Today I want to share a a video of Bill Callahan and Bonnie Prince Billy covering the Cat Stevens song, “Blackness of the Night.” It’s a real pretty version featuring some haunting man-on-man harmonies. And the video was directed by our friend, and Jerx supporter, Toby H. Check it out…
For the past few days I’ve been posting as David Copperfield on Twitter. (Well, a very enthusiastic, emoji-loving version of David Copperfield, at least.) I’ll be deleting the posts soon, since they won’t make sense when I change my twitter photo and name back. But I’ve collected them here for posterity.
Do you have any suggestion-based tricks in your 100-trick Repertoire? —MG
Not really. I don’t think suggestion-based tricks really work in the type of situations in which I perform. I’m not totally convinced they work all that well in any performing situation.
In the early days of focus-group testing we did less live performing and more testing where we would show people recorded performances of magicians and get their feedback based on those performances. The lowest scores I ever saw were connected to magicians doing suggestion based routines.
When performed for a group or large audience, it’s generally just one person who experiences the suggestion. So the audience perceives the effect through that one person. But that person’s reaction is almost never what you’d expect it to be if the effect was really happening. Instead, their reaction always has to be teased out of them. So you’re putting the full audience’s experience in the hands of someone who is reacting nowhere near the way they should if events were truly unfolding as the magician/mentalist is implying. It’s just not a very structurally sound way to build an effect.
I saw a mentalist once tell a woman to look at the palm of her hand and he said something along the lines of, “And you’ll notice the lines on your hand are starting to move and twist around.” And she looked at her palm and was like, “Uhm… okay, yeah.” And I feel like he thought that was a success because he got her to say yes. But it didn’t really ring true to the audience.
It should have gone like this:
“Look at the palm of your hand. You’ll notice the lines—”
“Holy fuck, what’s happening to me!!! The goddamn lines on my palm are moving!! Someone call a doctor!”
And in one-on-one performances suggestion-based effects have other issues.
Think of a coin bend. You’re holding a coin in your hand and I say, “And if you concentrate you’ll really feel it getting warmer. Warmer and warmer and now it’s getting softer and starting to bend. You can feel that, yes?” You may end up agreeing to that or not, but even if you do, on some level, you’re going to realize that I talked you into that response. Unless it’s something you really want to believe for yourself, you are going to sense the suggestion.
If I tell you you’re going to see or feel something and then you have to try to see or feel that thing, that’s not strong.
In my experience, there is nothing that takes people’s enjoyment down more than feeling like they had to “play along” with the magician. If people like being fooled, then they want to be fooled with their defenses up. If they don’t like being fooled, they’re not going to enjoy being coerced into pretending to be fooled either.
While I don’t use suggestion as a sole method for any effects I do, I think you can use suggestion to get people to feel and sense certain imagined stimuli, but you don’t do it by using coercion. You do it by planting a seed and then allowing them to water it. It’s something I think of as “anti-suggestion.”
For example, if the spectator has a coin they don’t know is bent held in their fist, I might say…
“I want you to imagine yourself sending energy from your heart, into your arm, and down into your hand. You might be able to feel a warm sensation radiating down your arm as you do this.”
Notice, I’m not saying they will feel it. I’m just saying they might feel it. And the truth is, if you concentrate on a part of your body, and imagine it felling warmer, it usually will. But that’s not the anti-suggestion.
I’ll then say, “Continue to feel the energy move down your arm and into the coin in your fist. Some people, if they’re particularly tuned in and sensitive, will feel the coin start getting warm, and the metal starting to soften a little. You’re probably not going to feel that, given this is your first time. But don’t worry, that doesn’t mean it’s not working.”
Anti-suggestion is telling people something they’re not going to feel/see/experience.
So now if you do get a hint of this thing I told you that you probably won’t feel, it becomes something you’re going to magnify in your mind without any pressure from me.
Here’s another example. Sometimes I’ll do a simple nailwriting trick where I try and send some initials to my spectator. I sort of guide them through the mental preparation required to receive the thought from me. And then I say something like, “When you get good at this, and you’ve practiced it, you’ll close your eyes and sort of see a sea of letters, far away in blue. And after some time thinking over those letters, two will rush up to the forefront of your mind’s eye and they will glow big and bright in a fiery red. That’s probably not going to happen now. That’s just an idea of what the process might look like someday.”
Then I have them concentrate and give me two letters and about half of the time they’ll say something like, “It was just like you described it. A mass of blue letters and then two bright red letters just shot to the front.”
And I’m like, “Wow… really?” As if I’m impressed. As if I didn’t just tell them exactly how to envision thinking of these letters.
My favorite way to use Anti-Suggestion is to say, “[Something] is probably not going to happen.” And then do something to make sure it happens. I call this Enhanced Anti-Suggestion.
Here are the three varietals of suggestion in action. Let’s say the spectator has a word written on a business card under their hand. I say, “I’m going to extend the aura from my hands, slide it under your hand, and use my aura to feel the word on the business card.” As my hands approach their hand:
Traditional Suggestion: “You’re going to feel my aura as it surrounds your hand. Yes? You can feel it? Like a little tingle, yes? And you can feel it slide under your hand as well. Be honest. Does it feel more like a tickle or a tingle?”
Anti-Suggestion: “Okay, you’re probably not going to feel this. Unless you have a very sensitive aura yourself. Then you might be able to feel our auras interact as my hands are close to yours. It will feel like a tingle. But it doesn’t matter if you don’t feel it. I’m just going to slide my aura near yours…”
Enhanced Anti-Suggestion: Verbally I would say the same thing as I do in anti-suggestion, but I would also use a loop or other form of invisible thread to make them feel the thing I told them they weren’t going to feel.
That’s the Enhanced Anti-Suggestion technique. It’s very strong. Spectator’s don’t expect something to happen that’s stranger than what the magician says is likely to happen.
Both regular and enhanced Anti-Suggestion are ways to make the spectator push the suggestion rather than have you try and pull it out of them. I think this is psychologically a much stronger technique. And it can work regardless of what the spectator’s disposition is towards you. If they like you and want you to succeed, then they will amplify any sensation you hint at. And if they’re fighting you, then the worst that can happen is that they will be forced to agree with you that they didn’t feel what you told them they’d be unlikely to feel. But they may actually fight you enough to persuade themselves into feeling what you said they weren’t going to feel.
And the best part about this is that it’s almost impossible to screw up Anti-Suggestion whereas it’s seemingly really easy to screw up traditional suggestion. I say that because—while I’m sure there are some performers who use suggestion masterfully—most often it comes off as something between bullying and “I’m just going to make this as awkward as possible until you go ahead and agree with what I’m suggesting so we can move the hell on with our lives.”
Our buddy, Marc Kerstein has released the second “season” of his app, Amalgam. This app doesn’t do one specific thing, it collects different apps that Marc has created under one umbrella. You can buy apps individually or in 4-app groups.
I haven’t had much time to experiment with the new apps in this release, but the one I’ve played around with the most is called Inertia, and it’s really good. You know those phone forces where you would hold the phone upside down and have them scroll blindly and whatever picture or item they landed on would be forced (usually because their scrolling wasn’t doing anything). Well, this app allows you to do that type of force face-up while the spectator looks at the phone. It’s so good and “feels” exactly like it should. I’m looking forward to playing around with it some more.
Today I wanted to share a routine I’ve been using for an effect in the first season of Amalgam called Watch.
In this trick, you show the spectator a picture and you ask them to name a time, when you zoom into a clock or watch in that picture, it’s shown to have that exact time on it.
I like this one a lot and have used it quite a bit.
This is the presentation I’ve been using for it recently if I’m showing it to someone I don’t know that well. (I have a weirder presentation for people I know.)
When they ask to see a trick…
“I don’t really have my cards or anything on me to show you a trick. But I can show you something that’s sort of like magic. It’s like a weird psychology test… or game. It’s even weirder than a trick in some ways.”
I open my phone and pull up the photo.
"The game is called Five Lies and a Truth. I’m going to tell you five lies about this photo, and then we’re going to follow that up with a truth. Okay?”
The spectator is probably not quite understanding what exactly I mean at this point, but they’ll agree to play along.
I count out the lies on my fingers:
“This group is all my best friends. They were applauding for me. It wasn’t my birthday or anything, they just really appreciate how nice and funny I am.”
“This photo was taken on a Thursday.”
“That’s Lisa. She was my girlfriend at the time this photo was taken. We dated for a while. But she said it was intimidating to be with me, because I’m so handsome. So we split up.”
“That’s Jerry. He’s 48, but I thought he was 42.”
“Everyone in this photo is still alive today.”
Your “lies” can be anything. I just make them up in the moment. But they usually include a mixture of things that sound self-aggrandizing, and some things that sound dull but perhaps will carry some weight in the spectator’s mind when they look back on it, i.e., “When he said the one guy was one age but he thought he was the other, was he trying to suggest a number to me?”
And then the last “lie” is just something to sound mildly ominous and introduce a weird energy into the mix.
“Okay,” I say, “So those were the five lies. But I said this was called Five Lies and A Truth. So there has to be one true statement as well. What makes this interesting is that you’re the one who’s going to make the true statement, okay? I want you to tell me the exact time this photo was taken.”
I say the “exact time” because I found if I just said, “the time,” they would say a very non-specific sounding time like noon or 3pm.
So maybe she says 12:19.
“And that is… true! Good job.” I say as I zoom into the photo and onto someone’s watch where she sees it says 12:19.
For me this is just the right amount of presentation for this type of trick. I want to give it a little more build than just saying: “Name a time. Look, here it is.” But on the other hand, it’s not the sort of thing that I want to build up too much either. Making it a couple minutes long and adding a bit of intrigue with the premise (“What does he mean ‘five lies and a truth’? Am I going to have to tell the truth from the lies? What exactly is the game here?”) and then having the small twist of it being their own statement that is going to be the true statement—that works for me as a good everyday routine to have in my pocket when I have a little time to kill with someone.
I stayed at my friends’ place this weekend. They have two kids, 8 and 10 years old. The idea for this trick came to me in during the day and I performed it for them that night when they went to brush their teeth. The kids freaked out—running around, screaming and spitting toothpaste foam everywhere. I don’t do too much performing for kids, but I think this is a perfect casual kid’s trick. It’s a variation on a standard beginner’s magic trick, but with a kicker ending that blows their dumb little minds.
There’s a trick from Tarbell called Ear It Is by Harry Crawford. You may know it even if you don’t think you do. It’s a coin vanish where you tap the coin with a pencil, only to have the pencil vanish. You show the pencil is really just behind your ear. During that misdirection, you ditch the coin. Then you make it “really” vanish.
If you don’t know it, here’s me teaching the trick.
Just kidding, that’s not me. But that’s the trick I’m talking about.
So this weekend, when the kids were brushing their teeth, I walked past the bathroom and said, “You guys want to see a trick?”
Propositioning pre-teens in the bathroom is something many of you are more comfortable with than I am, but the door was open and their parents were right there, so it wasn’t anything sketchy. And, of course, they wanted to see a trick.
I grabbed my toothbrush and took the cap off the toothpaste tube. I did the same pen/coin vanish as in Ear It Is, just with the toothbrush and the cap. I would say the kids were moderately impressed by that. Even for kids, it’s not that great a trick.
What really set them off was when they asked me where the cap was and I pointed to the toothpaste tube that was no longer within arms reach of me, and the cap was back on the tube.
The method was simply that I had the extra cap from the toothpaste tube I travelled with. When I was starting the trick I took their tube and mimed removing the cap and then brought my extra cap into view and focused attention on that. I tossed their tube of toothpaste aside so it ended up far away from me. No one is paying that much attention at that stage, so just miming removing the cap is as fooling as it needs to be.
And from there, it’s just the standard effect with different props.
The way the trick progresses: from a sort of “gag” vanish, to a real vanish, to an unexpected reappearance, is very strong from a kid’s perspective, I think.
Later that night, my friend went into her 8-year-old’s room and he was lying in bed, hands clasped behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. “I can’t go to sleep,” he said. “I can’t stop thinking about that toothpaste trick!”
I can tell this trick is going to stick with them for quite some time, maybe forever, similar to the way I still vividly remember dumb tricks I saw when I was a kid. That’s why it will be especially fun, years from now, when they mention this trick to deny it ever happened and try and convince them that it must have been a shared hallucination.
I have a question about today's post (Canned Responses).
I've performed socially a number of times for a number of different friends, and there's always this moment where they realize that the whole thing is... a trick. Does that make sense? They realize that this very interesting conversation we've been having, this strange concept or folktale or whatever that they're learning about was just a set up for a trick.
And don't get me wrong; nobody's mad about it. Everyone enjoyed the experience. But something turns at that moment, when they realize it was a setup for a piece of magic. And then, when they ask, "How did you do that?" and I double down, "Oh it's my dead grandma," that's when I begin to lose them. That's when they say, "Okay, well you can drop that now."
Lately I've been getting sharp enough to just shift the conversation before they have the chance to start asking those questions, but I was wondering if you could speak to this at all. —LB
There are a few issues here.
The first is this: “The moment where they realize that the whole thing is a trick.”
That “moment” should be when you start the trick.
If you think something is a documentary and then 3/4s of the way through you realize it’s not, you will feel misled. But if you know you’re watching a work of fiction—and yet there are moments that seem like they must be real—then you are going to be even more engrossed and affected by what you’re watching. So there’s no reason to ever have the audience in the dark about the overall nature of the experience.
Second, I don’t really get into any immersive styles of performance until the spectator has shown themselves to be interested and accepting of that style. See this post for a discussion of the progression I use when performing for people and you’ll see how I ease people into it. If at any point along that process the person is like, “Hey.. wait… what? That’s not real. You don’t know a psychic baby!” Then I just pull off the throttle presentationally.
The purpose of giving people better presentations is to give them something of interest besides just the secret—besides just the “how it was done.” If they’re the sort of people who only want to focus on the “how,” then don’t waste a more interesting presentation on them. I’m not saying I wouldn’t ever show people like that magic, I just wouldn’t bother showing them anything that was doing anything interesting presentationally. If it’s only ever going to be a puzzle to be solved, then you’re not served by creating stories/experiences. You’re served by giving them the most difficult to solve puzzles.
Third, don’t hesitate to abandon a trick if the lead-in gets too real or too personal. While I want people to know it’s a trick as early as possible, there still may be a point where I transition into the trick from a real discussion. So, let’s say it’s a trick about luck. My plan might be something like this:
Nudge the conversation toward the subject of luck.
Bring up the concept of a Luck Test or a Luck Ritual or a Luck Formula or whatever.
Transition from that concept into the trick.
Now, my audiences know once #2 happens that they’re on the path to a trick. They don’t necessarily know if this is something I planned or if it’s a spur of the moment sort of thing, but they do get a sense of where things are going the moment I say, “There’s something really unusual I was reading the other day….”
So they know it’s a trick pretty early on.
You might say, “Yes, but aren’t they bothered by the fact that during the conversation at #1, they didn’t know what your intentions were?”
No.
It’s simple. If we’re just have a quick, casual conversation that leads into a trick, they’re not going to feel manipulated by that. And if we end up having a deep, intense conversation on the subject, then I’m not going to go into the trick. I’ll save it for another day, rather than undermine the interaction we just had.
The final issue to touch on is in this section of your email:
And then, when they ask, "How did you do that?" and I double down, "Oh it's my dead grandma," that's when I begin to lose them. That's when they say, "Okay, well you can drop that now."
This suggests they’re probably not the right audience for this type of presentation. If they’re disputing the notion that your dead grandmother cut the deck of cards, they’re not taking the presentation in the spirit in which it’s intended. In the future, just show them normal card tricks.
But if you get yourself in that situation, the only thing to do is lean into it 150%. “I swear on the lives of my children that my grandmother’s ghost cut that deck of cards.” By making it even more ridiculous you highlight how dumb it is to dispute it.
Another thing I’ve done a couple times in the past with some success it to hint at why I’m presenting the trick this way. So if they say, “Tell me how you did that. I know it wasn’t your dead grandmother.”
I’d reply with something like: “I’m not sure what you’re suggesting. You’re saying that wasn’t my dead grandmother who cut that deck? So then… what? Are you saying that I know some way to make a deck cut without anybody touching it? That’s fine if you want to believe that. I’m flattered, actually. But why wouldn’t I take credit for that?”
This logic is particularly hard to debate. Why would you not take credit for something? Especially given magic’s usual reputation as being a battle of wits. The hope being that if they consider why you’re presenting it this way, they’ll realize you’re not looking for praise or validation, and in turn they don’t need to look for “the secret.” I think subtly pointing this out to people can change their attitude a little. But it’s not something I do too often. I prefer to just perform for the people who get it instinctively.
I was wondering whether you had any thoughts about presenting a trick similar to a long joke with low payoff. It would be akin to Norm Macdonald’s moth joke.
I haven’t bought the haunted deck trick by Jeki Yoo yet, but I was thinking along the lines of presenting it by going to an older house and saying something to the effect of being able to contact the dead by playing music that particularly resonates with them. Because it’s an older house, we need to make sure that anything that happens is specifically in response to what we’re doing, hopefully justifying the selection procedure. In everyone’s heads we’re thinking of lights going out, doors slamming, and the like. We could light some candles, chant something in Latin, and finally, with everyone watching the deck, have someone press play on my phone. Immediately, “Down with the Sickness” comes out of the speakers, and executing the trick. It’s *something*, but far below what anyone was hoping for.
I know that, structure wise, it isn’t very strong. It’s the opposite of what we generally want from a trick. The thought process behind it would be to set up an interaction with a low bar that any follow up tricks would exceed easily. Do you think this is an idea worth pursuing?—AR
I think the basic premise here is great. In AR’s full email he talks about maybe incorporating this trick into other performances later on. But I wouldn’t do that. I would just keep it as a “shaggy dog” magic trick. I’d want it to feel like a clear joke, not part of anything else I’m doing with them. Making it part of a larger routine actually takes away from the experience in a way, because the purpose of a shaggy dog story is that the payoff is so minimal and the story was so purposeless. So I would try and keep it that way.
I used to do something similar, which I think I wrote about previously somewhere. I had one of those coin vanish boxes where the drawer slides into a sleeve.
I would have that on the table along with an old, ornate wooden box, about the size of a shoe box. I’d borrow a coin, put it into the plastic thing, and close it. Then I’d take a key, and unlock the wooden box and open it up. I’d slowly unfold several layers of fabric that were surrounding what was in the box. Then I’d get to a long velvet bag, that was tied shut with some string. I’d unknot the string from the bag and I would pull out two parts of a magic wand that screwed together like a pool stick. I’d twist the two pieces together until the magic wand was complete. Then I’d remove another small bag from the box. Untie the knot holding it shut, and remove a small piece of fabric which I’d use to polish the wand. After all this I would take the wand and tap the plastic box. Then I’d do it all in reverse. Fold up the polishing fabric, put it in a bag, and knot the top. Unscrew the wand, put the pieces in the velvet bag, tie it back up. Place the bags in the box and one-by-one, fold in the corners of the fabric pieces in the box. I’d close the box, lock it up, and set it aside.
This all took minutes to achieve. Then I would slide the plastic drawer out to show the coin was gone.
I considered not having the coin disappear and saying, “Oh wait, I was supposed to tap it twice,” and then start in on the process all over again. But I can’t remember if I ever did that.
I wouldn’t be too abusive with this sort of thing. I wouldn’t take up hours of someone’s time for a trick that didn’t really go anywhere. But 20 minutes? Yeah, I might do that.
Ideally this wouldn’t be one of the first things you show someone. If it is, they won’t get the joke. They’ll just think it was underwhelming, like most magic tricks. Instead you should perform this sort of thing for people who have enjoyed some longer, immersive tricks in the past.
The idea of setting up some gothic, ritualistic effect and ending it by playing Down With the Sickness and having something very minor happen is a fun one.
The hard part will be finding an effect that’s minor enough to make the joke work. The fact of the matter is, with enough build up, even the smallest effect can feel significant to people. Maybe the way to go is to light the candles, do the chants, sacrifice a stray cat, draw a pentagram in blood… then pull out a Criss Angel magic kit and do something from that.
I have a bunch of ideas for apps (mostly non-magic) that no one wants but me. I’ve put some time into learning to code, but it’s always my lowest priority, so I’m moving slowly on it. I’ve decided I’ll occasionally share an app idea here. Then, if someone who creates apps has some time to kill, they can pop out the app. This isn’t a money-making situation. I’m not going to pay you to make it (because I don’t really care) and you’re not going to pay me for the idea if you do end up creating and selling the app (again, because I don’t really care and no one is likely to buy it).
This first app would be called Who Won?
This is an app that will tell you who won the day’s games in sports.
But that’s all it will tell you. It won’t tell you what the score was, or anything that happened during the game.
You see, I like sports, and I often don’t get to watch a game live. So I’ll record it to watch later.
That’s fine, but I don’t want to spend a couple hours watching a game if the team I like lost. I don’t consider that an enjoyable use of my time.
So it’s just a matter of looking up who won to see if I want to watch it. But if I am going to watch the game, I don’t really want to know any of the details about what occurred other than who won. I don’t want to know the score or anything that happened in the game. I want to be surprised if it’s a last second win, or a blow-out, or a big comeback or whatever.
So that would be the purpose of this app.
The simplest version would just be a scoreboard of various sports, but without the scores. So the winning team would just be highlighted a certain color or whatever.
A more advanced version would allow you to pick certain teams in different sports and leagues and you would just get the results for those particular teams.
If anyone decides to build this, let me know. I’ll buy a copy and you’ll make 99 cents (*well, 65 cents after Apple’s cut).
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