AFTER THE SHOW, I make my way to the office of M. Barassini, licensed hypnotist and hypnotherapist, for my session. The walls of the anteroom are adorned with framed posters of M. Barassini, the great mentalist/hypnotist/Hellstromist, featuring dramatic nineteenth-century-seeming illustrations of what I assume is Barassini in a purple turban staring deeply into the viewer’s eyes. The posters do not instill confidence, and, as I am still in the throes of a decent ayahuasca wallop, I find them rather terrifying. There are as well, however, several framed diplomata, one from the Harverd College of Hypnotism, which I’ve heard is an excellent school, although not affiliated in any way with Harvard. Barassini might, however, have been a legacy admission, in which case I will withhold judgment. The door to the inner office opens, and Barassini pokes out his head. Without the turban, he appears professorial, avuncular, anemic, somewhat staid, partially paralyzed, and handsome, with a bit of a twinkle in his eye, the right one, possibly due to cataract surgery.
“Mr. Rosenberg,” he says.
“Yes. Although I prefer the gender-neutral honorific Mx.”
“Quite right,” he says. “Won’t you come in, Mx. Rosenberg?”
I enter his office. Did I feel compelled to enter his office through some sort of hypnotic control? Or did I enter because he asked me to and that is what one does? Either way, I felt a distinct lessening of personal agency at that moment. Should I be concerned about this or is it, in fact, encouraging to know he is perhaps so good at his craft that I don’t even know he’s practicing it?
I sit on the couch.
“That’s where I sit,” he says.
“Oh,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
I get up, scan the office. There’s nowhere else to sit other than behind his desk.
“Do you want me to sit at your desk?”
“No. That’s also where I sit, although not now.”
“Then where?”
He gestures toward a Murphy chair folded into the wall.
“Oh,” I say.
“For the work we will do together, the best results come when the client is not so comfortable as to become sleepy.”
“I see,” I say.
I unfold the chair and sit.
“Welcome to my suite of offices,” he says. “What I practice here is something different from hypnosis. I call it hypgnosis.”
“Hypnosis?”
“No. Hypgnosis.”
“I’m not hearing any difference,” I say.
“There’s an additional letter but it’s silent.”
“What letter?”
“G.”
“Oh.”
“No. G,” he corrects.
“Right. So where does it go?”
“Oh. It goes between the p and the n.”
“Oh. I get it. Like gnosis,” I say.
“Are you saying gnosis or nosis?”
“Gnosis. Nosis isn’t a thing.”
“Then yes. Do you know what gnosis means?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Are you quizzing me? Knowledge. Primarily in the spiritual sense. Knowledge of God and of oneself,” I say.
“Perfect,” he says. “Now tell me why you’re here.”
And just like that I feel compelled to tell him. What is this strange power he has? If I am to be fully candid, I must admit to feeling a slight tingle in my groin with this giving over of authority to him.
“I need to remember a movie I saw in as much detail as I possibly can.”
“Interesting,” he says. “I can help you with this, of course. I frequently work with clients hoping to recover memories of abuse, lost time, past lives.”
Past lives? I think. Is this man a crackpot?
“I know what you’re thinking,” he says. “After all, I am also a mentalist, or as you call us, mind reader.”
He is right; I do call them mind readers. I also call them charlatans.
“Or charlatans,” he says, chuckling. “As you also call us. I’ve heard it all before, Mx. Rosenberg.”
He is good, whatever he is.
“Listen,” he continues, “I can help you. By putting you into a state of deep hypgnotic relaxation, I can help you access memories you feel certain are forever lost. You should know that in addition to working with alien abductees and past-lifers—both of which I believe in, by the way—I also work with the NYPD and several other major police departments.”
“Oh,” I say, impressed. “What is your success rate?”
“I do filing for them and I’m pretty damn accurate. The point is,” Barassini says, “that for this to work, I need you to trust me fully. Are there any concerns you have about me or the process at this point that I can try to assuage?”
“I guess I am concerned that you could potentially plant false memories in my unconscious while I am under hypnosis.”
“Now why would I do that?” he says.
“I’m not saying you would. I’m just responding to the assuage thing you said. It’s just something that crossed my mind. I need to remember this film accurately.”
“Look,” he says, “I’m a professional with advanced degrees. I take issue with your charge.”
“There’s no charge. I’m not charging you. I was just hoping there might be some way you could put my mind at ease about that issue.”
“Y’know, I don’t think this is going to work out,” he says. “You should leave.”
“I don’t want to leave!” I say.
“Then take it back.”
“Take it back?”
“Take back that you are worried I’ll plant false memories in your brain.”
“I take it back.”
“So you don’t think I’d ever do that?”
“I guess not.”
“Good. I hope that made you feel better.”
He smiles at me. And, bizarrely, it did make me feel better. I play the conversation over in my head. All sorts of alarms go off. And yet, I feel calm, open to him, ready.
“So shall we begin?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Good. All right. Now, the film you want to remember—what is it called?”
“It is nameless, really. It is bigger than names.”
“What should we call it for the purposes of our ‘conversations’?”
“Funny Weather,” I say, though I’m not sure why.
“OK. Funny Weather. Now, Funny Weather exists in your brain. Fully. Pristinely. Uncorrupted. It can be replayed in its entirety, as if you were watching the film again.”
“Is that true? Because I’ve read that memory is not at all like a recording but rather—”
“I’d like you to leave my office right now.”
“I don’t want to leave.”
“Then say it’s true.”
“It’s true.”
And now I do think it’s true. It’s odd. I am, by and far, a contrarian. It is my stock in trade as a film theorist-cum-critic, to question everything, to challenge norms, to eviscerate filmic clichés where I find them. And yet when Barassini bullies me into accepting ideas I frankly know to be fictions, I suddenly believe him. More so, I take great comfort in believing him. Perhaps Barassini is the father I never had, even though I had a father and, in point of fact, he was very much like Barassini. Maybe Barassini is the father I always had. Oh, Daddy.
“Grand,” he says. “Now I want you to look deeply into my eyes and listen closely to my words. Feel my words enter your psyche. Open yourself up to my words. Feel them go deep within you, touching parts of your mind that have never been touched before. You are grateful for my words, for the confidence they instill. You find it comforting to be controlled this way. My words caress you. They own you. Do you feel that?”
“I do.”
“Good. You want to please my words, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Say it.”
“I want to please your words.”
“And you will. By going deep into yourself, deeper than you’ve ever gone. Will you do that?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Tell me what you see.”
“The Magellanic penguin. Native to the Falkland—”
“Deeper.”
“Election, a 1999 film by Alexander Payne. It—”
“Deeper.”
“My mother hit me because I was whinging. Always whinging.”
“We’ll come back to that. Deeper.”
“A black-and-white image on a screen.”
“Tell me.”
“I don’t know. It feels vast. Dark. It goes on forever. Snow on a television screen. Static.”
“That movie is part of you now. Once the cream is stirred into the coffee, it cannot be separated.”
“I don’t follow,” I say.
“The movie can only be revisited as it has integrated with your mind. This is the law of entropy.”
“I just wanted that thing like when you help a witness to a crime remember a license plate.”
“If that’s all you want, go down the street to Hypno Joe’s. He’ll set you up nicely.”
“OK.”
I stand up and head to the door.
“But I think you want more.”
“I don’t.”
“You want what’s true.”
“Well, sure, but—”
“Fine. I guess I was mistaken about you. You’ll do well with Hypno Joe.”
“OK,” I say, grabbing the doorknob. “Do you have his address or is it like a storefront?”
“But let me just say this: Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.”
“That’s—”
“Godard, yes. Your hero, no?”
“But how did you know?”
“Knowledge. Gnosis. This film only exists because you watched it and because of what it revealed about you. If you want to bring it to the surface in all its complexity, you have to mine your psyche. But that’s not what you want. You’ll do well with Hypno Joe. I think David Manning of The Ridgefield Press uses his services.”
“But David Manning is a fictitious critic invented by the Sony Pictures marketing department to provide glowing reviews for their poorly reviewed pictures.”
“Oh, is he? I wasn’t aware.”
“So then how could he—”
“I don’t know. All I’m saying is that I would be careful about who I let into my brain. I wouldn’t want to end up a fictional, robotized, zombie tool of a soulless corporation.”
“I’m thinking maybe I should do the work with you,” I say.
“Only if you want to.”
“I think I do.”
“You’re getting sleepy.”
“What? Like right now?”
“We should get going on this. It’s a long process.”
“How long?”
“It took Ingo ninety years to make. Should you devote any less time to remembering it?”
“I don’t have ninety years! How did you know it took Ingo ninety years? I didn’t tell you that. I don’t think I even told you Ingo’s name.”
“I’ll write down Hypno Joe’s address for you.”
“No. I’m ready.”
“You’re getting sleepy.”
And I am. Just the simple suggestion from this master of hypnosis—
“Hypgnosis,” he corrects.
—hypgnosis sends me swirling lazily around the drain of hebetudinousness.