Bedrock: Feels Like the First Time

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This concept is a very fundamental idea to what I believe is the best approach when performing amateur magic. And it's completely opposite of what most magic texts on presentation teach. And that's because those texts are geared towards the professional. 

Every now and then I'll get an email from someone that says, "I'm surprised it took so long for someone to put forth the idea that amateur magic is a different style of performance than a professional performance." Hey, shit, I'm surprised too. I doubt I'm the first one to come to this conclusion, but perhaps I'm the first one to really lean into it and explore it to the extent I have. I think the reason it took so long is that a lot of amateurs want to be professionals, and those that don't, may not perform for anyone ever. And neither of those groups would probably ever come to the conclusions I have as someone who does perform a lot, but with no eye towards doing professional shows.

(However, I am willing to perform one night at the Magic Castle provided they give me a prime spot in whatever their most prestigious room is. I will do them this honor because I think it would be cool if my first (and only?) public show was in the Magic Castle. Just realize I'm not going to rehearse anything in regards to the show before that performance. In fact, if anything, I'll be using the Magic Castle show as a workshop for some stuff I want to show my friends. Don't worry. I'll kill it.)

Ok. Where was I? Yes, the fundamental difference between amateur and professional performances. It's this: Most often, the professional wants their show to feel polished and structured, but the best amateur performances will feel raw and spontaneous. They will feel like what's about to happen is happening for the first time.

Even someone like David Williamson—who is as offbeat and wild as the come—when you watch him perform, you know he's applying that chaos to something he's done 1000 times. That's the charm of watching him perform.

You're kind of locked into that as a professional. If you pretended every trick in your 45-minute parlor show was brand new it would stretch credulity and ultimately be off-putting. (You could certainly imply one thing was brand new. And that would give that piece an interesting feel to it, but it's not something you could do with every routine.)

Most magic theory on performance has been written with the professional in mind. So there's a focus on things like patter and routining effects together. And yet they don't write "Oh, by the way, if you're an amateur, this is the opposite of what you should be doing. It's alienating to 'perform' in non-performance situations."

If you have a friend who's a singer, it might be nice to hear them singing around the house, and in casual, off-hand situations. But if they sit you down and say, "For my next piece I will be singing a song I wrote called, 'Autumn Came Early This Year.' You know, it's a funny story... How many of you feel that autumn is your favorite season? Well, me too. And back in 2007, Halloween was just around the corner [blah, blah]," you'd be like... "Debbie, what the fuck are you doing?"

You don't "perform" for friends and family. You show things to them and share things with them. That's not to say there isn't some artifice to the presentation. But don't pull them out of the experience by doing something that mimics a professional performance. You want your presentation to mimic a natural interaction between humans (albeit an unusual one). 

Making your tricks feel like it's the first time you're performing them is the unstated goal of most of the effects and performance styles I write-up on this site. For example, the Tenyo idea where you receive the mysterious package, that's a way of taking the most obvious sort of prop-based magic and turning it into something that feels like a unique occurrence that you're experiencing together in that moment.

A lot of this will just come down to you telling them flat-out that what you're about to do is something new for you too. "I have this thing I want to try. I haven't shown it to anyone else yet, so this may blow up in my face. Can I try it with you?" "I belong to this facebook group where we discuss psychology and different quirks and oddities of the mind. And there's this test this lady on there was talking about. I don't think it works, but can I try it with you." 

The real key is to make sure you don't enter "performance mode." I've seen people who totally struggle with speaking like a normal human once they start a trick. Instead their pacing gets all weird and they start enunciating and emphasizing words like a child actor doing a monologue from Our Town. It's really unsettling to people. Knock it off.

Anti-routining

Anti-routining is another way to remove the "performance" feeling from a trick to make it seem less prepared, in a way that clarifies and strengthens the magic.

If you have a trick that is multiple phases—like a triumph that turns into a color changing deck—don't immediately follow the first phase with the second. Act like the second phase is an afterthought or a separate trick entirely. Not only will it feel more spontaneous, but if the second phase is something that is set-up during the first, then by distancing the climax from the set-up you can have some stunningly hands-off effects.

For example, in the triumph that goes into a color-changing deck; if those two phases are performed in quick succession, not only will the whole thing feel more planned, but the distinct effect are likely to get muddied. The triumph part can get forgotten altogether. Which is understandable, because you're grouping them together so if both effects are caused by the same thing (your magic abilities, or your sleight-of-hand abilities) then the lesser effect (the change of the orientation of the cards) will be overshadowed by the larger effect (the change in the color of the cards).

But let's say you separate the two. Now you perform triumph and leave the deck spread, face-up on the table. That moment gets its full opportunity to breathe. And all the convincers you've done to show the deck as blue (for example) were done during the triumph part of the routine. So in the spectator's mind it's a blue deck spread face-up on the table. 

Now, wait however long it takes to make the moment pass. Just as your spectator is changing the subject from the trick to some general question about magic, or to something else entirely, you go to scoop up the cards but stop yourself. Interrupt your spectator. "Sorry. Can I try one last thing. This is... I probably won't get it to work... but...uhm.... That last trick was pretty much all sleight-of-hand... but this is... well... not that." You then go through the process of creating a "color energy ball." (Maybe it sucks the color spectrum from the light in the air? I don't know. It's supposed to be unbelievable.) And then you push and spread the ball over the cards (without actually touching the deck). 

Then you turn over one card. It has a rainbow back. Then another. Then another. Then the whole deck. It worked! "Holy shit," you say quietly, "That's never happened like that. That looks amazing."

By anti-routining you take one—perhaps confusing—compound effect and turn it into two (or more) straightforward, simple effects. And because, often, all the set-up for the second trick happens during the first, the second effect happens with minimal handling or no handling at all. That can create a trick that feels very different for people, suggesting a method more ethereal and intangible than they can wrap their head around. And that creates an experience that feels distinct from the first effect, so both will be remembered.

Mystery Solved

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I got an email asking what is in the upper-left corner of The JAMM covers.

It's her...

Who's that? 

Beats me. I found her on the cover of this British magazine for teen girls from the 60s.

Why is she on The JAMM?

I dunno. I just like her.

Plus, when I first started, I didn't know what the JAMM would become. At that time I thought I might have articles like "PERFUME TIPS FOR A MORE KISSABLE YOU" and "COLOUR PICTURES OF OUTFITS TO MAKE YOU PRETTY IN THE RAIN 'N' SNOW."

Little did I know that those who subscribed to the JAMM have a natural beauty that makes them kissable and pretty (in the rain 'n' snow) because they're supporting this site. So those articles weren't needed.

If you're a "go-ahead" magician, you can subscribe to The JAMM here. 

The Amateur Magician's Heckler Stopper

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I almost never get the opportunity to deal with hecklers. Despite the fact that I go out of my way to perform a lot in social situations I don't really ever get some alpha-male trying to knock me down a peg or two. Part of that is because of my natural presence, part of that is the style I perform in which doesn't invite people to tear it down in the way traditional magician-centric performances do, and part of it is that I avoid hanging out with losers. 

This weekend, however, I did have a situation where I was hanging around a picnic table with a group of people, at a lake near where I'm staying. These are people I just recently met so I didn't know the dynamic between everyone. At one point I started showing a couple tricks to people with a deck they had been using to play card games. This was hyper low-key, just a step above comatose, really, but it was the right style for the situation. So I showed a trick to people and everyone seemed to enjoy it, except one guy. He was a young-20s, little meat-head dude. And he was like, "Nice one, Mr. Wizard. What else do you got? Let's see another one, David Blaine." 

The weird thing was, I got the sense he really did want to see another one, but I think he thought it would be too lame to say, "Oh, that was cool. Do you have any more?" So he was asking for more but in a way that implied he wasn't into it. I think he thought this was a cool vibe to put off for the girls around the table. It's not. If you're a young insecure guy, just do the opposite of what you think is a good instinct in every situation. You'll probably be better off.

He continued to talk a little shit. Now normally I would have been inclined to tell the guy to fuck off, but I didn't want to create a weird vibe with these people I'd just met, 7/8ths of whom I really liked. And it's not that he was being a total asshole, per se, he was just putting forth a destructive energy to the interaction, he wasn't adding anything to it. I'm not particularly sensitive about this sort of thing. Some people see David Letterman's treatment of David Roth here as heckling. I don't see that at all. I see it as someone goofing around. And I'm all for that.

But this guy was just willfully trying to fuck with people's enjoyment and had a dumb comment about every thing that was going on. (Earlier in the evening someone was playing guitar and he was intentionally singing loudly and poorly over the guy's playing. That's the type of corny tool he was.)

So I decided to show him something and try to engage him. At one point he says, "Wait... give me the deck now and let me shuffle it." The fact was, if I were to give him the deck to shuffle at that point the trick would be ruined. But, for me, the effect would also be ruined if I was like, "uuhh... NO! No. You can't have the deck," and then pull it away like a frightened little wuss. So I tossed him the deck and I was like, "Yeah, sure, knock yourself out." And he shuffled it and the trick was ruined. 

At this point I didn't really know what I was going to do. And then I flashed back on the advice I've always heard for dealing with difficult spectators. Like hitting them with a stinging heckler's retort, or showing them a trick that's so strong it will just blow them away to the point where they find it impossible to critique the effect, or maybe being overly kind to try and win them over. 

But then I thought, Like everything written about in magic, that's all advice for the professional. Let me just do the opposite of what traditional magic advice would say. That's usually my go-to technique when deciding what's a good tack to take for an amateur. "What have magicians been saying for the past 100 years? Okay, I'll do the opposite of that."

So I just let the trick fail. I searched for his card, suggested a few possibilities. I asked him to really concentrate and I gave it one more shot. I was wrong again. 

He didn't start laughing in my face or something. He was just like, "Oh, gee... great trick!" in a condescending manner. 

Then what I did is I started comforting him a little. "Ah, It's okay, man. It happens." I started treating him like we were about to have sex but he couldn't get it up. "Don't worry about it," I said. I was saying this genuinely. Not as a joke.

He was expecting me to be embarrassed and instead I was consoling him. "It's no big deal," I said. "These sorts of things don't work with everyone."

"Actually, you would be great for this one," I said, turning towards another person at the table. "Let's try it. This will be fun." And now I'm off having fun with the other people.

Meat-head dude kind of hung back for a minute, and when he reintegrated himself into what was going on a few moments later his attitude had shifted. He wasn't exactly super enthusiastic but he had dropped the annoying shit he had been doing.

I can't say I know for sure the psychology of why this worked. But I think what is happening is this: When someone is genuinely antagonistic to you and your performance then, on some level, they probably want to see you fail. So by failing outright and showing just how little it affects you, you essentially remove that tactic from their arsenal. They're not going to take you down by screwing up your trick, because you apparently don't care that much one way or the other. In fact, your language suggests that if anyone should feel bad, they should.

By lightly consoling your heckler when the trick fails you are also helping establish the idea that when things go right, it's, in part, due to the spectator as well. Which is a good idea to establish.

So yeah, I'm suggesting that when dealing with someone who is being adversarial towards you, it may be a power position to just completely fuck up the trick. It's the course I will take in the future should this ever happen again. 

Obviously it's not for everyone. You can instead do some bits like this or this if you think that will work. I just have a hard time imagining using something like that in the situations I perform. And I'd be surprised if someone who is sincerely trying to undercut your performance would be deterred by some schtick. But what do I know. As I said, I rarely deal with people like this.  If you find this happening to you a lot... well... as the saying goes...

Think Little

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JAMM #7 was running a little long, so I excised this opening tangent for one of the effects. It's something I think is valuable even without the trick it was attached to.

There was a trick I learned as a kid and it went like this: You would spread a deck of cards between your hands. There would be a joker face-up a quarter of the way from the top and another joker face-up a quarter of the way from the bottom. You would ask your spectator to slide out any three cards from between the two jokers. Those cards would be set on the table face down. You then tell them that the deck is in a special configuration. You turn the deck over and spread it on the table and show them that all the cards between the two jokers are red. “But before this trick,” you say, “I put three black cards in with the red cards.” You then have them turn over the cards they pulled out and they find that they've removed the only three black cards amongst the red cards.

The method, if it’s not immediately obvious, is that the deck is set up with all the black cards together, a face-up joker on the top and the bottom of the face-down black cards, then half the red card above the top joker, and half the red cards below the bottom joker.

You have them choose three cards from between the jokers. They, of course, get three black cards. Then you do any sort of pass near the middle of the deck and now the setup of the deck is the opposite of what it was. So you can reveal they chose the only black cards out of a grouping of red cards.

It may not seem like much of a trick. It may seem like one of the first tricks anyone came up with after the invention of the pass, and it probably was. But while it may seem obvious, it always got a pretty good reaction when I performed it.

[Edit: I've been informed this is Roy Walton's effect, Pass at Red, which was in MAGIC magazine in May, 1992. So, far from being "one of the first tricks anyone came up with after the invention of the pass," it was actually created right around when I was performing it. (I must have learned it from MAGIC, or from someone who did.) I certainly wasn't intending to minimize the effect by saying it feels like an obvious outgrowth of the move. For Roy Walton to be able to come up with an effect that feels so elemental, yet no one thought of for 100s of years, is pretty amazing.]

One time, when I was in my teens,  I performed the trick for my cousin and he came up to me a half hour later and said, “You just cut the deck.” He'd worked it out in his head. I did that response we all do when we’re busted. You just repeat what they say but do so in a way that implies it’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard while you stall for time. “I cut the deck?! Pssht… I mean...like you wouldn’t notice me cutting the deck? That’s hilarious.”

“I didn’t know to look for it. I think you just cut the deck,” he said.

I then went into my second phase of being busted. That phase where I acknowledge the method they suggest might work, but that only an idiot wouldn't see through it immediately. “I mean I guess you could do it that way… but… I mean…[sigh]... I just can’t see anybody being fooled by that. You would be fooled by that?”

From there I went into the third phase where I act like they’re doing me a favor by suggesting such a ridiculous method. “Actually, I’m glad you brought that up. I never would have thought someone would think that’s how it’s done. Next time I’ll have to make it clear I’m not cutting the deck.”

Then, I had a rare moment of magical bravery for myself at that age and I offered to show the trick to him again. So I set up the cards, had him choose three and I did this all very slowly. Then I said, super condescendingly, “I’m just going to turn over the cards. I’m not cutting the deck, am I? Did I cut the deck?” And, of course, as I’m saying this I am cutting the deck by means of a turnover pass.

I spread the deck on the table and he said, “Hmmm… okay… then I don’t know how you did it.”

YOU’RE GODDAMN RIGHT YOU DON’T, BITCH!!

Now, he knew exactly what I did, but I was able to get away with it because his concept of a “cut” (one hand moving and swinging around the other hand, or two hands moving together) was something that took place in a space much bigger than a pass takes place in. So when he didn’t see me occupying the space required to cut the deck he assumed the deck wasn’t cut. It’s not that the method was cleverer than he could imagine, it’s just that the move was littler than he could imagine.

This is probably stating the obvious, but a lot of magic is just the execution of something in a smaller amount of space than the spectator imagines it takes. A thumb writer, for example, fools people because their concept of writing requires moving the full hand while holding a sizable writing implement.

I've found it helpful, when working on a method, to think dimensionally.  That is, instead of the question, "How do I get them to not think I just did X?" I'll pose the question, "How do I do X in a smaller amount of space (or smaller amount of time) than they believe it can be done in? So even if they do come up with X for a method, they'll be forced to dismiss it."

There’s another move in magic that is nothing more or less than a “littler” execution of an action a spectator would assume is done in a much bigger way. And the following two ideas rely solely on this one move...

What "little" move am I talking about? All will be revealed this Sunday night for JAMM subscribers.

Salvage Yard: Twixter

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The phrase "this trick is worse than a botched back-alley abortion" gets thrown around a lot these days. But in this case... well... take a look...

It would be easy for me to say that the idea behind the trick is boneheaded. But that would be a lie because it would imply there's some idea behind the trick. The effect is wholly arbitrary. Usually you want a trick to address some kind of idea or concept that is almost primal in humans. Something we all can relate to. What if I could produce money from nowhere? What if I could make things I didn't like disappear? This effect answers the age-old question, "Does anyone have an idea of what we can do with all these fake Twix bars we have?"

It would also be easy for me to criticize his sleight of hand... because it sucks. It looks like he just learned the slip-force during the introduction to the video itself. And his palm and "color change" look like... I can't even describe it. This is the best take they had? And this is the stuff they kept, you can tell some of the sleights were edited out. If I had a scoop of mashed potatoes in my hand and held my hand over your plate and dropped the mashed potatoes on there, you wouldn't be like, "Where did those potatoes come from?" That's kind of what his sleight-of-hand looks like: someone palming mashed potatoes.

But I won't make fun of him for that, because not being good at sleight of hand is actually a good sign in my book. I mean, it's not what I want from the people I buy tricks from, but just in humans generally, if I have to drive cross-country with someone, give me the person who didn't waste most of his youth learning sleight of hand.

It would also be easy for me to draw your attention to those poor spectators. People who are just a few morse-code blinks away from me believing they are being held at gunpoint to watch this trick. It is almost impossible to get reactions that muted when there's a camera on. I've talked about how inaccurate demo videos are in the past. But usually they're used to make a decent trick look like it's mindblowing. In this case, the trick is so weak that even with the camera there, their responses are painfully indifferent. Like a parent who is focusing 98% of their attention on the newspaper they're trying to read, but still reacting to their kid doing some half-assed somersault for the 50th time. "Yeah. Sure sweetie. That's great."

All of that would be easy for me to do. So easy, in fact, that I could do it while telling you how I'm not going to do it. 

But I don't just want to criticize the guy behind this trick. So he had a bad idea and ran with it... that's alright. I'll take that over someone with a good idea who sits on their ass all day, never doing anything.

Instead, I'm going to try and salvage this turd. (To start, the trick might be better if you said, "I carry around two turds up my sleeve.")

When I see something that I think is particularly not good, I try and come up with some sort of context I might perform it in. I don't know if I've succeeded with this, but I gave it a shot. It's a good exercise to challenge your creativity if nothing else. 

The big question with this trick is Why?

Why do you have candy bars up your sleeves?

Why does the card disappear?

Why does the name of the card appear on the candy bar?

Why would you think anyone would want to play a game for a candy bar you had up your fucking sleeve?

Nobody knows. The only answer is, "Well, that's how the trick goes." 

Here is how I would perform this trick. Like, if someone had abducted someone I care about and they said I had to perform this trick if I ever wanted to see them again.

I'd approach the table and with perfect elocution and with that cocky fake-magician personality I'd day, "Good evening, everyone. My name is Andy the Magnificent. And I am here tonight to dazzle the eyes, and tickle the mind."

As everyone is thinking, Oh, this is gonna suck. I'd pull up a chair. 

"How does that sound?" I'd ask. "Do you like magic twicks?"

I'd then suddenly deflate. I'd drop all pretense and start acting like a real human for a moment. I'd let out a long sigh.

"Oh wow. I haven't said that in forever. Wow.... Hey, sorry. I'll get back to all that in a second. Can I tell you guys something? You seem like good people. I feel I can open up to you." 

I wouldn't say what follows as a joke, per se. But there's a way to speak with such sincerity about something stupid, that it's obvious your goofing around. That's how I would deliver the following monologue.

"I used to have a pretty bad speech impediment. I've worked really hard to lose it but it still creeps up from time to time. Saying twicks instead of tricks brings up a painful memory."

"You see, this one time, in fourth grade I was trying to impress this girl I liked, Tracy Connelly, with a magic trick. I had practiced for weeks. I was a shy kid because of my speech impediment, but I was determined to make my move on her."

"So one day I worked up the nerve and asked her if I could show her some magic. I did the the tw—the TRick—for her and she was really impressed. I remember her clapping her little hands together in delight. A bunch of other kids from school had gathered around and they were pretty impressed too. I wanted to say something charming so I leaned in and said, 'Just let me know if you'd like to see something else sometime. I have a lot of twicks up my sleeve.' And with that, the spell was broken, everyone just started laughing and pointing and I had to run home to keep from crying."

"But I had a plan to salvage things."

"The next day I came to school and Brian Couch said, 'Hey Andy, still got those twicks up your sleeve?' And everyone started laughing again. But I played it cool. I was just like. 'Yeah, of course I have them up my sleeve. I always do. That's my thing. You didn't know that?' And with that I pulled up my sleeves and showed them two Twix candy bars up my sleeves.  And then I turned the tables on Brian. I was like, 'Oh, did you think I mispronounced something? Oh my god. You're an idiot. Putting Twix up your sleeves is something my brother in college says everyone is doing. All the cool people at least.'"

"But to keep the ruse up, and to make sure I'd have something to fall back on if I made the mistake again, I had to keep Twix candy bars up my sleeves throughout the rest of my schooling. Up through high school and on through college. Even today I still have them there."

I roll up my sleeves and show the Twix bars. My forearms have gross smears of chocolate on them, and are tinted brown underneath from years of sleeved Twix bars.

"I actually came up with a trick to do with them, to help justify why I had them on me, want to see it?"

I would then force the two of hearts on someone. But a good force. Not like the one in the video. 

I would take the two and place it on the deck. I'd do an Erdnase color change for a blank card with a chocolate-y brown smear mark on it. "Damn," I'd say. "I was trying to make your card and the Twix bar change places. But I don't think I got all of it. Just the 2 and the hearts on your cards switched places with some of the chocolate from the Twix. No... for real." I'd then pick up the Twix, look it over, then notice where the 2 of Hearts was on the bottom. 

Ta-dumb! 

I mean... ta-daa!

"That's actually the trick I performed for that girl Tracy on the night I proposed to her many years later, and we're now happily married. Want to see a picture of her?"

When they say yes, I would reach into my pocket and pull out a picture that is covered in smeared, dried chocolate, to the point where you can't even make out what it's supposed to be. 

"Yes. She's my soulmate," I'd say.

Then I'd turn the photo over and on the back, written in pen, it would say:

Andy
+
Twacy
2014

"I also have a writing impediment."

It's still not a good trick, of course. But with a solid force it could maybe be a fooling one. And my presentation is about making the whole thing much dumber. This is a dumb trick. But he performs it almost as if it's not dumb. He performs it as if making a cad appear on the bottom of a Twix is cool or logical. You can't do that. Your only chance of getting away with performing a stupid trick is to make it much, much stupider.