Long-Shots
/Do you have any stories of tremendous luck or synchronicity during a performance? Given that you perform a lot, I would suspect you do —BP
Hmm… I think you’d suspect wrong. I probably do have some stories in that vein, but they haven’t stuck with me.
The craziest thing that ever happened to me in the “statistically unlikely” category actually happened to me when I was alone. I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned it on the site before. This was five or six years ago. I was reading a lot about the Open Prediction. And I was reading something like, “After they’ve dealt the face down card, they don’t need to deal the rest face-up. It’s boring and takes too long. Instead just have them turn the rest of the cards face up and spread them.”
That didn’t make sense to me, because with an open prediction, each turn of a card is meaningful, even after they’ve set aside their selection.
So I wanted to test what it felt like from the spectator’s perspective. I grabbed a deck of cards, shuffled it up, and thought, “Okay, my open prediction is the 4 of Diamonds.” I dealt cards face up, one at a time, then dealt one to the side face-down, and continued dealing the rest of the deck face-up, one-by-one. At some point I knew I was probably going to turn over the 4 of Diamonds, but I wanted to experience what it felt like up to that point. Did every card feel meaningful or was it something you’d just want to get over with as quick as possible? The more I dealt, the more excited I got because the 4 of Diamonds didn’t show up. I was literally having the experience a spectator would, where every card had weight to it. And more and more weight the longer it went on. It felt like watching a no-hitter in baseball, where every pitch could be the end of it.
But as it so happened, I did flip through the rest of the cards face-up without finding the 4 of Diamonds. I turned over the card I’d set aside face-down, and there it was. The universe had successfully performed the Open Prediction on me.
If that happened today, I might have stopped right there. These days I’m more into the idea of fully accepting and going along with low-level mystery and seeing meaning in coincidence. Now I would say, “Well, I decided to see what the Open Prediction felt like and the universe gave me that exact experience.” And I wouldn’t have messed with that perfect moment.
But five years ago I was a little different and I needed to try it again. So I did… and it worked again! Twice in a row I performed the Open Prediction on myself and it worked. A 1 in 2500+ plus chance of that happening.
And so I tried it again.
But that time it didn’t work. I’m not sure what I would have done if it had. I sometimes think about that. What if it had just kept on working? But only when I was alone and doing it for myself. I probably would have gone crazy.
When actually performing for people, most of the stuff I do is 100%. So I don’t really try and take advantage of lucky breaks or coincidences or things like that. But I do have one story in that area and it happened just a few weeks ago.
I collect enamel pins and I buy every one that my friend Stasia produces.
She had this one with a cat in a mug of tea on a book.
I ordered one, but then forgot I owned it and ended up buying another one later on.
No big deal. It was $10 or something and I would definitely have no trouble finding someone else who’d like it.
Then I had an idea to incorporate it into a potential trick. I’d give someone 12 blank cards with different hobbies/interests written on them. I’d ask them to choose their three favorites. Three of those cards in play would be: reading, cats, and tea.
I would use this on someone I had just met. I’d ask them to remove three of the cards that spoke to them and their interests most directly. Then I would just look at the cards they decided on and act as if this told me a little something about their personality that I could then use for this thing I was about to show them. So it would just feel like a little introductory game/experiment that would lead into something else. But I figured that someday someone is going to choose those exact three cards and I would be able to immediately manifest a pin for them that included the three things that resonated with them most clearly. It just seemed like that would be so strong.
And the very first time I tried it on someone, she took out: books, tea, and cats. I didn’t even need her to turn the cards over before I knew, because I had marked those three.
I sat still at the table, with the pin held between my hands. (I assumed I wouldn’t need it, but I wanted to be prepared on the off-chance I did and then just get rid of it afterwards, rather than have to steal it out of my bag if I did end up needing it.)
I couldn’t believe my luck. Here I was with this person I barely knew. She had chosen three things completely freely from a group of 12 subjects. She didn’t even know that I knew what they were yet. And I had a cute, perfect reveal waiting in my hands to give her. It was a real fight to play it cool
My hands were casually clasped together in front of me. I asked her to grab my wrists. I asked her to tell me which cards she removed. She said, “Cats, reading, and tea.”
I said, “Uh… okay. I wouldn’t have guessed that. But I’ll see if I can make that work.” I focused on my hands and started squeezing them together slightly in rhythm. “I’m going to create a tiny gift based on your interests. A memento of this encounter that is just for you.”
I stopped the squeezing, told her to cup her hands together, and dumped the pin out into her hands. She, understandably, lost her mind.
For completeness sake, here is the list of subjects/interests I gave her to choose from.
Tea
Cats
Reading
Yoga
Wine
Dogs
Knitting
Beer
Video Games
Television
Comics
Chocolate
I tried to subtly nudge the choices in my direction. I knew I’d be performing for a woman, so there are a couple options that are more traditionally male interests. Knitting is more of a female interest, but it’s not super common. Then I put a few more options that are innocent sounding, but you might not choose them as interests that define you because you might think, “Does this make me sound [lazy] [fat] [like a drunk]?”
Again, I wanted the narrowing of options to be subtle. I wanted someone to be able to look at the options after and think, “There’s no way he could have known I’d pick these three. I could have easily gone with [x, y, and z.]” I didn’t want to pick nine obscure subjects like “banjo playing” or “1930s Universal monster movies” because then it would be obvious I was steering them towards certain choices.
So I figured I had it narrowed down to about 6 options that were more likely than the others, and I guessed it wouldn’t take me that long to find someone who would pick the three from those 6 that I wanted. Ultimately, I have no idea if the psychology behind the objects I chose worked, or if I just got lucky. But that was my thought-process going into it.
I love the effect, and I love the giveaway, and I’m working on some ways of doing something similar, but that don’t require luck. (Of course it won’t feel quite so free, but that’s the necessary trade-off.) I’ll let you know if something pans out.