This might come as a shock to some, but I am a quite the fan of language.

I believe the seeds for this were planted at a very early age. My two earliest, clearest memories are of watching the black and white television version of “Superman“ with my dad, and of my mom reading to me. I recall vividly that, when I was old enough to attend school, each and every morning, while waiting for the school bus (the longer variety, wise guy), she’d read to me. I’ve always had a natural love of books and reading. (Some magazines, too, but mostly for the articles.)

If you think about it for a moment, language really is magic. Words are simply shortcuts to memories of our personal experience.

If I say to you the phrase, “sweet, juicy, delicious red apple” it wouldn’t mean a whole lot until you allowed your brain to go back and pull out your memory of biting into a sweet, delicious red apple and having the juice run down your chin. When your brain does that, you substitute the words I used for the experience had. You didn’t really bite into an apple, but your brain experienced the sensation and substituted the memory for the words I used, so that you could understand what I meant. (Some people might call that hypnosis. Other people might suggest that hypnosis doesn’t exist.)

All of that happens in a split second. The words themselves don’t mean anything until you can match them up with your personal experience, which the brain is only happy to do for you without sending to it an engraved invitation.

Words are shortcuts to memories of personal experience.

Perhaps you’d not given that much thought until just now. It’s a profound concept. It’s also a very powerful tool in your performing toolkit.

In NLP-speak, the map (the words, invoking the memory) is not the territory (the apple.) It’s a representative of the territory. If you were looking at a map of New York City, you wouldn’t actually be looking at New York City, would you?

How we use language determines the level to which we can personally affect other people. One would think that, as mystery performers, we’d want to maximise our affect on our audiences. And I’m not denying that’s often the goal, either consciously or subconsciously; I hope that it is. But, in my experience in observing the performances of others in our trade and craft, I question whether enough people give it sufficient attention and, in the process, short-shrift our audiences.

Out of curiosity, allow me please to ask the question: Why use an impotent word, when it takes no more effort to utter another word which explodes meaning in the minds of our audience?

Every once in a while the subject of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) erupts on the discussion boards. Sometimes on more than one board at the same time. And each time the resulting threads of conversation eventually look like a book burning in progress. (Spirited discussion of any religion will do that, you know.)

There are the proponents, the opponents, the agnostics, and everything in between. I find it ironic that a field of study, the demonstrable results of which indicate a number of methods by which one person may more effectively communicate with another person, should create such conflicting reports of efficacy. It’s like watching two dozen blind men describe an elephant, with many of them grabbing at the wrong parts.

So, with that in mind, if you will, allow me to tell my tail.

The history of NLP — the real history — is available to anyone who can spell “Google” so I won’t go into the specifics or comment much on the folklore. Suffice it to say that as the 1970s were getting started, John Grinder, a professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz and student of linguistics and transformational grammar, met up with Richard Bandler, student of mathematics, psychology and computer programming. Their friendship formed the basis of future study, joined soon enough by others, including Leslie Cameron Bandler, Judith DeLozier, Robert Dilts, Stephen Gilligan, David Gordon, and Frank Pucelik. (And, if you believe what you’ll eventually read if you study NLP long enough, another three or four million co-founders — or so they believe they are.)

Bandler and Grinder found themselves living on a lovely wooded piece of property in the mountains behind Santa Cruz, near a man named Gregory Bateson. In 1955, Bateson and his colleagues attempted to create an “appropriate theoretical base” to describe human interaction. In other words, a way to break down human communication into identifiable components. It seemed simple in theory, but difficult to bring about.

Bateson challenged Bandler and Grinder. The result was found in the books, The Structure of Magic and The Structure of Magic II. (In fact, Bateson wrote the introduction to the book which formed the opening volley of NLP: The Structure of Magic. In it, he complimented Bandler and Grinder for succeeding in ways Bateson and his colleagues had not.)

There are some people who have the astounding ability to clearly communicate with others; to “connect” with people; to influence and persuade them; to get them to change. (And, while this group of people includes them, I am not specifically referring to televangelists.) Bandler and Grinder focused on a select group of therapists who inarguably achieved outstanding results with patients, most notably Dr. Milton H. Erickson, Dr. Virginia Satir and Dr. Fritz Perls.

By studying not only what they did, but how they did it, Bandler and Grinder described in exquisite detail how Erickson, Satir and Perls did their magic. The word used in NLP is modeling — an apt term if there ever was one. Think of it this way: if, somehow, you did what Erickson did, in the same manner in which he did it — if you created a model and acted that model out — you would achieve the same results he achieved. To the degree you managed to accurately model Erickson, you could more consistently achieve those results.

It’s a simple concept, but many people have a problem accepting it. “It can’t be that easy.” But, allow me to ask this question: what if it really is that easy?

Bandler and Grinder began modeling human excellence by studying therapists because the results were immediately observable. For instance, when a patient came to see Erickson, the change in that patient was often immediate, noticeable, and — if I may use the word — magical. They soon moved on to modeling other forms of excellence: sales people, managers, consultants, negotiators, educators, coaches, and performers (both atheletic and entertainers).

There was something awfully interesting in what they found through their study: they found that, when stripped of stylistic differences — that is, those personal fingerprints that make a person’s style what it is and different from others — and from the context in which they communicated, these people were doing essentially the same thing. They were following the same basic recipe for communicating with others; the same patterns of communication. And, as a result, they achieved a level of success that excelled.

One of the most important aspects was that each of these outstanding people had at their fingertips the ability to change their approach if what they were doing was not getting the results they wanted to achieve.

Kindly read that last paragraph again, because that’s a key component to your success as a performer.

If what you are doing isn’t getting you the results you want, do something else. Albert Einstein geniously observed,

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”

Yet many people are in the habit of doing just that. (Read the story of researchers and their adult-sized mazes.)

As you structure your act, you can only imagine the response from your audience to what it is you say and do. That’s all you can do. It is only by actually performing your act before an audience and, most importantly, noticing the results as your audience responds (or doesn’t respond) that you can mold an act to achieve the results you wish. Unless you are performing a silent act — curiously avoided by those who would benefit most from the choice, I might add — I’d suggest that the choices you make as your structure what you will say is far more important than what it is you actually do.

As with other examples, this aspect applies in spades to the performance of mentalism.

There are untold numbers of anecdotes told by professional performers who found that just changing one, single word made an enormous difference in the response of the audience to a performance piece. One word. That’s magic.

Model successful entertainers. Study what makes them successful. This is the real secret to the value of DVDs. It’s not the performances; it’s the thinking behind the tricks. It’s what goes behind making certain choices about how to perform a certain piece that achieves a greater level of audience response than another choice. Strip away the stylistic fingerprints and the context within which the trick is done, and find the common traits outstanding performers share. It’s right out there in the open.

Want another secret? Fielding West’s L&L Publishing DVD “The Fielding West Comedy Magic Show.” While there are some clever and very funny routines, it would not do you anywhere near as much good to copy those routines as it would be for you to study and model what makes West’s magic go over so well with audiences.

Here’s another secret. Take three steps back and give some serious, considerable thought to those people you may already be modeling. Often this may be completely accidental in that we tend to take on the qualities of those people with whom we surround ourselves. And sometimes some of those qualities aren’t quality material.