Taking Risks

[Yesterday’s] post makes me think that you’re not much of a risk taker when you perform. I agree with you that psychological forces are generally not reliable but I still like using them and using other risky methods when I perform. If you saw Asi Wind’s Masterclass he talked a lot about how much he enjoys taking risk in his shows. It can be a pretty exhilarating way to perform. —BD

Yeah, I’ll be honest with you, I don’t really get the “taking risks” thing when it comes to magic/mentalism.

If you were eating at a restaurant and the waiter came up to you and said. “Are you enjoying your meal?” And you said you were, and he responded with, “Want to know something cool? When the chef was preparing your meal, he was flipping the knife around and doing all sorts of crazy shit with it. It’s a really sharp knife. So it’s real risky.”

Your response would be, “Uhh.. Okay… thanks for letting me know.”

You wouldn’t care, because a chef flipping around a knife in the back of the restaurant wouldn’t have an effect on your enjoyment of the meal. It’s more something the chef is doing for himself.

You might say that’s a bad analogy. You might contend that you’re not using the risky method for your own entertainment. You’re using it because it allows you to do the most direct and powerful magic.

I think that’s less true than you might imagine.

The problem with a lot of “risky” methods is that they are very susceptible to an “Easy Answer” that not only undermines the effect, but is also often correct as well.

For example: You light a lighter, have someone look into the flame and name a card. They say the queen of hearts and you turn over the lighter to show that card is engraved on the lighter.

This is a very direct effect with a risky method. (The method being you just hope they name the Queen of Hearts, otherwise you transition into a different effect.) But when it hits, you would expect it to be very strong. Unfortunately, what you find if you ask people about effects like these is that after that initial moment of surprise they will then conclude, “Well, I guess everyone names that card.” Some will also recognize that you never told them there was a card engraved on the back of the lighter so you could have gotten away with never showing it to them if they had named something else. And since you can’t repeat the trick and the selection process was sort of rushed to begin with, it becomes very easy for them to fall back on that Easy Answer because you’ve done nothing to combat it. I find this to be true with a lot of methods we would consider “risky.”

We romanticize the idea of Derren Brown forcing a card with nothing but his words because we are putting ourselves in his position. But from the audience’s perspective, it may be the least interesting thing Derren has ever done.

Risky methods often require a bland presentation, because you don’t want to commit too much to one direction if you’re going to have to pivot to something else if your method doesn’t hit. So you have to just say something like, “Look into the flame and name the first card that comes to your mind.” Or something equally uninspiring.

Now, obviously if there is a moment in an effect that can be enhanced by taking a chance, and it will be unnoticed if it doesn’t pay off, then I’m happy to try and capitalize on that moment. I just don’t see the benefit of building an entire effect on a method you can’t fully rely on.

I do understand that if you’re a professional magician, doing the same tricks night after night, then you might get bored, and perhaps incorporating some risk is a way to keep you engaged. I get that.

But for the amateur, it doesn’t make a ton of sense to do a risky method with a standard, traditional presentation. Instead, what I recommend is to use a tried-and-true method with a risky presentation. From my perspective, that’s the more interesting and fun way to incorporate risk in my performances. Not wondering if they person will name the card I hope they will. But wondering how they’ll react to an audience-centric presentation that puts them in a situation they couldn’t have expected.

Invisible Gestures

A number of people passed along the results of this recent study that looked at Derren Brown’s psychological force for the three of diamonds. In total, when they used this force, about 18% of the people chose the three of diamonds.

We’ve tried out this force in our focus-group testing as well and while I don’t have the numbers with me, I think we got about a 15% hit rate. So about the same.

They seemed to think the results of this study showed the force to be a success. We interpreted our results as the force being something of a failure. But this is the difference between looking for results that are “statistically significant” and those that are “magically useful.”

We have looked at so many types of psychological forces over the years in our testing that I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a purely psychological force that is both reliable and invisible to the audience.

(I’d love to be proven wrong. If you believe there is, I have the infrastructure in place—once we’re back to a more normal sort of human interaction—to test it out for you. Come to NYC, I’ll put you in touch with the group I work with, and you can go out and test it for 100 real people. If it fools even just 51% of the people, I will cover the cost of the testing and your flight and accommodations. If it doesn’t, you will cover the costs.)

While I appreciate people trying to test magic methodologies scientifically, I’m not sure it’s the best approach. I say this as someone who has been involved with more magic testing than anyone in the history of the universe. If your process is a little too clinical, you’re not going to get the best feedback. In our earliest days of testing, we would try to have a process that felt very formal and “scientific.” And we found people claiming to be fooled by things at a much higher rate than we expected. It was only when we shifted our approach to being more of a “focus group” style of interaction, rather than a “scientific study” type of interaction, that we started getting the best feedback from the participants. When they saw a trick as some sort of clinical research, they tended to be very forgiving in their assessments. It was only when we made it clear that we wanted their critical analysis of an effect or a technique that we would get their true thoughts.

I’m not suggesting the more scientific studies aren’t useful, just that in my experience, it’s not the best way to test these things.

I’ve found the best use for Derren’s force in a social context is to use it as the starting point presentationally. “I’m going to try and send a card to you without saying the name of the card. You need to be very attuned and focused on me, or this isn’t going to work.” You may even have them film the process with their phone. You do the priming procedure until they name the three of diamonds. If they don’t get it immediately, you make the gestures more and more obvious until they do. At some point they’ll get it. Then you spread the deck and show them the reversed three of diamonds in the deck.

If they pick up on the force quickly you say, “You’re very good at this, let’s try something a little more challenging.”

If they don’t pick up on the force quickly you say, “I don’t think that style of non-verbal communication is a strength for you. But I have a feeling you might be more sensitive to something a little less direct.”

Either way, you continue on.

“If you were to watch back the video you just shot, you would see me indicating the three of diamonds to you via my movements and gestures. There is another way to transmit information that’s similar, but it’s not something you would pick up with a camera. It’s something called ‘Invisible Gesturing.’ Well, that’s not the technical name for it. The technical name is sub-perceptive trans-lexical kinesic communication. But the guy I learned this from just called them ‘invisible gestures.’ It’s communication that happens on a subliminal level. That sounds potentially kind of scary, but the truth is you wouldn’t be able to perceive the invisible gestures without me telling you they were coming. So it’s not like I could just walk into the grocery store and implant messages into the checkout girl’s head without her knowing.

“So let’s try it. You can record this too if you want, but there won’t be much to see when you rewatch it.”

You then “send” them the image of another card. This time using “invisible gestures.” (In other words, you don’t really do anything at all.) And incredibly they will again pick up on the card you were sending them, which you reversed in the deck (thanks to it being an invisible deck). However, this time they should truly have no understanding of how they did it.

While We Were Out

Here are a few of the things that happened during the July recess.

A reporter from the New York Times reached out to me…

She somehow stumbled over the GLOMM site and sent me an email asking if I had any insight into a story she’s doing on prisoners who “use magic as a way to cope with a difficult situation, and some of the challenges that there are for incarcerated magicians.”

Given that The GLOMM tracks magicians who, primarily, have used magic as a pretext to get close to children for the purposes of taking advantage of them, I had the feeling that whatever information I could give her wouldn’t really help her feel-good article. I think she wanted to hear something like, “These poor bastards can’t get a quality close-up mat! They have to weave one out of whatever toilet paper they can sneak out of the bathroom over the course of 18 to 24 months.”

Really though, what was I going to say? “Yes, my understanding is life on the inside is very hard for these gentlemen. They got into magic to be near the taut, tight buttocks of the young. Not the sloppy, baggy rectum of a grizzled lifer. Pray for them.”

My actual response to her was this:

The only thing I know about magicians in prison is that I keep track of the ones who are there for diddling the birthday boy and things like that. I don't think those people were in it so much for the "love of the art" but more so for the proximity it put them to pre-teens who might be easily convinced about the importance of "keeping a secret." So I don't really have anything that will help with your story. 

I don’t expect to be quoted.

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I got pump-faked by a magic ad…

A reader forwarded me an email from Mystique Factory advertising a Jewerly Box Prediction. Not jewelry. Jewer-ly.

I was willing to cut them some slack on that. It’s an easy word to misspell.

But I did get intrigued by the idea of this product. What was the jewelry box prediction? I could see some interesting possibilities.

Maybe it’s one of those jewelry boxes that plays music, with the spinning ballerina. And when you open it, it plays the song they’re thinking of. Even if their song choices were limited in some way, that could still be very strong. The tinkle of a music box is such a unique and evocative sound.

Or what if the spectator “built” a piece of jewelry in their mind. They decided on the type of jewelry, the metal used, the type of stones and how many there were. Then, in the end, they slide open the jewelry box and inside is just one thing: the piece of jewelry they just created.

Even if the attributes of the jewelry were on cards and you just had a routine to force a specific “random” grouping of the cards—that wouldn’t be as great as them just thinking of something—but it would still be kind of cool. Especially if the selections lead to some weird combination of elements and that’s the exact thing in the box.

“Okay, let’s see what cards you picked, So it’s a bracelet… made of copper… with one pink crystal… three black crystals… and a seahorse charm. I know that sounds… kind of hideous actually. But that was exactly my great-great grandmother’s prized possession.” They open the box and find it in there. And you let them keep it, of course. A truly memorable, quirky souvenir with a great little story behind it for them.

These thoughts come to me in the two seconds it takes me to scroll down the email and I’m actually kind of enthused to see what this “jewelry box prediction” consists of.

Only to see this…

Right, right. Of course. Silly me for forgetting how fucking stupid magic is and expecting this to look like anything other than a magic prop.

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Ellusionist got weird…

Ellusionist sent out this email a few days ago…

We won't keep you long. This is just a quick reminder to let you know, without intent or irony...

YOU
ARE
AWESOME

Why are we sending this email?

We text this same message to our friends in the Ellusionist SMS group earlier today and people really appreciated the reminder... So we're more than happy to remind you of your awesomeness too. 

Then they provided a few screenshots of how well this went over in their SMS group.

I like to picture that guy: tears streaming down his face, barrel of a gun in his mouth. <DING> Okay… let me read this one final SMS message. What? I’m awesome? Thanks, Ellusionist! That means so much!

Listen, if you get any validation whatsoever from a generic message sent en masse by a corporation there is something wrong with you. That’s not healthy. Seek help.

C’mon, man. You’re not going to fall for that, are you? A big, strong, smart guy, like you? You don’t need Ellusionist to tell you you’re special. I mean, you’re so smart and cool! And everyone likes you.

See how fucking stupid that is?

I do appreciate how honest Ellusionist was in the email though.

They tell you they’re sending the message to you “without intent.”

Intent
Definition: purpose, meaning, significance

I agree. Generic praise from people you don’t know doesn’t have any purpose, meaning, or significance.

I truly hope that someone at Ellusionist just made up those responses for the sake of the email. That’s the only possibility that doesn’t depress me. I don’t like to imagine there are people out there whose sense of self-worth is so low that they’re like, “Hey! Great news. The company that I bought the Fiddle Stick from thinks I’m awesome. (As well as every other person on their mailing list.) So long, suicidal ideation!”

The only acceptable response to that SMS is this:

Early Edition

Here’s an idea I’ve pitched to a few friends who have had some success with it. It’s not something I do because it doesn’t really address an issue I face myself. But you may find it beneficial.

Similar ideas may already exist in the self-help literature, but I don’t read much of that sort of thing so I don’t really know.

Here is the idea as I wrote it up in an email to my friend.

Here’s what you should do. Get yourself a blank notebook and every night before bed you should write a diary entry in it. So, for example, your entry might look like this:

July 15th

Woke up in a great mood today.

Ran three miles before work.

Got lunch with Tim and we went over some really strong ideas for the next season of the show.

After work I practiced guitar for a half-hour.

Then grilled up steaks for Kim and the girls and after dinner we went out for ice cream.

Afterwards I worked on the new book for a little bit and banged out a couple pages before relaxing for the rest of the evening.

Now, that might look like a pretty standard, even bland, diary entry. It doesn’t really delve too deep into your hopes and dreams or whatever. But that’s not the important thing about it. The important thing about it is that you write it on July 14th.

Get it? So it’s not a record of your day, it’s your intention for what the next day will bring, but you write it as if it already happened. So it’s part to-do list, and part intention-setting visualization exercise of what you want to get from the next day.

I suspect you will find your days will end up looking very similar to what you write.

So that was the idea I gave him—and some other people since then—and it seems to be working well for them.

Now, the people I suggest this to are people who have issues with anxiety or getting the things done that they plan to or people who find themselves entering into situations with a negative mindset. I don’t know the psychology of why it works (if it even does work, generally). But I’m guessing if you go into the day and you’ve already seen it in your mind being a success, then you’re more likely to get that outcome. And writing it down in the past tense just reinforces the strength of that process, I would imagine.

I would only write things in the book that are within your control, like your emotions and your actions. Don’t write things like, “And the yankees won. And I found a $100 bill. And a pretty lady said I’m the handsomest man she’s ever met.” It’s not supposed to be a book of your special wishes. It’s intended to be a book that focuses your mind for the coming day.

(Long time readers will recognize a similarity between this concept and something in The JAMM #12. It’s not quite the same idea, but it’s similar.)

The Juxe: Unreal is Here

I was emailed this list of “10 Bands from the 90s You’ve Never Heard.” While I had heard of many of them, some were new to me. But I wanted to highlight one that wasn’t, and that’s the group Chavez, a math-rock band from the mid-90s. I never followed them too closely but they do have one song I particularly like called Unreal Is Here.

The video is pretty funny. Chavez were not a well known band, but the video presents them as if they were in a faux “behind the scenes” style manner, catching them in fake candid situations that a “big” band might find themselves in (riding in helicopters, dropping off a big check for their “Chavez Kids” charity, excitedly rushing out of the shower to see their video being played on tv). My favorite moment is when the bass player plays basketball while wearing his bass (Which is something Metallica’s bass player bizarrely does in the video for Nothing Else Matters.)

Also, this would be a dope “theme song” for a magic show. “Unreal is Here” is a solid show title. And the lyrics fit too…

Yes, you will do now
What can't be done
Your unreal is here now

Correct, you can learn now
What truth denies
Your unreal is here now

There is nothing to not be amazed at
There are weeks upon years upon days that...

Things that can happen
Happen to you
Your unreal is here now

There is nothing to not be amazed at
There are weeks upon years upon days that...

Just take this with you
Just take this with you...

Here’s another bizarre, funny, weird Chavez video for the song Break Up Your Band.

Until August...

Okay, it’s that time of the month (my menses), where I’m going to split until August.

Don’t imagine me taking a 10 day vacation every month. It’s just the time when I shift the focus from the blog to the newsletter (and the next book, but that’s an all month thing).

I was just reflecting on how much of an idiot I am. Coming into this season of The Jerx, I was saying, “I need to cut-down on the amount of content I’m putting out.” And somehow the method I came up with for doing that was to go from 12 post a month to 20, and go from four newsletters per year to ten. I’m a dipshit.

---

I introduced the Second Helping feature last month where people can advertise their book or multi-trick video release for free on this in exchange for letting us help ourselves to the second best thing on the release (see the details here).

This month, Brandon Toh kind of broke the system by giving me something to share which people can already get for free. So it doesn’t really fit in with the premise of this feature.

You can download the full booklet from Brandon at his site (you might as well, it’s free—or “name your own price” which for magicians is “free.”). He believes the second best thing in the book is the effect Decja Vu. Check it out here.

If you’d like to offer something from your (not free) release in a future installment of Second Helpings, you can just email me and we’ll set it up.

---

Perhaps I judged Bolted too harshly in last Friday’s post. At least that’s what Michael Weber wrote in to suggest. He writes:

You are usually open minded and willing to consider alternative approaches to magic, so your reaction to Bolted was a bit of a surprise.

Back in 1994 I was practicing Houdini's Water Torture Cell in my magic den when one of the glass side panels broke. 

It sent a torrent of water through my apartment and the four apartments directly below mine.

Wooden props like the Vampire Block and Card Duck were spared because they floated. 

Books, magazines, manuscripts, posters, playbills and photographs did not fare as well.

One of the non-magic  losses was all my wedding photos, except for the one picture I kept in my everyday-carry Le Paul wallet.

Because it was the only surviving photo of that special day, I used strong hardware to secure it inside a protective  plastic holder.

I am not trying to claim any priority in the idea, but the fact they've recently hit on something I've done for decades may suggest you were a little quick to criticize.

He’s right. I’m wrong. I just didn’t have the creativity to see that it actually makes perfect sense to keep something precious to you in a clear case with bolts going through it. In fact, the only issue I have with Bolted now is: too few bolts. Get a baker’s dozen or so of those bolts running through their card to really make sure it’s in place for good.

Michael proves that old Dai Vernon quote correct…

---

I just cracked myself up. I was watching Asi Wind’s Vanishing Inc Lecture. And he said something like, “And then you ask them to write down something you couldn’t know. Like their dog’s name, or the name of the first person they kissed.”

And I said, “Or the name of the first dog they kissed.”

And I’ve been delighted by that for a good 8 minutes.

It’s super late though and everything is funny to me at this time of night.

Perhaps you can put it in your show. Maybe as one of those moment of faux humility the pros sometimes script into their performance.

“Now I’d like you to write down something I couldn’t know. Like the name of the first dog you kissed or something like that. And what I’m going to do is… wait… what’s going on? Huh? What did I say? Oh my god, how embarrassing. I meant to say, ‘Like the name of your dog or the name of the first person you kissed.’ How silly of me. And I’m supposed to be the one with the super-powered mind! Hahaha! Oh boy. What a charming mistake on my part.”

“But seriously, write down something I couldn’t know. If you did kiss a dog, hell, write down the dog’s name! Hahaha. What a totally fun spontaneous moment! Perhaps you didn’t even kiss the dog. Maybe you just gave him a hand-job. Or got him off in some other way. Maybe you have some ‘rule’ about only kissing when you’re in love. You’re like a Julia-Roberts-in-Pretty-Woman-style prostitute. So you sucked that dog’s dick or ate out his furry little asshole or something, right? Hahaha. Get your face all up in there. ‘Ahhgahhgahhgahh. Yumyumyumyumyum.” Who knows? Whose to say? We’re just having fun here. Hey, maybe you were on the receiving end of a multi-dog gang-bang and all holes were filled with hot dog cock. I don’t know. It happens. And it makes my job more difficult because I have to think of which of those dogs you’d be likely to think about. You see what I’m saying? Haha. Hey, do we have fun at a Joshua Jay show or what?”

---

Okay, beat it. See you in August.

The Deconstructed Journal

A couple weeks ago when I wrote up my magic organizational system using Notion, I mentioned that I use the application to organize many other things in my life as well. I received a few emails asking how else I use it, so I decided to discuss that today.

Things I track in Notion that would may be of general use/interest to others:

Books I Read

I track Title, Author, Start and End Date, and short summary.

Movies I Watch

I track Title, Director, Date I watched it, Who I watched it with, and short summary.

Seasons of Television I Watch

I track Name of the show; the Season; the day I started watching; the day I ended watching; if it’s the sort of show that tells one story over the course of the season I’ll write a couple sentences about the arc of the season; and I have a checkbox to indicate if I’ve completed the full series, and another checkbox if I’m rewatching the season.

Meetups and Dates

If I’m seeing someone I don’t see on a regular basis, I’ll keep track of it here: Who I saw, where I saw them, the date, anything interesting or amusing that happened.

Things that made me laugh really hard

Not just laugh a little, but if a conversation or something I’m watching/listening too has me doubled over with laughter, I’ve started keeping track of that. It’s fun to relive the things that almost made you pee your pants.

Notes on non-fiction books

If I’m reading about something historical, or something like that, I don’t keep notes. But if it’s a book about anything productive or business-y, I’ll usually make note of the 3-5 valuable sentences in the whole book.

App Ideas

I have no idea how to make an app, but I better learn because I have close to 100 ideas for apps.

Business Ideas

Products, inventions, potential money making ideas.

Story Ideas

Basic plot elements for things that may one day emerge in some creative outlet.

Meals

Not every meal. But when I’m eating somewhere new, I’ll note the restaurant, rate it, and mention the best thing I ate.

Outings/Adventures

I make note of where I went, what I did, who I was with, the date it occurred.

My Anticipation List

I’ll discuss this in a future post, but basically it’s just a list of stuff I’m looking forward to and the date those things are happening.

Finally, I have some daily checklist stuff for habits and tasks I need to do daily.

Beyond that I have a bunch of pages devoted to specific projects I’m involved with.

I would say I’ve moved 95% of my planning/tracking systems over to Notion. The one thing it’s actually not good at is any spreadsheet that you’re using to manipulate numbers and data. For those sorts of things I still use Google Sheets.

As the title of this post suggests, I think of this manner of tracking things as a “deconstructed journal.” The nice thing about Notion is that any database you keep that has a date element in it can be converted into a calendar with just one click. So I can just change the view to “Calendar” view and see who I was with, what I was doing, what I was watching or reading, etc. It’s perhaps not the best choice if you want to journal about your thoughts and feelings and hopes and dreams (although you could do that as well). But if you just want to keep track of the things and people and events and moments that make up your life, it’s a really good way to do that.