M&M: Poltergeist

Dear reader,

welcome to another “Movie of the Month! Today: Poltergeist. The film cam out in 1982. Just now I am reminded of „The Exorcist“. But when I thought of horror films I know, the first that came to mind was “Poltergeist“. Apart from the films, there's also a so-called “Poltergeist curse“. More on that later on.

“Poltergeist” is about a family with 3 children. The bird of the youngest daughter, Carol Ann (Heather O’Rourke) dies and is buried in the garden. The brother, Robbie (Oliver Robins) and the older sister, Dana (Dominique Dunne) make a bit of fun about that. In the night Carol Ann sits in front of the gray, static transmitting tv and announces her famous line, “They're here!” There are other strange (for now) harmless things happening in the house. Chairs move by themselves and Carol Ann can slide on the kitchen floor, but fast as if moved by some force. One night a big tornado makes the family wake up and Carol Ann disappears. She's sucked into her wardrobe. But she's not entirely gone. The family can still hear her and talk to her over the tv.

Of course scientists have to come and help the family. The whole thing looks like “Ghost Busters” from the characters, but the atmosphere is scary and intense more like “The Exorcist”. Strange things happen, especially in Carol Ann's room, which the family doesn't dare to enter anymore. The scientists suspect a poltergeist more than a classic haunting for starters. They call upon the help of the medium Tangina Barrons (Zelda Rubinstein) as last resort. Her rescue mission almost goes wrong, they get Carol Ann to the right side just in time. But the strange phenomenon don't stop here. In a thunderstorm night the mother goes out to get help from the neighbours when she slides into the muddy swimming pool, from which dead corpses suddenly appear. The family planned to move anyway. This night was supposed to be the last in the house. But they move to a hotel that very night.

If you don't want to know, why the ghost problems happen, skip the following paragraph. I can't help, but write it, because it's one of my favourite scenes of the film!

In the final stormy night, the father suddenly remembers a remark from his boss, a real estate broker. They planned a new estate and for that they want to move the graveyard. But the company will do it the easy way: they'll only move the headstones. The phenomenons the poor family has to endure, are the revenge of the restless souls buried under their house. So the father goes to his boss and screams, “You moved the cemetery, but you left the bodies, didn't you? You son of a bitch! You left the bodies and you only moved the headstones! You only moved the headstones! Why?! Why?!”

The final scene of the film has the whole family moving into the hotel room. The father stands outside for a bit longer and then follows the others inside, closing the door behind him. Shortly after that he opens the door again, shifts the small tv, which is on wheels, outside the room and closes the door again. A tv truly is the last thing that family needs now.

And now the “Poltergeist curse”: Like so many successful films, there were sequels to “Poltergeist”. But Dominique Dunne, who played the older daughter, never lived for them. She got killed the same year “Poltergeist” came out, killed by her ex-boyfriend. Heather O’Rourke, who played Carol Ann, died in 1988, while shooting “Poltergeist 3”. She died from an acute bowel obstruction, which had also led to a septic shock after bacterial toxins invaded her bloodstream. Which makes Oliver Robins to be the last surviving child actor. William Sampson played in “Poltergeist 2”. He died after complications following a surgery. The actor Julian Beck played in “Poltergeist 2” and died in 1985, two years after being diagnosed with stomach cancer. Curse or not? You decide.

Until next blog,
sarah

Freedom Today

Dear reader,

in a time today where half of the world seems to be on facebook, I see my freedom exactly in not being on facebook. Although I do have a mobile phone (cell phone, for some of my readers) and even one with a land line number, it's the only way to contact me all the time, if you wanted. The only four exceptions are: 1) when I'm taking a shower, 2) I'm out to do some quick shopping or 3) I don't hear my phone, likely because I'm out and listening to too loud music on my ipod or 4) I can't reach it in time.

It's a bit strange that my mobile phone is the best way to contact me instantly of all possible ways. Because I generally don't like phoning that much and I prefer writing or talking to people directly.

Most people, with whom I have communicated or still am communicating using chat programs, have the decency to write me when they're leaving when they're on invisible status. Many people I know, who use that status, have their good reasons for it. I only feel sorry that they're always the one writing to me and I don't have the possibility to be the one to contact them first. I don't know if they're there or not. For all I know, judging by their status, they could just as well be gone or have turned off their computer all together, just as their status suggests they're “off”. Luckily that only happened to me on few occasions.

For me what tops off the invisible status is being online with (hooray!) smartphones all the time now. That way some people are (almost) constantly online with chat programs, but with away status. Considering their status to be true, I don't write to the very most people in that case. Either they're really not on their phone or computer or don't want to be disturbed. So I don't write to them. Which is fine with me. Honestly. It only makes me wonder, why they're online still.

The answer quite possibly is facebook. Half of the world (at least) is on facebook, so I have to be, too. Ever more people have a smartphone and with that a phone that connects them to the internet. So it's the possibility to be online, especially on facebook, where most people are online almost all the time. Or is it not? Panic, when the battery of the smartphone gives up unexpectedly and one is out somewhere without the possibility to recharge. I can't read anymore what others have written to me on facebook! Boohoo! On the wikipedia page on facebook, under the section Criticisms_and_controversies, you'll find a 2013 study on why people quit using facebook. 48% said it was privacy concerns. It is the main reason why I don't even want to register there. Followed by what can be read under reception, that companies fired employers after keeping an eye on employers facebook accounts and firing them for what they posted there. Thanks, but no thanks. I don't need that. 6% of the study on quitters of facebook said that facebook is addictive. Thanks, I'm happy with the internet as addiction already. Whoever wants to get in touch with me, can call me, write me an e-mail or chat with me with a chat program. I do not need to register on a website, to keep in touch with my friends. The real world is still out there, away from screens, where you can see the whole person and do stuff in the real world.

In the first episode of the 11^th Doctor in “Doctor Who” (The Eleventh Hour), aliens darken the sun for the humans on earth and prepare to incinerate the earth. The Doctor stands outside and watches the people, who have nothing better to do than taking pictures of the sun or filming it on their cameraphones. The comment of the Doctor to all of that personally makes me very sad, “Oh and here they come. The human race. The end comes, as it was always going to... down a video phone.”
Call me egoistic, arrogant, old fashioned or whatever negative description you can think of. But I myself do not want to be part of a society, in which I have to be on call online always and all the time and even though I write this blog here online, I do not have to record every single tiny bit of my life online. In the episode “The Bells of Saint John” (season 7, episode 7) in a quiet moment, the Doctor describes the situation so far, the way he understands it as follows, “This whole world swimming in Wi-Fi. We're living in a Wi-Fi soup! Suppose something got inside it. Suppose there was something living in the Wi-Fi, harvesting human minds, extracting them. Imagine that. Human souls trapped like flies in the World Wide Web, stuck for ever, crying out for help.” Clara's comment on that, “Isn't that basically Twitter?”

Everybody vanish in the internet. Everyone, register yourself on facebook and twitter. I won't know what's going on for you then, because I'm not registered on either of that. But what the heck. If communication today gets reduced to facebook and twitter, then this here is my good-bye to you. Maybe we'll see each other again when the world stops existing or maybe already when the third world war broke out. I have a hunch neither of that might happen online exclusively.

Until next blog,
sarah

Better Be Many

Dear reader,

before the movie "The Silence of The Lambs" there was the same-titled book by Thomas Harris and before that book was the book "Red Dragon". (The latter being filmed twice, by the way, once in 1986 with the title "Manhunter" and William Petersen as the lead role of the investigator and Brian Cox as Dr. Hannibal Lecter. The movie from 2002 has Edward Norton as the investigator and Anthony Hopkins in his staring role as Dr. Hannibal Lecter.) "Red Dragon" is about the former FBI agent Will Graham. He became famous after helping identifying Lecter as the offender and then catching him.

The former supervisor visits Graham and seeks his help in the brutal murder of two families. He notices that during the intense conversation, Graham uses more and more of the rhythm and syntax of his dialogue partner. Graham doesn't do that intentionally to build a good connection between them, but unconsciously.

I noticed that and it happened to me, too. Once I was at my aunt's in Hamburg for about a week and after two or three days, I noticed, that I was talking in a different way. Back home I was talking my own usual way again.

Budding people of the social field, such as therapists, are told to notice the voice, rhythm, speed and use of words of their clients and adjust their own way of speaking accordingly. It creates sympathy on an unconscious level and a connection between the people talking to each other.

There's this saying that dogs often look like the owner. Which is no surprise, especially if they had been living together already for a long time. Adjusting doesn't only happen on a verbal level, but also with looks or gestures and body posture. Sometimes consciously, more often unconsciously.

Trends are set that way, too. We like a person and we like what he or she is wearing or how they are wearing it, so we start to do as they do. For many years I used to wear my wrist watch with the face on the inner side of my wrist. I had seen Bruce Willis wearing his wrist watch that way in many movies and also Matt Smith in his portrayal of the 11th Doctor in "Doctor Who" in at least two episodes, checks his wrist watch with the face on the inner side of his wrist. For some weeks, also analog to the 11th Doctor, I'm wearing a pocket watch. I don't wear my wrist watch anymore at this moment. No, it's not the owl wrist watch I have bought in april. It's a proper pocket watch with clipper to clip it to the brim of the pocket and a chain. I was especially thinking of Derren Brown and hypnotists generally, of whom you'd almost expect to waggle a pocket watch in front of your eyes to make you go into a trance. So my pocket watch has nothing to do with the Doctor!!!

Such things can work like little lucky charms or nervers. At least they do for me. Wearing a scarf the way Benedict Cumberbatch does as Sherlock Holmes for example. Maybe a purple scarf, purple being Milton Erickson's favourite colour...

David Calof was a student of Milton Erickson. In his audio set "Hypnotic Techniques", he starts by saying that "I'm one of those people, who believe that Ericksonianism died in 1980, when Erickson died and that we're actually in a post Erickson era." So he wouldn't stand here saying he was Ericksonian. Although he had the privileg of studying with him. He isn't Ericksonian. He is Calofian, he supposed. For starters, that's a funny thing to say and maybe a bit arrogant, too. One might argue whether or not Ericksonianism could have been done only by Erickson himself and indeed died with Erickson. The most "absolute" form of it certainly did. Erickson as a human and therapist was unbelievably complex and multilayered. Not one single person alone will completely "get" him and internalise it for themselves. To be like him for the sake of his genius and to act like he did, would only be a copy. Erickson was very creative and revolutionised the psyotherapy and hypnotherapy of his time. It's certainly worth checking out his way of working and how he did things. In the end however, everybody should find their own way of doing therapy. It would be sad, only to be a cheap copy of somebody else. Especially since there isn't just Erickson, who did good works with his approaches. Calof said it, too, that he learned the limitations of Erickson's model. (Sadly, for me anyway, he doesn't go on about what those limitations are. I would like to know, where he thinks the limitations are.)

Also, as much as you as a therapist might prefer one therapy over another or one method within a certain therapy over another, not every person responds to this one method the same positive way. That would be boring for therapists, too, because then they would all only learn this one kind of therapy and then treat everyone this same way and heal and help them that way. That would be boring, wouldn't it? As Betty Alice Erickson, one of Milton Erickson's daughters, put it in an interview with Paul Anwandter, " You can't have a rule of psychotherapy that applies to everyone."

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession." That same way we should respect the other person's individuality and not want to be like one single other person. At its worst, we'll be a "cheap copy" quite literally and at best people would still talk about as as some one like xy.

When I was a kid I had a blanket with all sorts of squared samples sewed together. One beautiful, colourful patch work blanket. That's what I wold wish for us all, that we become a colourful patch work person in the things we do, our way of thinking and the way we look. Taking individual aspects of many, different people and utilise them in a useful way. Everything else would be boring, cheap copies. Nobody needs those.

Until next blog,

sarah

Sleeping fast... if you want it and remember...

Dear reader,

how about this: a night owl writes about how to fall asleep fast. Well, that's me right now, right here! I like the night, because it's quiet, calm and peaceful. The hectic of the day is gone. I get creative a lot of times at night.

Actually much like with my current way of dealing with pain, my fast sleep method is borrowed. It's an idea I heard from Richard Bandler. He says, the problem insomniacs have is that they give themselves bad suggestions. They talk to themselves in their head in a fast and hectic voice ("Talk to themselves in their head? I don't do that!" That's exactly the talking in your head I'm writing about.) and go on about "can't get to sleep" on and on. Of course you're never going to get to sleep that way! It comes close to the old "don't think of a pink elephant". Okay, you may also keep yourself awake thinking about the past or the future or both. Whatever it is, it's no good, because you're keeping yourself awake when you should sleep!

So Bandler's idea is to slow down your inner voice. I don't think I've talked about this to someone face to face yet. It was always online somehow. Lately what I think worked best as an explaination is to remind people of when one person starts yawning, you start yawning, too. So if you talk fast, you can't get to sleep. Slow down your inner voice, make it sleepy and you'll fall asleep with it.

If people say they have trouble falling asleep, I always ask them what's going on in their head. So I don't right away go into "slow down your dialogue". I had one person, who told me that she saw images in her head. Like a movie where she'd "replay" the day or see what would be happening the next day and stuff like that. I told her to slow down the movie. Make it slow motion, like they did with the Matrix movies in the fight scenes. Slow it all down. I don't know if Bandler ever suggested that. I only remember him talking about the dialogue. But it made sense to me to tell her to slow down the movie, if she had pictures in her head.

I sometimes lay in bed late at night and can't get to sleep, mind you. This technique is something that requires discipline. When I can't get to sleep, I don't look at the clock. I know it'll only make it worse. It'll start me going: "Oh my, it's x now. I really have to go to sleep now!" It's useless dialogue, so I don't even go there and don't check on the time. Instead I go: "There you are again. You know what to do." And even with the second sentence, I'll start slowing down. I may even go back to other thoughts I've been thinking, but it'll be slow and maybe a yawn or two as well...

Like with many other NLP techniques, it's all about hitting that point of "Stop it. I want something else." Sometimes it even takes me some time to get to that point. But when I do, I get to sleep quite fast from there on.

Until next blog,
sarah

M&M: Takin' Over The Asylum

Dear reader,

something new today, which I hope I'll be able to do once a month: M&M: Movie of the Month. With that I want to introduce you to a movie, I know and like.

To start this of: the mini series „Takin' Over The Asylum“. This is a series of 6 episodes, each about 50 minutes long, which came on tv in 1994 and brought fame to the two main actors Ken Stott and David Tennant. I didn't know Ken Stott before and looking back I only watched a couple of movies he was in, which are listed on his imdb.com profile. Because I was and am watching lots of Doctor Who, I certainly knew David Tennant very well. Although it was quite amusing and strange seeing him that young: 23 years old.

The characters and story:

One of the most important persons is Eddie, played by Ken Stott. Eddie is salesman for double glazing windows and he's got an alcohol problem. His passion is being a radio D.J. Right at the beginning of the series, he gets fired from his job as a D.J. however. Although he is offered a new job at the St. Jude's hospital, which once had a radio station and they want to start it again. Eddie agrees to help and can tell his colleagues, who are standing with him after the termination notification that, “He didnae dump me. I've been promoted, if you must know.” The colleagues want to know where he will work. He tells them, St. Jude's. They start laughing. Eddie asks them why they are laughing. “St. Jude's is a loony bin!”

When Eddie goes to St. Jude's the first time, he meets Campbell (David Tennant). He shows Eddie the radio station, which looks more like a storeroom. Campbell tells Eddie that the station was working once. But rumour has it that the next day 122 patients went to their shrinks saying they were hearing voices. They prescribed about £ 6000 worth of major tranquillisers, before they realised it was the radio and the radio station was closed after that. Campbell doesn't believe it though. He can't believe 122 patients could not be watching television at the same time.

Campbell is a manic-depressive (bipolar). Although in the series we only see him manic and totally enthusiastic about the radio station. Eddie teaches him to be a D.J. and Campbell finds not only his job, but quite possibly his calling, too. One time Eddie asks Campbell, “Are you sure you're not manic?” Campbell: “I'm inspired, Eddie!” Eddie: “What's the difference?” Campbell: “Inspired is when you think you can do anything. Manic is when you know it.”

Rosalie (Ruth McCabe) is compulsive. She often makes lists and is cleaning all sorts of things. When Eddie arrives at the radio station the second time, Campbell and Rosalie have cleaned it all up and put things in order in just one day. “Much as I hate to take advantage of someone's illness, but she did insist”, says Campbell. Eddie asks, if they really did all of that in just one day. “Don't you wish, you were manic?”, asks Campbell. Eventually Eddie appoints Rosalie to be the station manager. One time there's a health day. Since the radio station needs a new mixer and that needs financing, the group decides to use that day to do some fund-raising. Who's organising the day? Rosalie, of course, who finally can use her lists for some good and pretty much assigns everyone at the station with tasks to do and hands them lists for what to do exactly.

Francine (Katy Murphy) is very depressed and also self harms. Eddie once sees her putting out a cigarette on her arm. “I couldnae find an ashtray”, she says about that. Later on she does use an ashtray Eddie hands her. Francine, too, gets training from Eddie to D.J. Francine and Eddie like each other and become friends.

Another important role for the radio station is with Fergus (Angus Macfadyen). He's a schizophrenic electrical engineer, who helps the group with everything electronical. Every now and then he'd run away from the station to come back some time later the same day. At first he just goes away, because he's bored. Over the course of the series however he runs away in more or less spectacular ways to get a new mixer for the radio station and other stuff.

Apart from the hospital there are some more people worth mentioning: Eddie's grandmother (Elizabeth Spriggs), with whom he's living together. She's from Lithuania and has her very own thoughts about Eddie's future. For example she's not that sad when he tells her that he got fired from his D.J. job. And at the age of 38, he should please marry soon! When Eddie tells her, he just didn't find the right one yet, his grandma replies with, “You think I find the right one? You think your mother find the right one? All blue eyes and itchy feet. We find misery. But God put us on this Earth to suffer. That's how He invent Stalin.”

And then there are also the colleagues and the boss of the sales company. All highly motivated. Eddie keeps that job with more luck than brains for that job and it's a real miracle that he becomes the “salesman of the month”. But sometimes one may wonder if Eddie's colleagues should be the ones in the mental hospital and the group from there should be the ones out.

In the series there are some quite serious psychiatric illnesses shown. Personally I think, they totally do not stultify it though, but do it with the appropriate seriousness for the illnesses and yet in a funny way. For me the group of the radio station is very likeable, especially with and because of their quirks, each of the illnesses brings with them.

Until next blog,

sarah

Stairway to observation: it's elementary

Dear reader,

Tuesday, a couple of weeks ago. I'm visiting a friend of mine at work. As I make my way up from the underground, I step on the first step of the escalator. It's broken. I have to walk up. Darn.

Wednesday that same week. I'm again visiting that friend of mine at work. As I make my way up from the underground, I step on the first step of the escalator. It's still broken. I have to walk up again. Stupid!

 Thursday that same week. I'm again visiting that friend of mine at work. I am finally remembering that maybe the escalator is still broken. I peek around the corner to check if the lights are green. They're red. I walk on it to take the stairs. I finally learned.

Months ago I spend many days watching both the series "Sherlock" and "Elementary". As Sherlock likes to say, "You see, but you don't observe." The first step to see and observe and deduce the way Sherlock Holmes does is to actively engage in seeing things.

 Last week on Thursday. I'm visiting that friend of mine at work. I peek around the corner to check the lights of the escalators. They're red. It's broken again. I wonder what all the old people at my friend's work are doing. The escalators are broken a lot of times at that underground station. As I walk alone to the stairs, I'm thinking about Sherlock Holmes, too. Thank you, Sherlock.

Until next blog,
sarah

Ventriloquists good - non-ventriloquists evil

Dear reader,

granted, there are some strange ventriloquists out there. Edgar Bergen for example in his later years gave Charlie McCarthy his own room. Candice Bergen, the daughter of Edgar Bergen, was certainly frustrated when she was younger and Charlie McCarthy was called to be her big brother. Al Steven writes in his book „Ventriloquism: Art, Craft, Profession“, that Paul Winchell had massive problems with his mother. That went so far that he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital at one point. He ran away from there one night to go to the graveyard to hallucinate both his figures Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff at his mother's grave. (Stevens takes that from Paul Winchell's autobiography „Winch“, which I haven't read though. So all I can do is repeat what Stevens wrote.)

Al Stevens also writes, rightly so, I think, that there is surely a certain percentage more or less crazy vents out there. But this percentage of crazy also exists in other professions. The thought that vents are crazy therefore is not more often or less than with other people. The media, especially films, however like to spread the image of this crazy vent or the murderous vent figure. It's similar to that image of hypnotists. Many people fear hypnotists, though for other reasons. The thing with hypnotists though is that people believe the hypnotists totally take away their own free will.

More common than the truly crazy vent you find them in films. Be it portrayed by Jay Johnson as “Chuck Campbell” in “Soap”, for whom Bob is as real as a real human. “Soap” isn't quite normal anyway. The series is about two sisters, Mary Campbell and Jessica Tate and their families. Both families are not normal. A vent truly seeing his figure as just that would not have fit in there. Billy Chrystal for example played another brother of the family and was gay. Today this is hardly a drama at all, but around 1980, when the series was shot, it was quite a big thing. One of my favourite scenes is the one with Chuck, Bob and the fridge.

Chuck and Bob's first meeting with both families is also something worth watching for sure. And the scene with Bob as mindreader shows in a very beautiful way that Chuck is not alone in accepting Bob as an independent person. I just love the look Mary gives her husband Burt.


There's no video of it online, but in “Night Court, the episode “The Next Voice You Hear” (season 4, episode 1) Ronn Lucas plays a vent, who talks all right, but without moving his lips and without a figure. He refuses to talk in his normal voice. A successful act, he says, depends on the personality of the figure and the rapport between he and the ventriloquist. He has honed his skills, but he hasn't yet found the perfect other character. Until he does, he refuses to speak as himself.

He's also in the „L.A. Law“ episode „Dummy Dearest“ (season 3, episode 6). As Kenny Petersen, who was kept in a trunk of a car for a couple of days when he was 3 years old, he doesn't speak himself. But he does have a figure, who speaks for him instead. It's not more patient with him than the rest of the people around Kenny, who think him crazy for walking around with a puppet all the time. Again there are no scenes of that episode on the internet to show you here.

I only mention this film here now, because even with the clichee of the crazy ventriloquist, I still think they're quite witty and not the typical “murderous insane”, like many others.

As a vent you're more than just an actor. You're audience, when the figure is active, and yet at the same time you're actor, because you're playing the figure. That's something other actors don't get to do. Either they're in the role or not. Only vents can be actor and audience at the same time.

I'm very fascinated with Ronn Lucas' role in „L.A. Law“ because of that. It goes a bit further than the „usual“ 2 roles of a vent, because on one hand (no pun intended) he has to play a depressed, intimidated vent and at the same time his figure is totally raging against almost everybody he comes across... including Kenny Petersen himself. One especially touching scene is at the end of that episode as Kenny is crouched with his figure in the corner of a room full of records and the figure is totally hitting on him how it makes no sense anymore to speak for him and that he's a lost case. The scene is even more beautiful (as much as such a scene can be beautiful that is) to watch, if you keep in mind that Ronn Lucas doesn't just have no text, but the very angry figure is speaking and that's without twitching lips on Lucas' part or otherwise showing that he's at the same time speaking for a very emotional figure. Scenes like that seem simple. Someone talks and someone else does not. In fact however they're much more complicated as they seem, similar to a magic trick. The art of ventriloquism is that the text of the figure are there right away. It's not something that's added later on by someone speaking the lines. That's the true art. I miss good ventriloquists. The films today are all animated and the actors just speak the lines. Or you help yourself with letting the actor speak the lines “off camera”, invisible for the camera.

As a ventriloquist you can be creative and you have a unbelievably complex task in being two persons at the same time. Also it gives the ventriloquist the possibility to say things which are impossible to say otherwise (because society doesn't like them) or things you don't dare saying (because you're shy). The figures give you the freedom to come out, really say anything and still be shy and withdrawn themselves. Ventriloquism is the safest way to let oneself go and “let out some steam”. Ventriloquists aren't crazy or evil. Crazy are only the people, who just take it all in all the time and don't let it out. Something like that makes people ill and crazy in the long run, I think.

Until next blog,

sarah