My Weekend

So yesterday I performed 5 and a half hours of close-up magic: the most time doing professional magic in a single day I’ve ever had to do.  It was split up over three events, but still, I was in the car speeding to the next event as soon as one was over.  Very hectic, but satisfying day, and it really solidified for me that this is something I really enjoy doing.

A few notes about my performances that night:

-For one, I found myself very much being “myself” at all the shows.  For some reason, I was very comfortable, and was branching off, improving jokes and routines which went over very well.  I passed out all of my remaining business cards too.

-When I first started performing magic professionally, I would go to events with my pockets stuffed with different props.  Over the years, my pockets have increasingly lighter for various reason.  However, I feel that they may have gotten too light.  Yesterday, I worked with two decks of a cards, Holy Moley, Paperclipped, a sharpie, business cards, and sponge balls.  No coins (I’ve found the washers make a great substitute, and with the recession, there is a great in-line joke to introduce them), no gimmicked decks, no magnets, nothing.  Of course, I’m borrowing coins, rings, dollars, and napkins the whole night, but still, I feel I do need to add a little more variety to my walk around routine.

-My opening routines still lack magic within the first 15 seconds.  I need to work on that.

-Drunk high schoolers make for an interesting crowd.

I want to explore astonishment a little more.  There's so much out there, and I feel like I'm just skimming the surface.

So I have an idea: and idea which is losely based on Eric Mead's in Art of Astonishment.  I'm concidering hosting special magic shows for five people at a time.  No addmission charge, no sales pitch, just some very deep, and powerful magic aimed at generating at least one moment of true astonishment a night.

We'll see if there is some interest, and then see how it goes I guess.

Originality in Magic

Magic is very much a backwards art.  It's the only art form where all the work you put in is never supposed to be seen by the audience.  Its end result, astonishment and wonder, are emotional sensations much of the population are very reluctant to submit to.  And to top it all off, we are all seen as very much being the same.

The root of this publicly viewed "uniformity" stems from several factors in magic, I believe.  I mean, one could argue that since there are so few magicians out there, compared to singers, dancers, film makers, etc, that the sterotype of a magician is likely to be the most influential piece in the public's image of magicians.  What is this stereotype, a man in a tuxedo and top hat doing old, cliche tricks.  (The Tuxedo by the way, is just the epitome of sameness I think.)

But that's the society's fault I suppose.  I'm sure jugglers, ventriloquests, and mimes deal with the same sorts of originally problems.  (BTW, one of the most moving, artful pieces I've ever seen on stage was by a mime.)

But I guess the real problem with this is that, as magicians, we all do the same tricks.  Why shouldn't we be percieved as all interchangable.  But that's not really entirely our fault either.  There are only so many things 'magical' one can do.  One can make something vanish, appear, transform, teleport, restore, escape, penetrate, predict, and percieved through supernatural mean (reading minds).  That is it.

Now of course, you can do these tricks with a trillion different objects, presentations, order, and twists.  So why do so many magicians peform the bill to lemon?  I think we can credit Darwin with the answer; natural selection.

For some reason or another, throuhgout the ages of magic and marketting, and performance and art, the natural selection of all these forces and desided that, for most performers, for this teleporation, a bill and lemon are the best objects to use.  For penetrations: linking rings, for vanishes and productions: cups and balls, for restorations: a piece of newspaper, for a predictions: meaningless shapes and numbers, for transformations: a silk into a cane, for escapes: a water torture cell.

Maybe the last one was a little hyperbolous, but you get the idea.  And these are all very good tricks, which explain why they are the classics of magic.  However, the problem is, when we all do them, they become cliche and earn us the title of being interchangable performers.

In response, most peformers and magic trick producers, immediately look for simple substituations for these classic effects.  Everyone has seen the linking rings, but in my act, I'm going to use linking coathangers!  Now the trick is better because it's something new, and better yet, is an ordinary object!  Now it's a new and better trick!.

Hmm...not really.  I imagine that when most audience member see the linking coathangers routine, the first thought they have is "why isn't he just doing it with rings, like every other magician," not "wow, most magicians do this trick with rings, but he's using coathangers!"

The trick is the same, and as little emotional meaning as a typical linking rings routine has, I'd argue that the linking coathangers has even less.  It is even more mundane, and much more awkward.  At least with a linking ring routine, you have an opportunity to be elegant.  The rings can be a beautiful performance piece, if done by a master.  Alternatively, the linking coat hangers could also be a good routine, if  it fit with the theme of the performer.  (The thought of a character who cannot afford rings, but still wants to be a magician immediately comes to mind.  However, in this example, notice how the use of this substitue prop is accounted for in the performance, and not merely ignored.)

However, much of this discussion has been about an ordinary performance by an ordinary performer.  I truely believe any master magician can take any trick and turn it into at least a good performance piece.  At the opposite end of the bell curve, however, poor magicians can very easily butcher perfect magic tricks.  I am not interested in these two extremes, but the center, the area where most of us lie.

More on this later...

Second Blog

So this is my second attempt at creating an ongoing blog.  Hopefully this one will prove more useful than my previous effort.

Last year, I had a college writing professor who explained how writing is a means to an end; more specifically, writing is an excellent way to discover meaning and hone one's thoughts.  In class, we applied it to essay writing.  She would often say, just write down everything you think to say about a subject, look through what you have, find a thesis, cut out everything that doesn't fit with that, reorganize and then, POOF!, you have an essay.

This process of discovery through writing worked very well, so the following is my attempt at replicating such a technique with magic.

I've made this blog public so all can read, think, and maybe learn something from my own thoughts.  So yeah, here we go.

I just finished reading Tangled Web by Eric Mead.  I remember when this book first came out three years ago.  I almost bought it then, but something held me back.  But Joe Pon (owner of Misdirections Magic Shop here in San Francisco) suggested I read it, so I picked it up.

Now this isn't so much a review, as just sort of my thoughts on the book, and what it left with me.  It's very short, and I finished it in like two sittings (then again, I devour magic texts.  If only I could do that with my Econ textbook...).

There are some very good routines in here, particularly openers.  Currently, I'm working on his "A Fine Howdy Do" close-up production of a quarter.  Now this routine offers nothing revolutionary.  At its heart it is a production of a quarter with flash paper, into a copper silver routine.  However, the whole time I was reading the routine, I could just see how well this routine would play.  Now, my approach in walk-around settings isn't bad, but this type of opening routine could obviously bring it to a new level.  Honestly, I felt like I've been failing for not using such a powerful opener.

Also, looking at the script Eric provides with the routine gave me another insight.  As script for his copper silver routine, he explains how truly impossible it is for him to make the coin disappear why the spectator is holding on to it.  He explains that he must make the spectator forget about the coin in order to make it disappear.  At this point Eric introduces the copper coin and comments on how his grandfather or father had given it to him, and that it was special.  Then, Eric would pause, look at his audience and mention how he'd just distracted them with this little backstory.  And yeah, then the coins are shown to switch places and all that jazz.

Here's the cool part: Eric just combined back story with plot progression in the most efficient way I've ever seen, read, or heard about.  The back story about where the coin comes from, it's relevance to Eric, and the fact that he keeps it with him, all move to characterize Eric in the minds and hearts of his audience.  Remember, this is still his opening trick, and he's already putting this back story into his performance.

However, the cool part is that this back story, true or not, is recited in order for the trick to work.  It's a plot piece in the context of the trick, since Eric has to make the audience forget about the coin to make it disappear.  That complexity is just genius to me.  Back story in magic almost always slows down the performance, however this particular example shows that it can become a very integral part of the trick.  I'm very excited to explore areas where I can apply this lesson in my tricks.

So yeah.  Yay for flashpaper, and yay for plot oriented back story in magic.