Eutrapely

a vocab word that’s a learned skill, that some seem to possess naturally.

Thanks again to Don Huely and Word of the Day on Insta for inspiration (Instapiration?)

When Don Huely describes this word and uses it in a sentence, I wonder if the ‘George’ of his example is, or is based off of, George Smiley, of Le Carré spy thriller fame. Have I mentioned my journey (now paused) into the Smiley land of Cold War era spycraft? It was sort of a random lark—my partner was trying to discuss some of it with me, and when I confessed to not having read any of the series (but having loved the Fleming Bond novels as a preteen), he found a beautiful box set and we set to it. Honestly, I loved them—they’re extremely well written and I love the character of Smiley (I’ll get to that in a minute), in his almost invisibly unremarkable appearance, his extremely sharp powers of observation, and his eutrapely. Though the silver-tongued skill isn’t normally one he uses—like Lieutenant Columbo, Smiley tends to be even better at letting other people talk than he ever needs to himself. And once his target realizes he’s said too much, it’s too late. 

This is the same reason why I like the character of Columbo so much, too: it’s such a satisfying delight to watch him cockeyed-ly set his one good eye in a laser sight on the arrogant, usually rich murderer who’s rapidly talking himself into a jail cell. What’s especially fun about reading the leCarré books, though (I haven’t yet seen either Tinker Tailor movie), is the fact that we’re often in Smiley’s POV. This is really great, in that we get what he’s really thinking, see all the things he does, noticing all the little details and knowing how he’s putting them together. It’s something we never get from a Columbo or a Sherlock Holmes, as much as the latter will explain his process to us after the fact. 

Why have I paused my Smiley spy journey? I dunno—I kind of lost momentum after book 4. They continue to be really good, it’s just…they’re getting more and more bleak, if I’m honest, and I can’t imagine once I get to the one about Vietnam, that it’ll be anything less than devastatingly depressing.

Eutrapely

Definition: (noun) Liveliness and ease of conversation. The quality of being skilled in conversation; wit; urbanity 

I’m an ambivert nerd but with theatre training, which means that I do eutrapely as a sort of code switching that I call the Charisma Switch. I’ve mentioned this before: with some prep, I can become a scintillating source of conversation. At one of my first posh parties, I entered feeling intimidated by the people there, of a different class than me. By mid-way through the party, I remember vividly sitting on a round ottoman in the middle of the living room, near the fireplace, the entire population of wealthy people surrounding me in a circle, a rapt audience at a stage in the round.

Reading body language, too, is a huge part of an engaging conversation. Humans mirror each other naturally, constantly, and unconsciously. It’s part of social inclusion and a huge part of communication. Does that count as eutrapely? Or is the conversation / wit / urbanity of this word restricted to speaking only? Speaking (!) of: the part at the end of the Huely vid when they cut together only the nonverbal bits was interesting too. Maybe mostly because it’s so focused on his face? He quipped in the caption that it wasn’t exciting but I disagree. 

Meisner technique and mimesis

Meisner technique and mimesis? Meisner technique and mimesis.

Okay so you’ll only understand the above if you know what Meisner technique is and what goes into it. For those of you who’ve gone through that training, I apologize for the trigger. Basically, Sanford Meisner was one of the Big 4 of modern Method acting technique, and one of the central exercises of the system involves intensive eye contact, and a focused repetition of lines. How it goes is: two actors sit facing each other, knee to knee, maintaining eye contact (an extreme discomfort for me, which is further evidence that I’m probably neurodivergent in some way). One actor says a line or sentence: “I want to explain myself,” for example. The other actor, staying within eye contact, will take a breath and repeat, “You want to explain yourself.” Then the first actor will close that with a third iteration: “I want to explain myself.” Then the other actor will say their line, with the same pattern of repetition, and so on, and on. Knees to knees. Eyes to eyes. Line to line to line.

I didn’t dig the training myself, at all, as you can imagine. But I do appreciate what this painful process is trying to do: the idea behind doing this nonsense is that it forces you to actually listen to your scene partner, as opposed to just be waiting to say your own line as soon as you can. Which is indeed a good thing to learn, whether acting in a scene or in dialogue with someone irl. The less self-conscious you are, the better the actor. The better the listener, too, which means the better friend, the better partner… I imagine that eutrapely also can only really soar to its potential heights when the eutrapelist (?!) is more focused on the people they’re talking to than on themselves and how they perceive they’re being perceived. Same with acting, same with sales. The more you focus on your ‘audience’ and not on yourself, the more readily the magic happens.

Oh, just one more thing…

I’ve long loved characters and types that are good at eutrapely: court jesters like Feste, smooth talkers like The Saint and showmen like Penn (not Teller, obvs) and Johnny Fox. Poets extempore like Cyrano. The best of the freestyle rappers. Maybe it’s a wishfulfilment: when I’m playing one of these characters, I become the silvertongued clever sonofabitch that’s irresistible. Normally, I kind of suck at improvising (though I’m getting better in my brief producers spiel moments onstage with Blue Dime). It feels good to be a guy who can do that, though, and I like to do it vicariously by having an excellent script.

The level of satire that Feste spouts as Sir Topas is astonishing in its detail, and I did the whole diatribe in a vaguely Southern evangelical type accent, complete with literal Bible-thumping. A note about that silly beard: it was my own hair, and here’s why: we were waiting for a false beard to arrive in the mail and in the interim in rehearsal, someone suggested I just tie my own hair around my chin. The process of doing so and the end result was too hilarious not to keep in the final performances.

But it can be said that eutrapely is a forgotten art, forgotten during lockdown in particular. The damage many people have suffered by being in ‘solitary’ for so long has lasted past the opening back up of the world: isn’t it being said that the rudeness of people in public these days is much much worse than in the Before Times? That people are more rude to servers and have way more reckless driving and road rage these days than before? Because we’ve all been holed up alone for too long, and we’ve forgotten how to be dazzling and charming and courteous.

But my younger stepgoblin is happily taking debate in the end of middle school and will continue as he moves on to high school. He loves it, and he’s good at it. He marvels, actually, at the childish attempts of his peers and is planning on continuing on. So that’s interesting—this is a kid that had a pivotal developmental couple of years locked down from COVID. What is it about debate that excites that little Gen Z person? I’ll have to ask him. I’ll get back to you.