Monday Mailbag #52

Hi Andy,

1) How often would you perform for a person if you see them once per week?

2) How often would you perform for a person if you see them on a daily basis or live with them?

—CE

Well… here is a premise that you may or may not agree with. And if you don’t agree with it then you know not to put any weight in the rest of my answer. And that premise is this: The less frequently you perform, the greater impact an individual effect will have.

We see this all the time in magic. The first card trick you ever show someone freaks them out entirely. But then, as they become accustomed to seeing you do impossible things, it really takes something special to get that same type of reaction.

In addition to that consideration, I’m someone who doesn’t want it to seem like I have an endless supply of tricks up my sleeve. So for that reason I’m also in the “less is more” camp.

I think ideally I would show people a maximum of one trick a month on average. Now, if I only see that person once a year, they might end up seeing a bunch of tricks over the course of a couple days. And if I see that person frequently, they would go many interactions without seeing a trick. (I don’t know why I explained that. I think you all understand what “on average” means.)

This isn’t a hard and fast rule, it’s just generally what I shoot for. A lot of people in my life see something much closer to four times a year. That might be a better rate.

Seeing 12 tricks a year is a good amount. Especially if you can make them each powerful and distinct experiences for someone. Remember that most people probably don’t see any live magic tricks in a given year. So while once a month may not seem like much, it’s more than most are accustomed to.

I know people like to show their wives or significant others tricks all the time. I get that it’s convenient to try out stuff on your wife. But if you overload a person with magic tricks, you’re essentially making it very difficult for a trick to feel special for them. Do you hate your wife so much you want her to get burned out on your one hobby? Eh probably.

I don’t find a ton of value in having a go-to non-magician as a “test audience.” Once they’ve seen a ton of magic, they’re close to useless as a sounding board. They don’t have a magician’s knowledge to give you that type of insight, and they can’t give you an unspoiled laymen’s perspective either.

Now, I don’t always stick to that “once a month” average, of course. When I first meet someone, they may see a few tricks fairly close together early on. And if someone is asking frequently to see something, I’ll usually indulge them (over time, that is—not over the course of the same interaction).

If you have someone you want to perform for more often, or who is asking you to see stuff more frequently, then I find the best course of action is to draw a distinction between things you show them that are “just magic tricks,” and things you show them that are, “something really strange” you just learned or discovered or whatever. In this way, the “normal” magic tricks you show them more often can be used to set a standard. Then on those occasions when you show them something stronger and weirder and intimate that isn’t just your usual trick, then you can fuck with their heads a little more.

---

I have a new peek wallet I will hopefully be releasing in 2022. One of the peeks I use comes from your handling of the peek wallet in the post you wrote on November 16th of 2015 where you get the peek as you place the wallet between their hands.

Do you have any other credits for that peek or is it something you came up with yourself? I’ve seen other wallets recently that use the same peek, but I haven’t seen any credit to you or anyone else. Was that your idea? And how frequently do you get busted because the wallet is in their hands?—HF

Hmmm…. I’m fairly certain I came up with the idea of getting the peek while you hand the wallet to the person. But it’s certainly well within the realm of possibility that others had done it before me. I would assume they had. I will post your question so hopefully we can get a credit for you (I’ll update this post if/when comes in.)

As far as getting busted with the wallet in their hand, I think it’s happened once. But that’s because I was going the extra step (as described in that post) of having them clean up for me as well. So they were actually removing the card from the peeked position. I just used the technique mentioned in that post to brush off the incident and move on. So it wasn’t a big deal.

This reminds me. At some point in the past five years I’ve had a person or two message me saying they know how to make wallets, so if I ever wanted to create a magic wallet of some kind I should reach out to them. Well, I have an idea in mind, but I can’t track down who sent that email. So if you’re one of those people, please reach out to me again.

---

How do you present levitation effects that are not magician-centric? —CE

I will assume you’re talking about levitating an object (as opposed to yourself).

Well, remember, as I discussed recently in this post, the only defining characteristic of a “magician-centric” presentation is that the magician is taking credit for what is occurring.

So, if a magician-centric levitation is the magician saying, “I will make this rose levitate” (or not saying anything at all, which is the same thing) then a non-magician-centric presentation is anything that suggests you’re not the one causing this to happen.

With levitations, I personally like to imply that there’s something significant about the time or location at which the performance takes place. So, while on a day-trip, maybe I’ll make a small detour to this place I “read about online” and stop on the side of the road by an old farmhouse and show them this weird gravitational anomaly that exists there (look for gravitational maps online to add some credibility to this). Or it may be a time of the year thing—when certain planets are aligned, or whatever. Tying the levitation to something more grandiose won’t always stop them from wondering, “Hey, where’s the thread?” But I find it helps considerably in giving them a more interesting story to consider.

Other audience-centric/story-centric levitation presentation ideas; spirit energy, demonstration of some new technology, hallucination, etc. You could also just say, “I have something to show you. I need you to tell me I’m not losing my mind and that this is really happening.” This type of presentation, the “I have absolutely no idea how this is happening” presentation, is non-magician-centric. Used too much it just seems like laziness. But used sparingly, it can work well. Of course, to use that with a levitation you’d need a levitation that didn’t require you to be gesticulating around the object as if you are in control.

---

What Women Want

“Sooooo… tell me! How did you meet him? Where did this great love affair begin?” Susan asked.

“Well, it’s a pretty romantic story,” Lana responded, sipping her mimosa and staring wistfully into the distance as she remembered that night.

“It was a rainy night. Not a ‘duck and cover’ type of rain, but a misty drizzle that you could walk in without even carrying an umbrella. It was a rain that didn’t make everything wet, it just made everything shimmer.

“I was at the Tin Owl Cantina, getting a drink after another late evening at work. Roger and I had broken up in late April and I had been doing nothing but going from my bed, to the gym, to the office for weeks. I felt if I didn’t have a spreadsheet or a treadmill in front of me that my mind would spiral into a depression that I might never recover from.

“But for whatever reason, that night I didn’t go directly back to my place. For the first time in a while, the Tin Owl was calling me and I decided I’d stop in for ‘one quick drink’ before heading home. Well, one quick drink turned into two, and that turned into an order of the pulled-pork nachos. And it was at about that time that I was drowning my sorrows in pig and processed cheese sauce that he walked in

“I wouldn’t say he immediately grabbed my attention. It wasn’t like that. I thought he was cute, but not enough so that it would have shaken me out of the funk I was in. He walked right up to me. His confidence made me think he might know me from somewhere, or maybe he thought he knew me from somewhere. I tried to place his face, but couldn’t. I looked him up and down. Decent shoes, jeans that fit well, a short-sleeved button up shirt. Nothing special.

“And then I saw it. Something that would change the course of that evening… and dare I say, the course of my life. Dangling from a cord on his neck was something that would at first pique my interest, and later win my heart. What was it? Nothing more or less than a little plastic bear trap that he did a magic trick with.”

✿✿✿

This is an excerpt from my upcoming novel. And just so it’s clear to everyone, this is a work of SCIENCE FICTION.

There is a new trick on the market called Fast Fingers. It’s a little plastic bear trap that you grab stuff out of without getting caught. (But also, in the demo, they show the magician putting his finger right in the trap and it closing on him and it seems completely painless. So there isn’t a real sense of stakes with this trick. It’s more just a goof.)

I don’t have any issue with the prop in and of itself. I do have an issue with the suggested presentation—that you should wear this plastic bear trap as a necklace and then pull it off to do a trick where you ask a woman to write down her phone number and then you place part of the phone number in the trap and if you snatch it away you get to keep her phone number. The implication being that this would be a good way to get someone’s phone number via a magic trick. Please. For your sake. Don’t.

First off, any trick that is designed to “get a girl’s number” is worse than just asking a girl for her number. It just makes you look spineless.

Walking around with this trick hanging off your neck ain’t a hot look, chief. In fact, if you’re trying to pick up a woman you’d be better off just saying, “I have Fast Fingers,” and then making it abundantly clear that you’re not talking about the plastic magic trick.

Now, I realize I’m only talking to a small subset of my readers here. I can’t imagine there are too many of you thinking, “Yeah, that does sound like a good way to flirt with a girl and get her number.” But there are enough people who potentially feel this way that they thought this was a good angle to use in the presentation of this trick. I want to assure my younger male readers that this sentence has never been spoken or even thought before in the history of mankind, “My… who is that man with the little plastic bear trap on his necklace. I hope he asks me for my number!”

Here is some genuine advice I have for guys looking to pick up women. I dedicate this to my younger readers with school and college starting back up. This advice doesn’t require you to be handsome, funny, or intelligent. This is something anyone can do. This is my basic beginner’s advice. It won’t help you nab a 9 if you’re a 5; you’re going to have to go beyond the basics to do that. But it will help you—at the very least—meet and connect with people and not turn off people to you from the jump.

This is not the advice I would give to someone looking to get laid tonight. This is foundational advice to help you meet people in everyday circumstances: at class, at work, at your dorm, in public, etc.

When it comes to interacting with women, there is a tendency for guys to think, “I need to make a strong impression. I need to be funny and charming. I need to do something to stand out.” This is, I think, the wrong thing to be focusing on.

In order of importance, here are the three qualities you want to exude when meeting someone new who you think you might have an interest in…

Normal - This is your first hurdle to get over. You want to come across as a normal dude. Not a weirdo or a creep. Not overbearing. Not someone who is invading their space. Not someone who needs to be the center of attention. Not someone who is clearly forcing a conversation with someone or using some canned lines.

Positive - Exude a positive energy. Try to tap into the optimistic and enthusiastic part of yourself. Have things that you’re excited about and looking forward to. You don’t need to be bubbly and giddy. Just don’t be a bummer.

If you have average looks, average intelligence, and average sense of humor, but you come across as normal and positive, you will be ahead of at least 80% of the crowd.

The final trait you should cultivate is…

Mysterious - Normal and positive gets you through the door. Mysterious keeps people intrigued. You don’t need to stand in a corner and brood. Just keep some things to yourself. Don’t be a completely open book. Don’t post all your thoughts on social media. Listen more than you talk.

I’m just trying to point you in the right direction here. In a blog post I can’t give you a step-by-step guide on how to be normal, positive and mysterious. When I write a book on social interaction, I’ll go into more detail.

For now just realize that these three traits are going to do much more for you than a colorful hat, canned story, or plastic bear trap ever will.

Wednesday Whalebag

The spectators who google something: How long do you think they spend on it? My theory is that if they don’t find an obvious answer in 30 seconds, they’re going to be frustrated and stop. But you know people who have done it. How long did they spend? —PM

From my observation, and from talking to spectators and from talking to other performers, I think your estimate is just about right.

This is probably a point I should have made earlier. When it comes to googling information about a trick, people will search for information, but most won’t research something. If there isn’t an explanation of the trick or a link to where they can find it for sale in the first couple of pages of search results, then you’re generally good. Sure, some people will be more persistent, but for the amateur, you’re likely to know if that’s their personality type. So you would know to show that person things that would be much more difficult to track down.

If this is something you care about, it’s probably good to have some rule in place so the decision is made automatically for your if something is too searchable online. My general rule would be something like this…

The Jerx Rule for What’s Too Googleable

If a search of the main items used in the trick, plus the word “magic,” leads to an explanation of the trick (or where it can be found for sale) within the first couple of pages of google results, then the trick is too googleable.

For example: bill lemon magic

or

Rubik’s cube bottle magic

“Too googleable” doesn’t necessarily mean “completely undoable” for me (and certainly not for anyone else). But it does put a limit on the longevity of the response I would expect from such a trick. And it suggests that trick is not something you would want to build a “big” presentation around.

---

From the same email…

If I do my version of the cut and restored rope, students can google Cut and Restored rope and they will find the basic technique I use, but they will also find many other methods I did not use, and they have no idea what if any of it is related to anything I did. —PM

True. And that becomes kind of a grey area. There are some general trick descriptions that produce so many results that searching for it is pretty useless for the spectator. If they search predict chosen card trick, that’s not going to give them anything valuable.

Cut and restored rope is a little different. A search on that might provide them an explanation that satisfies them, even if it’s a different method. In most cases they won’t be savvy enough to realize it’s not the method you used. They’re not going to say, “Oh, wait. But he didn’t hold the rope in this exact specific way, so I guess I have no clue what he did.” They’ll just look at it and think, “Oh, I see. He didn’t actually cut the middle of the rope.”

So they might not have an explanation they would bet their life on, but it’s likely something that would satisfy them. And honestly, I just don’t want people to be satisfied. I want the effect to gnaw at them somewhat.

So in that situation I might do some sort of meta commentary on this trick and the secret. “Cut and restored rope is a classic of magic. It’s practically a beginner’s trick. If you search for how it’s done you wouldn’t find one method, you’d find hundreds. But you could read through all of those explanations and you’d never find a way to do what I’m going to show you today.” And then I’d need to come up with some supposed or legitimate rationale for what makes this different.

---

You may have never been proven so correct as I proved you recently. I’m a long time reader of the site. I agree with much of what you write and disagree with some of it too. In the “disagree” column would be your recent writing about trick “google-ability.” I just didn’t think it was an issue. I’d never seen someone google a trick of mine and no one had ever come up to me to say, “I found out how that trick was done.”

But in the spirit of your site I thought I would ask a few of the people I regularly perform for if they had ever tried to find the secret of a trick I’d shown them. I went to my friend and coworker Mike and asked if he’d ever searched for a secret. He said “Sure, a bunch of times.” When I asked him which tricks he said “Well… the good ones.” That was incredibly eye-opening for me.

I asked a few other people as well and they all admitted they had. And all the tricks they had searched out were ones that had gone over really well. Some secrets they had found out but they never mentioned that to me. —NN

Yeah, that’s just reality, unfortunately.

A good point made in your last line is that you shouldn’t expect people to tell you they learned the secret. Not unless there was something adversarial going on during the trick. I would guess that most of the time if they search and find the secret, they keep it to themselves. They found out what they wanted to know. They’re not looking to make you feel bad, unless you come across as a true dipshit.

---

I answered “Choice 3” in your original survey and I think your breakdown of why people might choose that option was a good encapsulation of my opinion. Magicians are entertainers, if the people are entertained during our performance, then we’ve done our job. What they choose to do afterwards isn’t really our issue or our business. —MK

Okay. My goal isn’t to try and change your mind, but only to offer my perspective.

Yes, a magician falls under the heading of “entertainer.” But if you went on stage, got all nervous, shit your pants, and everyone laughed at you for 20 minutes, it’s unlikely you’d walk of the stage saying, “Well, I entertained them. I did my job.” You’re an entertainer, but you’re one who entertains by creating something magical. That’s the specific thing you do.

If you give someone a profound magic experience with a fascinating mystery at the heart of it, I’m sure if you had your druthers you’d rather the trick not be exposed 5 seconds after you perform it, yes? 30 seconds would be better. And one hour would be better than that. And one week would be better still. Even if you say keeping the secret isn’t important to you, I think you’d agree to that. So it’s not that you don’t see the benefit of keeping the secret, you just don’t think the trade-off is worth the effort it requires. I get that opinion, I just disagree.

For me, the cat and mouse game of making something ungoogleable has added a lot to the impact of my magic. In the 1980s, if you showed someone a trick and you fooled them, they might think, “This guy is more clever than I am. This guy knows how to do something I don’t know how to do.” But in this age, if you show someone a trick and they’re fooled and they cant find an answers via the internet, they might think, “He fooled me. But I also can’t find any example of anything like this online. What he did… it’s not a thing that exists.” It makes the experience seem much more special.

It’s really about your perspective. As a professional it might make sense to say, “I’m here to entertain people for 45 minutes.” But as an amateur, it would be weird to come off as “the entertainment” for the evening.

I feel like the goal with magic is to create mystery and memories. That’s something magic is uniquely well suited for. Unfortunately, both mystery and memories are greatly diminished once the spectator feels they have an answer to the “how” of it all. Very regularly I have people recount tricks they’ve seen me perform. Sometimes the trick has just occurred recently, and sometimes it’s a trick from literally decades ago. And they’re still excited by the trick. But they’re never excited about a trick if they think they know how it was done. No one brings up tricks to me that they figured out a few years ago. I’ve written before that I don’t consider the trick over until the spectator has some clue of how it might be done. So that’s why making something ungoogleable is a worthwhile pursuit to me. It can turn a two minute effect into a life-long one.

Is He Still Talking About Google-ability? He Is.

The subject of the “google-ability” of tricks has taken over my email box, so I want to do a post on that today and a mailbag post on Wednesday to sort of wind down on the subject for now.

A bunch of people wrote me over the past few days to explain their rationale for why they chose this answer in the survey I ran a week or so ago.

The question was: “When it comes to the google-ability of a trick, which statement best represents your feelings…”

And I wanted to hear more from the people who said,

“As long as they enjoy the trick in the moment, I don’t really care what they search or learn about it afterwards.”

Now, because the categories in my question were broad, I will say that most of the explanations didn’t match up perfectly with what I imagined people selecting that response would be thinking. I was more expecting to hear, “I don’t care if people search out the secrets afterwards because information shouldn’t be kept secret,” or some goofball shit like that.

But I didn’t hear that sort of thing too often. Most of the responses fell into two categories:

1. “I don’t worry about it because of the type of material I perform.” (i.e. tricks from books rather than effects that were marketed individually.) Which doesn’t exactly suggest that they’re ok with people googling, just that they don’t feel it’s an issue for them.

Or

2. “I don’t worry about it because I don’t think people really google tricks.”

I have bad news for you… they do. The big mitigating factor here is age. If you’re performing for an over-50 crowd, primarily, you’ll find less of this. But otherwise, if you present a very clear, direct mystery to people, then there is a very good chance they’ll run it through google.

Tricks People Won’t Google

I think it’s true that there are a good number of tricks that someone would never google.

People don’t bother googling bad or boring tricks.

And they don’t bother googling longer routines where a bunch of stuff happens because:

• It might be boring, as just mentioned.

• There might be so much going on they wouldn’t know where to start with a google search.

• For a lot of longer routines like that, they think they already know how it’s done: “Sleight of hand.”

In our testing, sleight-of-hand (often paired with misdirection) is the most common response people give when asked if they know how a trick is done. They will give that answer as if it’s a full explanation. And they seem content with that answer. The don’t need more information. So in the case that they think what you did was sleight-of-hand, they probably wouldn’t end up googling the trick. In their mind they don’t need to.

It’s like if I asked you, “I wonder how Ted cut these pieces for the construction of the birdhouse?” And you said, “He used woodworking tools.” You don’t actually know the names of the tools or how they work or what they do. But you don’t need to. You have the general idea and that’s enough. You don’t feel a sense of “mystery” in regards to how those pieces got there. You just realize there are some specific details you don’t understand because you’re not immersed in that world.

This is one of the reasons I personally avoid long sleight-of-hand pieces. With rare exceptions, they don’t seem to capture people’s imaginations because they have the Easy Answer of “sleight-of-hand” to fall back on. That’s not a problem if you want people to think of you as a sleight-of-hand technician. But generally I try to avoid being associated with that.

Don’t Fear the Google

Imagine two magicians, Magician A and Magician B, and they have both just performed a trick for some strangers. Magician A’s audience gives a warm response and some puzzled looks before declaring, “I guess it’s magic!” Magician B’s audience gives a warm response and some puzzled looks and, when the magician is gone, they’re on their cell phones trying to figure out how it’s done.

Based just on this information, I would assume that Magician B is the better magician with the stronger trick. We at least know that Magician B’s audience is fooled by the trick and still thinking about it after he left. While it’s true that if you’re a dick people might want to undermine what you did and search for an answer, they will usually have that impulse too even if they adore you. So we can’t say anything about the power of B’s performance skills one way or the other.

An important realization for me about audience reactions was this: Wanting to know the answer is part of being mystified. You can entertain people or fool people, and maybe they won’t make an effort to discover the secret. But to be mystified, they have to have some desire to know what really happened. That desire to know is inherent in the feeling of mystery. You don’t know your mailman’s mom’s maiden name. But you have no desire to know it, so it’s not a mystery. But if I say, “I can’t tell you… but you would never believe what your mailman’s mom’s maiden name is. Oh my god….” All of a sudden, it’s a mystery. The only thing that changed was your desire to know the information. If you’re reading a mystery book and you don’t care about finding out what happened, then you’re not really reading a mystery book. You’re just reading an account of someone who was bludgeoned with a statuette in the grand foyer of Tuttlesworth Manor in Shropshire.

So instilling that desire to know the secret is not a fault in your attempt to generate mystery. It’s exactly what one would expect from a successful performance.

The Power of Charm

Now, it’s also true that people can be so charmed and delighted by a trick that they have no interest in googling it. But this is much more rare and requires a pretty special presentation. A lot of magicians delude themselves into thinking they’re such brilliant performers and that’s why no one ever googles a trick or no one ever asks to see the deck or whatever. Nope. 1000 to 1 the odds are that they just didn’t care that much about what you showed them.

Not wanting to seek out the answer is usually a learned response for people. Their natural inclination is to figure it out. But if you’re good, over time, they may come to value the experience of just being overwhelmed by the magical encounter.

One of the ways of identifying someone with that mindset is if they’re seeking out a performance from you. The person who goes to Copperfield to be amazed is going to have a different appreciation for being fooled than the person who has a trick sprung on them by an acquaintance.

As an amateur you can plant the seeds with quick, lower-stakes tricks and then cultivate an audience with the people who come back and ask for more and seem to enjoy the wonder of the moment. The people who seek this sort of thing out tend to be he people who are more easily charmed by the magical experience and see the value of an unanswered mystery

The Power of Presentation

A good presentation can positively affect the google situation as well.

First, a good presentation can add to the charm factor to make the spectator not want to undermine what just occurred.

But more importantly, a good presentation can just disrupt the logic flow in a person’s mind so searching for the answer isn’t the sole, obvious next step.

If I’m showing you the color-changing knives and my presentation is, “Watch, I’m going to make this knife change color,” and you’re fooled, there isn’t much for you to think of or do afterwards other than say to yourself, “Hmmm… I wonder if I can figure out how that was done. Let’s see. “ [Typing] knife change color magic. “Okay, well, here we go.”

A straightforward trick with no presentation to speak of doesn’t give the spectator many options other than trying to figure the trick out. It’s like giving them a button and saying, “Don’t press the button.” Well… what else is there to do?

But if your presentation wraps the spectator in a story then you can give them much more to occupy their thoughts with other than just, “What’s the secret?” If a knife changes color and your presentation is about hypnotizing them to see the different color or transferring objects through mirror dimensions that are the inverse of ours, then at least there is something more to consider at the end of the effect. Regardless of their belief-level in the presentation itself. They don’t have to believe you’re swapping items between dimensions to imagine the ramification of the idea.

Sometimes a presentation will completely camouflage the effect, making it ungoogleable by causing them to google something else entirely.

Sometimes a presentation can occupy their thoughts enough that they don’t immediately think to google the trick at the heart of the presentation.

But even with a commercially available, easily figured out effect like the color-changing-knives, a strong presentation can maintain some of the value of the encounter even if the trick is figured out. In the same way a mystery novel can still be a good read if the ending was spoiled for you by someone—so long as the rest of the book is written artfully. I still tend to avoid such tricks, but there’s no doubt a great presentation can salvage them to a certain extent.

Revising Vernon

Vernon said that a good effect is one that can be described in a single sentence. That statement was accurate 50 years ago or whenever he uttered it. But it’s not as true today. The tricks that can be described so simply can also be searched so simply. So I guess it still describes a good effect in theory, but not necessarily a good one to perform.

I would say a good trick is one that seems to the audience like it should be google-able, but when searched, it produces no informative results. Similar to Vernon’s definition, I believe the best effects are ones that an audience could describe in one sentence. But in this modern day, that simple description should lead to no answers.

Dustings #48

One time I was poking around a used magic book shop and I came across a pamphlet called Smoke by Ted Annemann. I’ve looked for it since, but haven’t been able to track it down. This might be because “Smoke” is such a generic name, which makes it hard to search for. Or it might have been re-released under a different name. Or maybe Annemann never wrote it at all. If someone told you that after Annemann died, people would put out stuff under his name just to increase sales, you’d probably say, “That sounds about right.” It was the 1940s, it would be difficult to check if he really wrote something. And we’re talking about magicians, who are notorious scumbags.

Anyway, if I’m remembering correctly from my brief flip through the manuscript, it was a pretty basic idea. It was just a matter of doing a center tear and dropping the pieces into a fire and “reading” the word from the smoke. While it’s very simple, it does address two issues with the center tear:

Why do they have to write the word down?

Why do you tear it up?

They write it down because you need to burn it. And you tear it up because that’s what people often do when they burn something.

Anyway, it’s a perfectly fine motivation. And it works nicely, especially l if there’s already a fire nearby that you can utilize to burn the pieces.

But the reason I mention the idea today is because I found this quote from The Absolution of Roberto Acestes Laing by Nicholas Rombes, which goes along nicely with this premise…

“In college I had a physics professor who wrote the date and time in red marker on a sheet of white paper and then lit the paper on fire and placed it on a metallic mesh basket on the lab table where it burned to ashes. He asked us whether or not the information on the paper was destroyed and not recoverable, and of course we were wrong, because physics tells us that information is never lost, not even in a black hole, and that what is seemingly destroyed is, in fact, retrievable. In that burning paper the markings of ink on the page are preserved in the way the flame flickers and the smoke curls. Wildly distorted to the point of chaos, the information is nonetheless not dead. Nothing, really, dies. Nothing dies. Nothing dies.”

---

This post on the WYW Book Club was a pretty big hit in my email box, so some of you might benefit from this item, courtesy of Chris Rawlins. It’s a bookmark that purportedly comes from a similar type of service as mentioned in that post. You could have them printed up professionally or probably print out a serviceable one yourself on some card stock. This could either be something you leave around casually as a potential Hook for a future performance. Or it could come in the package with the book, just adding to the idea that this is truly coming from a special service.

You can find the file here.

If you’re really lazy, you could order Chris’ effect, Rudiment, which comes with some of these bookmarks as part of the package. Rudiment isn’t the same premise or effect as I wrote about in the WYW post, but he needed some bookmarks for the sake of the routine and decided to go with this idea as a way to kill two birds with one bookmark. Thanks to Chris for sharing.

---

And thanks to those of you who wrote in with your explanation for choosing Option 3 in last Friday’s Dustings (as discussed in the post right before this one). I won’t be able to respond to everyone individually because there were quite a few responses and most were fairly long. So I’m offering a generic “thanks” now and if there’s anything in particular I want to follow up on with you more individually, I’ll be in touch.

---

If you want to go down a not-exactly-magic, but somewhat-adjacent rabbit hole, I recommend the story of Velocity Gnome that reader, David S. recently informed me of. As I said, it’s not magic, but it is the story of a long-form immersive fiction, somewhat similar to (but much longer than) some of the stuff I’ve written about here. It happened to a kid named Kolin in the early 2000s.

Here’s a podcast episode about the story.

And here’s an article by comedian Chris Gethard that doesn’t give away too much (but does link to a first-hand account of the story) and does a good job of explaining the potential greater significance of the incident.

To set the stage, here are the basics of the story (taken from Gethard’s article).

• Everything started when a complete stranger knocked on Kolin’s door, claimed he was from the future, and handed him a package.

• For the next few years, Kolin wound up interacting with these people intermittently. Some of these dealings happened online, but most of them involved Kolin traveling to a number of different states while meeting many people who were in on the conspiracy, which he was sometimes aware of and sometimes not.

• After a few years of these strange interactions, they stuck the landing

It’s a pretty interesting story. And it’s a good example of someone being immersed in a fictional situation, but in a way where they know it’s fiction (as opposed to, like, a practical joke).

Google-ability Survey Results, Feedback Request and The Jerx Tank

In last Friday’s post, I asked this question:

When it comes to the google-ability of a trick, which statement best represents your feelings:

1. I make an effort to perform tricks that would be very difficult to find information about online.

2. While I don’t want people to be able to find the SECRET to an effect that I do, I don’t mind if they search and find that it’s a trick you can buy and that others are doing the same trick.

3. As long as they enjoy the trick in the moment, I don’t really care what they search or learn about it afterwards.

Here are how the results broke down…

59% chose option 1

10% chose option 2

31% chose option 3

I was happy to see that 59% of the readers of this site have concerns about making their magic ungoogleable. It’s not something I see discussed too much in other places so I was wondering if maybe this was some weird quixotic battle that no one else really cared about. I’m glad I’m not wasting my time discussing it here. I’m sure that 60% is probable skewed due to the nature of this site and the sort of magic I write about. With the general magician population it might be closer to 40%, I would guess. Maybe less.

If I had to argue for the third option—the “who cares what happens after the trick” option—I guess my rationale would be along these lines:

• Everyone knows it’s a trick anyway, so figuring out the secret doesn’t change that fact.

• If they put in the effort to track down the secret, there’s no reason they shouldn’t be able to know it. I learned the secret myself and I’m not some special individual.

• There’s no winning this battle of keeping a secret if a spectator is determined enough, so it’s not worth worrying about.

• If you’re too concerned about google-ability, your options for the material you can perform are very limited. You essentially can’t do any classics of magic because information about all of them are available online. Nor can you do many of the big releases from the major magic producers because often it’s very easy to find where you can buy the trick. In fact, the magic companies are going out of their way to make the tricks easy to find by anyone searching them. So to avoid google-ability you have to avoid a lot of classics and new releases.

• The goal is to entertain. If they’re entertained for 5, or 10, or 20 minutes or whatever, then the goal has been achieved. What they do afterwards is not really any of my concern.

I’m sure there are elements of this position that I haven’t covered here. And I’m looking for some feedback from people who voted for #3. Is there part of your thinking that isn’t mentioned above? If so, send me an email.

I’m working on something that may be used for some potential testing later on and I want to get a better grasp on this particular way of thinking. It’s a mindset that I too had many years ago (when finding out tricks required a significant amount of effort on the part of a spectator), but I am firmly in the “Option 1” camp these days.

The Jerx Tank

One thing the response to this question showed me is that there is a somewhat significant market out there for magic tricks that don’t have an online footprint and can’t be googled. Such tricks could demand a premium price so long as the buyer’s could be reasonably certain the trick wasn’t going to show up on Vanishing Inc. 18 months from now.

Now, I actually have the infrastructure in place to sell a product without ever having to advertise it online. And I have the faith of my supporters that I’m not going to go back on my word about releasing something widely that I indicated wouldn’t be.

So if you have a product you’d like to pitch to me to be release in such a manner, just reach out to me over email. If it’s a good idea that’s in line with the work I’ve put out, then I’d be happy to collaborate on the project with you and either buy the rights off you or work out some other type of deal. This isn’t something I’m like desperate to do. I have enough on my plate. But if it would mean bringing some cool products to a discerning group of magic buyers, all on the down-low, I’d definitely be interested in helping that process along.

Let me be your Lori Grenier.

Dear Jerxy: Diminishing Magician-Centrism

Dear Jerxy: How do I add more “audience-centric” elements to a routine? Since magic books (besides yours) weren’t written with this concept in mind, is there a process you use to take a standard trick that’s intended to be a demonstration of a magic ability and make it more audience-centric?

Signed,
Seeking Audience-Centric Knowledge

Dear SACK: I will get to your question in a moment with three techniques I use to make a magician-centric trick less so. But you’re giving me a good opportunity to address the “audience-centric” term that I first threw out on this site six years ago.

I’ve used this term in two different ways, and I think it will help for me to clarify those two ways, at least until I come up with a different term to differentiate them.

Sometimes I use “audience-centric” to describe one’s approach to magic as a hobby. And sometimes I use the term to describe a type of presentation.

Approach

The audience-centric approach to magic as a hobby involves showing magic to other people as the end goal. It’s concerned more with presentational elements than methodological elements. The question at the heart of audience-centric performing for the hobbyist is, “How do I best find opportunities to give people as many different types of positive experiences with magic as possible without overwhelming them, coming off weird, or showing them so much that it takes away from the specialness of the interaction?”

The magician-centric approach to magic as a hobby involves a focus on anything the spectators don’t experience directly: creating new sleights, practicing incredibly difficult techniques for hours, learning magic history, building gimmicks, watching magic, etc. This approach prioritizes one’s interest in magic itself and its inner workings, rather than one’s interest in performing for other people.

People assume a value judgment when I use these terms, like, “Ah… I am the noble audience-centric performer, sharing the joy of magic with the people! And you are the lowly, self-centered, magician-centric hobbyist.” But that’s not what I mean. Most people with an interest in magic are some measure of both of these things. And both of these approaches can be done lazily or in a way that they contribute something to the art.

The only mistake I think people make is when they are the sort of person who is solely interested in just one of these approaches, but they feel obligated to engage in the other approach as well. If your focus is solely performing for others, you shouldn’t force yourself to spend hundreds of hours on a pass because they say it’s an important sleight. It’s just not worth the time investment for your priority. And if you just like reading up on the techniques and practicing tricks for your own amusement, you shouldn’t feel obligated to go out and perform for others. If you don’t have that inclination naturally, you’ll probably be doing more harm than good by forcing yourself to perform.

Presentation

This is what the original email was referring to.

In Magician-Centric presentations, the magician is the one who is causing the magic through his skill or ability (this ability/skill may be played as a “real” or supernatural). A magic trick with no presentation is implicitly magician-centric. If I take a sponge ball and split it into two, barring any other explanation, the implied power behind that is coming from me.

In Audience-Centric presentations (aka Story-Centric, or Experience-Centric) the magician is not exhibiting a power, so a story needs to be generated that explains the phenomenon we’re witnessing. And in the process of crafting that story, the audience’s role should change from just watching a demonstration or a “show,” to one where they’re playing a more active role, even if the magician is still guiding the experience along.

Now, again, I’m not putting a value judgment on either of these things. But audiences sometimes do. A magician-centric presentation can appear—from the spectator’s perspective—as a way to boost your own ego, regardless of whether that’s your motivation or not. This is especially so if they think you’re trying to claim you really have whatever particular skill you’re demonstrating. Coming off cocky in life is not a great look generally and it’s particularly bad if they think you’re trying to come off as cool or powerful by acting like you have a skill you don’t really possess. So the magician-centric thing can be a bit of a minefield.

But for me, the bigger issue with magician-centric presentations is that they’re sort of limiting. It can feel like the same story told over and over again. “People can’t make bills float. But I can make bills float. Watch as I make this bill float.” “People can’t read minds. But I can read minds. Watch as I read minds.” “People can’t ____. But I can ____. Watch as I ____.” At its heart, that is the basic magician-centric story. If you have a constant stream of new audiences, that might not be an issue. For an amateur who performs for the same people frequently, their audience can get quickly tired of that. I’ve found that audience-centric presentations keep them engaged far longer.

But as the writer points out, most magic books are written, and tricks explained, as if—of course—you’re going to want to take credit for the magic. So most effects are built on that premise. SACK asks if there are audience-centric elements that can be added to a trick. But that’s not really how I think of it. You can either shift the presentation so it’s audience-centric or not. I don’t really have a process for that. It’s more of just an intuitive leap I make with a different story for the effect. But often tricks don’t immediately lend themselves to an obvious audience-centric presentation.

That’s fine. I still use magician-centric presentations all the time. I just don’t do too much that are really a straightforward demonstrations of my “abilities.”

The three most frequent techniques I use to tamp down the “ain’t I hot shit?” aspect of a lot of magician-centric presentations are these.

Magician-Centric Diminishers

Remove Certainty

Compare, “I’m going to read your mind. Think of a two-digit number.”

to

“Can I try something with you? This may be a giant waste of time. But I’ve been trying to learn this way of transmitting numbers ‘telepathically’ that I read about in this old book at my grandfather’s place. I think I have the idea down. And I’ve been getting pretty close. But I haven’t quite nailed it yet. Can I try it with you? It seems to work better with certain people.”

You “sense” their number, but you’re three off.

“Shoot. One more time?” And this time you nail it.

In my experience, the second way will get people much more interested, much more on your side, and much less likely to ask themselves, “Did he see the number I wrote down?”

Certainty is generally not that interesting. “They were the best baseball team the world has ever known…. and they won the championship!” is not a tagline you will find on any movie poster.

You can read more about the concept of removing certainty in this post.

Don’t Call Attention To It

The other week I was showering with a lady friend of mine. At one point during the shower the soap fell out of my hands and onto the tub floor. Without much thought I kicked the bar of soap. It traveled across the bottom of the tub, hit the curve up the side, and then shot up a few feet where I snagged it out of the air with one hand and went back to lathering myself up. The woman I was with was astonished by this little feat.

In the moment, it seemed like the most casual off-hand stunt. Now, the truth is I’ve been doing this for years, any time I drop the soap and I’m too lazy to bend over. I hit it now more often than not, but nowhere near 100%. I didn’t do it thinking, “This will impress her!” It was just a reflex.

Now, imagine it hadn’t happened in that way. Imagine I said, “Hey, watch this!” And I set the soap down. “How amazed would you be if I kicked the soap, it went across the tub, up the side, and I caught it in my hand?” Then after making sure all her attention was on me, I did it and took a bow. Suddenly this nonchalant cool moment becomes a desperate attempt to be acknowledged. This is what so much of magic feels like.

Just doing the thing without shining the spotlight on yourself beforehand is a solid way to come off as someone who doesn’t need the validation.

This sort of thing really only works for quick moments of magic. If you want more information search for posts about the Distracted Artist style on this site.

Go Absurd

The final way to take the sting out of a magician-centric presentation is to choose absurd material. If I tell you I can read your mind, or I have an incredible memory, or I can cheat at gambling and you won’t be able to catch me…. the audience may wonder, “Am I supposed to believe this? Is he really doing it? Is he pretending to do it? And if so, why is he pretending to have these skills? Is it just for fun? Or does he want me to be impressed? Do I need to pretend to be impressed?”

If your skill or ability is useless or absurd then that softens a lot of the negatives of a magician-centric presentation. (You do lose the benefit of a relatable “power” to demonstrate. But that’s just the particular trade-off of that comes with this technique. In some situations the trade-off will be worth it.)

In Manuel Llaser’s Penguin Live lecture, he does a trick where a card is selected and lost in the deck. The deck is placed on the table. He then spins a yo-yo on it’s string, and when it’s at the bottom of its descent he lets the yo-yo roll across the table, where it hits the deck and cuts the deck right at the spectator’s card.

This is a magician-centric demonstration of skill, but it’s a pretty useless one. And, in fact, the sting is taken out of it even more if you try to play it up as being something super impressive. “Malcolm Gladwell says it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill. And that’s why, for three hours a day, every day, for the last 10 years, I’ve been hitting decks of cards with a yo-yo to get it to cut at exactly the card I want it to. Some might say that’s a lot of time, but is it really? When the outcome is something so useful? To me it seems like time well spent. But here’s the deal, if I show you this, you have to promise you won’t fall in love with me. Okay? Yes, it’s very cool. Yes it’s impressive. Yes, it’s wildly sexy. But that’s not why I do it. This is about the art for me. Not pussy.”

Now, of course, any one of these approaches done consistently for the same audience would be weird and tiring. The idea is to mix it up with different variations on these themes and (for me) to focus on audience-centric presentations the majority of the time. That’s a solid way to keep your performances fresh long-term.