in a trance

“As a child, I remember hearing the pots and smelling the food, and kind of like someone in a trance, I would walk into the kitchen to see all this incredible stuff happening,” Harris said.

His head fell sideways in a trance and he spun and spun and spun, held up by the hand of God.

Without having received physical injuries of any kind, men might begin to tremble or shake uncontrollably; some became like zombies, staring blankly into the distance as though in a trance.

On Wednesday night at Carnegie Hall, the pianist Vikingur Olafsson’s performance of Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations had everyone in a trance — including him.

“In fact, I never thought I wanted to be a journalist. I’m someone who things kind of happened to, you know. And I just emerge, having, in some ways bullied or in a trance, walked into them.”