedication; the images are sharp and colorful.
I will not go into detail on the rest as I would likely spoil the experience for future users. Suffice to say that the process I was taken through was extraordinarily cathartic and weight-lifting; by the end of the tape I was profoundly asleep. I do not even remember when Dobson’s voice had stopped speaking. I woke up many hours later, in the middle of the night, still with the headphones and the light on.
Dobson, who was born in Tacoma, Washington, and spent most of his professional career in California and Washington State until his passing in 2008 (strangely, very little information is publicly available about his life), was influenced by the work of renowned therapist Milton H. Erickson, in particular what is regarded as Ericksonian techniques (using language patterns and indirect suggestion). Some of his admirers and followers considered him a “new Milton Erickson”. He developed his own version of hypnotherapy, including the coining of a new term, “Other Than Conscious Communication” or OTCC. He spend many years conducting seminars using his method and his theory. In an interview about his practice, one can see Dobson discussing how he came up with the term in 1970s:
“I really don’t like the term hypnosis because people either use it as a cop-out or are afraid of it. After working on thousands of people I am convinced that there is no such thing as hypnosis, and everything is hypnosis. Probably the greatest hypnotist in the world is your mother, and your daddy. And your school teachers… your priest, your rabbi. What we are doing is we are acting on a belief system, and if your believe in the belief system, it is real.”
For years I have been interested in Dobson’s approach, and in the way in which he uses suggestion and language to help one create images. I often wondered what would happen if I could emulate his style, but with an emphasis in the narrative. I thus share here the resulting script from a video piece I made in 2016.
Saturday Garden
Today is a perfect day, and you can feel it. Let’s think about this for a minute. I want you to think about it very carefully. Let’s start with a bit of a test. Sit down and close your eyes. I want you to imagine yourself comfortably sitting in your living room. You are very comfortable, and nothing will trouble you for now. Forget all worries; forget everything you are going through. You can take a few minutes to relax. Now, breath in. Breath out. Breath in, breath out. Breath in, breathe out. Every time you breathe out the weight of your problems is coming out. And you will feel lighter, as if you were floating, each time you breathe out. Breath in, breathe out. Breath in, breathe out.
In your mind you will stand up where you are sitting and look around the room. There is a door there; a door that you didn’t realize existed. It is incredible that you didn’t see it before, its right there. You walk toward the door, and you open it. It leads to a beautiful garden, with lots of flowers. You feel like you are in Switzerland, on the most beautiful place in the world. It all is so peaceful. There are butterflies flying around. It is around noon on Saturday. You can hear the noises of the street- some cars out there, maybe a construction site, but it all is very faint, they are very far, and in a way it is comforting, because you are hearing people work while you don’t have to do anything right now.
The garden is really beautiful. It has white and red flowers, of which you used to know the name but now you can’t remember anymore how they were called. Your aunt was a specialist in those flowers. They grow very easily, but you haven’t seen them in forever. The path is very colorful; you feel the gravel as you walk. You think that your shoes might need a bit of a thicker sole now that you come think of it. It is so peaceful, so beautiful here. Now you are going through an archway with ivy. The leaves gently rub against you as you go through. It is a long archway for sure. When you come out, you are in a completely different place it seems. There are beautiful gardens everywhere, and many houses with huge yards. It does seem now that you are in a different city and maybe a different time. There is no one around, it’s so quiet. But now you see a child running around, that is the only person you see. You can’t tell if it is a girl or a boy, it’s so hard to see. You are in charge of that kid. It is your job to get that child wherever he or she might be going. The kid is running, he or she must be only 3 or 4 years old but seems to be running very fast anyway; before you know it you have lost sight of the kid. The kid has now gone into a garden with beautiful fountains. They are truly very nice fountains. They kind of make you think of Spain, of the Alhambra, which you always thought was the most beautiful place in the world, and also the saddest, because it was made so long ago by people and for people who disappeared centuries ago. You enter one of the gardens in the form of a labyrinth as you look for the kid. And now you are lost in the labyrinth made of very thick orange tree bushes. You can smell the orange leaves, you cut one of the leaves and you can smell the citrus in the leaf. You continue walking around looking for this kid. Remember you are in charge of this child. You must be his or her guardian, his or her parent. It is your responsibility to be his or her protector, his or her guardian. Let’s call this child X. X starts talking in a quiet voice, clearly talking to himself or herself. X is playing, telling stories, making up conversations in the way that every child does that. They are stories that don’t really seem to have a beginning and an end, but they always have dialogues. There are always characters in them. X asks a question, and X answers it. You use the voice of X to know where the kid is and you follow it as you go through the bushes. The sun is very strong, it is hot, but it is a dry heat, and there is something very calming in the sound of the fountain behind the bushes. You are now lost in the labyrinth but for some reason you are not worried about this. You simply follow X’s voice. It’s a very familiar voice, a voice you feel you have heard for your entire life. At some point you appear to be right on the other side of the bushes of the labyrinth, and you can’t get through, but X has stopped moving. Now the voice remains right on the other side, and you can hear it clearly. At this point X asks you about death. X saw something on television maybe about a man who was killed. Why was that man killed, X asks. And you try to start answering, because there are bad people in the world that try to harm others. And why are they bad? Don’t they want to be good? X asks. I guess you say, some of them think they are good but they decide that they want to harm others because they consider them bad. And they cut their heads, asks X. Yes, you say, hesitantly. But you let’s not talk about that, you say. At that moment there is a silence on the other side. X must be thinking about what you have said. You can hear the water in the fountain. And what happened to that man X asks. Did he go to heaven? Then you have to be honest and tell X, I don’t believe in heaven, some people do, but I don’t. But if there is no heaven, where do people go, X asks. I don’t believe they go anywhere; you reply. X doesn’t seem to understand. Then you say, I believe when people die they disappear forever. Another silence. Then through the bushes you hear X starting to cry. Why are you crying, you say. X replies: I am crying because I am afraid I am going to die, and then I will never see you again. I will be alone. You are sitting there, next to the bushes, and you are not sure what to say. You are overcome with sadness yourself, and you start crying too, but you don’t want X to know it. You feel an uncontainable sadness, but you do your best to hide it. Don’t worry, you reply, this will not happen in a very long time. You will die only when you are very very old, very very very old, or if you are very very very sick. X continues crying. You hear that X is moving again, and you try to follow his or her steps. You try to continue talking to X, explaining not to worry, I am here to take care of you, I will take care of you, while I am next to you there is nothing to worry. X says I am so afraid, I am so afraid to die. Do not worry you say, as you continue walking. X starts to run, and you try to follow those steps. It’s so difficult to keep pace with the kid. And this labyrinth is so complicated. You run, you sense the movements of X on the other side, you think you need to move now in the other direction. “Where are you?” X asks you. You are now running trying to find X, but the thickness and the height of the bushes makes it impossible for you to see. “Stay still”, you say, but X continues running. You wish X would stay put, but X continues to move. The dry heat of the sun is too much. You are sweating. You are thirsty, you have an insatiable thirst by now, but you need to find X.
Finally, you turn a corner, and you see X. it is the longest hallway of the labyrinth it seems, and suddenly X looks very far away, so much so that you can hardly see the kid. But now X is standing, looking at the bushes. You walk toward X, slowly. It takes really a very long time to walk all the way over where X is standing, and you can see X’s back. Finally, you are close enough, and X is right in front of you, with his or her back facing you, so you can’t see X’s face yet. You put your hands in X’s back saying don’t worry, I am here, I am here with you, and I will take care of you. And X turns finally and looks at you. You immediately feel a shiver, because you discover that X is you when you were a child.