4 IMAGINE YOUR AUDIENCE NAKED

Better yet, imagine your audience debased and humiliated, in thrall to the command of your oratory and bent by the subtlest effects of hypnotic suggestion to your inflexible will. Concentrate on those members of the crowd whose eyes seem most to betray a contempt so fervent it can hardly be concealed, and then imagine your voice persuading them one perfect word at a time to relinquish their distaste and become instead enamoured of the brilliance of your speech-making. Picture others mesmerized by your animal magnetism or captivated by the manifest wit and intelligence of your rhetoric. Hold an image in your mind’s eye of yourself exalted by a fusillade of cheers, the embittered skepticism of every last member of the audience having been melted away by your magniloquence, their hearts won by the simple clarity and truth of what you have deigned today to impart to them. Think about the very tall glass of vodka you will pour the minute this speech has ended.