51 Cases South

Here is a theoretical idea for a parlor or stage routine. I don’t know if it’s any good, but I think it’s kind of interesting and there are a couple moments in the piece that I like.

The magician says, “One time I saw this guy perform a trick. He had a deck of cards. He told me to name any card in the deck. I named the 5 of Hearts. Very slowly, without doing anything sneaky, he slid the deck from the card case, spread the cards between his hands, and there was one card reversed in the deck. It was the 5 of Hearts.

“Do you want to know how he did it? Well, the truth is, I don’t know. And the reason I don’t isn’t because I can’t think of a way it can be done. It’s because I know of so many ways it could be done that I don’t know which method he used.

“One thing people don’t understand about magicians is how much they’re specialists. There are performers who can make things appear. There are performers who can make objects change color. There are performers who can make things float. Some can do all these things. But not many. It’s like playing an instrument. There are some guys who can play a lot of instruments well. But usually if you play a bunch of instruments you’re really only particularly good at one and just okay at the others. Magic is like that too. Most everyone has their speciality.

“So if you want to do the trick where the one card the person names is found reversed in the deck, you’re going to use the method that’s in line with your specialty. Some guys know what people will say, so they just reverse the card they know will be named. Some guys can make you say something without you knowing it. So they just reverse any random card and make sure that’s the one you name. Some guys don’t know what you’ll say, and they can’t make you say anything, but they can make things appear. So they just wait for you to name a card and then make it appear face-up in the deck. Other performers can change an object’s orientation, so for them it’s simply a matter of magically reversing the card. And still others can cloud people’s minds. They’ll tell you that your card is reversed in the deck, and you’ll swear you see that it is, but it’s not really there.

“Tonight I’ll show you how I would do the trick.”

The curtain behind the performer opens and there is a sawhorse on either end of the stage with a piece of wood resting across the two. The wood is just a few inches in width, but it extends across the entire stage. The wood is acting as a shelf that is about hip height to the performer. On top of the “shelf” are 52 decks of cards in their cases, standing on their bottom edge.

The performer has a few members of the audience work together to name a card. They come up with the 3 of Diamonds.

“The 3 of Diamonds? Okay, okay.”

The magician steps back so he’s standing behind the shelf of cards that goes all the way across the stage.

“3 of Diamonds, 3 of Diamonds, 3 of Diamonds,” he mumbles as he slowly walks down the row of decks. “It should be here, I think.” He picks up one of the cases. Opens it up and thumbs through the cards a bit. “Nope, one off,” he says. And puts that case back down.

He takes the next case in the row and removes the deck of cards from it.

“Look. Pay close attention. All I do is spread this deck, very cleanly. And… miraculously… the one card you named is the one card that’s reversed in this deck.”

The magician spreads to one reversed card. He pulls it out, and it’s the 3 of Diamonds. The audience is unimpressed.

“When I said I could make your freely named card be the one card that was reversed in the deck, you probably didn’t imagine me having 51 other decks in play. That is a little underwhelming, I suppose. As you probably guessed, there is a different card reversed in each of these decks.”

The magician puts the deck of cards back in its case and replaces the case on the shelf where it was originally.

He then walks over to one edge of the shelf, still standing behind it.

“It’s not impressive when you see it like that. But that’s the method I need to use. I’m not good at making things appear. And I’m not good at making predictions.

“What I am… is a vanisher.”

The magician removes a magic wand from his inside coat pocket and begins to walk behind the row of decks. He makes a tapping motion above the cards on the near end of of the row. “Bippity,” he says, and continues walking. When he gets to the middle of the row he makes another tapping motion with the wand. “Boppity,” he says. As he gets to the far end of the row he makes a final tapping motion above the cards on that end. “Boo,” he says.

Then he flicks his wrist of the hand holding the wand and the “wand” unfolds. It’s actually a black folding fan with white tips.

The magician once agains walks behind the shelf. This time he holds the fan at hip height and flutters it in short, rapid movements at the decks. As he walks, the breeze from the fan causes the card cases to fall off the plank of wood, tumbling to the floor where they clatter emptily, following the magicians path across the stage. When he reaches the other side, only one case is still standing, the one from which he had spread to the named card earlier.

Method

Well, you know, it’s just an invisible deck and a bunch of empty cases, of course.

The trick was inspired by some emails from Joe Mckay in which he suggested a few different sucker tricks using an invisible deck and a number of empty card cases where the spectators would assume you had access to a bunch of decks in order to do your trick, but then you reveal that all the cases are empty. (The original idea here seems to belong to Dr. Sawa. Although similar concepts have been explored by a few other magicians, including Asi Wind on his Fool Us appearance.)

What I wanted to do was remove the “sucker trick” element of the effect. Rather than say, “Ah-ha! I fooled you. You thought all these other cases contained decks too, but they’re actually empty!” I decided to go with the idea that yes, these other cases did in fact have decks in them, but I’ve caused them to vanish. If one was ever to perform this for real, I would recommend adding a couple convincers at the start to reinforce the idea that there are 52 actual decks on stage. For example, you could “accidentally” knock one of the decks off the wooden shelf, causing its cards to spill out on the floor. In the process of gathering up the cards and returning the deck back to its original position, you would switch the cased deck for an empty one at some moment where your body is blocking the view of the audience.

I think it’s kind of an interesting effect. I like the premise, and the idea of giving them a peek behind the curtain of how different magic specialists would accomplish the same trick. I like using an Invisible Deck as the method for a vanish. And I like the fact that it sort of jerks people around with what they’re seeing. I would assume that after the decks “vanish” a good portion of the audience will come to the conclusion that those decks never were there. But if that’s true, they have to reassess the moment where the magician spread the cards to show their reversed card. This moment—that originally meant nothing—is now the moment of impossibility (if it’s true the other cases were empty all along).

My original idea was to turn on an oscillating fan behind the cases, so it would blow them all off in sequence except the one that held the Invisible Deck. But I like the folding fan idea a little better. Mainly because I like the idea of the thing they assume is an “ordinary” wand, unfolding into a handheld fan. (Which seems like a prop that should already exist, but I did some searching and couldn’t find anything.)

Monday Mailbag #46

I know that you prefer performing for people one-on-one or for just a couple of people, but I was wondering if you had any thoughts about performing for small groups of friends (5 or so)? I am much more likely to be in a situation to perform magic for friends in these smaller groups than with just one or two. Excepting my wife, who at this point is more like performing for another magician (although I’m slowly training her to change her expectations as I have been changing my style closer to your suggestions).

If you are in a group of people and some have seen you perform before, but some have not, would you cater your performance specifically to the people who have seen you before or to someone who has not (e.g., something short and visual mainly involving a friend who hasn’t seen you perform)?

What sort of qualities do you look for in tricks for a handful of people? Do you lean towards tricks or presentations that directly involve more people (e.g., one person names a color, another the suit, another the value) or perform more or less the same as if you were performing one-on-one? —DW

Up until receiving this question, I never realized how little experience I have in this sort of situation. Primarily because I prefer performing one-on-one. And probably also because, for whatever reason, I don’t run into many situation where a few people have seen me perform and a few people haven’t. It usually skews heavily one way or the other.

But if I’m at a small dinner party or game night with three people who know me and two who don’t and I decide to perform something, this is my general thought process:

1. I would go for something mid-level weird. Like, for example, I wouldn’t go for something totally traditional, like a 4 Ace routine. And I wouldn’t go for something way out there, like a two-hour immersive time travel adventure. But I would sort of split the difference with something that takes a few minutes and has a mildly bizarre premise. “Oh, sure. I can show you something. Let me think… Well, I have been reading up the subject of ‘induced deja vu.’ This is kind of crazy….”

   I find you can push the envelope a little more in group settings, even when they include first-timers. If I’m performing one-on-one for you for the first time, and I start off with something too weird, then your guard is up and you might not be able to go along with the experience like I’d want you to. But if it’s the first time you’re seeing me perform and there is a group there who seems comfortable with me and what I’m showing them, then you’re going to trust their judgment.

2. I would gear my performance toward the new person or people. When your friends or family pimp you out to show something to someone who hasn’t seen you perform before, it’s because they want to watch that person’s reaction. So in the specific case where you have some newcomers and some old-timers, I would gear the material towards the newcomers and let the others enjoy splitting their focus between the trick and the person’s reaction.

As far as material goes, there are obviously some tricks that require.a group, and some tricks that are perhaps too subtle or intimate to be done any way other than one-on-one. Beyond that, I tend to keep the “sillier” stuff for groups, because the fun tends to build with more people there. And I keep stuff with a more intense emotional element for one-on-one performances, because if one person in a group doesn’t buy into it, it can ruin the atmosphere for everyone.

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I was reading your May 7 post on the false shuffle and this came to mind: In Annemann's book 'Shh It's a secret' there's an entry called 'the $1000 test card location'. Quickly described, you hand the stacked deck to them and innocently hurry them through a quick shuffle. Turn around, have them cut the deck, take and remember the top card, put the card anywhere in the deck. You turn back around, take back the deck, peek the bottom card, reveal their card per the stack. About 80% hit. If not, repeat and you will almost certainly hit. I can vouch for its effectiveness. —RC

Yup, that works. The issue with that in a casual situation is that there is no good way to “innocently hurry them through a quick shuffle.” In a formal performance it makes sense to move things along at a good clip. So handing the the deck to shuffle and quickly taking it back works fine. In a social situation it can be a little awkward. What’s the hurry? It’s just us here hanging out.

When it comes to things like shuffling or examining objects, people have their own internal metronome. And if you rush them, they can feel it. So rather than trying to force someone into your own pacing for the sake of a method, I find it’s better to make note of people’s predilections and then take advantage of them at a further date. If you notice when you give someone a deck to shuffle that they just give it a few overhand chops and hand it back, then you know you can utilize that Annemann technique without it feeling internally “off” to them.

Similarly, you’ll find people who examine objects rather cursorily and others who take a deep dive into the object. Once you know that about them, you can choose material that takes advantage of those proclivities.

There are many effects and methods that rely on a certain pacing. Whenever possible I try to save those effects for people who naturally interact at that pace.

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Just wanted to report my experience trying out Yento recently. I have never felt such an exciting atmosphere when sharing magic with people as this. It just felt different. Something truly magical. Thank you. I actually slightly messed up the trick itself, but IT DIDN'T MATTER. They were enthralled by the story and I am starting to see how much more powerful that can be than just busting out moves. I've attached a pic of my package and I look forward to trying out some more of your effects soon. —TC

Nicely done.

I receive a fairly consistent flow of emails from people relating their performance experiences of tricks I’ve created or presentational ideas I’ve suggested. I sometimes feel like I should post more of these emails because it might encourage people to try some of the odder ideas if they knew they were working for other people as well. At one time that was going to be a new series of posts, but I kind of abandoned the idea because it felt self-serving and self-promotional, and I’m sort of grossed out by that stuff. (Probably not a great trait to have if a portion of your livelihood depends on people supporting your work.)

That said, I always like seeing people’s Yento packages. Send me a picture of your package!!!

WAIT NO, FUCK…. THAT’S NOT WHAT I MEANT!

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I’m going to end today’s mailbag with an email from Jonathan S. As a stupid person, I’m not sure I understood it 100%. And as the person whose creative work it comments on, I’m not sure it’s productive to spend too much time dissecting my own work to find out how “integral” or “Metamodern” it might be. But as a general way of thinking about the performance of magic, I think some of you who enjoy taking a more studied approach to this sort of thing might find it interesting.

Regarding your discussion of the differences between male magicians and female magicians I thought it might be valuable to offer up a framing we use in our transformative media classes, which emerges from work done by psychologist Carol Gilligan. She identifies the principles of Agency and Communion, which are masculine and feminine principles respectively (not necessarily male and female). Agency is about doing things: think about "guy" films in which (usually male) heroes take action to affect an outcome. Communion is about relationships between people, often seen in films thought of as "chick pics" which involve personal development of characters through interactions.

A work we think of as Integral will tend to combine Agency and Communion, characters taking action to affect an outcome but often in the service of a personal evolutionary arc which changes the way they relate to the world and other people. Game of Thrones, Source Code, the Lord of the Rings trilogy...these are examples of cinematic works that combine Agency and Communion throughout.

Although these are thought of as masculine and feminine qualities they don't necessarily line up with male and female characters or creators. Some men are into relationship fields and some women are more action-oriented. Nevertheless, they tend to follow gender lines, though on a continuum.

Where this principle applies to magic is that the field has been dominated by males, who generally think in terms of Agency: Do things, so other things happen. As women are entering into the magic space we are indeed seeing more communion in magic, more exploration of relationships and emotions, beauty and rhythm. I think women in general just tend to have this type of orientation more than men and I am quite thrilled to see it start filtering through the magic world.

When you see a female magician picking up the worst habits of male magicians, often it's because they are learning to privilege Agency (action, eye candy) over Communion (meaning, connection). My working theory is it's quite noticeable when women magicians "act like male magicians" because we intuitively tend to expect more emotional complexity from women. So my speculation is that the superficiality common to so much of magic seems even more pronounced when it's a female magician embodying those same bad habits.

I think what is now being referred to as "the Jerxian style," the kind of informal presentations you are pioneering, are much more communion-oriented than typical magical works, though still with sound Agency-type magic impacts. So you're also more Integral than most.

You're also Metamodern, in the academic sense of a new artistic phase after Postmodern. (The term has also been hijacked to mean the broader developmental phase also sometimes called Integral). In its academic usage Metamodern refers to a kind of oscillation between Modernism and Postmodernism, "sincere irony," a constant tension between absolute absurdity and deeply felt sincerity. In that usage, Jerxian magic is extremely Metamodern, and you're at your best when your presentations are not merely deconstructive and absurd but also reveal some deeper beauty, meaning or hint at almost existential depth.

If you have any desire to dive deeper into this subject the best book to read by far is Hanzi Freinacht's The Listening Society, which is metamodern itself (it's often hilarious and irreverent but also deeply purposeful and serious) and designed to help evolve the reader's consciousness so they can perceive greater breadth and depth. It's a very zeitgeisty book amongst people in the Integral and developmental metatheory communities.

“To unite the many struggles
of the exploited bodies of the poor
with the struggles of the lost,
suffering souls of the rich world.
And to expand that struggle
to sustainability across time and space.
And to expand that solidarity
to fathom the vast suffering
and multiplicity of perspectives
of the animal realm in its entirety.
And to deepen the struggle
until it is reborn as play.”

Thanks for reading, if you made it through this. Sorry for the long rant; I'm rather steeped in this world though I must admit the application of Integral thinking to magic is a pretty tough nut to crack. Carisa Hendrix has lectured a bit about the academic phase of Metamodernism (the "sincere irony" oscillation that runs from Coen Brothers to Wes Anderson to TV shows like Rick & Morty) but I don't know of anyone who's really thinking seriously about the evolutionary stage after Postmodern deconstruction and how magic can be used to help accelerate the societal transition.

I'm with Terrence McKenna: The artist’s task is to save the soul of mankind; and anything less is a dithering while Rome burns.

Dustings #41

For supporters: The next newsletter will be coming out around the 30th of this month. If you have an ad you’d like placed in the issue, get it to me by next Thursday.

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Here’s something to think about for anyone considering creating a magic show for a theater setting.

Often a magic “show” is just a loose collection of tricks. I don’t see anything wrong with that. It’s like seeing a musical artist. They can just perform a dozen songs. They don’t need to be thematically linked in any way. That’s perfectly enjoyable, and I think it’s perfectly enjoyable for a magic show too.

But sometimes performers feel the need to present something a little more cohesive. And there are a few ways this can be done.

Message-focused - Sometimes the show is tied together with a message. That message might be, “Stop Bullying” or “Jesus Is Lord.” Or it might be a message about how our minds can be deceived. Or something generic like “the power of wonder” or something like that. Or—most confusing of all to me—is a message like, “This show is about one thing: You can do anything you put your mind to!” Which is a fine message for any type of demonstration except the one where you’re faking stuff you can’t really do.

Character-focused - In recent years, people like Rob Zabrecky and Carisa Hendrix have found success building their performance around a unique character. Sure, most magicians would say they have a “character.” But if you made them break it down, their character is usually, “Guy pretending to be suave who puts bills in lemons.” The problem with doing something character-driven is that for the character to really register, it usually has to be pretty out there, like Rudy Coby or something like that. And not a lot of magicians can, or want to, do something that broad.

So if you’re looking for some way to present a cohesive stage magic show and you haven’t hit on any strong message or character you want to pursue, I would suggest looking into a premise-focused show. A premise-focused show would be one where the show would be performed in a different context besides just a magician on stage performing tricks. It would add another layer of theatricality on top of that. So, while I recommend stripping theatricality from social magic, I think a formal show benefits from more of it.

What would be an example of a premise-focused show?

I’ll give you three. Note, that in all of these you would be playing a “character.” But I wouldn’t call them character-focused because it’s not some quirk of the character that is interesting. It’s the premise that is interesting.

The Rehearsal - You come out on stage and tell people that you’ve left your corporate job and the rat race and you’ve decided to pursue a passion of yours and do some good in the world by becoming an anti-drug magician who does school shows. “Unfortunately, there’s a bit of a catch-22 here. Before I can do some school shows they want to see video of my show in action. But I can’t take a video if they won’t let me do a show. So for the next 40 minutes, it would be great if you guys could help me out and stand in for the 11-13 year old’s who will make up my target audience. Just to give these decision makers a feeling for what the show would be like.” So you’d have the magic show, but also the comedy of you shoe-horning in the anti-drug message, and interacting with your audience as if they’re pre-teens. “What’s your favorite subject in school? Do you have a little boyfriend?” What I love about this idea is the sheer layers of artificiality involved. You’re you, but you’re playing the part of a magician, who is rehearsing the role of a magician. And your audience is playing the part of an audience who is playing the role of a different audience. It’s bonkers. And I could see it being very fun to do. “I know these may look like ropes, but what I actually have here are three different lengths—one small, one medium, and one long—of doobie.”

The Wake - Here’s a kind of melancholy one. You play the part of a 70-year old man whose wife loved magic. And you had been planning to surprise her by learning magic so you could perform a show for her on your 50th wedding anniversary. But she passed away a few weeks before that could occur. And now, here at her wake, you’d like to show the mourners (i.e, the audience) the show you had planned for her. Too sad? I don’t know. I think it could be sort of depressing yet sweet.

HR 642 - This is an idea I think would be fun to perform. Even though I don’t intend to do any stage performing myself, this is the sort of thing I would do. I’d open up by explaining to people that House Resolution 642 has been debated in Washington D.C for years now and things have been at a stalemate. “Is magic an art? Isn’t magic an art? No subject has been more hotly debated in U.S. politics for the past five years.” Then I’d explain the big news to the crowd… the Supreme Court is in the audience for the show and at the end—based on my performance—they’re going to vote on whether magic is an art or not! [Yes, I know it’s not something the supreme court would decide. I just think it’s funnier if that’s the premise.]

This is a show that would allow me to swing between playing a cocky idiot one moment and then a nervous doofus the next when things aren’t working out. And it would be fun to perform some of the tricks with a pretentiously artsy theme to “prove” that magic is an art. “Is magic an art? Gee… I guess that’s not for me to say. But allow me to show you this next trick that’s representative of my childhood in West Virginia—son of a racist coal miner, and struggling with my sexuality. I have three lengths of rope…”

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Because of some older posts, I occasionally get asked for recommendations of where to learn origami.

I will give you two general recommendations.

First, I recommend the work of Jeremy Shafer. He has a lot of videos on youtube. But if you’re brand new to origami, I would probably start with his books instead. I find it easier to learn origami from books. Yes, occasionally you’ll get stuck on a fold and need to see it in action, in which case you’ll want to see a video. But that’s sort of the exception. The more common situation is that the video is going either too fast or too slow and it makes learning the piece annoying. So I recommend learning from print, and supplementing that with video when you get stuck.

What makes Jeremy’s work fun to study is that he often creates origami that does stuff. So it’s a little more fun to play around with than folding a turtle that just sits there.

Also there is sometimes a magic element to his work. Although they’re generally not the most mind-blowing tricks you’ve ever seen, they can still be mildly amusing to play around with.

For example…

Origami Floating House

Origami Switch Blade

Origami Balancing Eagle

The second recommendation I would give is to learn dollar bill origami (for those of you that have foldable paper money in your country). This is good for leaving a memorable tip. And it allows you to do some origami in a casual moment without carrying around any special paper, like a weirdo. (I mean, I guess some would say that money is the ultimate “special paper,” but you know what I’m saying.)

I like this book by Janessa Munt, although you should probably have the basics of origami down before you pick that book up. The pieces aren’t ridiculously hard, but they’re not for pure beginners either.

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Saw this add from TCC about a lecture featuring Michael Ammar.

A Michael Ammar lecture is always good. But Michael Ammar and CUM… yes, please!

(I know this is primarily a Michael Ammar lecture, but as a big fan of Chinese Underground Magician’s work, I hope we don’t just get a sprinkling of CUM. I hope we get a big load of CUM. I—for one—can never have enough.)

The Jerx Calamity Sentence

In 1961, during Richard Feynman’s first lecture teaching introductory physics at CalTech, he made the following remarks:

If—in some cataclysm—all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis that all things are made of atoms — little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.

Now, I’ve already had one successful blog that disappeared into the ether 15 years ago. So there are no guarantees this one will always be here.

So today I want to focus on the Jerx Calamity Sentence. This is the one sentence that would allow you to reconstruct a lot of ideas from this blog if you were to work backwards from the central idea contained in the sentence. It’s a sentiment I’ve expressed before, but perhaps didn’t put all the weight on it that I should have.

And that sentence is this:

The experience of MAGIC is created by the gap between what the spectator knows to be true and what feels real to them in the moment.

For me this has been the most useful definition for a “magical experience” or the “the feeling of magic.”

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If we expand the calamity sentence slightly, we get these two concepts:

1. The feeling of magic is founded on disbelief. If what they believe is possible is in line with what they feel they’re experiencing, you don’t have magic.

2. You can increase the power of the magic experience by creating a greater gap between what they know is true and what seems real in the moment.

So this isn’t just a definition, it’s actionable.

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We can widen the gap in two ways:

1 - Making our premises more unbelievable.

and/or

2 - Making the experience feel more real.

Making the premise more unbelievable is sort of self-explanatory:

“I knew which hand held the coin by reading your body language.” Believable and possible. If you do it well enough that it feels real, they’re like to believe it is real. It may be impressive, but that’s not going to overwhelm someone with a feeling of magic.

“I can know which hand you put the coin in five times in a row because of my powers of ESP.” Less believable, but still mildly plausible. While it seems unlikely that someone could intuit which hand someone would place a coin in, it doesn’t have the ring of something absolutely impossible. The gap is there, but it doesn’t feel very profound.

“I knew which hand you’d put the coin in five times in a row because this is my 12th time living this day, and you always hide the coin in the same sequence.” This is unbelievable and impossible. But if you are able to build up the premise enough and support it in a way that it feels real—even if just briefly—then you’ll have that strong, otherworldly, magical moment.

Making the experience feel more real is done by:

A) Stripping away anything that feels false (other than the premise) or performative. So no heavy-handed patter; canned jokes; or unjustified, convoluted processes.

and

B) Adding elements to your presentation that reinforce the premise, beyond what is necessary for the performance. These are things I call “extra-presentational techniques,” (hooks, reps, imps, buy-ins, etc). These techniques make the experience feel emotionally more real to people because they go beyond what is necessary if what they were seeing was “just a trick.”

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Not every trick I do reaches the level of being truly “magical.” That’s a tough bar to clear. Often I fall short, but that doesn’t mean the trick wasn’t a fun or fascinating or exciting or unique or funny or intriguing or mystifying experience.

But when I do reach the goal of something that goes beyond fun and fooling to some level of “enchanting,” it’s because I’ve hit the sweet spot described in that sentence. The real magic feeling comes out of the harmony in the duet between their rational mind saying, “This isn’t real,” and their irrational mind saying, “Holy hell, this is happening!”

Monday Mailbag #45

Last night I met up with some of my friends for a little birthday get-together. As much as I love my friends from my hometown, they aren't the brightest people you'll meet. Once again, I'm going to have to blame the Kentucky public school system. I say this because they started giving me shit about being vaccinated. Long story short, instead of debating with them, I did magic. Specifically with the presentation about becoming magnetic and being able to conduct electricity because of the microchip.

I did the bit where you make butter knives stick to your hands (Apparently it's an old gag that Charlie Miller would do but I learned it from David Ben). and then I charged my phone by placing my tongue in the charging port. This was accomplished by Marc's beautiful app Amalgam. It made it so silly and so ridiculous that they kinda stopped with the conspiracy theories for a bit.

I was inspired by your post about getting people to question their belief systems. Maybe they will see how ridiculous it is.. or maybe you'll see a Facebook post about the vaccine giving you the ability to conduct electricity. Only time will tell. —NW

A few different people have written with similar ideas based upon this notion going around that the vaccine will make magnets stick to you. I like the idea. It’s a pretty good way to capitalize upon something in the zeitgeist to be able to perform what would otherwise be a semi pointless demonstration of a useless power.

Something else you can do in addition to the magnetism bit, or as an alternative, is say how you got the vaccine and you’ve been feeling a bit “off” since you got it. Have them touch your arm near the injection site. “Do you feel a bump there?” As you talk with them, continue to rub your arm in that area and then slowly start pushing your fingers up your arm as if you’re manipulating something under your skin. Mumble, “The fuck is this?…” as you continue pushing along your skin. Up your arm. Up your shoulder. Up your neck. Over your jaw and up your face to your eye. Where you then pull down your eyelid and a little metal ball drops out. Ideally on to a well-placed ceramic plate where it produces a satisfying small clatter.

Pick it up and examine it closely. Let the horror slowly dawn on you. “What are they doing to us? What are they doing to us!!!!???” Run away screaming.

This is just a version of the old seed/bean/popcorn kernel from the eyelid geek stunt, but using a small ball bearing, and giving it some relevance beyond, “Here’s something dumb I can do.” I have no idea how safe/dangerous this trick really is, so consider this just a theoretical idea. You should absolutely not do this unless you would like to go blind in one eye or worse. Don’t come and try to sue me if something bad happens because you did this thing I told you not to do. Sue your parents for making you a moron.

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Based on your writing I’m going to assume you’re not a woman. Despite that, I was curious if you thought there was any difference in the way that men and women should approach social magic. Are there any special considerations you imagine would arise for women performing magic in the style you write about? —MS

First, let me talk about women and magic generally. My introduction into the culture of magic was in the early 90s. At that time I didn’t get the sense that there was any still-lingering codified discrimination against women in magic. I never heard a male magician say anything negative about women in magic. And all the doors were theoretically open to them. But despite that, it was still very rare to see a woman at a convention or lecture. I didn’t think much of it. I just assumed they had better taste than to want to go to a magic convention.

On the rare instance where a woman showed up who wasn’t dragged there by a guy, she wouldn’t be shunned at all. Quite the opposite. Anyone who walked though the door with a touch of mascara and/or at least one distinguishable breast was hounded by a bunch of creeps under the guise of being helpful and encouraging. The amount of infantilizing and fetishizing of women attendees must have made them long for the days when they were excluded from these events. And that’s coming from the perspective a 13-year-old me. I wasn’t cool around women at that time in my life. I would practically cum in my pants if a girl walked by me in the hall and her backpack grazed my junk. But even I was like, “Dudes, chill out. You’re being weird.”

I can only assume things are a little more comfortable for women now, but I don’t really know. I don’t go to places where magicians gather or hang out with many magicians socially. It looks like women are better represented in the world of magic these days, but that comes from a semi-outsider’s perspective. I’d be happy to hear from women about their experiences if they want to reach out directly.

Sadly a lot of the magic I’ve seen coming from female magicians is just as garbage as the stuff I see from men. The worst of them seem to have adopted all the same corny affectations and attitudes of men performing magic. That’s fine. Everyone should have the same opportunity to bore people with bad magic.

But what, specifically, of the social magic style?

Let’s start by focusing on what I consider to be the ideal representation of a social magician:

This is what I’m going for.

This is what I strive to be.

This is, in my opinion, the way that one should present themselves when performing magic socially.

Whoops… hold on…

I screwed up.

I cropped out the wrong part of the photograph.

This is what I consider to be the ideal representation of the social magician:

That is what I’m going for.

I want to be Nani Darnell. I don’t want to be Mark Wilson.

The sentiment I hear frequently when it comes to women in magic is that we need to smash the patriarchy and no longer reduce women to the role of just being shoved in boxes and penetrated, sawed in half, or vanished. But to me that’s backwards. To me the estimable partner has always been the magician’s assistant. That’s the one I want to be like.

Maybe we’re too hung up on the word “assistant.” But I don’t let that get to me. In the magician and the assistant, I just see two different entities, with dramatically different traits.

(I’m not speaking specifically about Mark Wilson and Nani Darnell. Just about the roles of “magician” and “assistant” generally.)

The assistant is the one who faces the danger. She floats in the air, gets pierced with swords and cut in half by scary looking buzzsaws.

She gets abducted by a gorilla and still remembers to satisfy the contractual obligations with the sponsors.

The magician? He waves a stick in the air, “Wheee!!! I’m a wizard!”

Sure, within the story of the show, it’s the magician who is the powerful one. But outside of that narrow perspective, there’s no fucking question who the cooler person is.

If we left a show and you said to me, “You remind me of that assistant,” I would feel flattered. If you said, “You remind me of that magician,” I would feel like I must have some sort of personality disorder.

This is a long way of saying that I think the style of magic I write about here is well suited to performers of either sex. In fact, if anything, when mapping it onto the traditional roles of male magician and female assistant, the role I think works best for the amateur—and the role I go for most often—is the role of the assistant. The “power” isn’t usually something I possess. The power is in: this weird ritual, this strange object, this haunted artifact, this magician friend of mine, this quirk of human psychology, this unusual game, this altered state of mind, etc., etc.

I want to be the assistant who brings the people to these mysteries. I want to be seen as the one helping, the one facilitating, the one who is getting the things together to allow the magic to happen. I want to be seen as the one with the killer legs and cool outfits.

Rarely do I want to be seen as “The Magician!” who is causing the magic to happen. I don’t think that comes across well in casual performing situations. I think it limits the types of “stories” you can tell with your tricks. And given that a modern audience is going to know that what you’re showing them is a trick on some level, I think it’s a much better look to underplay your involvement (i.e., to put yourself in the “assistant” role). From the audience’s perspective you are denying yourself credit you could be taking. But when you say, “I will read your mind,” or, “I have magic powers,” then—from the audience’s perspective—you are someone asking for more credit than you deserve.

So yeah, I don’t know if there are any special considerations for women when performing this style of social magic. But they are probably better equipped for it. Taking a step back and not feeling the need to get credit for everything probably comes easier to women than men.

Dustings #40

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I was talking with someone over email about places to hide a crib. “Ah,” I said, “You smothered your baby to death and now you’re trying to remove any evidence you ever had a kid. Smart. What I like to do in that circumstance is—”

No, he explained, not that kind of crib. Like a crib-sheet that holds information you don’t have memorized or information for which you’re not 100% comfortable relying on your memory. The order of a stacked deck, say, or a progressive anagram. Sometimes you’ll have this sort of information mostly memorized but you’re not completely confident to do a trick with it because you don’t want to find yourself frozen with no option if you just completely blank on what card is at position 36 in the deck. So you might take that information and write it on a tiny piece of paper you can palm, or have it printed in small letters on the barrel of a Sharpie or—most retardedly—on the outside edge of a watch bezel.

But if you’re performing a trick that isn’t magician-centric (i.e. a trick that isn’t focused on your own “powers”), you can often “hide” the crib in the presentation.

What I mean by hiding a crib “in the presentation” is having a presentation that allows you to access a crib in a perfectly logical way where the action doesn’t need to be concealed.

In magician-centric presentations, where the power behind the effect is supposedly concentrated in the performer, it can be difficult to justify openly looking at something else.

But imagine your presentation is related to “something I saw online,” “this weird ritual I read in this book,” “this dream I had where we went through this strange procedure,” or “something this guy I met at a party showed me he could do” or something along those lines. In those cases you can refer back to that thing you read online, open up the book, take a look at the notes you scribbled down after your dream, or text that guy you met at the party. And in the process of any of those things, you can get a good long look at your crib.

You might think people would be quick to assume that you’re looking at something that is helping you for the trick, but that hasn’t been my experience. If your action is motivated by the premise of the trick, then they may believe you’re really doing what you’re saying, or they may feel the action is just “theater.” But I’ve found they’re unlikely to think it’s theater for the purposes of doing something sneaky. (This is not just my experience, but also based on some testing we did years ago that I will post about if/when I can track down the data.)

So they might think I was really texting some magician friend on the phone who told me where their chosen card was in the deck. Or they may think I was just pretending to text my magician friend to find out where their chosen card was in the deck as part of the story of the trick. But they don’t seem to make the leap where they say, “I bet he’s pretending to text his friend so he can reference something else on his phone that helps him with the trick.”

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On a related note, if you’re ever in a position where you can snap a quick picture of a shuffled deck (either in a face-up fan or face-up spread), then you can do some stuff you would normally do with a stacked deck. And using the premise of communicating with “the magician” over text, you can pull off a very strong, simple trick.

So, for example, the person you’re with cuts the deck beneath the table a few times and then pockets, sight unseen, whatever card they cut to. The rest of the cards are put back into the case (where you get a peek of the bottom card). In the process of apparently texting your magician friend, you look at the picture to figure out what card followed the card you peeked from the bottom of the deck (in other words, the card now in the spectator’s pocket). Then you can pretend to have a phone or text conversation with someone to reveal that information. (Or have an actual phone/text conversation if you have someone really helping you out.)

How to get the picture of the deck? Well, that’s going to depend. This is something i don’t do with my own deck. So I’ll do it at a card game when there is a break or when the games have wound down for the evening. If no one else is in the room I’ll spread the deck on the table and take a quick pic. If others are around but people aren’t paying too much attention, I’ll be playing with the deck absentmindedly and at some point I’ll fan the deck and put it under the table edge and then I’ll take the picture. From the perspective of anyone looking over who hasn’t been watching me the whole time, I’m just looking at something on my phone.

From there you have the crib for your “stacked” deck. And any premise that involves using your phone can be used to hide the fact you’re looking at your crib.

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In a recent post I mentioned using spaced repetition to build up your repertoire and keep the tricks fresh in your head.

On this page you can find an incredibly well done explanation of the concept of spaced repetition that goes into it in much more detail.

Even if you have no interest in applying it to your magic pursuits, give that page a read and you’ll see how useful it can be in other areas of interest.

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I guess the most common question I get here at the Jerx is:

Andy, what’s it like to have sex with you?

Great question. But sadly, despite my mastery of the English language, I’ve found it a little difficult to put that experience into words. Some things simply cannot be captured in text. We may need to add a few more letters to the alphabet before you can accurately describe the dance with the divine that is a sexual encounter with me.

Fortunately, I’ve found a video that puts you right into the experience of being opposite me as we engage in rigorous coitus.

Making love to me is just like this clip from Bobby J. Gallo’s promo video from 1996.

• I play that exact song.

• The expressions I make are IDENTICAL (A combination of self-satisfaction and self-amusement, with a little bit of “oops, did I do that?” mixed in.)

• It lasts 26 seconds.

• And at the end I shoot all over your face.

Past-It Notes: The Past-Tense Svengali Force Pad

In the Dustings of Woofle post before I went on my break, I made the point that a Svengali pad made to look like a pad of Post-it notes doesn’t make a ton of sense, because people don’t write on Post-it notes when they’re still in their pad form. In fact, people use Post-it notes for the sole purpose of writing on the top sheet and then discarding it. Therefore it makes it particularly hard to justify why you’re carrying around a “filled out” Post-it pad, unless your performance character is, “Guy Who Doesn’t Know How Pads Work.”

Then Benjamin from ThoughtCast emailed me an interesting idea. What if the Post-it notes weren’t on the pad? What if it was a stack of used Post-its? As Benjamin wrote, “This way it seems like a collection of post it notes you’ve used over time instead of buying a fresh pad and writing on each still stuck note like a psycho.”

So this is a Svengali Post-it “pad” that you will make yourself. But it requires no cutting. Your force sheets will all be set back a millimeter or two, and all your non-force sheets will be forward a little bit. Either straight or at an angle, it doesn’t really matter. This is meant to look like a stack of used Post-it notes. So you’re absolutely not going for something neat looking. It’s supposed to be messy and the Svengali principle is hidden in this messiness rather than in the precision cutting of a professionally made Svengali pad.

For the purposes of illustration, I’ll use blue Post-its to represent a sheet with the force information on it, and pink (salmon?) sheets to represent the sheets with non-force information on them. In practice you would want to use all the same color, or all completely random colors. I’m using the two separate colors here just for clarity.

So first you put down a force sheet, then you stick a non-force sheet on top, but have it jutting forward a little.

Then you will put another force sheet on, pretty much squared with the previous force sheet. Then a non-force sheet sticking out, and so on. It works best if your force sheets are generally in the same position. You can go wild with the non-force sheets, but if they’re too all over the place, it makes it difficult to flip through the stack.

When you’re done you’ll have something that shows only non-force sheets as you casually flip through it.

But will only show force sheets if you direct someone to open up the stack anywhere and get a look at what the Post-It says.

Of course this is much subtler when all the sheets are the same color.

If this is something you think you’ll want to actually use beyond just playing around with the idea, then you may want to do something more permanent than just the standard Post-it adhesive that’s on the pages. Once a page has been peeled and restuck, it doesn’t really maintain it’s stickiness that well. So someone opening up the pad might “break” the pad at that point. Which isn’t necessarily a problem, unless you feel it is for your purposes. If so you’ll probably want to glue the sheets together where the adhesive would be.

Now how might you use such a thing? To force a playing card? No, let’s not do that. Let’s think…in what context might Post-its be used?

Maybe you were using Post-its to identify which items in your garage you wanted your son to bring to the dump.

Okay… that’s my fault. I asked a bad question. I should have asked: In what context might Post-its be used… and there’s a chance a reasonable person would hang onto those used Post-its?

I’ll give you three possible themes. These are probably not quite useable as is, but they may give you an idea of a direction to pursue.

Love

Everyday your wife (or husband/child/significant-other/inconsequential-other) leaves a little love note for you on the bathroom mirror so it’s there when you’re getting ready for work. You’ve held onto a bunch of your favorite ones. People can’t really read minds, you tell your audience, but they can tap into intense emotional frequencies and the items attached to those emotions. And you can use these notes to demonstrate that phenomena.

Someone flips open the stack of notes, reads one, and then tries to imagine themselves saying the sentiment on the note to someone they care about. You’re able to pick up on this.

Hate

You’re standing on stage at the Magic Castle. You toss a stack of used Post-its on the table.

Every day, at your old job, you would come back from lunch and find a whiny, passive-aggressive note from your boss on your computer monitor. At first it was an annoyance. But then it grew to be symbolic of everything you hated about the job: the mindless busywork, constantly having someone looking over your shoulder, having no autonomy. As soon as you got back from lunch you’d take that note, tear it up and toss it in the trash.

But then you changed tactics. You decided to use the notes to finally motivate you to pursue a job you were actually passionate about: a career in magic. You started keeping the notes. Letting them pile up on your desk. You’d read through them over and over, building up your annoyance and anger.

First a few days passed, then weeks. The pile grew larger. You still felt frozen in your career. Then you gave yourself both a challenge and a deadline. And you told yourself the moment you had mastered the trick of knowing which note someone was thinking of, that would be your sign that it was the right time to quit your job and go into magic full-time.

“And here I am today!”
blah-blah-blah
”Take a look at any note in the stack.”
blah-blah-blah.
”You’re thinking of a note that says… it’s something about… oh this is the one where he said I’m only allowed one personal item at my cubicle so I either had to get rid of the picture of my wife or the picture of my daughter. Correct?”
blah-blah-blah
”Pursue your dreams.”
blah-blah-blah

Magic

“See that book on the book shelf. The tall thin one with the white and red lettering on the spine? That was the first magic book I ever bought with my own money. I read it over and over and marked it with Post-its to make a note of everything I found interesting in the book. I would write quotes or ideas from the book on the notes and then stick the note on the page where that quote appeared. I didn’t want to highlight or underline the pages themselves, because I was so protective of this book since it cost me almost all the money I had at the time.

“Some years later I removed the Post-its, but I just found them all stuck together in a box with a bunch of other old junk. I wanted to try something. Peel up a corner anywhere in the stack and take a look at whatever note you open to.”

You try to read their mind, but aren’t getting anything clearly.

You pick up the pad and flip through a few of the options to see if any jump out at you. But again, you’re not having any luck.

“Maybe it will help if I have the book,” you say. You pull the book from the bookshelf and there is a Post-it sticking out from the side. “That’s weird. I thought I removed all of them.” You open the book to the marked page and say, “Uhm, okay, this is a long shot, but are you thinking of the phrase: You will need to obtain two plastic, glue-on eyes?”

Your friend says that yes, they are.

“That son of a bitch! He beat me to it.”