Xenoglossy

I got an email recently from supporter Colin Robinson that was inspired by the trick, Shutterlock, from The Jerx, Volume 1. That’s a trick that uses two different peeks for two words on the same business card. And it justifies the word placement on the card presentationally so there is absolutely no question as to why the words are being written where they are.

Colin had come up with a couple presentational ideas to use along with peeks that were both interesting in their own right, but also helped justify the placement of the word to be peeked.

I’m going to give you one of those ideas today and another next month when I’ve had some time to play around with it a bit more.

The first idea is to be used with the Acidus Novus peek. This is a good peek that is taught in many places. The one weakness of the peek is that you only get a peek of the area in red below.

There are some good justifications for having the spectator draw or write their word there. And there are some terrible ones. Probably the worst one I’ve seen is when the performer will use up the other three quadrants to demonstrate how someone might write something down on a piece of paper.

“In a moment I’m going to have you write something down on this paper. It could be a word like mouse. Or a shape like a star. Or a number like 78.” And as he’s saying this, he writes those things in. Leaving only the right bottom corner blank.

That’s not a normal way to treat a person. “Hey, I’m going to have you write something on this small piece of paper. But I think you’re too stupid to understand that concept. So I’m going to demonstrate it. Not just once. But three times. So hopefully that will sink into your stupid brain.”

Colin’s idea gets the peek word into that position with 100% justification.

Here’s the basic idea from his original email to me…

Presentation: I ask the spectator to create a new word, from a new, fictional language. They write down both the new word and the translation into English on the inside of a business card and fold it up. The only hint I ask is that they pronounce the new word for me. I proceed to ask them several things about the word, like the part of speech and the history of it, who created it and when. I try to spell the word at one point, and then end up revealing I've discovered the translation. 

Method: I fold up the card for the Acidus Novus Peek, and then when I write on the back I put "New Word ___________" on the top half of the card, and "Translation ________" on the bottom half, so the line with the translation ends up in position at the bottom left for the peek. After they fold it up I immediately have them put it down and start asking questions. When I attempt to spell the word, I write my attempt on the folded card and when I pick it up to ask if it's correct, I do the peek then.

I’ve expanded on this idea slightly, but it’s still more or less Colin’s idea.

What i do is I say, “Let’s try something. I’m going to have you create a new language. And even though it’s complete gibberish, I will attempt to learn your made up language. What should we call the language?”

Let’s say she says, Flurrpti.

I write this on a business card.

If you ask your spectator to come up with the name of a fake language and they say, “Ugghh…. I don’t know. I can’t think of one.” Tnen they’re either to dumb, uncreative, or disinterested to use this presentation with. Just say, “Oh, okay. Never mind.” And end it right there.

I go on…

“I want you to think of a word in Flurrpti. Anything you want. And write that word in that language here. Then write the english translation of the word here. Then fold it up into quarters and set it on the table. To make it more difficult, don’t pick something that’s in this room.” I turn away while she does this.

Imagine she writes

Flurrpti: Gorzum
English: Horse

I turn back to her. “What was the word you made up? Not the translation, but the word in your language.”

She says, “Gorzum.”

“Okay. Gorzum. Hmm… wait. In your imagination is Flurrpit like an alien language or an ancient language or a language that some isolated tribe speaks or what?”

I take whatever she says and nod as if that’s important.

“Okay. Okay… gorzum. Gorzum. Let me think. Gorzum. ‘I went to the gorzum.’ Hmm… I don’t know. ‘She was feeling very gorzum.’ Huh. That doesn’t sound quite right. Let’s see…,” And I continue this muttering and trying out the word in different scenarios. I don’t do it to the other person. I do it as if I’m talking to myself, for my own benefit.

I then point to the table and say, “What would the word for ‘table’ be in your language?” She says, “Hamlicker.”

“Hmm. Interesting. Table is hamlicker. Okay. This is coming together.”

I then pick up the business card and either say:

1. “Ok. What about this? What would you call a business card in your language?”

2. Or I’ll pick a word from the front of the business card and ask them the translation for that in their language. So if the business card says “phone” in the visible quadrant, I might ask how they say phone in their language.

Either way, this is the point where I get the peek.

I think Colin’s idea of getting it while you try and spell the word on the outside of the business card is good, but when I tried it, it didn’t really work due to their being too much printing on that side of the card I was using. Plus I didn’t really like having such a concentrated moment of my focus near the card. I wanted something that felt a little more casual.

So let’s say she tells me the word for “business card” in her language is “ludz.”

“Okay. ‘The ludz is on the hamlicker.’ That makes sense. ‘We’re sitting at the hamlicker and the ludz is on it.’ Okay, yeah.”

The idea here is that I’m familiarizing myself with the language and that’s going to allow me to interpret the word she gave me.

“So if the ludz is on the hamlicker, then the gorzum would be… hmmm…. it’s a noun. I’m pretty sure of that. It’s a thing. It’s not a place… I don’t think.”

“‘I’m going to eat some gorzum.’ No. Maybe? No. ‘I’m going to drive the gorzum’? That’s not quite it. Let’s see… ludz is business card… hamlicker is table… gorzum is… Oh! I got it!”

I concentrate for a few moments, as if I’m checking my math.

“Okay. Tell me if this makes sense. ‘I’m going to the stables to ride my gorzum.’ Yes?”

This presentation is essentially in the same family as my trick, Cryptophasia. It’s sort a simplified, one-phase version of that trick. Which is good, because that’s a fun trick to perform. And this is similar but completely impromptu.

Thanks to Colin for letting me share it with you. Next month I’ll share another idea from Colin that helps justify the word placement and the tearing in a center tear.

Sunday Productivity, Part 1

The productivity systems I have in place are so convoluted that they would require a full book to explain them. And they’re so idiosyncratic that it would make no sense to ever write such a book. However, I wanted to give you one element of one of my systems that you might benefit from, but to do so I’ll have to lay some groundwork in this post. Then in a future post I’ll give you the details on the specific technique that has been very helpful to me.

Most people split up their day in this manner: work and home. Even if you work from home, you tend to think of things as work time and personal time. Broadly speaking, work time is spent doing things that make you money and personal time is spent doing things that don’t.

I split up my day slightly differently, into three parts:

1. “Work” time

2. Productive personal time

3. Unstructured personal time.

I’ll define the two outer categories first.

“Work Time”

“Work time” is anything that is mandatory for me that day. It’s not necessarily stuff I’m getting paid for, but it’s stuff that I’ve decided is non-negotiable. For me, the “mandatory” items that happen most days are:

• actual work, i.e. a certain number of hours working on writing for this site and the related projects (books, newsletters); meeting up with people to test new concepts or effects; writing/consulting for other non-magic projects

• exercise

• listening to new music releases

• any necessary errands

Now, obviously exercising and listening to music aren’t “work” in the sense that I’m not getting paid for them—I don’t teach a Zumba class—but they are things that are important enough to me that they fall into the mandatory “work” category.

Unstructured Personal Time

This is time where nothing is scheduled, and for which I have no set goals. I can do whatever I want during this time. I certainly can do something productive, if I’m really in the mood to. But the time is intended to be a period of relaxation. For me, this time is usually spent watching tv, hanging out with friends, or wasting time on the internet.

Productive Personal Time

This is the time I use for anything that isn’t mandatory (which is why it’s not in the “work” category), but it’s also not totally fruitless waffling. None of these things are particularly pressing, but they are things that I think are beneficial to me in some way, in the short or long-term.

The sorts of things that are in my productive personal time are:

• Reading

  • magic books

  • magic magazines

  • fiction

  • non-fiction

  • comic books

• Writing

  • novel

  • screenplay

• Watching magic lectures/videos

• Practicing magic

• Cleaning

• Various athletic activities

• Various artistic activities

• Learning/practicing musical instruments

• Learning computer programs and computer programming

And probably a dozen or so other things. Things go on and off the list. If I think, “I’d like to learn how to decorate a cake,” then I throw cake decorating on the list until the point where I’m not interested in it anymore.

Some of those things on the list may ultimately be useful in my working life, but they’re not work itself at this time. They are not projects with a deadline.

The way I organize my day is that my “work” time just takes however long it takes. It might be two hours, it might be twelve. These are the mandatory things I do before moving on to personal time. ThenI’ll have a set time at the end of the day when my unstructured personal time kicks in. And I fill whatever time is between those chunks with productive personal time. (Of course this basic schedule doesn’t account for things like meals and socializing, but you just work those things in as they come up. This is the basic structure of my schedule, assuming nothing else comes up. But if someone calls me and says, “Hey, want to go see a movie?” I don’t have to work that in my schedule. I just say sure and go and then get back into my schedule when I return home.)

So if I get done with my work at 4pm, and I plan on shutting things down and going into unstructured personal time around 9pm. Then that five hours in-between will be filled with productive personal time.

Here’s why I think this is beneficial. If you just have two categories—work time and personal time—then where does learning a second language, restoring a classic car, learning to code, writing a novel, yoga, or practicing tomahawk marksmanship fall? Assuming those things aren’t related to your job, then they fall in the personal time bucket along with masturbating, watching Netflix, eating fudge, napping, peeping in windows, getting drunk, crying, etc. So then you have to rely on your own motivation to ever do something productive in your personal time. But if you create separate times in your day for productive and unproductive personal time, then you only need to be committed to keeping to the basic schedule you set out for yourself.

The hard part can be deciding what to do within your productive personal time. How do you make the most of that time and not just revert to whatever the easiest or most fun thing on your list is? Well, I have a solution for that. And in Part 2 of this post (coming in a couple weeks), I will tell you the automated system I use to guide my productive personal time in the most efficient way possible.

The Juxe: A New Beatles Album

It seems to me like The Beatles have been very inactive for a while now. Perhaps they’re in the studio working on a new album, but if so, it must be really complicated because it’s taking forever. In the meantime I’ve put together an alternate universe Beatles album for you from songs released in the past couple decades.

Why Not Me (Why Can’t I Be You) by Locksley (Madison, Wisconson)

Thank You by The Redwalls (Deerfield, Illinois)

She’s Going Down by The Red Button (Los Angeles, California)

Please Don’t Go by The Ugly Beats (Austin, Texas)

Girl by Cupid’s Carnival (London, England)

Future Perfect by The Spongetones (Charlotte, North Carolina)

Time by The Jetbeats (Grand Rapids, Michigan)

Finer Things In Life by Pugwash (Dublin, Ireland)

So Far From My Heart by Frank Lee Sprague (Wichita Falls, Texas)

Find the One by The Orgone Box (Sheffield, England)

Serenading, Part 2

Okay, here are some examples of the Serenade style of performance I wrote about a couple of days ago.

I mentioned two primary orientations for performing in this manner.

1. Close-up, but with a window between you and the audience.

2. They’re outside, maybe on a porch or balcony, but they’re some distance away.

The first situation is pretty straightforward. You can just do any sort of close-up effect you might normally do in-the-hands, that doesn’t require physical interaction with the spectators. But you might as well take advantage of the situation and do something that’s not examinable. Those gimmicked decks or gimmicked packet tricks that can be very suspect in a regular performance work much better in this situation. I mean, people may still suspect there’s something fishy about them, but at the very least the fact that they can’t examine the object makes some sense. Whereas in real life it makes zero sense.

If the idea of doing gimmicked magic through a window sounds familiar, it may be because I recommended that sort of staging years ago in the post Youtube Magic in the Real World.

There’s an idea I mention in that post that I had forgotten about. You take a dry erase marker and make a circle on your side of the window. Then you display an object (a card, a coin, a pack of gum) outside of the circle, but when you move it inside the circle it changes in some way. If you had something that could change back and forth easily, here’s what I would do… Let’s say it’s a card. Outside the circle it’s an ace. When you move it in the circle it’s a Jack. Pull it back out it’s an ace. Put it back in, it’s a jack. Now, while it’s still in, you erase the circle from the window. And now the card is permanently a jack. As if you were opening some sort of portal and then you erased the portal leaving the card in its altered state.

When it comes to tricks to do at a distance, I prefer not to do tricks that were designed to be performed that way. What I mean is, I wouldn’t do a rope trick, because most rope tricks are perfectly well suited to be done from 20 feet away. I wouldn’t do a platform style trick. I want to do a close-up trick where the distance becomes an added element to be dealt with.

One trick I’ve done a few times is Gemini Twins. I will call the person and ask if I can stop by and show them a trick “from a distance.” I tell them to get a deck from their house and start mixing the cards and I’ll honk my horn when I’m there and they should come outside. When I arrive, they come outside with the deck and I walk them through the procedure. I have them spread through the cards while they’re facing me so I can “see what cards I’m drawn to.” I stay as far away as possible. I would guess at least 30 feet or so. I use the camera on my phone to zoom in so I can identify the indexes of the cards. I’m yelling. They’re fumbling. They may have to squat to deal the cards in a pile on the ground. Or they deal onto a bench or the hood of their car or any flat surface. Cards are sliding. Cards are blowing. It’s all a bit of a clusterfuck, but that’s what makes it so good. I’ve often done Gemini Twins without touching the deck myself in a normal close-up situation, but for some reason it seems to hit even harder when I’m so far away. There’s no logical reason it should, but it does.

For a mentalism sort of thing, what I’ve been doing is something like Wiki-test or Xeno. But I start the effect remotely. From my house. So they have a thought in their mind that I apparently couldn’t know. I concentrate, but fail. I ask them to go outside their house and I’ll go outside mine (to get a stronger mental signal). That fails. I tell them not to forget their thought and ask if I can come over. “I won’t come inside. I just need to be closer. I thought I might be able to do it from here, but I’m getting nothing.” I drive over. They come out. I’m standing as far away as I can without being in the road. I ask them to concentrate. I’m still getting nothing. “What the hell? Are you seriously even thinking about it?” I ask. I walk closer and closer. When I’m about 15 feet away it comes to me. As if I’ve finally entered into their “thought radius.” At this point I don’t struggle. I don’t go letter by letter or anything. It’s just obvious. “Oh, you’re thinking of fish. Tuna fish.” Or whatever.

I like this because it feels like how mentalism should work. It should be that there’s some distance at which you can perceive thoughts, and at a greater distance they’re out of reach. We tried something from our respective houses; that didn’t work. Then we both went outside; that didn’t work. We got closer and closer until finally I was able to pick up on the thought. That seems reasonable. It’s fun to try and make something feel both fantastical and logical. And it gets people thinking away from the actual method.

I think there are endless variations you could come up with of ways to play off the physical distance in your performances. When I first started doing this and I was performing for people on their balconies at my apartment complex, I would have them write the word they were thinking of on a piece of paper, fold it up into a small packet and then dangle it down at the end of piece of string or thread (one person hooked it on a fishing line) so I could get close to it but not close enough that I could touch. So here I’m “sensing” what’s written down (not reading their mind) supposedly. But I just need to get closer to the paper itself. The staging adds so much to the trick. Them leaning over the balcony, fishing the word down to me; me with a hand reaching towards the sky looking up at them, and then somehow divining the word that’s still suspended out of my grasp. The trick becomes tied to the staging, and the staging is tied to this moment in time. And that’s a structure you can use to make your magic stronger and more memorable in or out of a pandemic.

Introducing: Friends + Astronauts

There was a time, in the 80s and 90s, when people used to get all excited for the premiere of a new video on MTV. It would be hyped for for a week and then, at like 10pm on a Wednesday, your sister would hijack the tv and make everyone watch the premiere of the new video off Duran Durans’s Seven and the Ragged Tiger album.

Sadly, many of you are too old or too young to have enjoyed this phenomena. But today I get to be your Martha Quinn and premiere a new magic venture.

Supporter, Eric Hu has created a site with this stated goal:

“I got some friends to help with a simple project for a great cause, and this is it. We’re gonna teach magic tricks for free (all previously unpublished) in support of each other, the magic community, and COVID-19 relief efforts.”

The site is called Friends and Astronauts.

He’s releasing material in “collections” so a few ideas will go up at a time, stay there for a bit, and then he’ll remove them and put up the next collection. (At least, as of this writing that’s his plan.)

I was shocked to see that all the the contributors to the first collection of material were current or former Jerx supporters. The odds of that seem astronomical to me. Like when all the guests at a mysterious dinner party realize they all played a part in the tragic accident that disfigured that young boy 20 years ago. “We didn’t win a contest. We weren’t randomly sent these invitations. We were brought here for a reason.” It could be a coincidence. Or maybe it was done to entice me to mention the site. Well, it worked.

I won’t spoil the material—you can check it out on the site. It’s not the sort of stuff you see much here. It’s more quick, visual ideas that could be incorporated into some larger effects.

I don’t usually think too much in terms of multi-phase routines, but Ryan Plunkett offers a sleight where one ace turns into two, then three, then four progressively as it’s turned over. I think it could be cool to incorporate this as a finale to a Universal Card effect. Four people select cards which are then lost in the deck. A joker is introduced which becomes each persons card, one at a time. In the end, you secretly switch the normal joker for the set-up with the selections at a point when people believe the trick to be over. Then, as a last beat, the “joker” dissolves into the four selections as it’s turned over in the hands. It would take some work to come up with a handling that allows you to routine that all together, but I think it’s doable.

Check out the site for some other cool ideas. Support the performers and/or the charities mentioned. And keep an eye out for future collections.

Serenading

I wanted to thank you for the question-poem trick you posted last week. I’ve been doing a lot of zoom magic recently and this has been stronger than anything.

You’ve written a few times about video chat magic and using it for predictions. I was wondering what other types of effects you’ve been doing over zoom recently? —HL

Nothing. I have stopped doing magic over any video chat platform for the time being.

I realize I was one of the first people talking about this. And I do think it’s still a great outlet for performing magic if you don’t have anywhere else. But I wanted to push myself to find different ways to perform, even amidst the social distancing and all of that.

(I do have a couple video chat magic ideas that I’m working on at the moment. But, oddly enough, they’re actually going to only be of use once things get a little more back to normal. They’re designed to be used over webcam, but you need certain elements of normal social interaction to pull them off. So those will have to wait a few months.)

I was sort of inspired to quit the video chat thing by a friend of a friend, Paisley, who has been doing “pandemic portraits” on her instagram. That is, she’s doing portrait photography of people from a distance or through a window.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Paisley Grey (@paisleynotplaid) on Apr 13, 2020 at 2:42pm PDT

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Paisley Grey (@paisleynotplaid) on Apr 26, 2020 at 3:07pm PDT

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Paisley Grey (@paisleynotplaid) on Apr 27, 2020 at 11:46am PDT

I started doing something similar but with magic, last month when people were a little more on edge than they are now.

It’s a performing construct I call Serenading.

Originally I was going around to my friend’s apartments in my complex and they’d come out on the balcony and I’d show them something from down below. It had a real Romeo and Juliet vibe to it. Or Say Anything.

Then I expanded beyond my apartment complex and I’d call up a friend and ask if I could stop by and show them something, and I’d drive over and show them a trick through the window or from a distance.

I’ve been talking about video chat magic for years now. It’s a great medium for magic because you can get away with a lot of things out of frame. But for me, the real power was the novelty of it. But now with everything taking place over video chat, the novelty is gone.

I’m devoting a section in the next book to the power of changing the circumstances and the setting of your performances. It’s very effective in creating memorable magic. Previously, showing someone a trick over video chat was a rarity, so it brought an element of uniqueness to the effect. Now it just sort of feels like a necessity. There’s very little charm to it when it’s a necessity. Doing magic through a window, or from the sidewalk to someone at their front door, or up to a balcony is a little more exciting to me at the moment.

So what do I do when I do my social distanced magic when I visit my friends? Well, I fuck around with a bunch of stuff. I don’t have one particular thing. It’s just a good excuse to connect with people I haven’t seen in a while.

Generally, I have two main modes. Either I’ll stand on the front lawn and they’ll be on the porch. Or if they have something like a bay window at the front of the house, I’ll walk up to that and show them something close-up, but through glass. I’ll give you some specific examples of the sort of stuff I do on Friday.

A Story With No End

I got a couple emails last week that were similar in tone. The first was about the PIcasso Pro app I mentioned last Thursday. I said I would probably get my own URL and forward it to the custom URL in the app, that way even if the actual URL for the effect was released, it couldn’t expose the effect if someone I performed it for ended up googling it.

The other email was about the 1900s cards I mentioned in last Friday’s post. I said that I wouldn’t use those cards as is because—while they look old—they feel brand new, which completely blows the illusion of an old deck if someone handles them.

Both emails I got suggested that I was worrying too much about these things. Not that the issues I mentioned weren’t potential issues. Yes, the URL for Picasso Pro might get exposed and therefore the trick might fall apart if someone googles it. And yes, the 1900s deck does feel new and if someone handled it they’d realize they’re not really old. But… so what? Their point was: Why go to a bunch of effort to plug every potential hole in an effect when the spectator’s already know they’re just tricks? Just be fun. Just be entertaining. It doesn’t matter if they realize the cards aren’t really old. Of if they find out the drawing website is part of a commercial magic effect. Magic is supposed to be entertainment. If they were entertained, you did your job.

I understand this point of view, but I disagree with it.

It often feels like there are two approaches to magic:

1. Let’s make our magic as convincing as possible to get people to really believe in the power of the performer.

2. Let’s make our magic as entertaining as possible and don’t worry too much about the more trivial details. They know it’s a trick anyway, so just make it an entertaining trick.

I don’t really agree with either of these approaches. I’m somewhere in the middle. Or off to the side. I believe you should try to make the most entertaining magic by attempting to generate conviction in something they know isn’t true. Now, that’s not a mindset that can really exist—at least not for long—but that’s the target I’m shooting for.

“But it’s just a trick. And they know it’s a trick.”

Yes. And a movie is just a movie, and you know it’s a movie. And yet… they will spend millions of dollars to create a believable special effect. Why? Why did Jurassic Park do all those CGI dinosaurs? Why not just use a puppet or a cut-out of a dinosaur from construction paper? They could have told the same story. People would have just had to use their imaginations more. And the producers would have saved a bunch of money.

Well, because they want it to feel as real as possible while you watch it.

If I pull out a deck and say it belonged to my grandfather and it looks really old and then you touch it and it’s as smooth and slippery as Joshua Jay’s bare white ass, then you’re being reminded of the fact this is just a prop, this is a fake story, this is a trick. But if I hand you the deck and it looks and feels and smells old, then you can still get lost in the story.

For a quick trick, I don’t get too worked up about things. But for a big, immersive effect—the Romantic Adventure style I’ve written about here—I have one overriding goal:

Don’t break the spell.

That’s the only way to get people truly caught up in an unbelievable premise.

Now, you might say, “Okay, I get that. While the trick is going on you should put all your effort into making it as pristine and fooling as possible. But who cares if afterwards they google something and realize that it’s just a trick you can buy? They’ve already experienced the trick and had fun and all of that.”

It’s a fair point. Watching a documentary on the making of Jurassic Park, doesn’t ruin the experience you had watching Jurassic Park. So why should a spectator googling a URL and having it lead them back to a magic website ruin the magic trick?

Well, because a movie begins and ends.

But a successful magic trick is a story with no end.

A magic trick is ongoing until the point where the spectator has an explanation that satisfies them. I’ve had people come up to me, 10 or 20 years after the fact, still amazed by something I showed them. For them, that trick is still going on. I mean that in the sense that they’re still living in the world where this thing happened and they have no clue how it happened. If, all those years later I say, “Oh yeah. I just switched the corner piece. So that restored card was a different card altogether.” That’s when the trick would be over for them because that’s the point where there’s no more mystery.

A movie exists on film. A novel is printed on the pages of a book. If everyone on earth died tomorrow, that movie or novel would still be there for an alien race to discover. A magic effect exists in someone’s mind. So the effect doesn’t end when the card is turned over. It goes on so long as their mind sees it as a magical experience. Once they have a satisfying explanation it’s over. And there’s no recapturing it. That’s why I strive to not let an effect be undermined even long after the machinations of the performance are over. The climax of a trick should be just the start of the magic.