Rebecca Baker

About

A moment that never gets old: one person says something they have said many times before, and the other responds differently for the first time. The room changes immediately. Everybody notices, including the person who did it. That is the whole mechanism in miniature. Partners get locked into a sequence where each move reliably produces the next, and a single unexpected response is enough to demonstrate that the sequence was never inevitable. We practice those departures deliberately. They feel artificial at first and stop feeling artificial fairly quickly. My first occupation was nothing at all like this one, which perhaps left me more interested in what people do than in what they mean. If you already know exactly what the other one will say, get in touch. One unexpected response is enough to prove the sequence was never fixed. Departures feel artificial and then stop feeling artificial.