The Wonder-Room

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The Wonder-Room is a new performance style I've been working on. The performance styles I've described in the past have required you to initiate the interaction, to be sociable and outgoing, and to sometimes put in considerable work. The Wonder-Room, however, is perfect for the anti-social, the lazy, the socially-awkward, the agoraphobic. You know, that guy you see in the bathroom mirror every morning. Or you would if you ever took a shower or brushed your teeth.

The Wonder-Room is a "cabinet of curiosities" concept (the names are synonymous). Don't get confused by the terminology.

This is what you think of when you think of a cabinet.

But the word "cabinet" used to mean "room."

And while I'm using the word "Room," that's just because I like to think big. In reality we're probably talking something more... well.... like a cabinet? Actually something like this would be ideal.

But your wife won't let you co-opt that piece of furniture, so we're probably talking something closer to a single shelf on a bookshelf somewhere in your home. That works too.

The idea behind the Wonder-Room performance style is to curate a collection of effects that use objects that you permanently leave on display in some area of your house. Objects that can be freely handled and looked at by anyone in the house or anyone visiting. 

Yeah, great idea. "Behold, my shelf of rubber bands, coins, and string. Prepare to be mesmerized."

That's not what I'm talking about, ya fucking blockhead. 

Well then clarify, dummy.

You're pushing it, pal.

The idea behind this performance  style—the idea behind all the ones I've suggested—is to disturb that traditional magician/spectator dynamic of, "Hello. I'm a magician! And I'm going to fool you with my magic trick!" It's mind-boggling to me that, for the most part, everyone has pretty much been on board with that being what we're stuck with when performing magic. Especially given the fact that it obviously causes a certain amount of the audience to pull away because they're defensive against being fooled, and a certain percent of the audience to almost baby the performer because they sense your ego is on the line, and a certain percent to feel uncomfortable about whether you want them to actually believe you possess these powers. 

Performance styles are designed to upset that dynamic by removing the traditional "magician" role.

With the Wonder-Room you're not a magician so much. You're a guy who collects unusual, strange, and fascinating objects. You don't present these things to people. They sit on that shelf, or in that curio cabinet, or—if you're lucky—in the room you have devoted just to magical objects. And maybe you sort of nudge visitors that way, but you always follow their lead. Let them pick up the objects they find interesting. It's a Cabinet of Their Curiosities.

"What's this thing?" they ask, picking up one of the objects. Maybe you have some story you heard about the object, or maybe you're just like, "I don't really know. I have a few different guys who look out for these sorts of things for me and one of them was searching through a barn on the property of this guy who had recently passed and found this. Actually, he sent me an email about what you're supposed to do with it, hold on let me get it." You don't "perform" the tricks. You demonstrate this interesting trait of this odd object.

And part of the work behind this style is developing a story for each piece. Not a story in the "bizarre magick" sense. If that works for you, great. But for me, those types of stories like, "These are the gold coins a wizard paid a mermaid to bring him the moon's reflection from the sea!" It's like, whaddafug you talkin 'bout? I find that stuff more distancing than engaging for an adult audience. 

But stories about how you came across these objects, where you found them, the people you interacted with along the way, the subculture of people who buy and trade these odd things; that can all be very interesting.

You could limit yourself to a certain type of artifact. Maybe you only collect haunted objects. And everything you has vanishes or floats or possesses you in some way. Maybe your display is of things collected from suspected alien crash sites. Maybe you collect scientific anomalies. Or gambling paraphernalia. Or odd toys. 

When I build mine, it will have things from all manner of categories. Some old crusty books from the Outlaw Effects/Gemini Artifacts world. Some examinable Tenyo effects. Some interesting old decks of cards (each set and stacked for very specific tricks). A spirit bell. A Dean's Box. Any effect or prop that is somewhat visually interesting and can be fairly examined, I will come up with a story regarding where it came from and it will live in my Wonder-Room. 

I'm sure other people have had similar ideas, but it came up pretty organically for me. I was staying at a friend's place for a week and I had a bunch of tricks I'd had people order for me so I could review them (or consider reviewing them) for the JAMM, and I had some other tricks with me a well. So I had more than I would usually carry with me when visiting someone and while I had some tucked away from prying eyes, others I had out on the dresser near my bed. These were ones that could be looked over by someone else. (Perhaps there was part that couldn't be looked over, but I would just have that individual part hidden away.)

At one point his sister visited us and she was talking to me in my room that night and she was asking me about some of the objects that were laid out on the dresser. And I just started making up stories about them and where they came from, then I'd demonstrate whatever weird property they have. She really enjoyed it. She burned through everything and it was a nice inverse of a potentially awkward situation where you are forcing trick after trick on someone.

Did she believe everything? That's not the question. Performance styles aren't about getting people to believe them. Distracted Artist isn't about getting them to believe tricks can inadvertently happen. Engagement Ceremony isn't about getting them to believe you really know a Viking virility ritual. And the Wonder-Room isn't about getting them to believe this bookcase is full of genuinely incredible relics. It's simply about blurring the lines between what part of this is a trick and what isn't. Certainty makes for dull magic.

❀

But it's bigger than that too. In magic we are constantly asking people to play along with us. The purpose of coming up with new performance styles is to make it easier and more fun to play along by giving them something to play along with other than, "Hey, let's all pretend I'm a super incredible guy with amazing skills, okay?" Get that through your skull, because that is amateur magic's biggest issue.

In a theater we can all pretend David Copperfield is a warlock or whatever the shit we want because that's how a "show" works. "We went to the off-broadway show and pretended that hollow wooden box was King Lear's throne." No problem. Copperfield is to wizard as hollow box is to royal throne. But you're not performing in a theater. You're in a Wendy's.

That's why it's so odious when people try to come off as having real powers of some nature. You're asking people to invest in the least likable part of this craft: the phony bullshit part that serves the magician's ego. And then all these magicians sit around like, "Errrr... why don't people like magic more? People just don't wanna believe in wonder these days, I guess." Uh, they do. You're doing it wrong, dummy. Remove the role of "magician" from the interaction, blur the lines of what is real and what isn't, and you will be shocked how much people are willing to let themselves believe.

But with the traditional magician-centric way... why would they bother indulging that? Here's a thought experiment. Imagine you went to a friend's house and sat around a table and one of them said, "Hey, I have a fun idea. Let's engage in an activity that's predicated on all of us playing along with the notion that I'm the most handsomest boy in the whole-wide world!" What would your enthusiasm for that activity be? Well, I hate to break it to you, BUT THAT'S BARELY FUCKING DIFFERENT ENOUGH FROM WHAT MAGICIANS DO TO QUALIFY AS AN ANALOGY!

The False Constraint

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One of the easiest things you can do for a more powerful presentation is to add a false constraint into your performance.

For example, the other night I was hanging out with my friend and at one point I just "happened to notice" that it was the Spring equinox. Not only that, but we were approaching the exact midpoint of the night between sunset and sunrise. I got all excited and told my friend to get a jacket and shoes on and meet me out front. "There's something I've always wanted to try on the equinox," I said. 

Once we were out front I oriented our bodies so we were facing each other and so a line running north and south would run between us.

We each had half a deck resting on our fingers in our palm-up hands. Mine had a face-up card on top, his had a single card face-down next to the rest of the stock. 

I told him about the equinox. How night and day were the same length and how we were approaching the point where we were equidistant from sunset and sunrise. And how, if you split up the earth into two hemispheres based on a line drawn between us, at any moment, on the other side of the earth, the sun was going from mostly in my hemisphere to mostly in his hemisphere. 

As I talked, I would occasionally flick the wrist of my hand holding the deck, but nothing would happen. At one point I flicked it and the top card begin to spin. "Hold still," I said, "It's about to happen."

We waited a few moments. And just as I was about to suggest that maybe this thing didn't actually work, the card on the palm of his hand flipped over onto the cards on his fingers and began to spin.

The trick, if you're not familiar with it, is Butterfly by Bruno Copin.

Am I saying this trick gets a better reaction if you drag someone outside in the middle of the night on one specific night a year?

Uhm, yeah, that's 100% what I'm saying.

Putting in constraints about when you perform a trick, where you perform it, for whom you perform it, etc., all of these make for a richer experience for your spectators. It prevents them from immediately resorting to the Non-Explanation.

I am more and more convinced that one of the issues with the perception of magic is that we perform it as if it was completely inconsequential and so that's how people view it. "I'm going to change five $1 bills into five $100 bills." And then we do it. If your only goal is to do some visually interesting things for people, I think that's fine (and I think that's a fine goal). But if your goal is to give people an experience, then there needs to be some element of a story there. A story that they're a part of.

Diane, You Beautiful Asshole

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Today's commercial message will be short because I'm a bit under the weather. And because I very rarely get sick, I'm a gigantic baby about it when I do.

Support the site by subscribing to The JAMM. I'm really excited about the next issue and I have no doubt getting an email saying I have a new subscriber will boost my immune system too. So if you don't subscribe and I end up dying, I hope you can live with that on your conscience.

I've been sitting around all day watching some of my favorite youtube videos. That's how I handle being sick. Here's a video some friends of mine made almost ten years ago. I was just recently reminded of it and it always makes me laugh. The language isn't work appropriate. But neither is this site for that matter. 

Gardyloo #20

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In December 2015 I put most of my belongings in storage and left my apartment in Brooklyn and I've been living a somewhat vagabond lifestyle ever since. Well... vagabond... may not be the right word. I'm not exactly picking strawberries and living in a lean-to (I don't think I even know what that means), but I've been traveling for work and staying in short term rentals across mostly the northeast US, settling in upstate NY for large chunks of time because two of the people who help with this site are located there and that's where we operate the mailings from. Soon I will be making a semi-permanent move to a bed & breakfast somewhere near the US/Canadian border. After spending time these past 15 months in all sorts of different living situations (like cabins, houseboats, hotels, etc), I thought a bed & breakfast would make a good temporary situation because there is a constant influx of new people to perform for. Am I making my living decisions based on some dopey magic blog? Yeah, kind of. The thing is, I can do my normal day-job (writing/consulting) from anywhere, so I might as well optimize my living location for this site. 

My next plan, after the B&B? I want to get an artist residency on Amtrak trains. It's a legit program they have and it would be perfect for me (lots of new people all the time, many of whom are looking for ways to pass the time). Unfortunately I think the program might be suspended (Oh, and they'd never accept me.)

What was my point here? Right... so I've been traveling a lot and in some locations I find that I am completely incompetent with a deck of cards. An Erdnase color change seems damn near impossible. I just sit there rubbing the deck back and forth like some weird pervert. Then I'll try certain moves and the cards will just shoot out of my hands onto the floor.

It's all climate related, of course, and the way humidity or whatever affects your skin. In some places my skin is really dry and everything just seems impossible. And I was thinking that if I grew up in one of these environments and had never really left, I would just assume I was incapable of performing these sleights and I probably would have given up on them a long time ago and resigned myself to the fact that I "wasn't a sleight-guy."

So if you've always lived in the same place, and there's no natural tackiness to your hands, maybe you just think sleight of hand isn't in your skill set when, in reality, a little glycerin and you're good to go.

What I use in these situations is Vagisil moisturizing lotion. No, I'm not kidding. No, this whole post isn't a goof to get you to squirt Vagisil in your hands. And no, I didn't start this blog almost two years ago with the sole purpose of leading up to this post.

Seriously, you can see it recommended on the Cafe as well. And no, I didn't create all those accounts many years ago in anticipation of this post and getting you to douse yourself in Vagisil. (As far as you know.) I know it weirds some guys out... but it's just lotion guys. It's not made of dry vaginas. 

The only problem is, for some reason, it's selling for $62 for two ounces on Amazon when I use to get it for, like, $6. I'm not sure what's going on there. Apparently there's been an epidemic of feminine dryness sweeping the globe. (Is this tied to Joshua Jay's recent world travels? Seems possible.). So you may want to go with one of the different options in the Cafe threads linked above. Or you might find it cheaper in a drugstore. Just be sure you get the lotion. Don't be squirting anti-itch gel or douche all over yourself. (Unless that's your thing.)

Always good to see people representing the Jerx family in the wild. 

Here's our pal, Stasia in her GLOMM shirt. (And check out her soon-to-be-released full Tarot deck here.)

Proud, card-carrying member. #GLOMM #thejerx #thejerxvolumeone

A post shared by Stasia Burrington (@stasiaburrington) on

And here's friend of the site, Leja, in her self-made AATKT shirt.

Bad Equivoque Pt. 2

Because nothing says "choosing" one of two objects quite like touching the other object.

Hey, remember that resolution to recognize magic as an art form? Well, great news! It's really getting a lot of traction now!

Card Box

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Here's an idea I'd like someone to work on and make a reality.

You have a small box on the table, the size of a deck of cards. It has, in fact, been painted to look like a deck of cards. It hinges open on one of the long sides.

(I can't draw.)

You open the box and remove two sponge balls and do a quick routine with them.

You shake the box and the spectator can hear change inside. You dump out three coins and do an effect with them.

You open the box again and show the spectator that it's empty.

(Seriously, dudes, I can't draw.)

"It may seem completely empty, but there's actually one other prop that I keep in here. My deck of cards."

With that you peel a layer of clear plastic tape off the hinged long-edge of the box, and it's clear those hinges were just a graphic under the tape. The tape also pulls off the top "layer" of the box, the painted card back on a thin piece of paper. You crumple it all up and toss it over your shoulder. What you're left with is a normal, examinable deck of cards.

This isn't really "my type" of idea that I would spend a lot of time working on and developing. This is more of something you'd see in someone's FISM act or some junk like that. But it is something I like, and I have a workable method for it. 

It's kind of has a reverse "Solid Deception" feel to it. Which I would say is a good thing. Instead of a deck of cards becoming a solid object for really no reason, a solid object disintegrates into a deck of cards. And there is a pleasing logic to it. "I keep all my magic props in this box." And the box transforms into your final prop.

The idea started one day when I had a deck in my hand, cracked open like a hinged box, and I was pretending to remove stuff from it that was actually finger-palmed in my right hand or hidden under the deck. It looked pretty good in a mirror.

Then I thought that if you had a card with the image of an empty box interior on its face, and another card with the image of an empty box interior on its back, then you could put them together in the deck and crack it open at that point and show people an empty box. (Likely only briefly. I don't know how real it would look.) And if the two images were treated with roughing spray or Science Friction, then you could flash an empty box and when it closed it would immediately transform into an examinable deck of cards. 

The clear plastic tape on the edge would keep the fake hinges in place and hold the deck together somewhat. You would also draw a straight black line along the tape which would pass as the break between the top and bottom of the box.

The image on top of the "box" could be stuck to the top card with repositionable glue. The purpose of that image is you don't want it looking too much like a deck of cards from the start. In fact, maybe it's not even a painted card back. Maybe it's some other image all together.

You could have some kind of rattle gimmick to produce the sound of the coins.

As I said, the items to be produced would be finger palmed. Or, in the case of the coins, perhaps held in the hand under the box and then apparently dumped out of it. Or you could maybe do some kind of Han Ping Chien type maneuver to dump them out. 

This idea supposes a couple things which might not be true:

1. On a brief glance a picture of the interior of a box could pass for the real thing. I think it would, but can't say for sure. I'm less concerned about the fake hinges, even though they're in view the whole time, because they would be very small. And, if nothing else, you could use actual tiny hinges stuck to the deck in some way, and then just pluck them off.

2. That the side of a deck of cards wouldn't immediately give away that it's a deck of cards. Maybe you could stain it or something? I don't know. 

Go work on it and let me know. I can't do everything here. I'm just the idea man.

What I like is that you get the transformation with no switching. But if you wanted to push it further (for your FISM act) the ideal ending would be to then switch the deck for an actual box with a normal Bicycle back graphic on top. You do your final trick, get your applause, then open the (switched in) box and place your props back inside. The crowd goes wild. You step to the microphone. "This act would not have been possible without the greatest mind in modern magic... Andy at The Jerx. So thank you, Andy. Or should I say... thank ME! That's right, I'm the Jerx!" you say, and put on a mask to hide your identity. Eugene Burger leans over to Jonathan Pendragon and says, "He knows we could see his face the whole time leading up to that, right?" And then you mysteriously vanish.

Dissonance

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[This post is pretty long and sloppy. That's okay, you've got a few days before the next post. I didn't edit out some of the asides I normally would. I'm still attempting to formulate some of these ideas and there isn't really a common magic vocabulary I can use to do so, so I'm laying a lot of groundwork and rambling. Let me summarize the post up top. That may make it more understandable as you work your way through it.

The main ideas are these:

1. Magic inherently produces cognitive dissonance that isn't pleasant for people.

2. To allay this dissonance, often people will say, "It's just a trick." And that will be their explanation for what just happened, and their way to dismiss the experience. You: "I made your dime change to a penny." Them: "Yeah, well, it's just a trick." They abandon a feeling of wonder because that feeling is dissonant with their knowledge that magic doesn't exist. So they revert to "It's just a trick."

3. We can nudge them back towards a feeling of amazement by making the explanation "It's just a trick" itself feel dissonant to them. But we can't achieve that with more impossible tricks. We can only do it by hinting at more incredible methods.

As I said, these ideas are just coming together, but I thought I'd put them out there now so we can see how they evolve.]

I've been finding the introduction and manipulation of cognitive dissonance to be one of the more useful tools in creating affecting magic. (Hell, it's one of the more useful tools in life, for that matter. But that's a subject for another time.)

First, a definition. I know that cognitive dissonance is pretty well understood, but I also know I have a lot of readers for whom English isn't their first language and they translate this page and who know what Google will translate it into. Probably, "Thinking Cacophony" or some other garbage. 

[Bonjour à mes amis sur virtualmagie.com. Je n'ai aucune idée comment vous pouvez lire ce site et obtenir quelque chose hors de lui étant donné comment anglais-centrique il est. Même les anglophones natifs ont du mal à suivre les plaisanteries, le sarcasme, les références à la vie de banlieue des États-Unis en 1980 et la folie générale qui se passe ici. C'est le meilleur compliment que vous avez même peine à travailler à travers si l'anglais ne vient pas naturellement à vous.]

So, cognitive dissonance is when you hold two (or more) conflicting ideas at the same time. Trying to hold conflicting ideas creates a feeling of discomfort so you will then modify one of the ideas in order to reduce that discomfort and restore a sense of balance. The idea that people will stick with is the one that is the simplest, or strongest, or makes them happiest. And they'll modify or dismiss the other idea. Knowing this, you can introduce cognitive dissonance into certain situations to nudge people in the direction you want them to go .

Magic is one big source of cognitive dissonance. Especially magic as it has been traditionally performed. And that dissonance is this:

Spectator thinks: "That looked like real magic!"
Spectator also thinks: "Real magic doesn't exist." 

How do they reconcile these conflicting ideas? I'll get to that.

Magicians, clowns, and ventriloquists. Look at the representations of practitioners of these art forms (if you can call them that) in pop culture. At best you're a loser weirdo, but more likely you're an axe-murderer. Why? But more importantly, why not jugglers? Why do they get a break?

I think it's because the juggler causes the least amount of dissonance for the audience. The others are all trying to be someone they're not. They're acting, but not in a play or in a movie. They're acting in a real interaction with people. It's weird. It's something a loser or an axe-murderer might do.

Dissonance can be a barrier. And if you walk around suggesting you're an all-powerful wizard and the audience is thinking, "But you're an assistant manager at Dunkin Donuts," or you say you're a mind-reader and the audience is thinking, "You wouldn't possibly dress like that if you could tell what people were thinking," or you say you're a world class gambling cheat and the audience is thinking, "You consistently lose when we play Uno," then you are just going to increase that dissonance. So perhaps the answer is to take the focus off yourself and your supposed abilities.

Yes, intelligent readers will notice I've already solved this issue. I'm solving all magic's problems here but no one will listen to me! Why won't you listen? Please... somebody! You have to hear what I'm saying. To Serve Man... it's a cookbook!"

Where was I... okay, let's take a step back before we move forward. There's a statement that you'll see on magic message boards often, where someone will say something like, "Would a real magician ever do this?" "Counting cards into a pile... is that something a real magician would do." This is a moronic question because there is literally nothing in the history of magic that a real magician would do in the way we do it.

Hey, they might transport people around the world, like Copperfield does when he sends that guy to Hawaii. Yeah, but not with little curtain booths and not on a stage in Vegas. 

They would definitely change $1s into $100s. No they wouldn't. They'd just make 100s materialize and keep the ones for themselves. Actually they'd probably just manifest whatever they wanted to buy with that money in the first place.

That's not to say we shouldn't do magic that taps into people real wants and desires whenever possible, but there is plenty of great magic that doesn't. 

"Would a real magician do this?" This is a fruitless question. Whatever you do is always going to be dissonant from what a "real" magician would be doing.  The answer to the question isn't to do what a real magician would do (they would do none of this). The answer is to not pretend to be a real magician. Problem solved. 

This has the benefit of eliminating one source of dissonance for the amateur's audience. And that is this:

Spectator thinks: "This person must have some otherworldly abilities!"
Spectator also thinks: "This is my brother Pete. He's an idiot."

Instead you're just Pete the idiot, but you happen to collect mysterious objects, or procedures, or situations which you roll out for the amusement of your friends and family. 

I think taking steps to address the dissonance between, "This guy claims to be a magician," and "I don't believe in magic," goes a long way towards easing people's discomfort around magicians, and making you seem like a normal human.

But can we use cognitive dissonance to push people towards a greater sense of mystery? I think so.

Let's go back... how do spectator's reconcile this dissonance?

Spectator thinks: "What I just saw looked like real magic."
Spectator also thinks: "Real magic doesn't exist." 

I've found they do so in a profoundly unsatisfying way. Essentially they say something to themselves like, "Well, it was a trick. There must be a way to do what he did that I don't know of." It's a complete non-explanation, of course—in fact, we'll call it the Non-Explanation—but it's often what they'll say to dismiss the effect and move on with their lives.

Well, so what? What do you care? You're the one who's saying you don't want them to think it's real, so who cares if they say, "I guess it's a trick," and move on?

Well, I care because bailing on the "magic" feeling diminishes their experience and their enjoyment. And they're bailing because of dissonance.

Did you know there are over 43 quintillion ways to arrange a Rubik's Cube? If you've ever seen anyone perform a Rubik's cube effect you know that because everyone always says it.

Perform a 1 in 4 multiple out and gauge the reaction you get.

Now perform one of the Rubik's Cube matching tricks and gauge the reaction you get.

Is it one quintillion times stronger? Is it even twenty times stronger? Maybe, but I don't think so. The Rubik's Cube trick is certainly not an order of magnitude stronger than a 1 in 52 card matching effect. 

You can try as hard as you can to make your magic more impossible, but we've already done that. There is a 1 in 43 quintillion effect that we have many methods to perform. What do you think the answer is? Oh... a 1 in 44 quintillion effect will REALLY have the effect I'm looking for.

No. More impossible magic won't make it more affecting because that will just get them to that dissonance level sooner, causing them to bail into the Non-Explanation. This is the unfortunate reality of living in the 21st century when you can't get an intelligent adult to believe in "real magic."

That doesn't mean we can't perform stronger magic. But to do so, we need to strive for something beyond shear impossibility.

But what?

I have the answer!

Try this test. Go buy yourself a Raven. (The trick, not the bird. I mean... go ahead and buy the bird too, but that's not what I'm getting at.)

Now go vanish a coin off someone's hand. They'll say, "Cool." It's a visually impossible effect that will quickly push them into the Non-Explanation.

Now try this. Take out a quarter and ask your spectator, "Want to see something cool?" Place the coin on her hand and wave your hand over it slowly. Nothing happens. Do it again. Still nothing. Adjust their hand a little and try again. Still nothing. Say, "Shit. Give me a minute."

Go sit in a chair somewhere out of the way while your spectator continues on with whatever they were doing. Pull out your copy of The Jerx, Volume One. Furrow your brow. Read for a few minutes. Eventually close up the book and start waving your right hand slowly over your left hand. Back and forth. Look at it from every angle. After a few more minutes say, "Ahhhhhhh!! Okayyyyyyy...." 

"Let's try this again," you say. You place the coin on the back of your spectator's hand. Slowly wave your hand over her's and the coin disappears. 

Then tell me what captures your spectator's imagination more. Which they're more likely to ask about or talk about later on.

You don't have to. I've already done the same thing in a round of focus-group testing back in 2013. People were much more taken with the second way. (The actual data on this is lost to time, but it wasn't close.) 

As I proposed on Wednesday, when your magic comes off as easy, planned, and within your control, it also feels like a trick to people.

"This is amazing."
"But it's clearly some kind of a trick."
"So I guess he must have some way of doing what he just did that I don't know about."
The End

However, if you can make your magic seem difficult, unplanned and out of your control, you can affect people more significantly with the same trick. 

In the Raven example we create dissonance in two ways in order to nudge them away from the "it's clearly just a trick" explanation. The first is by adding elements that don't seem like they would exist if it was "just a trick." Mentalists have been doing this for ages by getting things slightly wrong. "If it was a trick... if he just somehow read the number I wrote down... why would he be off by two?" This is a good idea, but also a fairly rudimentary and uninspired use of this technique.

We're also creating dissonance by suggesting a method that is itself compelling and mysterious. The Non-Explanation is a way to run from the mystery. So the idea here is to ruin the safe zone they've erected for themselves by infusing their explanation ("it's a trick") with the same sort of mystery and uncertainty they're trying to avoid.

"This is amazing."
"But it must be some kind of trick."
"But wait... what difference would it make how he waved his hand over mine? What could be the process going on there?"
"It was definitely a trick, though. He was reading up on it in a magic book."
"But seriously, what on earth could that book have possibly said about the way in which he waves his hand over mine? What are the mechanics of how that could work? Could the way he waved his hand really make a difference somehow?"

It's like farting in the living room with your family and they all run to the kitchen to get away from it only to find you farted in the kitchen just a couple minutes ago.

Here's a very overt example of poisoning the "it's just a trick" explanation. 

Let's say you work in a hospital. In one of the rooms is someone who has been in a coma for 7 years.

You offer to show one of your fellow nurse's a trick while in that room. You tell her you're going to leave the room. While you're gone you want her to think of any word, write it down on a pad so you can verify it later, remove that sheet and fold it up and put it in her pocket, then whisper her word into the room. 

She does this and you come back a few moments later. Now you tell her to leave the room and come back in 20 seconds. You will be able to pick up on the faint echo of her whispered word and tell her what word she chose.

When she leaves you flip open the impression pad and figure out what word she wrote down. When she comes back she finds you leaning over the comatose patient with your ear to his lips. "Oh, hey," you say, "Uhm... okay. So I've been able to hear your word in the ever fading echo. It was 'pony," right?"

This is just a straight up misdirect, method-wise. You're subtly suggesting something that happened (that the comatose patient relayed the word to you) that is as unbelievable as the trick itself (that you heard the echo of a whispered word long after it had been whispered). 

That's a very blatant example of suggesting a completely separate, "accidentally exposed" false explanation. But it doesn't have to be like that. All you need to do is make the effect seem difficult, unplanned or out of your control and that alone implies a method that is somehow richer and more mysterious than the plain, dull method they had contemplated.

What other ways are there to make your magic seem difficult, unplanned and out of your control? Well, read this site. That's essentially what I've spent two years writing about.

The purpose of all this is not to get them to believe in magic. As I said, that's not a reasonable goal with a modern audience. But what we can do is blur the edges of what is real and what is not. Leaving them in a position where they have to live with the mystery a bit. Instead of having a trick that is easily dismissed as being separate from reality, give them an experience that bleeds into reality and doesn't offer any clean lines or easy answers. Create dissonance and make them live in uncertainty for a little bit.