John Singer Sargent: Figure and Head Studies (1872)

" … his Base eases into apparently effortless understanding."

I cannot comprehend most of whatever The Incumbent says. He mumbles. He exclusively speaks in incomplete sentences that often lack an object, subject, or coherent verb. He seems to speak in a shorthand dialect that some of his more fervent followers certainly seem to understand. I do not know how they accomplish this feat, which seems like mindreading to me. My best explanation comes from my experience working with a partner named Jeff after I joined that boutique Silicon Valley consulting firm back in the nineties. Jeff had previously worked as an engineer for Attari, the early video game producer, and with Apple. He was considered a rainmaker in the consulting firm, for he seemed to know everybody in the valley. Name a company, and he invariably had an old friend there with whom he was on a first-name basis. Several of them were CEOs. They'd grant him an interview and often enough agree to sponsor at least a trial workshop.

Jeff baffled me because as I was learning how to teach that firm's flagship workshop offering, I had been sitting in the back of the room watching Jeff facilitate. He had his own style, which wasn't my style, but beyond that, I couldn't make heads or tails out of much of his banter. He seemed to babble through his introduction. When directing the participants to do something, he'd often leave out what seemed like critical parts of the instructions. His beginnings and endings were equally ragged, but he never seemed to notice. Even more curious, the participants never seemed to notice, either. They'd find their way into and through each exercise and give glowing reviews of his performance on the Happy Sheets by the end of the workshop.

I mentioned this apparent paradox to the senior partner, who called an emergency partner meeting. There, I was asked to recount my concerns, which hadn't yet matured into a coherent statement, by which I mean I'd never mentioned them to Jeff. I tried to explain but failed. The evidence in the form of a deep file of obviously satisfied Happy Sheets stood against my mere experience. Another consultant in the crew took a stab at explaining this phenomenon, and I recall her story every time I hear our new/old Incumbent speak. She explained that a particular speech pattern parses as incoherent when looking only at the transcript but seems curiously coherent to someone watching and listening. She called the difference a Transderivational Trance, a concept coined by two researchers that deals with language use and patterns. It describes the process of making meaning that involves searching back through memories of prior experiences to find matches. According to these authors, understanding any language involves such searches, but some language patterns encourage more and deeper searches. If I understood what she was saying, Jeff induced a pleasant trance in his workshop participants, who were completing his fractured sentences for him. In that process, it might seem to those who were ContinuouslyTranslating that Jeff was injecting insights directly into their consciousness. They would then ascribe those sensations to Jeff's performance.

This story certainly explained what had seemed to be happening. It resolved the apparent paradox. The worst result from my inquiry would have been for Jeff to reform his speaking pattern, which seemed to work for Jeff and the rest of us, too. I also accompanied him on a few of his selling excursions and witnessed the same dance. I'd listen with my internal grammar style book and feel embarrassed with Jeff's performance while the prospective client would be eating out of his hand by the end of the meeting. It never didn't happen. These experiences upset my understanding of language, instruction, and consulting. The ideal, which I could sometimes achieve, of speaking as if I was reading complete sentences instead of composing on the fly was not necessarily required. I'm still impressed with The Muse's ability to speak extemporaneously and coherently without apparent preparation. Our new/old Incumbent has never once ever been accused of this. As I mentioned above, he exclusively seems to speak in gibberish, and his "base" apparently enters the trance and experiences greatness not evident to any of us unwashed.

Neither Jeff nor our new/old Incumbent ever made a lick of sense. I expect that the new/old Incumbent's most entranced reference back to his old television series. They hear a television star. Others might experience a President speaking. Those not so susceptible to these influences see a bumbling clown juggling meaningless phrases. Who knows what he's thinking when he derisively refers to DEI hires? One civil rights lawyer salivated, wondering how his justice department would coherently describe a DEI hire in court. The ragged edge between particular states of consciousness and the law will probably be under continuous challenge throughout this curious administration. It might be a psychological type or a genetic difference, like those who experience a mouthful of soap when tasting cilantro. I do not suppose I will ever be capable of entering the trance his language patterns so easily induce in others. I will be ContinuouslyTranslating and probably usually failing while his Base eases into apparently effortless understanding.

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