Coming Soon

Tomorrow I'll be posting that Quinta pdf I mentioned a few weeks ago.

And in the next week or so there will be an update to the Jerx app which will feature a new little effect called Br@inDump. If you've learned what word a spectator is thinking via a peek wallet, impression pad, or center tear or something, Br@inDump is a way to reveal that word in an intriguing, almost believable, potentially slightly unsettling way. One of the first people I performed it for said, "Oh... I don't like that. This is like something out of Black Mirror." And no, you don't reveal the word while screwing a pig (unless you want to). More details on that to come.

The Force Unleashed

This is a continuation of Monday's post. If you haven't read that post yet, go do that. We'll wait...

Nah, let's not wait... screw that guy, how dare he not stay on top of the blog posts as they-- oh... you're back. Okay, moving on. 

Let me go through the forces we tested again with some quick comments just so we're all on the same page in regards to what I mean when I'm talking about them.

The Forces and How They Look

Classic Force: Cards spread from hand to hand, the spectator reaches out and takes one as they go by.

Cross Cut Force: Spectator cuts the deck into two piles. The cut is "marked" by placing one half across the other. After a moment, the spectator is instructed to look at the bottom card of the top portion (the "card they cut to).

Dribble Force: The cards are dropped singly in rapid succession from one hand to the other (i.e., "dribbled") and the spectator stops this process at any point. The card is displayed at the point they stopped at.

Riffle Force: The performer holds the deck in dealing grip and runs his thumb along the corner of the deck. The spectator calls out stop and the deck is split where he called stop to determine the selected card.

Second Deal Force: The cards are dealt on the table one at a time. At any point the spectator can call "stop." They are given the option to keep going or stay where they stopped. When they're happy with where they stopped, the card that is on top of the deck is turned over.

Under-the-spread Force: The cards are spread between the hands and the spectator is asked to touch any one. They are given a chance to change their mind. Once they settle on a card, the selection and the cards above it in the spread are raised to display the chosen card.

The deck was shuffled and then each procedure was demonstrated for the respondent but without the covert action involved that would force a card, so they were given free choices in a way that would mimic the actions of a force. After each one they would rate how "free and fair" the selection seemed on a scale of 0-100. 

If you want, see if you can predict the order in which the spectator's ranked them from least fair to most fair. Take out a piece of paper and rank them from 1-6. This is your last chance. The results will come after this ad for our new sponsor: Tyler Perry's Boo! Two - A Madea Halloween. Coming to theaters October 20th. Tyler Perry's Boo! Two... You Scurred?

The Results

Here are the forces with their average "fairness" score next to them. From lowest (least fair) to highest (most fair).

"Wait... what the shit?"

Yeah, that's what I was saying too. The first four people we tested, all ranked the classic force in their bottom two and the cross cut force either first or second. I probably shouldn't have been surprised because, if anything, I've found traditional magic wisdom to be wrong more often than it's right. But I was still pretty surprised. After those first four people we added a little discussion to the end of the testing where we would ask them why certain procedures felt more fair. And after that we would ask them about their knowledge of the concept of "forcing a card."

After breaking down why certain procedures felt more fair, the rankings above seemed very obvious.

There were two important things that we gathered from discussing the procedures and their scores with them.

Important Thing #1 - Speed Kills

The lowest rated forces all had one thing in common: the moment of choice was over in an instant.

When we asked, "Why did you rate this one the least fair?" very often the answers dealt with the speed in which the choice was made. They would say something like, "It just happened too quickly." Or, "I didn't have time to think about it." 

Regarding the riffle force, one person, who scored it the lowest, said, "It was too fast to completely connect when I said stop to when you actually stopped. It seemed close, but maybe it was a little before or after. It was hard to see."

This is one of the many things that seems obvious now after talking to real people, but I don't think it's something most magicians ever consider. Think about how magicians will jokingly riffle through the deck or dribble through the cards completely before the spectator has a chance to say stop. Like idiots, we're emphasizing the fact that it's all happening too fast to be meaningful.

If you had to select any other object in the world, and you did so by having them whiz by your face too quickly to see, and you just randomly shouted stop and then you were presented with one, would you be confident that was truly a free choice? Probably not.

The highest scoring forces were all slow forces. The participant isn't rushed. You can spread through the entire deck. You can deal through the entire deck. Or they can take as much time as they want cutting the cards in two piles.

But one thing this doesn't explain is why the riffle force scored higher than the classic force. They're both "fast" forces, but the classic force is certainly more open, and would certainly seem more "free and fair," one would think.

That brings us to...

Important Thing #2 - A Layman's Understanding of Forcing

When we asked a few people who had rated the classic force the lowest why they did so—when we asked why spreading the deck for a selection didn't feel fair—four of them said something like this with no prompting: "Because, that's how you force a card."

Hmmm.

Of the 18 people we asked, "Are you familiar with the concept of 'forcing' a card?" Seventeen had heard of the concept. When we asked, "Do you know what that means?" Two said no, two gave a general (accurate) description of what it means, and the other thirteen said something along these lines, "It's when you have someone pick a card and you kind of push the one you want them to take into their hand without them knowing." Obviously they didn't all use the exact same words, but they all expressed a similar idea. That's 13 out of the 18 people we asked (and we can assume the first four who weren't asked, but put the classic force at or near the bottom as well, would likely have a similar view).

Men and women, old and young—they don't see card forcing as a general term, they see it as a specific thing which means to spread a deck and secretly push a particular card on someone.

Wrap your fat head around this: When you do the classic force you are literally mimicking the ONLY process many people associate with card forcing.

With that in mind, of course, the actions of the classic force were rated as "least fair." Cutting the deck doesn't conform with their understanding of what it means to force a card. Nor does dealing through them. A riffle force might not seem like a "free" selection because of the speed at which it happens, but it's a little more fair seeming to some people because it doesn't consist of the exact actions of what they understand a card force to be. 

"Yeah, but everyone says the classic force is the best force."

Yes. They do. And I always just assumed it was as well (although it's not something I performed) however I don't think that way now. You could say that 100s of years of magic wisdom shouldn't be flushed away for what I learned over the course of one Saturday with 22 people, but the findings make sense to me. 

So why do so many do it and champion it?

I can't say for sure, but these are my theories:

First, I think it probably was, at one time, a very strong force. Maybe in the 1800s spectators didn't have the concept of forcing a card. I don't know. Maybe spreading a deck of cards and saying, "pick a card, any card" wasn't associated with deceit and shadiness. I know the one person in our study who said she wasn't familiar with the concept of forcing a card also rated the classic force the highest of any of the other people. That's just one data point, but it might point towards an explanation.

Second, a lot of magicians live in a bubble in regards to technique—what fools people, what people enjoy, etc. I read some of these theory books and so many seem completely bogus. Not like the author actually asked any real spectators what they think, but just made assumptions. So maybe the classic force was once a very strong force, but over time, as the public's understanding of the concept of card forcing increased, no one bothered to see if spreading a deck between your hands for a card selection still feels innocuous. I'm the only one who admits to being dumb enough to need to test these things out.

Third, while the classic force might fool people less often than we think, I think it still impresses people. So performing it still gets the magician a positive response. What do you think is happening when you do the classic force half a dozen times in a row, forcing the same card on the same person, as many magicians do? They're not marveling at the magic. They're marveling at your skill.

Fourth, I think it's just more satisfying to pull off the classic force than most other forces. The degree of difficulty is much higher, so it feels like more of an accomplishment. But that difficulty isn't reflected in how fooling it is.

"But seriously, the Cross Cut Force?"

Yep. And not only that, it wasn't some clever variation on the cross cut force (See Ben Earl's work for that). It was literally just, "Cut the deck in two piles." Cross the halves. Wait a bit. Reveal the card. 

And think about this, this was the only actual force we did all day... and it was rated the most fair!

And it averaged the highest score despite the fact that one guy gave it a zero because he was familiar with it from a book on magic he read as a kid. (We weeded out anyone with an active interest in magic, but not someone who had played around with it as a kid.)

When we asked those who rated it the most fair why they did so, we got two main answers.

1. "Because I was holding the deck." Duh. That seems ridiculously obvious now, but yeah, of course it will feel more fair given that they are doing it themselves.

2. "It was just cutting to a card." Again... of course. Spreading the deck for a selection is what you do in a magic trick. But cutting the cards is something you do in card games. It's a normal action. It's no surprise the top two forces involved dealing and cutting; actions people are familiar with outside of magic tricks. There is very little dribbling and riffling in daily life. I don't know of any card games where you spread and select a random card.

Conclusion

So what did I take away from this?

Am I just only going to do the cross cut force the rest of my life? No. Although I will be using it much more, I'll be doing so with added convincers to make it even stronger. The problem with the cross cut force is when someone does spot the discrepancy that makes it work, it falls apart completely. Whereas with something like a riffle force, they can be suspicious but never really know.

Am I never going to bother learning the classic force because it's more of a self-indulgent exercise than an ideal tool for fooling people? Uhm... yeah, that's probably true.

I think my takeaways are these:

1. When deciding on a force I will choose one where the moment of selection is not rushed in any way.

2. The actions of the force will, ideally, be something they're familiar with (cutting, dealing, shuffling) rather than something that looks like the actions of what their understanding of a force would be. 

3. I will keep my eye out for more forces that happen in the spectator's hands.

4. I'm going to work on my second deal. The idea of dealing through the deck until someone stopped you felt very fair to most of the respondents.

Postscript: The Damsel Technique

I'll probably write this up at some point next year. It's a tiny idea but one that can have a big impact. This was the technique I originally wanted to test when I went off to NYC. It can be used with almost any force (it works amazingly well with the cross cut force). In our testing we used it with the dribble force. We performed a standard dribble force for 11 people and their "fairness" rating was 54. We performed the same force with the Damsel technique for another 11 people and its fairness rating was 86. And it has applications beyond card forcing. You won't get all the details any time soon, but I mention it now just to whet your appetite. Y'all whet?

No Alarms and No Subscribers

The subscription option is now removed from the JAMM page. With three issues left, it didn't make much sense to keep it there. You can now either buy the entire first volume (and receive the JAMM deck when it's available) or purchase individual issues. 

The final three issues of the JAMM will be

November: The Thanksgiving Issue - I will be giving thanks to some people whose ideas have influenced me and offering some ideas inspired by their work.

December: The Holiday Issue - This issue will have a few effects that use magic in the context of gift giving.

January: The New Years Issue - The New Year is a time for change and reinvention. This issue will feature a couple of effects that may inspire or motivate your spectator along their path in that regard. 

The Force Awakens

On Saturday, September 30th, in a rehearsal studio space in New York City, 22 men and women of various ages, races, and—I can only assume, because we didn't have any reason to ask—sexual orientations, joined me and two friends as we tested card forces for 12 hours. (They weren't there for 12 hours. We were. The subjects came in individually for about 20 minutes each.)

Why Test Forces? 

Well, a couple of reasons. The first is because I've recently come up with a technique that can be added to essentially any force to make it significantly stronger, and seemingly remove the possibility of it being a force. The code name for this technique is Damsel. I want to do a lot more testing with it, as I think it has value beyond card forcing, but that was the impetus for getting me to think about testing card forces.

The second reason I wanted to test forces is because I had found myself relying on an under-the-spread force and the occasional riffle force and I was wondering if maybe it was worth the effort to really dig in and perfect a classic force (or some other force). If a classic force is only a little stronger than a riffle force, then probably not. But what if it's twice as strong? Or ten times as strong?

The Forces Tested

• Classic Force
• Under-the-Spread Force
• Cross-cut Force
• Riffle Force
• Second deal Force
• Dribble Force

(Only half the participants saw a traditional Dribble Force, the other half saw it with the Damsel technique I mentioned above. For the purposes of comparison, only the ones who saw a traditional dribble force will be used when analyzing the data to come.)

Methodology

How would you test which force is the best? If your first instinct is like mine, you'd probably want to use the force in the context of a trick and have someone rate the trick. But there's a problem with this method. If I show you a trick where I force a card and it appears in my wallet, then another trick where I force a card (a different way) and it's tattooed on my chest. And then I ask you to rate which one you liked better, you wouldn't be judging the force, you'd be judging the trick. (And obviously you're going to like the one where I expose my rippling pectorals. Cause you thirsty AF.)

So then the obvious suggestion would be: Show each person just one trick. Show each person the same trick. And just split up the participants by the number of forces you want to test. So 1/6th of them see the trick with a classic force. 1/6th see the trick with a riffle force. And so on. That's a fine idea, Mr. Moneybags, but let me explain the finances of how something like this works. To do such a test with enough people to draw some conclusions we'd probably need about 20 people per force. Test six forces and that means 120 people. Times $40 per person. Plus the fee to the people who find us 120 individuals. Plus the fee to rent the space for the testing. Plus lunch and dinner for my friends who helped out, and suddenly I'm in for $6500 because I had a bug up my ass to test something out which no one in magic has given a second thought to since Grayson Kingsley VonCrosscut invented forcing. (Look, I don't know the history, okay? Get off my back.) So, financially that was a no-go. 

In order to test the forces we figured we had to pull back the curtain a little bit and not do them in the context of a trick. And to do that we needed to understand what we meant by a "strong" card force. This may seem beyond obvious, but what makes for a good force is that it feels like it was a free selection. So rather than try to hide what information we were trying to glean from our participants, we asked them straight out what we were looking for.

We introduced ourselves as part of a consulting company that was working with magicians (which is almost true). We said magician's audiences are often skeptical of the actions of magicians and the words they use and we just wanted to test some things with them to see what felt the most fair. 

We had a couple of preliminary questions to establish the type of feedback we were looking for from them. Then we moved into the card selection portion. We didn't bring up the concept of "forcing" at this point in time. Instead we said, "There are a number of different ways a person can physically select a card from the deck. We're trying to establish which way feels the most free and fair because we want the the people who experience the trick to know everything is above board. So we're going to show you a few different ways a card can be selected and we're going to have you rate each one on a scale of 0 to 100 in regards to what feels the most fair to you. So if I just gave you one card and said, 'Here take this,' that would be a zero, because you don't have a free selection. On the other hand, if I gave you a deck of cards and told you to go in the other room, far away from me and my influence, and randomly choose any card, that might be a 100 on your scale if that feels very fair to you."

That was our intro to the card forcing testing. The purpose of this intro is that we didn't want them to feel like we were asking them to "spot the deception" or something like that. What we were proposing is that all of these procedures are fair ways to select a random card, but we were trying to find the way that felt the most fair and on the level.

And then we went through each selection procedure with them and they would rate them on a scale of 1 to 100. 

When it was over we would ask about the one or two that they scored highest and lowest.

We would then ask if they had heard of "forcing a card." If so we would ask them what that meant to them. 

The Twist

Now, here's the twist. With all these people, and during this entire time that was devoted to testing card forces, we didn't actually force any cards.

You see, I didn't want someone to question the results based on the technique of the person doing the forcing. It would be too easy to say, "Sure, this force was rated more highly than this other one, but that's because the other one is more difficult and you probably botched it." 

So, for the sake of the testing we said, "Well, let's just assume every force was executed with flawless technique." So, for example, with the second deal force (where the force card is on top and you just do seconds until someone tells you to stop, then you give them the top card) instead of actually doing the force, we did what the force was intended to look like. We just dealt cards off the top of the deck until the person said stop, then gave them the next card.

If this seems odd to you, just realize that we weren't trying to test the reliability of the covert action of a force. That would all depend on the person executing the force. Instead, what we were trying to test is which overt actions felt the most fair. For a spectator, does pulling a card from a spread feel more fair than cutting the deck to select a card? And if so, does it feel significantly more fair? What about riffling down the edge of the deck? Or dribbling the cards from hand to hand? Do spectators question any of these actions or do they all seem legitimate to them?

This is why we didn't have to test both the riffle force and the slip force because they should (ideally) look fairly similar.

So why test both the classic force and the under-the-spread force? Well, despite the fact they're both selections from a spread, they have different rhythms to them. With the classic force the cards are pretty much constantly moving from one hand to the other until the selection is made. The under-the-spread force can be done slower and more deliberately and the cards can be held in a static spread.  In one the card is removed, in the other it's (usually) left in the deck. Again, while we didn't actually force the cards during these selections, we kept the same rhythm and look to the selection.

The only time a card was actually forced was during the Cross Cut Force. With that force there is no covert action. So just by performing the actions of what it looked like, we were, in fact, performing the force.

On Wednesday I will reveal the findings from this testing. I think there is a lot to be taken from the results, there was for me at least. The top performing forces scored almost twice as high as the lower performing ones. And all the ones in upper half had something in common that you can look for in forces you utilize in the future. It has definitely had a big impact on the forces I will choose going forward. 

See you then.

Harvest Time

As we were conducting our testing on forces last weekend in New York City, one of my friends who was helping out with it turned to me with a quizzical look on his face after looking at the data we had collected. "So... wait...," he said, "are we the first people to ever ask these questions?" The results were so counterintuitive that after the first few subjects we thought we were doing something wrong. But after digging deeper with some of the people in our test, it all made perfect sense. The results, which will be in a post next week, are completely at odds with almost everything you've ever heard about card forcing and magic. You'll want to check out that post.

Today's post will only be of interest to the hardcore fans of this site and it will cover what's to come with The Jerx in the future.

I write this post during the first October Harvest Moon in almost a decade. The Harvest Moon is the full moon that's closest to the start of fall. It's called the Harvest Moon because, in pre-electricity days, farmers working late into the evening to collect the fall harvest would do so by the light of the bright full moon.

It's Harvest Time at the Jerx as well. When we start getting to the end of the year I need to make a decision about the future of this site. And I think I have a general idea of what that future will hold. 

When I was in NYC last weekend, I met up with someone who is kind of considered a guru in the business world. I mentioned The JAMM and how I had been working on this digital magazine all year. He asked me what my retention rates were. I told him that over the course of the past nine months three people who were on a month-to-month plan cancelled their subscription, but one signed back up. So two people, altogether. He was flabbergasted by this. He thought that figure was insane. And he's right! That figure is pretty insane, now that I think of it. 

But it never hit me like it should, because I already just considered everyone who supported this site to be part of the cohort of the best people on earth, and screw everyone else. So it didn't surprise me they would continue to support the site. They were the best.

And I tried to explain to this guy that it's not that people were subscribing to the magazine so much as it was they were supporting the site and getting the magazine in return. This is a point I made with JV1 early on. No one was paying $260 for a book. They were supporting the work I was doing throughout the year and getting a book as a bonus.

It's not that I'm doing something with the site better than someone else is with theirs, I explained to this guy. I was doing something that no one else was really doing. People who like this site want to see it continue because it offers a perspective that is hard, if not impossible to find in magic. That is the presentation of magic outside of a professional performance.

And as I was explaining this to him, something occurred to me that never had before: I am the world's first professional amateur magician.

I'm being paid to perform magic non-professionally. That seems like an oxymoron, but it's what's happening. 

The guy I was meeting with paused me and said, "I get it. You're like a consultant. But where a normal consultant might be paid 10s of thousands of dollars by one entity, you're paid $10 a month by a larger group of people."

Yes, that's the perfect way to think of it. I'm not interested in being a publisher of magic books or magazines. I'm interested in trying new stuff and coming up with new ideas and then testing them out in the real world. Most of you, as amateurs, don't have the time to try out a dozen different ideas with a dozen different groups of people to see which sort of things hit and which don't. I wouldn't either except for the fact that I have people who are essentially paying me to do that for them. What I bring to the table is a decent writing ability, sense of humor, and a wide circle of people to try out material on. But what allows me to be so prolific is that I have people backing the site so I can put in the time to try out these ideas. I'm testing out concepts almost daily with real people. And most of my insights come from those real performances. 

This year alone, between the blog and the magazine, I will have published 200-250 articles and effects. That's bonkers. And yet the list of ideas I have and want to work on is only getting longer.

There are still people who think I should do this site for free. That I should invest 1000s of hours of work every year just for the "love of the art" or some horse-shit. If that's you, suck my balls. 

I'm calling it Harvest Time because I want to harvest the genuine supporters of this site from those who have just a passing interest in the type of stuff that I'm writing about here. 

That's why next year this site will go private and you can only get access for $1000.

No. I'm kidding. But if this site continues, there will be changes to how this it's supported in the future.

2018: No Casuals

In 2016, supporters of this site got JV1. In 2017 they got the JAMM.

The JAMM will be a one-year wonder and will end after issue 12. I will have written a year of the greatest magic magazine ever. I have nothing more to prove there. 

In 2018 (and going forward) this is likely how the site will be funded. There will be three levels:
- Level One will be a small token monthly donation with no further rewards.
- Level Two will be a slightly larger monthly donation, which will get a quarterly digital review magazine (similar to the X-Communications I did during the first year). This level is primarily for minimalists who don't want a physical reward.
- Level Three will be the equivalent of $5/week which will get the digital review magazine as well as a physical reward similar to The Jerx, Volume One.

If five dollars a week seems too expensive, then you certainly aren't getting the value/enjoyment I would hope you would from reading this site so I wouldn't want you to donate anyway. See? It's a problem that solves itself.

I want to go with the top reward being something physical, rather than something digital like this year, because I want the supporters to have something that they know is limited to them. With the magazine it was just too easy for one person to order it and then just share it with all his magic friends. And that was wildly disheartening. You might say, "What, Andy, you never shared an ebook with your friends?" I have, yes. But not when the author had already shared so much content for free. 

Here's the thing, Penguin and Ellusionist can factor piracy in and raise the price of other goods to account for it. It's still wrong, but at least they have some way to combat it. But when you're just a single person selling one thing, if people rip it off, they just rip it off. It would be like if I baked bread to give away for free to my community and to support that effort I sold pies on the weekend. That's all I had to sustain the bread business, my weekend pie sales. And then you take the pies and are like, "It's okay. I don't want to pay for this so I'm just going to eat it and not pay."  Gee, thanks. Hey, remind me again why I'm spending $1200 out of my pocket to rent a space and pay participants for a focus group on card forces?

So that's why it will be physical products going forward. People can still make some ghetto ass bootleg pdf where they take pictures of every page, but those people won't have the physical product in their hands, and a little bit of their soul will leave every time they scroll through the "book" and realize what a loser they are.

The thing is, I don't want anyone's money who isn't solidly "hell yes" in favor of backing this site. I'm not looking to take people's money so I can get a yacht made of cocaine. I'm looking for people's support so I can continue to devote a big chunk of time to this site. So I can guinea pig myself and try out ideas and techniques that present magic to people in different ways. And then I can report back on what does or doesn't work. And then you take some of that and apply it to your own performances an we all get to have more fun.

It's like this old Nancy comic: 

I don't want your money so I can go to the circus without you. I want it so we can go together.

If you're a supporter of this site then you'll be notified in January of how to donate for another year. 

That's something else I should point out. Only previous supporters of the site will automatically receive the info on how to support for 2018. Is this bad business sense? Yes, of course it is. I don't care. 2018 is the year of No Casuals, meaning I'm not doing this site for the casual fan. Just the hardcores. And if there aren't enough hardcore fans to support the site, then that's fine too. I have long-term plans for this site if there is the support for it. And if not, I'm fortunate enough to have other life plans for the time it would free up. I've set up my life so it's a series of win-win propositions. Whatever happens going forward will be good for me.

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Coming tomorrow night: The JAMM #9 where you will determine the day someone will die, open a line of communication with the dead, and turn someone invisible.

We had a good time with the JAMM Muse for October, Jerri. Below you can see her pondering one of the illustrations of herself in The Jerx, Volume One; demonstrating her scratching skills on the turntable; and either successfully executing a multi-card card-stab routine or totally botching Triumph. I forget when that picture was taken.

You're Only A Day Away

Tomorrow morning this site returns, back on the usual publishing schedule.

Tomorrow night, just before midnight New York time, the JAMM #9 will be released to all subscribers.

This is the Halloween issue featuring a few tricks to make people's skin crawl. Legit spooky stuff. Not like, "I drew a vampire bat on this card and no matter how many times you put him in the middle, he always flies to the top of the deck!" 

And I'm very happy that Issue #9 will mark the return of Jerri, our original GLOMM muse, JV1 illustration model, and now JAMM Muse for October. 

She will be doing her best Fred Kaps for the cover.

But since it's the super spooktacular Halloween issue, she will actually be doing Freddy Kaps.

The 88th Parallel

This is going to be one of those posts that won't resonate with a lot of you. And it's kind of a dick move for me to leave you with this before my week off, but oh well. It's one of the ideas that's defined my current outlook on the performance of amateur magic. And it's a lot less crazy than it might initially seem. 

I think, for the amateur magician, it's better to think of every trick you do as as being part of one extended performance. At least if you're performing for people you'll see again (which is generally true for the amateur). I think your performances are much more interesting to the cohort of people who make up your repeat audiences if there is a sense of continuity to things. 

Very few people have written from the perspective of what might be good for the amateur magician. And nobody, besides me, has given any thought about what might be good for the amateur magician's audience. And, as it turns out, I think what amateur magicians have subjected their audiences to for at least the past 100 years or so—a bunch of disconnected tricks that put the focus on the magician's incredible skills or abilities—is perhaps the least satisfying type of performance for the amateur magician's audience to sit through. 

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I've made this analogy before, but how do we approach comedy with our friends? We don't block off a set portion of time, tell a joke, and then be done with it. We don't treat it like a 3 minute open-mic set. Humor with our friends and family is something that permeates our interaction and it's made up of long-running jokes, callbacks, variations on themes we've joked about before. There's a cohesion to it and it builds over time and over our relationship.

And yet, when we perform magic for friends and family, we tend to do so in a way that's no different than the way we'd do so for a stranger at a table-hopping gig. Doesn't that seem sort of bizarre? We introduce a premise that is unrelated to anything in the real world or our shared existence. We demonstrate it. And then it's over and it's never brought up again. And then we leave and they eat some mozzarella sticks. 

My contention is that we have hobbled ourselves by presenting amateur magic that way. And that we can create a different vibe for our performances by presenting magic with the same sense of continuity that we do any other thing (like humor) when dealing with others. It doesn't need to be this weird thing that exists out on an island. It can be something that's woven into the fabric of your interactions with people and it can build over time. 

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Here's an example of how giving something continuity and context can increase engagement.

I have a friend who's really into beer. In the past, when we would go out, he would always be drinking some weird microbrew and it was always something new. I'm not into beer. I don't care about it at all, and so I never engaged in the topic with him.

And then one day he started this program one of the bars we used to go to was having where you would attempt to drink a beer from every beer producing nation in the world. (Like... not in one night. You'd be dead. This was something you did over time.) And there was the card you got with a map on one side and a list of the countries on the other. There were around 100 countries/beers I think. But it wasn't just that you had to buy 100 beers. You had to be there when they had these beers in stock and sometimes, depending on the country, their stock would consist of a six-pack every few months or something like that. 

I think the whole challenge took my friend a little over a year, and I was with him a handful of times as he was going through this. I remember being there when he tried the North Korea beer, the Fiji beer, and the Congo beer, among others. I still didn't give a shit about beer, but now there was a greater context to it all. It wasn't just a random beer. There was a narrative to the beer drinking now. And despite my disinterest in beer, even I became curious about the whole thing. Which country had the worst beer? Which one was good but the most different from traditional "beer." Which one had the coolest label? The weirdest name? How many countries had he knocked off since we last saw each other?

And when he finally got down to the last country, a bunch of us came out to join him in his final beer. Most of us with no interest in beer, but this dumb quest which had gone on for over a year couldn't help but draw us in on some level. 

I've found this sort of thing works with magic too. Whether people like magic or not they will become much more absorbed in it if you can give them some context and continuity to hold onto.

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Here are some actual magic examples of this in action.

1. I have a friend for whom I perform a variation on the 10 Card Poker Deal almost every time I see him. This was Michael Weber's idea in his treatise on the 10 Card Poker Deal, TEN. Normally people do a multi-phase routine when they do the 10 Card Poker Deal. Michael's idea was to do multi-phases, but over time. Not all in the same interaction. 

I've since broken up other multi-phase routines this way as well. It works surprisingly well. Traditionally, the climax of a multi-phase routine can sometimes overshadow everything that came before, or, worse, it can be less compelling than it would have been if presented on its own.

Broken up over time the trick becomes much more resonant than a 6-phase routine done in one night and left to fade into history. 

2. I'll call someone up or text them a few days before I see them. "Can you go through your jewelry and bring the ring that you've owned for the longest amount of time with you on Wednesday? If you had it when you were a kid, all the better." Now the anticipation and the intrigue about the trick starts days before the actual trick starts.

3. A friend of mine works in an office and performs for his co-workers pretty regularly. Earlier this year he sent himself a shoebox full of magic props. The kind of props you wouldn't automatically assume were magic props. He set the box on his desk. When one of his co-workers asked about it he said, "Oh, it's this magic organization I'm in. I have to come up with a trick for each of these items over the next year. I'm not supposed to talk about it."

Of course, tricks for these props were already figured out by other magicians over the past 100 years. But now he has this ongoing "story" he's telling of working his way through the box as it sat on his desk all year. And every time he's like "Hey, let's get lunch together today. I think I have an idea for this thing...," it's more interesting than if he had just brought that item in with him that day from home.

3. Reps, Imps, and The Cast (as mentioned last week) are all ways of extending magic beyond the performance of the trick itself and therefore can all be used to create some kind of continuity. The Cast is especially good for this. If you have someone you bring up again and again over time or a "secret club" you mention (like my friend in the above example) then you're creating a world that your effects take place in. And when you bring those details up again in the future you're building off the past performances.

4. Similar to breaking up the phases of a trick over time, you can also break up the performance of a single effect over time. Maybe one night you have the idea. The second night you try and fail (or only partially succeed). And the third night you pull it off. 

You can do this with any trick. For example, sponge balls. Night 1: I say, "I wonder if I could get one of these balls to go from my hand to yours." Night 2: I give you a sponge ball to hold and I hold one too. I open my hand and the sponge ball is still there. "Oh wait," I say, "A little bit of it is gone." I show you my sponge ball is missing a chunk. You open your hand and find it there. Night 3: We both hold a sponge ball, when I open my hand, mine is gone and it appears in your hand.

It may seem ridiculous to you to take three nights to build up to what is often the first moment in other people's sponge ball routine. But while I can't say I've ever tried it that way myself (with sponge balls, that is) I have broken it down like this with other tricks. And I do think it could prove to be pretty interesting for someone who's never seen sponge balls performed before—the idea that this is some skill they're watching you develop in real time. 

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Okay, now I want to take this all a step further and tell you about a contextual concept I've been using. It's not something I explain to my audiences. It just exists in my mind. I'm not sure this is going to make sense to anyone. So if I lose you here, I'm sure you're not alone.

Late last year I was at a restaurant with a few friends. We were sitting on bar stools around a high table. There was a machine called Madame Esmerelda in the lobby that claimed to read your fortune. "Give me a quarter I'll tell you your fortune. Fortune for a quarter, I love quarters," it said.

So I kept asking to borrow a quarter to use he machine and then I was making it disappear. Actually, at first I wasn't making it disappear. I would just ask to borrow a quarter, set it on the table, and when no one was paying attention I would lap it and pocket it. After a couple times it became clear I hadn't just misplaced them and my friends realized I was doing some kind of bit.

When I asked for the third time to borrow a quarter, my friend Sarah started turning around on her bar stool "Heeeere we gooooo!" she said. I asked her what she was doing and she said, "I was in a tornado. Whenever you start in on something like this, it feels like we get to go to Oz for a little bit." 

That, to me, was a huge compliment, and it became my goal going forward. I didn't want to subject people to nearly indistinguishable card tricks for the rest our lives. I wanted it to feel like there was an alternate universe running alongside ours, like the Twilight Zone, or the Upside-Down or something. And when I was doing a trick they were temporarily sliding into that reality. One where karma exists, and you can test for luck, and items can be cursed, and true love can be gauged with playing cards, and objects can be haunted by their former owners, and prayers are answered directly, and fairies exist, and my spectators themselves can temporarily gain crazy powers. 

To be clear, I don't tell people this. I don't say, "Now we're going to go to a magical world where anything is possible!" This is just something I think in my head. I imagine the room getting fuzzy and starting to skip like an old reel to reel film in school. And then I think, "Ah! We've entered the 88th Parallel." 

(The 88th Parallel is the name for my alternate universe, based on a strange and somewhat "magical" series of events in my own life.)

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Now, maybe it's because I grew up as a fan of the Twilight Zone, and Outer Limits, and Tales from the Darkside, but I've found imagining that most of what I perform exists in this alternate reality is surprisingly helpful.

First, it helps establish the continuity that I've been talking about throughout this post (even if only in my mind) because everything takes place in the same "world."

And second, it keeps me focused on the intriguingly impossible. As magicians, I think we often make the mistake that if something's impossible, then it's worth showing people. But I'm not sure that's always the case. So when I think about the 88th Parallel and some trick I might want to show someone, I think, "Do I want to create a world where... a sponge ball changes from one color to another?" No. That's impossible, but not intriguing. So what might be true in this world that could make that change more interesting? And I take it from there.

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Let me clarify something so I don't have to answer it in an email. As I said, this isn't something I express to people. It's just a metaphorical way of thinking about things. Instead of, "I do random tricks for people." It's, "I'm building a weird little universe for people." And since I've started thinking about things this way it has manifested in the experience feeling different for people. Where I used to hear, "How did you do that?" a lot, now I more frequently hear things like, "What is going on here?" Suggesting the focus is less on what I did and more on the "happening" itself.  (And, as I've mentioned, I'm building to the more intense performances as described in this post. Not just constantly doing the same types of effects big or small.)

As far as belief goes, there are really only two things I try to put out to the people I perform for that I want them to believe on any level.

1. Premise: Andy has an interest in magic and shows us tricks from time to time.
Belief Level: 100% - I'm not interested in hiding that magic is my hobby or suggesting these aren't tricks.

2. Premise: Due to his interest in magic, Andy has learned some arcane skills, met some weird people, and collected some odd objects.
Belief Level: 50% - Some of this is true and some isn't. I like to make people unsure of which is which.

Everything else is just about feeling, not belief. I want them to feel like they're momentarily in some cockeyed version of our world. But obviously I'm not asking them to believe that.

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I find this to be a very satisfying way to think of amateur magic. This is the hobby of magic as world-building. You're building an alternate reality that seems like ours in most respects but where strange and mysterious things regularly take place. 

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And just to close the loop on a couple thing above...

Originally I introduced the 10 Card Poker Deal to my friend as a game I played with my friends when I was a kid. It was a favorite of mine and we would always come up with different rules and ways to play. I claim a misguided birthday wish I made when I was 9 to never lose a game of 10 Card Poker seems to have come true because I haven't lost since (as long as the other person is trying to win). I'm not happy about this. It's like that episode of the Twilight Zone where the gambler thinks he's in heaven because he never loses, but that's the twist; it turns out always winning is actually a gambler's hell. I say this all very matter of factly. (The more absurd the thing I'm saying is, the more I talk about it like it's the most normal thing in the world.) 

So we play a couple of times and no matter how we adjust the rules, I just can't lose.

This goes on for months to come. We try it over the phone. We try it using little scratch-off cards with playing cards on them (this all comes from Michael Weber's work). I always win. I'll see him and say, "I've just come up with a way I'll definitely lose. The cards will be face up and you'll make all the choices." And then I still win. This makes me furious and I start punching the Doritos in a bowl on the table in front of us, sending Doritos shards flying everywhere., much to the delight of my friend. This is like an ongoing bit. We see each other once every month or two. I present him with some new way to play the game with a new set of conditions that seem to make it difficult or impossible for me to win, and yet I still win. Then I act pissed and break something or make a mess in a goofy way.

The 88th Parallel isn't a world where I always win this game because I'm so skilled. It's a world where a 9-year old's birthday wish comes true and tortures him for the rest of his life by ruining his favorite game.

In regards to the the quarter trick I was doing for my friends, it wasn't much of a trick at all, just a dumb idea I had. I made the first few coins "vanish" by just stealing them off the table when they weren't looking. I did the same thing with the next two coins, but now they were paying attention so I just had to wait them out. With the last two quarters I borrowed, I made them disappear with legitimate sleight of hand coin vanishes. All the while I'm saying that I'm not doing anything with their quarters. I don't know where they're going, I swear. I borrow one final quarter and say that nothing will happen to it because I'm going to immediately go over and put it into the Madame Esmerelda machine.

I took that final coin and went to the lobby to use the machine. A minute later I came back and said, "She says I will soon be coming into some money!" And I gestured outwards with my hands and a bunch of quarters flew out of my sleeve all over the floor. So that was more of a dumb joke than a trick, although there were trick elements in it.

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See you next week.