Fundamentals: The Eight Pillars of The Carefree Philosophy

If I was a reader of this blog, rather than the writer, I think one of the things that would be interesting to me is seeing ideas start from their most nascent stages, grow, evolve, get dismissed, etc. It's great to read a book with a fully-formed concept, clearly explained. But a blog is not a book. The fun of a blog is to see the day to day fluctuations in someone's focus and interests and see how a passing notion becomes something fundamental to their thinking.

The issue with that is that if the concept you're building isn't fully understood by yourself when you start talking about it, people can misunderstand what you're saying and just move forward with their own interpretation of what you were trying to get at.

This happened when I started talking about the Carefree Philosophy.

A lot of people who write me about it, since I first talked about it on the site almost two years ago, interpret it as me suggesting you just do self-working tricks or something. But that's not accurate. So today I want to revisit exactly what I mean with the term "Carefree."

Carefree Magic is based on this simple premise: Unintended tension kills magic.

If we are walking outside at night and I say, "Want to see something crazy?" And I have you look at the sky as I casually wipe my hand through the air and the moon disappears, that will feel like the most magical thing you've ever seen.

Now think of this. Same exact effect. Same method. But…

I tell you to look at the moon. Then I'm like, "No, like this," and I grab your shoulders and turn you at an exact orientation. Then I tilt your chin up to look at the moon from a precise angle. "Don't move. Stay just like that."

I'm breathing heavy. My mind is clearly preoccupied.

I step in front of you and say in a rushed monotone:

"Since the dawn of recorded human history, mankind has gazed upward at the night sky and marveled at the celestial bodies therein. Chief among these bodies—and I think you'll agree is the moon. The moon has been a source of mystery, wonder, and also inspiration, for poets, sailors, and lovers throughout the ages. Tonight, however, I would like to invite you to consider the possibility that the moon, despite its long and storied history as an object in the sky, is not as permanent as we have perhaps come to assume. If you will maintain your attention upward, to where the moon currently is, I think you will find what happens next to be... surprising. Please enjoy."

Then the moon disappears.

You would likely still be stunned and feel it's a very fooling trick. But it's a profoundly less magical-feeling experience because of all the areas of tension that shouldn't be there if this was a genuine impossibility.

And while my goal is not at all to make people think what's happening is actual magic. The goal is certainly to make it feel like that. Otherwise, what's the point?

The 8 Pillars of the Carefree Philosophy

Carefree Magic is Easy

Does this mean self-working? Not necessarily. Just whatever is easy for you. It's a trick you can do without focusing on the sleights.

Some magicians can't do any sleights without creating tension at the moment the sleight occurs. For them, self-working magic probably is the best route to take.

Some magicians can do a lot of sleights flawlessly. But these magicians are very, very rare. I'm not one of them. You're probably not either. Most of the magicians touted as being "great" at sleight-of-hand aren't. Not that I've seen. I watch them on video and can almost always tell when they're doing a sleight.

We often talk about "invisible" sleights. And what we mean is that if you look at the deck of cards (for example), you don't see the magician doing the sleight. But that's just one aspect of it. If someone sees tension in your face, your shoulders, your forearms, or wherever, then the sleight isn't invisible even if you can't see it in the hands and cards.

If you feel mentally engaged in a sleight when you're doing it, then it almost certainly shows as tension somewhere. I try to only do tricks that have sleights I can do without thinking about them. That's what I mean by "easy."

Carefree Magic is Present

This one is related to "Easy," but it's not the same thing.

A trick can be technically simple regarding sleights, but still require you to keep track of a lot of moving parts. Maybe you're using a memorized deck. Or a trick that requires a bunch of mental math.

Whatever it is—if part of your brain is occupied with something other than the actual interaction you're having, it shows.

Sometimes it’s fine. If your premise is about how much mental focus something takes, then it’s not an issue.

But if the mental gymnastics are part of the method and not the premise—and if you’re not comfortable doing them under fire—it’s going to feel awkward and tense in performance.

Carefree Magic asks you to be in the room, responding to the person in front of you. Actually present for the moment you're supposedly creating.

If your trick requires you to mentally duck out of the conversation while you do some bookkeeping in the back of your head, it's not Carefree.

Carefree Magic is Unscripted

And by that I mean it is unscripted or it feels unscripted.

Scripting your presentation can be great for helping you guide the experience in a way that makes it as compelling as possible.

But it's dangerous too, because if you're performing casual magic and someone senses you're reciting something, you no longer have something that feels magical.

It also means you can't adequately respond to the things your friend might say to you. You see this a lot when you watch magic demos. The performer is "on book" and if the spectator says something that isn't in the script, the performer ends up brushing past it. Or, just as bad, they'll engage with the spectator for a bit and then switch back into performance mode and continue on with what they planned to say. So you get this abrupt shift between scripted presentation and casual conversation.

Carefree Magic should feel like a genuine interaction. Even if the content of what you're talking about is clearly theatrical or unbelievable.

I will talk more about what I think you should script for a Carefree presentation and how to do so in a future post.

Carefree Magic is Unmanaged

"Spectator management" is a term magicians use which means, "Imposing your will on the spectator to get them to do something they wouldn't normally do."

Examples:

• Rushing them through a selection procedure.

• Removing an object from them before they've looked at it as much as they want.

• Giving them minute, unjustified directions on how you want them to do something they would normally do differently.

We usually think of 'spectator management' as a good thing. We've given it a professional-sounding name and convinced ourselves it's craft. But in most cases it’s just weird and unnatural.

Carefree Magic is Hands-Off

The less you have to touch the items that are in play, the freer and less tense the effect feels.

"I'm going to deal the cards. I'm going to stop. I'm going to turn over a card. I'm going to shuffle it back into the deck."

Carries much more tension than:

"You deal the cards. Stop where you want. Turn over the card you stopped at. Then shuffle it back into the deck."

The reason this works is that your hands on an object keep you in the causal chain. You remain the person responsible for what happens, and on some level, the spectator knows that. When they're the ones handling everything, you're removed as a suspect. There's nothing to control. And when there's nothing to control, there's no tension around the controlling of it.

Carefree Magic is Unprepared

Seemingly unprepared.

When you're carrying around a pocket full of props, there is a psychological weight to that. You're locking yourself into those tricks that you have with you. You're not like a shortstop in baseball, "light on your feet" ready to go in any direction the ball might be hit. It's not that you don't know other routines that don't require that stuff. It's just that if you're bothering to carry that stuff around with you, you're naturally going to default to those tricks. It's the sunk cost fallacy.

Also, when you start emptying your pockets of little props and gimmicks to show people, you put pressure on the moment. It's no longer a seemingly spontaneous moment of impossibility. Now it's this thing you prepared for and bothered to carry around things with you so you could show it to them. It better be worth it.

Stand-up and sketch comedians often dislike improv comedians, because they'll frequently get bigger laughs from less funny jokes. But that's because improv is unprepared, so people are more impressed when it seems like you weren't practicing for this moment.

Similarly, if you can give your magic an improvisational flair, it will get a greater reaction than a technically stronger trick that you've clearly been carrying props around for.

Carefree Magic is Examinable

Introducing objects of interest into an interaction and then not letting someone get an unbothered look at them is a source of tension.

Think of it in any other situation. "Look at this beautiful rock I found!"

"Oh, cool," your friend says. "Let me see."

"Hold on a minute, buster. Keep your hands to yourself," you say as you put the rock in your pocket and walk away.

Does that sound crazy? Uhm, you realize that's how almost all magicians handle unexaminable objects in magic, yes? "Here, pay attention to this interesting object. Now, I'm going to put it away where you can't see it."

Carefree Magic is Comfortable

A fully Carefree performance requires you to be fully comfortable with the audience, and the audience to be fully comfortable with you.

The other pillars of the Carefree Philosophy are going to go a long way toward allowing the person you perform for to feel comfortable with you. They release the tension that makes magic feel awkward.

But what if you are nervous? That will create tension that an audience picks up on and lead to a less Carefree interaction.

Now, obviously the other pillars will mitigate some of the reasons you might have to be nervous. If you're doing a trick that is easy for you and you're not sticking to a rigid script, there will be less reason for performance anxiety.

But what if you're just nervous performing for people in general, regardless of the material?

That's rough, because that's the hardest thing to do something about and the hardest thing to hide from a spectator. I don't know what the answer is, because I don't have that issue. I'm pretty comfortable around people generally—performing a trick or not.

But I will think about it some more and see if I have any techniques beyond reducing the tension in the other areas of your performance. And if anyone has experience getting over generalized discomfort when performing, let me know your tips and I'll pass them on.

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One final thing: these pillars are all on a spectrum. They're not binary. And you're unlikely to find a given trick that is fully Carefree. These are dials, not switches. The goal isn't to find a perfect 8-for-8 effect. It's to understand where the tension is coming from so you can make conscious choices about it.

The pillars don't even necessarily support each other. The easiest tricks are often the least examinable. The most hands-off tricks often require the most spectator management. The eight pillars could be seen as eight horses—not always pulling in the same direction.

It's difficult to find a completely Carefree effect, and it would be impossible to construct a completely Carefree repertoire. But I’m not chasing perfection, I’m chasing a particular feeling. And every bit of tension I remove gets me closer to it.

Noted Notes

I've been searching for a good impression pad for years. I looked at easily a dozen or more in that time. Mostly all do a good job of getting the impression. That wasn't the issue. The issue was they often looked weird and/or required an unusual procedure before the spectator wrote something down or in order to get the read of the impression. The great thing about Chris Rawlins' Noted is not only is the impression clear, it's also the most inconspicuous and recognizable impression pad I've ever used.

I keep one on my bedroom dresser along with the marker. That's where it lives for spontaneous performing.

For example, the other day my friend stops over on his lunch break. I tell him I want to try something. I open the drawer on my living room end-table as if looking for something. "Actually, go in my bedroom. On my dresser there's a Post-it pad. I want you to write a four digit number on it and shout when you're done."

He went in the other room and wrote down a number and let me know when he was finished.

I tell him to pull off the sheet he wrote on and attach it to the back of one of his credit cards, and sandwich it between two other cards in his wallet.

"We'll pretend that's important information, like a PIN code for your bank account," I tell him. "We'll get back to it later."

Later on I call him up and ask him if he did anything after work.

"I stopped at the used bookstore," he says.

"Interesting," I say. "Do you remember seeing me at the bookstore?"

No, he tells me.

"Did you feel anyone bump into you or get particularly close to you while you were there?" Not that he remembers. "And if you don't remember it happening once, you certainly don't remember it happening twice, of course."

I then go on to explain I'm trying to learn a new system of pickpocketing techniques. And that I grabbed his wallet, peeked the number he wrote down, and put it back in his pocket all without him knowing. I then told him the number he wrote down.

He—having forgotten precisely what he wrote—had to double-check in his wallet. And he was audibly taken aback when he confirmed I was right.

Did he really think I pickpocketed him and put the wallet back? Probably not. It's just a more interesting premise than saying, "I know the number you wrote down."

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This is what I like about Noted. You don't need to be near the spectator when they use it. They write on it and remove the sheet as they would if the pad were ungimmicked. You don't need to micromanage them or get them to do something unusual.

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The other day I was in my bedroom with a woman. (We were just listening to records, mom!) I stayed in the bed and rolled onto my stomach and asked her to go over to the dresser and write a word on the Post-it pad that was there.

It's very clear from this setup—me, on the other side of the room, face down (ass up?) in bed—that I can't see anything she's doing. I told her to take off the note and leave the room and go to another room, or even outside, and find an interesting place to stick it and then come back to me.

When she came back, I said, "Okay, so I can turn over now? There's nothing for me to see, yes? The paper is not even in this room anymore, right?" She agreed.

I rolled over onto my back and patted the bed for her to sit down.

"That was a free choice of word, yes? You don't feel like I made you write that word over any other word, do you?" Of course not.

"Okay, let's try this. Tell me where you stuck the note." She said it was on top of one of the blades on the ceiling fan in the dining room.

I told her I was going to try and project my consciousness out of my body and that note was going to be the proof I really did it. I did some deep breathing and then lay still for a moment. After ten seconds or so I did a big inhale as if I was just coming back to my body. I propped myself up on my elbows. "Okay, this is good. Thanks for helping me test this. I was trying it earlier and I thought it was working, but there's no real way to know for sure if you're not just imagining you're doing it. That's why this word thing works as a test. I did see a Post-it with a word on it when I left my body. But again, I'm not sure if it's real or not. Did the word you wrote start with a B?" I asked, as if I was afraid to fully commit to what I saw just yet.

"Yesss," she said, dubiously.

"Was it 'blossom'?" I asked.

"What!" she said, and picked up a pillow and hit it against my chest. "How?"

"Oh, sorry. When you told me where you put the Post-it, I sent my consciousness out of my body and it floated down the hall to the dining room and I went up above the ceiling fan where I read the word you wrote down." I said. As if that explained things.

Actually (if it’s not obvious) when she left the room, I quickly jumped out of bed, got the peek from the pad, and jumped back in bed.

Noted is available directly from Chris. I believe it's currently sold out but will be back in stock later this month, including potentially the larger square-sized Post-it version (although I'm not sure about that).

Salvage Yard: Black Pearl

The only thing I bought from Blackpool this year was Black Pearl from Victor Zatko.

So far I’ve had two types of reactions:

1. A shrug.

2. A good reaction followed by “Can I see the bracelet?

AGGHHHHHHHHH!! It’s the ONE thing I bought. Any idea how to make this work? —CA

Okay, for those who don't know what this trick is and you're reading this during a work meeting so you can't watch the video, the trick is you're wearing a black beaded bracelet with one white bead on it. You ask your friend to name a number between 1 and 20. When you unclasp the bracelet, the white bead is found the selected number from the end of the bracelet.

(By the way, if you are in a work meeting and reading this site instead of paying attention, just look up right now and say, "At the end of the day, it's about execution." They'll think you're really engaged.)

The two reactions CA describes in his email don't surprise me.

In fact, they're not two reactions. They're one reaction: "I bet that's a trick bracelet."

The non-reactors just sense it earlier. The people who react well just come to the "trick bracelet" conclusion a little later. But 100% of people who watch this will assume it's a trick bracelet. And, I would guess, most will have a good idea exactly how it's gimmicked.

How would I salvage it?

Hmm… give me a minute.

[Four days later.]

Okay, a little longer than a minute.

Here's what I'd do.

"I want you to imagine looking out a window."

I draw a square in the air with my fingers in front of them.

"You're looking out on a street in front of your house. It's quiet. Then, walking into the frame is a parade of black cats. Twenty of them. All in a row. Can you see it? Okay, now you notice something. The cats have a guest in their parade. A pure white bunny is in the row of animals as well. Can you picture that? Perfect. Tell me, what position is the bunny in the cat parade? Where, from 1-20, is he located?"

Eight.

"That's right. That's exactly how the cat parade played out. Let me show you something."

I open my Notes app to a note called The Cat Parade.

"Want to know how that works? Okay… when we went through that focus exercise earlier, I was trying to heighten your sensitivity to pick up external stimuli. When I was drawing the window in front of you, and when I was pointing out the parade of cats, there was something in your periphery that I was hoping you'd pick up on."

I give them a moment to get ahead of me if they can. Either way, I smile and say...

"Let me undo this."

I "unhook" the bracelet and hold it up.

"One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven… and the white rabbit."

I think by making this an ancillary effect (combined with DFB) it might help with the "trick bracelet" explanation, because that's no longer a complete answer.

In the write-up I refer to a "focus exercise." This is something you would do before the "visualization" exercise of them thinking of the cat parade. You want to do something—some kind of Imp—to suggest their mind was prepped to pick up on information it might not have otherwise and that's what happened here.

Don't call it "influence."

I mean, go ahead, do whatever you want. But that's just beyond corny. "I influenced you by wearing a bracelet!" Okay, goofball. (Ctrl+f and search for Influence for a lot of posts on the influence premise and why it mostly sucks and alternatives to it.)

It's not influence. They're walked through a process, or some other type of Imp, that temporarily heightens their perception. And that's how they were able to pick up on this subtle cue without knowing. You guided them through the process, but it's something they accomplished. The list on your phone is proof that they did and the bracelet is the explanation for how it played out.

There you go. I think I might have talked myself into buying this dumb thing.

Mailbag #166: Dupe Thoughts

Wanted to pick your brain about something. How much do you think magicians are fooling themselves by thinking that spectators don’t just assume a duplicate is used in tricks?

I performed a classic two card transpo today for three of my classes just as a precursor for a TNR (Reform 52) and literally every single class had at least one student that mentioned two of the same card.

I actually think that because it wasn’t the main point of the trick, it encouraged them to be more honest than they normally would. It’s almost like since they didn’t understand the TNR part, they practically HAD to expose the transpo to feel like they had a footing in reality. I just have to assume that if at least one student said it, multiple were thinking it. And worse, that’s probably been true every time anyone has ever done a two card transpo with a dupe.—MH

Any trick that relies solely on a dupe for the primary method is dead in the water. 100% of audiences will consider it as the method.

(Okay, maybe not any trick. There are likely subtle uses of a dupe that an audience wouldn't pick up on. But with something like a torn and restored card, or a transposition—that's going to get sussed out immediately.)

This is so clearly true, in my opinion, that there’s not much more to say about.

That being said, some of the strongest reactions I've ever had are with a dupe and a borrowed deck.

Borrowed deck + Long Force + Dupe is an incredibly strong formula for magic.

I make it a habit to spot the decks friends have in their homes so I can try and track down matching decks.

If you can match some obscure deck they have, that's great.

But I found recently that even if they have just a regular red Bicycle deck their mind doesn't jump to the idea of a duplicate when you're in their house with their deck.

This is especially true if they don't see you as someone who is constantly carrying magic shit around with you. (Another argument for Zero Carry.)

You might be thinking, "Okay, so I guess I'm going to palm in the duplicate at some point, and then I'll have it to work with in the deck."

Maybe.

But there are other ways to utilize it that don't even require that much effort.

If you plant the dupe somewhere to be revealed later on, then you never need to introduce it into the deck in the first place.

Or, you can do what I do, and put a dupe in the deck at some other occasion altogether and just let it live in their deck until you need it.

I have a few friends who—at this moment—have a deck in their house with a duplicate card sitting in it. I have a note in my Notes app that reminds me what cards are where.

Could they end up playing a game of cards with two 4 of Clubs in the deck? I mean, yeah, I guess. But most people I know aren't hardcore card game players. They're not engaged in big-money poker tournaments in their basement where a duplicate card is going to be consequential. And if they do find it, they'll assume it was a factory error or got mixed in during some game night with multiple decks. They're not going to think, "Ah! I bet Andy put this in the deck back in January in order to show us a trick at some undetermined future time."

Although—if I planted a card in a friend's deck and a few weeks later they got the shit kicked out of them for "cheating" because they had two 6 of Spades during a high-stakes poker game… that would be pretty funny, actually. So it’s a win-win scenario.

Dustings #142

Here is the cover of Card Fan Productions by Ed Marlo in 1941.

It’s nothing special, really. But it’s simple, charming and evocative.

Flash-forward 84 years and this AI garbage is the cover for a new Marlo book, Ed Marlo Forty Years Later.

Is the level of care they used for the outside of the book similar to what’s inside? I really hope not.

Or maybe I’m just assuming this is bland, effortless, AI slop. Perhaps it was lovingly hand-crafted and the book comes with some custom gimmicks—the Sevive of Diamonds and the Feight of Spubs—as featured on the cover.

[Update from reader CP: “I’m not sure if anyone’s told you yet. But they AI’ed the pics inside too. They’re like an 11 of diamonds and shit.” Wild if true.]

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Speaking of which, I think we've reached a new chapter in how we react to AI content.

There was a time when it seemed surprisingly good. Maybe in a scary way. Like, was all entertainment going to be AI-generated in a few years?

The next chapter was when everyone got past the initial shock of what the technology could do and realized it was mostly kind of shitty. And beyond that, kind of meaningless.

"Look, it's you as a Muppet!"

If someone had created that image of you 10 years ago, you'd probably hang it up somewhere in your house. Now you look at it and say, "Oh, yeah. Neat." And never think about it again.

The new chapter we've reached is where AI content is so generally understood to be bad that it's funny to pretend it's good.

"Have you seen the stuff AI is doing these days?" my friend asked in mock awe. "I think it should stand for Amazing Innovation." And people laughed. It was a little joke that wouldn't have made sense even a year ago. They might have thought he was being serious.

There's no doubt AI is going to change certain industries and the world. But I think we'll end up being surprised by how little it affects the art and entertainment we consume.

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Does Craig Petty like getting sued? It sure seems that way, or else he'd be a bit more careful with his words. DAMMIT, I'm so mad!

So I had this big opportunity come up to do a show for the owner of this fancy hotel. His daughter's bat mitzvah. And he's like, "Hey, if it goes well, we'll have you as our regular entertainment for all our events." It was going to be a $200,000 contract. And even more importantly, it would have led to a ton of other high-paying performance opportunities.

So I figure, maybe I'll do something with Craig's new release, Instant Teleport. And I'm watching through the instructions and—I'll be honest—maybe only half paying attention because it's another typical Petty blather-fest, and I hear this.

"The lower left corner is being pushed against the mound of Venus."

Hmmm… I think. Now, I know in palm reading there are the "mounts" of the hand.

But isn't the mound of Venus… uhm…

Well… okay, I think. If Craig says so. He knows best. Who am I to question the winner of Penguin Magic's Creator of the Year Award? Surely he knows what he's talking about, right? They don't give the Penguin Magic Creator of the Year Award to any dumb oaf, do they?

So I go do the show. It's going great. People are laughing and clapping. Cards are being found. Balloons are being needled. Coils are being unmouthed. It's quite simply a "magical" evening.

Before my final trick (Instant Teleport) the wealthy hotel owner comes up to me and says, "I suggest when you go home tonight you empty out your wallet to make room for all the new moneys you'll be putting in there once I hire you." He rests his hand on my shoulder. "You've got the job. That is," he says, "unless something goes wrong during the last trick in a monumentally horrible way."

With that in mind, I start the last trick. With Craig's voice ringing in my head I joyfully go through the effect, getting to the point where it's time to push the lower left corner against the mound of Venus. I look around the room, locate the nearest one, and—committed to the craft, as Craig would want—get to it.

Predictably, all hell breaks loose. The bat mitzvah girl is crying. Her parents are furious. Children are screaming. Two burly security guys try to hold me back. "No!" I scream, kicking and fighting. "This is what Craig Petty said to do!"

The contract is torn up. The police are called. And I get literally thrown out on my ass.

THANKS, CRAIG.

You better fire up another Kickstarter, for when I sue your ass. You're going to need it

And you know the worst part… the absolute worst part about all of this? We live in a world that can feel a little chaotic… a little topsy-turvy at times. It's nice to be able to rely on some things that are stable and good and will never let you down. It's nice to have faith in certain institutions. For me, that was always the Penguin Magic Creator of the Year Award Winners. They were my rock. They were my north star. "They'll never encourage me to jab a deck into someone's vagina," I always naively thought. What a fool I was. What. A. Fool.

Fundamentals: Experience-Centric Magic

Earlier this week I mentioned that there are three fundamental concepts I want to revisit or expand on this month. The first is an older idea (and an old post) that I’m updating to reflect my current thinking on “magician-centric” magic and why it’s essential for the social or casual performer to understand.

"Audience-centric" is a term I first threw out on this site almost 11 years ago, but I think it's time to retire it—or at least demote it—in favor of something more precise.

The problem with "audience-centric" is that people hear it and assume it means a specific type of presentation. One where the audience does the magic. Spectator as Mindreader. Spectator as Magician. They tell you what card you're thinking of. They, somehow, add up a list of long numbers in their head. The power belongs to them, not you. And while that's a version of what I mean, it's not the whole picture.

So let's use a different term: Experience-Centric.

The point of an experience-centric presentation is simple: get you out of the way. Not out of the trick entirely—you can still be the one making the impossible thing happen. But out of the audience's head. The moment they stop wondering what you want from them, they can start actually enjoying the experience.

Here's what happens in casual situations when you perform a standard magician-centric trick—one where the implicit message is "Something remarkable lives inside me, and I'd like to share it with you now." The audience sees the impossible thing happen. And then, underneath whatever reaction they're showing you, some part of their brain starts asking: Is he trying to make me think this is real? Does he expect me to be genuinely impressed that he 'read my mind'? Does he know that I know this is a trick? If I act amazed, am I being played for a sucker? If I don't, am I being a bad sport?

Think about every parody of a magician in pop culture. They're sometimes made ridiculous by bad technique. But they're always made ridiculous by the naked desperation and approval-seeking they display—the "ta-da," the jazz hands, the expectant look after the climax of the trick. What pop culture figured out is that magician-centric performance, taken to its logical conclusion, is just a person asking strangers to validate them using fake powers.

This becomes a cringe spiral. The moment you frame a trick as a demonstration of your personal power or ability, you create a social situation with an uncomfortable subtext. The audience now has to figure out what posture they're supposed to take toward you. Are they meant to believe this? Play along? Pretend to be impressed? That ambiguity creates a quiet discomfort, even if the spectator can't quite articulate why.

Experience-centric presentations dissolve that. If the story you're telling doesn't hinge on you being special or powerful, the audience isn't working out what social posture to take towards you. They're just in it, having the experience.

There are two broad ways to get there.

Attribution-Shifted Magic

The first approach is to relocate the magic entirely. You're not the one doing it—something or someone else is. This is what most people picture when they hear "audience-centric," but the possibilities are much wider than "the spectator finds their own card."

The spectator could be the one with the ability. A natural phenomenon could be responsible. Some obscure supernatural mechanism could be the cause. You could be attempting to channel or demonstrate something you have no real control over. The specifics don't matter as much as the effect on the room: nobody's looking at you like you're trying to impress them, because according to the story, you're not the one doing anything impressive. You're just helping facilitate it.

The experience becomes communal in a way that magician-centric presentations almost never are. Everyone's on the same side of the table. Something inexplicable just happened, and you're all trying to make sense of it together. That's a fundamentally different dynamic than watching someone perform a skill demonstration and clapping at the end.

See this post on 24 Disarmers to explore this further.

Englightened Magic

Enlightenment is the death of the ego. That's what this approach is about. It's subtler than fully shifting the power off yourself. Here, you're still technically the one doing the thing. There's no elaborate alternative explanation for the magic. But you perform it in a way that makes clear you're not looking for credit, approval, or admiration. You're stripping the ego out, even if you're still the central figure.

I use three techniques for this regularly.

Remove Certainty

Compare: "I'm going to read your mind. Think of a two-digit number."

To: "Can I try something with you? This may be a giant waste of time. But I've been trying to learn this way of transmitting numbers 'telepathically' that I read about in this old book at my grandfather's place. I think I have the idea down. And I've been getting pretty close. But I haven't quite nailed it yet. Can I try it with you? It seems to work better with certain people."

You "sense" their number, but you're three off.

"Shoot. One more time?" And this time you nail it.

In my experience, the second approach will get people much more interested, much more on your side, and much less likely to ask themselves, "Did he see the number I wrote down?"

Notice what's happened to the ego problem. In the first version, you're planting a flag. You're claiming a power and inviting the audience to watch you exercise it. In the second version, you're barely claiming anything. You're a guy who read something interesting and wanted to try it out. The impossible moment is identical. But the social contract is completely different. They're rooting for you instead of evaluating you. The experience is something you're both inside of, rather than something you're delivering to them from a stage.

Watching someone trying something or learning something is endearing.

Certainty isn't. And it's not even that interesting. "They were the best baseball team the world has ever known…. and they won the championship!" is not a tagline you will find on any movie poster.

Don't Call Attention To It

A while ago I was showering with a lady friend of mine. At one point during the shower the soap fell out of my hands and onto the tub floor. Without much thought I kicked the bar of soap. It traveled across the bottom of the tub, hit the curve up the side, and then shot up a few feet where I snagged it out of the air with one hand and went back to lathering myself up. The woman I was with was amazed by this little feat.

In the moment, it seemed like the most casual off-hand stunt. Now, the truth is I've been doing this for years, any time I drop the soap and I'm too lazy to bend over. I hit it now more often than not, but nowhere near 100%. I didn't do it thinking, "This will impress her." It was just a reflex.

Now, imagine it hadn't happened in that way. Imagine I said, "Hey, watch this!" And I set the soap down. "How amazed would you be if I kicked the soap, it went across the tub, up the side, and I caught it in my hand?" Then after making sure all her attention was on me, I did it and took a bow. Suddenly this nonchalant little moment becomes a desperate attempt to be acknowledged. This is what so much of magic feels like.

The ego isn't always in the trick itself. Sometimes it's just in how you announce it. "Watch this" is the two-word version of the entire magician-centric ethos. It's the request for evaluation. Strip that out—just do the thing, in context, without the preamble—and you've already moved toward an experience-centric moment.

This really only works for quick, off-the-cuff moments of magic (it's harder to do an eight-phase Oil and Water off-handedly). For more on this, search for posts about the Distracted Artist style on this site.

Go Absurd

The third technique is to choose a claimed power so ridiculous that no reasonable person could interpret it as a genuine boast. If I tell you I can read your mind, or I have an incredible memory, or I can cheat at gambling—that cringe spiral kicks in again. Is he serious? Does he want me to be impressed by this? Is this supposed to be cool?

But absurdity short-circuits all of that. The over-the-top premise signals immediately that you're not in the business of being taken seriously. Nobody's sitting there wondering if you're trying to come off powerful. The premise itself rules that out. Which means they can just enjoy what happens, without the mental overhead of decoding your intentions.

In Manuel Llaser's Penguin Live lecture, he does a trick where a card is selected and lost in the deck. The deck is placed on the table. He then spins a yo-yo on its string, and when it's at the bottom of its descent he lets the yo-yo roll across the table, where it hits the deck and cuts the deck right at the spectator's card.

This is a magician-centric demonstration of skill—but a completely useless one. And the sting is taken out of it even more if you try to play it up as something super impressive. "Malcolm Gladwell says it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill. And that's why, for three hours a day, every day, for the last 10 years, I've been hitting decks of cards with a yo-yo to get it to cut at exactly the card I want it to. Some might say that's a lot of time, but is it really? When the outcome is something so useful? To me it seems like time well spent. But here's the deal, if I show you this, you have to promise you won't fall in love with me. Okay? Yes, it's very cool. Yes, it's impressive. Yes, it's wildly sexy. But that's not why I do it. This is about the art for me. Not pussy."

The absurdity works on two levels. The skill itself is ridiculous. And the over-serious framing of it makes it even more so. The ego is technically present—but it's inflated to the point of self-parody, which is, in a roundabout way, its own form of ego removal.

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The magician-centric performer gives the audience two possible interpretations of what just happened:

I really did that. Or I want you to think I really did that.

I can read your mind. I can vanish a coin. I can change ones into hundreds. Or: I want you to think I read your mind. I want you to think I vanished that coin. I want you to think I changed those ones into hundreds.

Those are the only two interpretations available. And both of them are entirely focused on you.

Since the audience probably isn't going to believe it really happened, the only interpretation left is that you're performing demonstrations designed to make yourself look impressive. The fiction you're creating is one about you being special.

With experience-centric magic, the interpretations are endless.

Was that really caused by a “synchronization ritual”?
Did that crystal genuinely heighten my intuition?
Is that something he’s really just learning to do?
Was that really just coincidence?
Is that object truly haunted?
Did his mentor really just read my mind over text?
Did he actually do that absentmindedly?
Did I somehow add those numbers up subconsciously without realizing it?

They probably won't believe the literal reality of any of those explanations either. But because none of them feel self-serving, the audience becomes more willing to entertain them—even if just for fun. And once the magic stops being solely about you, the tricks start to read differently. Less like demonstrations of power, and more like little stories unfolding around them. Small fictions the audience gets to step inside.

Which opens up an endless range of experiences beyond "I watched a guy do something impossible."

Make Your Own Jerx

Last month, The Jerx passed the 2000 post count. AI estimates the time to read through the full site as 150 hours. And about 25%-100% longer if you're taking notes and following links. So, maybe a month to a month and a half of full-time work to read the site completely.

Hitting that milestone number makes me feel like this is a good time to wind things down.

Oh, don't be so glum. You always have the Steve Brooks "blog section" of the Cafe, My Side of the Screen with the three posts he wrote 20 years ago to keep yourself entertained. You'll be fine.

I'm just busting your beans, dude. I ain't going anywhere soon. We're going for 10k.

I frequently get emails from people telling me some idea or other that they found on my site that they really like. That's always nice to hear. But it occasionally happens—and it happened twice last week—that I have no idea what they're talking about.

Oh, that's called early-onset senility, Andy.

No, I don't think that's what it is. It's just if you write 2000 posts (and 100s more articles and tricks in the newsletter and books) your brain just doesn't bother holding onto every little thing.

So first, a request: if there's an idea/trick/concept/post from the history of this site that had an impact on you but wasn't something I revisited often—something that is sort of lost in the sea of content—send me an email and let me know about it. I like to be reminded of these things and may start a small feature where I highlight some of them.

Second, a suggestion: if you're someone who feels you get something from this site, it's probably worth it to go through it from the beginning and keep a document or notebook of the ideas that resonate with you. I've found myself doing this with the magic content from the creators I regularly revisit. I have a notebook for each and it's been so valuable to have a concentrated version of their output that I can reference when I don't want to take a more relaxed stroll through their full output.

The larger concepts are easy to remember. But often there's a brief line, premise, or idea that connects with me when I'm reading and I think, "Oh, that's great. I should remember that." And then instantly it's like…

I don't remember it. In fact, I'm lucky if I remember that there was something I wanted to remember.

With 2000 posts on this site, the odds are pretty good there are a handful of those moments scattered through the archives that you forgot to remember. So creating your own condensed version of the site might be a worthwhile endeavor. It won’t take you six weeks of full-time work. Skip the posts about Josh Jay and Andi Gladwin’s “partnership,” and you could probably get through it in a long weekend. (Looks like they’re heading to Hawaii this year for one of their sodomitic bacchanalias. Oh, sorry—I mean they’re going there to “learn magic.” Funny… last time I gathered with people to learn magic, it was in the conference room at a Courtyard by Marriott, and that served us just fine, thank you very much. But I guess that location doesn’t give you as many opportunities to prance around in your little speedos and rub your buns together or whatever you sickos do.)