Monday Mailbag #58

Re: Ring and Campfire Coin Vanish

Hey Andy, I enjoyed very much your presentation for a one coin vanish in this post. I only got to read it today, but funny enough, I commented to my friends Ive been doing a trick from Ben Earls book Inside out called "The Vanishing". It’s also a one coin vanish, and my magician friends commented that, to only vanish a coin without reappearing it, generates an "incompleted-ness" feeling in the spectators. That the spectator wants you to bring it back.

They agree with the opening scene from The Prestige: "....you wouldn’t clap yet...because making something disappear isn’t enough, you have to bring it back"

Also, on Ben Earls trick, even after the vanish there is still some patter left, and some of my friends say there shouldn’t be too much patter after the magical climax

What are your thoughts on those minimalist routines, and regarding still delivering presentation after the magical climax? —BM

I don’t know Ben’s trick, so I can’t comment on that specifically.

If you don’t have a particularly good premise, then I would agree that it makes sense to vanish an object and then make it reappear—to go full circle.

But, if you have a good premise, then the opposite is true. If you have a premise where vanishing the object makes sense in the first place, then bringing it back probably doesn’t make sense.

One of my most performed tricks, I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, is to take a paper napkin, when I’m done eating, ball it up, and make it disappear. I do this somewhat absentmindedly, as if this is just something you would do if you could make stuff vanish. I’ve heard a lot of comments about that simple trick, but no one ever says, “Bring it back.” Because people understand why you’d make a napkin vanish.

With the Ring presentation of mine linked above, no one would expect for the coin to come back. That wouldn’t make sense.

Even if you just said to someone, “I’m trying to learn how to make a quarter disappear.” Then you made one vanish. And they asked you to bring it back and you said, “Oh, I don’t know how. I haven’t learned that part yet.” That would be more interesting than vanishing a coin and bringing it back. Because it suggests the coin is actually somehow gone.

So yes, if you have no solid premise, bring the object back. But if you have a premise that justifies vanishing something in the first place, it’s probably best to leave it where it is.

As far as whether there should be much patter after the climax, it depends really. If there’s patter after the climax it should have a different tone or be coming from a different angle than what preceded it. For example, looking back at that same ring/coin vanish story above, you wouldn’t put the vanish in the middle and then keep telling the story. The climax is what you’re building towards. Any talk that happens afterwards should be a reflection on that climax or should put a spin on what they just saw. What you don’t want to do is go back to the same points you were making leading up to the climax.

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I bought Xeno off of your recommendation and have really been enjoying it. What pairing method do you use? —DR

I use the swipe mode of pairing, and I do essentially the same thing every time. I take out my phone and tell them I’m going to bring up a website. That’s when I go to the Xeno app. Then I stop and say, “Actually, let’s use your phone.” My hand with my phone drops to my side. I tell them to go to the website and then I stand next to them and look at the site on their phone with them. While I do this I’m saying something and getting the information I need and swiping on my phone at my side. I then step away or have them go to the other side of the room or whatever in order to allow them to choose something in private.

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Regarding last Wednesday’s post, “medium”

I loved this post - there’s something really potent in the idea of interrogating whether there’s a  “vessel” that carries the magic… I guess previously I’d have been tempted to think of the medium as “performance”. But that’s performer-centric thinking. The idea that it’s more about an interaction that profoundly (or maybe persistently) causes someone to question belief is something I’m going to stick with.

On first reading I actually got a bit pedantic and thought, “is it belief”? I thought it was more accurate to think about “confidence in the trust you place on the senses”. I think great magic makes you snap out of automatic sense-making and fall back on a slower “system 2” intellectual interrogation.  But maybe that is about belief. I really like the image of that oscillation “between what they know to be true, and the crazy fantasy you’ve so carefully crafted”. I think we get that because it’s uncomfortable not to trust the senses. And when this is combined with our innate drive to “discover” there’s an impulse to question whether you missed something in the “magic” or miss things the rest of the time is nearly irreversible.

Thanks for the great post. —DR

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When I first read today’s “medium” post, I thought you were making a semantic argument that “belief” was the medium that was manipulated in magic. But after considering it for a while, I think you’ve offered one of the few practical ways to consider generating a real “magical” feeling in people. It’s not just about how fooled they are, it’s really about creating that shifting sense of belief.

I think an important piece of the puzzle which you didn’t quite get to is that having a story is the best way to engage their belief. If the trick is just “your bill is in my lemon,” you won’t have that push and pull dynamic with their belief because there is no “compelling fiction” to believe in.—ER

Yes. Thanks for the kind words about that post. It wasn’t intended to be a theoretical exercise… “What is the medium of magic?” 🤔 It was meant it to be an actionable idea for how we can create effects that feel“magical” and not just fooling. And I think the way to do that is by keeping their belief unbalanced. I’m testing a number of different ways to do this, many of which are extensions of other concepts I’ve written about here. If I have any breakthroughs in this area, I’m sure you’ll read about them somehwere.

The Rough Draft Framework

One of the most interesting ways you can present a trick to someone as an amateur is to break it up in stages over the course of a few different interactions. The idea is to “let people in” (but not really) on some “rough draft” (but not really) versions of the trick before you show them the real thing. In reality, the “rough draft” versions are just a way to extend what would otherwise be a quick trick into something hopefully more interesting. And to get the target spectator thinking in a direction other than the methodology that you’re actually using.

Here’s an example. Suppose you had a sleight-of-hand color-changing-ring effect, where one ring was secretly exchanged for a ring of a different color. That would likely be a very quick effect that would amount to a nice visual, and not too much more. And the idea that you likely just switched the ring would probably be the first thing they would consider.

We can change that around with a rough-draft style framework for the effect.

You would use this with someone you see regularly.

Encounter 1 - After you’ve performed another trick, or when the subject of magic comes up, you mention you’re trying to come up with a way to do a trick where a ring changes color—from black to gold (or whatever). This is said casually, you don’t make too big a deal about it at this stage. You can give more to the backstory regarding why you want to work on this trick, but the important point is simply that you bring it up.

Encounter 2 - “Remember I told you I was trying to come up with a method to make a ring change color? I’ve come up with a prototype for it.”

Here you now perform this color changing paper ring trick by origami-ist, Jeremy Shafer. The idea is that this is an early stage version that you’re hoping to shrink down to finger ring size. This is just a proof-of-concept.

This trick is kind of neat looking, but it’s not really strong enough to stand on its own. People will know that if they took a look at the paper ring, they’d know how the trick was done. Now, you could make up a whole routine around this and build in some switches to make it stronger, but that’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m just talking about using this routine as a misdirect for a future effect.

So for our purposes you would end the effect by exposing the trick. This is not “meaninigless exposure” It’s purposeful exposure. But if you’re uncomfortable with it, that’s understandable. Don’t do this type of presentation.

Encounter 3 - You would mention you had your “prototype” professionally printed so it’s more durable (although it’s still in the prototype phase). And then demonstrate the color change again using the gimmick from Tenyo’s Honeycomb.

I’m not suggesting you do the whole effect, just show them the gimmick and some of the color changes you’re working on. Because they already understand the basic workings, the purpose of this is just to beat into their heads (subtly) the mechanics of how a ring shaped object changes color.

“The next step is to find someone who can forge a ring for me that has the same qualities as this… with the colors laid out in this manner.”

Encounter 4 - “Hey. I got that ring made. Check it out. From this angle it looks black, but from this other side, it looks gold.”

Here you do any sort of sleight-of-hand ring color change you want to do (I’ll post a simple one soon.). Then you slowly hand them the ring after the change (as if you’re still trying to maintain the correct angle), and as you do this, you ditch the extra ring while all the focus is on your other hand.

You see, if you just do a change of an object, there is heat almost immediately on your hands to see if there is something else hidden there. But because we’ve set up “how it works,” all their focus will be on the ring itself. You’ve shown them essentially the same trick and you’ve exposed the method in the past, so they are not (yet) looking for another layer of deception.

When they get the ring, they’ll turn it over in their hands looking for the opposite color. This is how they’ve been trained. You’ll want to have your hands out in front of you, innocently. Perhaps slightly adjusting the ring in their hands. So without saying anything, it’s clear you’re clean. By the time it dawns on them there’s nothing special about the ring, it’s too late for them to catch anything. The other ring has long been ditched. And it’s even too late for them to remember if there was any time for you to ditch anything, because their mind wasn’t focused on that until too late in the game.

At this point, the trick is over. But if you want, you can do something to “explain” why they’re not seeing what they expect to see with the ring. “Oh, yeah. Well, the two-sided color thing works better with the larger, flat-sided, paper rings I was using. Once I shrunk it down to ring size, it wasn’t nearly as effective. So I had to come up with another way to do the trick. Have you ever heard of the psychology of color expectation? There’s an experiment where they handed people a blue coke can, and later on they asked them what color the can was and they almost universally said red—because that’s the color people expect coke cans to be. Anyway, so I primed you by saying it was a black ring. But it was gold all along.” [Blah, blah, etc., etc.] “Next time we hang out, I’ll show you something cool with that color expectation thing.”

And the next time you’re together you show them something interesting with a color theme.

It’s these types of techniques that allow you to take a two second ring trick and expand it over time and weave it into other performances. This is the unique aspect of amateur magic. You don’t have to just build isolated moments of weirdness. You can build out an entire weird tapestry.

medium [ mee-dee-uhm ]

Fine Arts.

1. the material or technique with which an artist works

If magic is an art, what is the medium? It’s a question that I find fairly easy to answer with most any other artistic endeavor. In painting it’s… well, paint. Sculpture, maybe clay or something. In dance the medium is the movement of the human body.

A lot of people who perform magic are looking to generate belief. They want people to believe they can truly read their thoughts or move something with their mind or whatever the case may be.

But in my opinion, generating the strongest “magical” experience is not about getting people to believe something. Belief is not the goal. Belief is the medium that is manipulated to create magic.

If someone believes in mind-reading, and you perform a demonstration of mind-reading that they think is real, no magic has occurred, because no one’s belief has been agitated.

If someone doesn’t believe in psychokinesis, but you perform a demonstration that is so strong that it gets them to believe in it, then you have performed a very strong trick, but not really a strong “magical” moment. All you’ve done is flip them from non-belief to belief.

The strongest magical experiences I’ve been able to give people happen when their minds get pulled back and forth, between the fiction of the trick and what they know the reality must be. (Ideally this happens over and over.) Or when they’re momentarily in some hybrid state that exists where they feel both the reality and the fantasy simultaneously. It’s their belief that is getting stretched and squished, swirled and smeared.

If your goal is just to fool people or entertain them, they you don’t really need to worry about this. The purpose of this technique is for them to feel the very specific type of magical feeling that invokes a sense of enchantment and wonder. That type of magic feeling is the feeling of reality and fantasy being blurred. And the way to generate it is to use a clearly impossible premise and then to hack away at all potential answers, explanations, and alternative theories, so that the only option people have left is to vacillate between what they know to be true, and the crazy fantasy you’ve so carefully crafted. It’s in this state that their belief is most pliable, which can lead to truly magical seeming experiences.

The Premise Process

I’d like you to reconcile two ideas from separate questions in today’s post.[Mailbag #56].

The first question in that post talks about your “Photographic Absorption” premise.

Then in the next question/answer you talk about the mistakes people make with Audience-Centric magic and you say that one of the mistakes they make is that they choose a premise the audience cannot understand at all because it’s unrelated to any concept they understand. You use the question, “Is this a thing?” to ask if it’s a good premise. But “photographic absorption” isn’t a thing, so why would that be a good premise?

While I have you, what do you find to be the best way to come up with ideas for premises? If there is a process you use for that sort of thing.—BI

I see your point. The term “photographic absorption” is made up. But the concept that you can look at a photograph and have that affect your mental state is something that has a basis in reality. So we’re building on something people understand. The magical turn in that presentation is the idea that going through some process can affect not just your internal state, but external factors as well. While that doesn’t have a basis in reality, it is an extension of something that does. Which, to my mind, is a perfectly good type of premise.

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In the original “Is this a thing?” post, I said: “My favorite types of premises/presentations are unbelievable, interesting, and familiar.” And I talked about looking for these sorts of concepts that already exist in the world. Things like time travel, ESP, haunted objects, etc.

But it’s actually fairly easy to come up with premises that meet those criteria in regards to any subject, even if it’s not inherently strange in the first place.

Here are the steps:

1. First you start with a concept or an object.

2. Make some sort of statement about the parameters of how that concept/object operates.

3. Change one of those parameters to make the statement untrue.

4. Use the now untrue statement as a premise for an effect or presentation.

For example, let’s say we want to do a trick related to the concept of “memory.”

We start with a statement related to memory.

You can take certain supplements to help you better recall your memories.

Now we change one detail of that statement to make it untrue.

You can take certain supplements to help you better recall other people’s memories.

And we now have the premise for a trick.

By starting off with a sentence that rings true and only changing one thing, you end up with something that still feels familiar, because it’s very similar to something that’s well understood. This keeps you tethered to reality in a way that makes for what I feel is a good premise, rather than just asking, “Is this thing I’m going to do impossible?” By that metric you end up with shit like Milk to Lightbulb. “I’m going to vanish milk and make it reappear in this light bulb,” has no relation to anything at all. It feels like you’re doing it simply because you have a way to do it. And, of course, you are.

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You can use this process with anything. I look out of my window now and I see a tree with bright red autumn leaves. What’s a fundamentally true statement I can say about this? In autumn, all the leaves on the tree change color from green to red. Now by changing any single parameter, we’ve got a decent premise for a trick. If we change “autumn” we have a trick where you make the leaves change color in the spring. By changing “all” you have a trick where only one leaf changes color, or maybe one selected leaf doesn’t change color. By changing, “green” we have a trick where the leaves change to blue or something.

Let’s do it with something else. Theres a lamp on my desk. What’s a statement I can make about this lamp? The lamp lights up when it is plugged in and electricity flows into it. Okay, now we change one parameter of that statement. The lamp lights up when it’s not plugged in. That’s okay. But just negating your original statement is probably not the best way to go about this. Instead, maybe we change the parameters in this way: The lamp lights up when sexual energy is fed into the cord. So instead of plugging it in, two lovers sandwich the end of the power cord between their hands. That’s a premise that works for me. We’re substituting in something for the electricity. But it’s not completely arbitrary. “Sexual energy” makes sense as a power source, at least in a fantasy word. We just changed one parameter: the type of energy a lamp needs.

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Now, let’s talk about a bad premise:

The card changed from blue to red because it was embarrassed.

Someone might say, “I did what you said. I took the concept that embarrassment causes people to turn red, and I just changed one thing: I put ‘playing cards’ in place of people.”

Yeah, sorry, no. That doesn’t count. People feel embarrassment. Not playing cards. So you’re introducing an entirely new object as the subject of your premise. When you do that, you’re just making your trick a symbolic exercise.

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Now, of course what I’m talking about here is sort of an easy way to generate premises, because you’re not limited by any given trick. It’s just an idea generating process.

Look at something: There’s a pumpkin outside my window.

Make a true statement about pumpkins: Pumpkins decompose about a week from when you carve them.

Change one parameter of that statement and you’ll have a trick idea.

Maybe it’s a trick where pumpkins don’t decompose, they recompose. And every night you swap out the pumpkin on your neighbor’s porch with a similar one except the image that was carved into it is a little smaller than the previous night. As if it’s healing. (That would be more of a weird, benevolent prank than it would be a trick.)

Or maybe you change “about a week” to “about a minute” and the audiences watches as the pumpkin decomposes in real time in front of you. “That wasn’t a trick with the pumpkin. It was a trick with time. We’re all ten days older than we were just moments ago.”

This is, I think, a pretty satisfying way to generate trick ideas using a particular concept or object.

But unless you’re creating a themed show, or something like that, you probably don’t not need to create a premise first, and then build a trick from that. Instead you probably have a trick that already exists and you need to come up with some premise for it. That is, admittedly, much harder.

But just coming up with premises (without tricks) attached is the first step I use. I come up with subjects that I think are interesting. Then I use this process to generate premises based on that subject. Then I keep a list of those premises and read through them from time to time, alongside a list of tricks that I haven’t quite found a premise for yet, and I look for any potential connecting fiber between the two lists.

It’s not automatic, but it puts you in a position to get lucky occasionally and match up a premise you like with a trick you have. This beats the option of just hoping for a bolt of inspiration to strike and to just have the perfect premise pop into your head. Sometimes that does happen. But it’s not a very actionable way to approach the process.

Dustings #56

Thanks to those of you who sent complimentary emails about Wednesday’s post. I didn’t get a chance to reply to each one. That post was in my head for so long that it comes to a point where I assume someone else must have made that point already. Which I’m fine with, so long as I’m adding something to what came before.

As I’ve discussed before on this site, I don’t read much magic theory. First, because most of what I read doesn’t feel like it applies to me. And second, because I don’t want it to interfere with what I’m writing about on this site and in my books, which is my own journey in magic and the things I’m learning from performing. That being said, if I do write something that overlaps significantly with something someone else wrote, please do let me know. That’s not like something that would bother me. I’d be happy to hear that and update the post with that information.

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I saw that Joshua Jay mentioned me in his new book, How Magicians Think. I have to admit, I was at first confused by some of what he said. Here is an excerpt from page 299.

A lot of this is just inaccurate. My trick with the time capsule uses a signed card, not a cellphone. And in the ring trick (which is called Faith, not Letting Go), the ring reappears… well, wherever you want that you have access to. But probably not in a drawer in their apartment. So what’s going on here? Well, either Josh was drunk when he wrote this (likely) or maybe he’s doing me a favor. Those two tricks he mentioned are two of the strongest tricks I’ve created, but he made them seem even more impossible. And given that there will be more copies of his book published than copies of every magic book I ever write combined, he’s kind of boosting my legend a little. So thanks Josh!

The site is also mentioned in the notes section. And again, it’s a weird mention.

Sooo… that post he mentions has absolutely nothing to do with what he’s talking about in that chapter. But it does link to a post that links to the Dumb Houdini store (a site that puts a little bit of money in my pocket whenever someone buys something from there). So again, thanks Josh!

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I like this review of Josh’s book:

Yeah, c’mon, Josh. What the fuck. How am I supposed to follow this? Every time he says “she” I think, “Wait… is he talking about the magician’s mom now?” I’m thrown every time.

And yes, I understand that in this new world order, women can finally do magic too, and we should acknowledge that. But I found this passage particularly pandering and strange:

“The best trick in magic is sponge balls. When a magician performs sponge balls she gets a feeling of excitement, because she knows it’s going to get a great response. Her breasts will heave in anticipation of the audience’s amazement. Her labia will quiver with delight. The combination of vaginal mucus and lubrication (which can contain carbohydrates, amino acids, proteins, and other acids produced by the normal lactobacillus bacteria) will drip down her inner thigh. Performing the sponge ball trick, and seeing her spectator’s awestruck faces, will validate her decision not to follow society’s path of becoming a wife and mother—and instead to pursue her dreams of becoming a world-famous magicienne.”

Ooooookay…. That’s weird, right?

Dear Mentalists: The Art of the Pre-Reveal and the Pickle Jar Approach

You asked your friend to think of a famous person and write it down on a business card. Your friend is thinking of Brad Pitt. You’ve peeked this information.

You start to concentrate on their thought…

“Hmm… it’s an actor, I think. A film actor, primarily. At least that’s what I think I’m getting. He’s not old, but he’s been around for a while. I get the sense he’s been in a lot of public relationships. Hmm… he was in Fight Club. No… no… not Ed Norton. Hmm… who could it be. Wait.. it’s coming to me… Brad Pitt!”

This is only a slightly exaggerated version of the type of bad pre-reveals people give in mentalism. And by “pre-reveal” I mean the information they give before they (supposedly) know the actual information.

I once saw a trick where a guy had someone think of an item from a group of, like, 20 items. The person was thinking of an airplane. And the guy was picking up details of what they were thinking of. “It’s manmade… it’s a vehicle of some sort, I think.” Well, only two items in the group fit that description, so it was obvious where this was heading. He should have just said, “Well, it can only be the plane or the car then.” But instead he kept getting his “impressions.” “It’s big. Very big, actually. Am I seeing this in the air?” At that point it’s just like, get the fuck on with it.

We think of bad mentalism as saying, “You’re thinking of an actor… it’s Brad Pitt!” And so we think we need to add some process to the revelation. So we act as if we’re picking up on details as they become clearer and clearer. This, I think, seems more real, but it’s not great dramatically. It reduces the impact of the final reveal.

If you’re performing one-on-one, the other person already knows what they’re thinking of. If you give details and get closer and closer to that thing, then they soon realize exactly where this is going. It become anti-climactic.

Similarly, if you’re performing for an audience and they don’t know what the person is thinking, you don’t want to give so much detail that they’re ahead of you at the end. That too is anticlimactic. And sort of silly if they can jump to the correct conclusion with no psychic powers before you can put the pieces together with yours.

So what I find works best is to give information that is correct (or will be perceived as correct) but doesn’t give too much clarity. That way the people you perform for still get a sense of surprise when you name what they’re thinking of.

Three Ways to Give Information Without Giving Too Much Information

Let’s again say they’re thinking of Brad Pitt. Here are some techniques to give information without it being clear that you already know what they’re thinking.

Vagueness

This is sort of obvious. The idea is to just use hits that don’t actually reduce the pool of potential correct answers all that much.

• “I feel this person is still alive.”

• “I think it’s a male, yes…. oh… well, actually it could be a female with a strong masculine energy.”

• “This is someone you might see on TV.”

That last statement, “Someone you might see on TV,” is just another way of saying, “Someone famous.” It’s the kind of statement you can make without even knowing what the person wrote down yet.

Tell Them What It’s Not

A good source for “hits” that don’t give too much information is to reveal what it’s not. The moment you say, “This is an actor,” we all know that a lot of people will jump to Brad PItt. He’s one of the most commonly thought of actors.

But if you say:

“I don’t think this is a politician.”

“I don’t get the sense this is a historical figure.”

“I don’t see really long hair.”

You are giving them hits by excluding some things, but you’re not really drawing a bullseye around any one particular thing yet.

Similarly, if you have a list of objects, saying “You’re thinking of something manmade,” might eliminate half of the objects or more in one “hit.” That’s too much for me. I would instead say something like, “Okay, I don’t get the sense this is something you’d find…like…in your backyard or something.” That’s still a statement with some meaning. It might eliminate the tree and the flower, or whatever, from your list. But it doesn’t narrow you down too much.

Retroactive Hits

“I think maybe… is this an athlete? Like a boxer? No? Hmmm….”

Later when it’s revealed to be Brad Pitt you say, “Ah! Okay, that makes sense. I think I was picking up on the fighting from Fight Club. That must be where the ‘boxer’ idea came from.”

Coming up with these retroactive hits is very easy with actors because you can just “pick up” on one of their better known roles and misinterpret that.

You can also do it with inanimate objects by asking them to build out a picture around that object in their mind. So you might say, “Is this an animal you’re thinking of?” They say no, and later on it’s revealed they were thinking of a tree. At that point you can say, “Hmm… I’m trying to figure out what I was receiving from you. Did you think of a bird in the tree or a squirrel or something?” If they were, this seems like another hit. If not, it doesn’t really matter because this comes after you’ve already successfully completed the effect.

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So, how close do you want to get to the final reveal in the pre-reveal stage? For me the answer is about 25% of the way there. Any more than that and I think it feels like a foregone conclusion before the reveal, rathe than a surprise.

Now, for this to make sense, you may need to change what you imagine the process of “mind reading” to be. You might think it doesn’t make sense to only get 25% of the way there, and then you make the leap to the correct answer. You might think it’s more “realistic” to get more and more information, gradually zeroing in on more specifics, until the point that you finally get the right answer. But that’s only “more realistic” if you imagine reading someone’s mind is like reading a sign in the distance. First it’s a blurry jumble, then as you get closer and closer you can make out more details, until finally you can read the sign or see the picture clearly. If that’s how you think of mind-reading, then it makes sense that your pre-reveal is a sort of linear progression of greater detail.

But I would argue that it might be more interesting—and certainly more dramatically satisfying—to not think of mind-reading that way. Consider an Agatha Christie novel. In one of those, are the detective’s insights of greater and greater specificity until it’s clear who the killer is? Do we have half the answers halfway through the book? No. There are hints and red herrings for the first 95% of the book. Only at the very end do you see that it all came together and the investigation “worked.”

I think this pace is a more interesting way to do a reveal. And there’s really no reason mind-reading can’t follow this formula. Instead of a picture gradually becoming clearer, maybe it’s more like opening a really tough pickle jar. You kind of work at it and work at it, and maybe you’re making some progress, but it’s hard to tell and then eventually—in a moment—the jar pops open. Maybe mind reading is like that. It’s not immediate. But it’s also not a linear progression. It’s sort of a struggle—is this working, is this not—and then, in a flash of insight, you have it. With that model of how mind-reading works, you can still “show the process” while keeping the ending in doubt and maintaining the surprise of your successful reveal.

Monday Mailbag #57

[Do you] recommend a technique for easing ones nerves...

My best trick for this is to address the issue to the people before you - "gosh my nerves are kicking in here - hopefully you won't notice my icy, shaking, sweat drenched hand things..." —GB

I tried to address this in a previous mailbag post, but I don’t really have a great answer, because it’s not really something I deal with. At least not regularly.

But here’s an idea to consider. You wouldn’t be able to do it all the time, but you might be able to get away with it occasionally. And that idea is to attribute the nerves to something else. Something related to the trick, but not just, “I’m worried I’m going to screw this trick up.”

So, for example, you could say, “I might be a little jittery here. To do this trick right you have to practice this mind-centering, breathing/meditation technique. It makes you hyper-sensitive to certain things, but it also kind of puts you on edge.”

Or, “Okay, I’m nervous, so forgive me if my hands shake a little. The truth is, I’m not supposed to be showing anyone this trick. I belong to this kind of underground magic group that shares tricks with each other, but we’re not really supposed to show them to others without permission. We sign an agreement and you can get kicked out of the group if they found out. Not that I think you guys would ever say anything to anyone or post anything online. But there are stories of some members of the group performing a trick they weren’t supposed to for someone in their private home when nobody else was around, and nobody mentioned it afterwards, and still somehow this group knew. So that’s why I’m a little on edge. But I really want to show you this thing that I don’t think anyone outside of this group of magicians has ever seen…”

I can think of three benefits to this:

First, it would give you an excuse to show nerves other than, “I’m a little puss-baby who is worried about fucking up his magic trick.”

Second, now that you’ve provided a reason to be nervous, you’ll probably be less so. I would guess that part of the reason people get nervous is because they’re worried about getting nervous.

Third, if you do end up shaking, or sweating like a maniac, or shitting your undies, or whatever, you will have taken this potentially embarrassing situation and turned it around in the audience’s mind. They will think, “Oh, come on… he’s not really nervous, right? It’s just for the story. There’s not really a secret magic organization that’s going to find out about this that he’s worried about, right?”

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Hi Andy, after reading today's post (which even made me marvel just reading the coin vanish part... That alone was magical after the setup, even in print) it reminded me I wanted to ask you about breaking character.

Obviously they know this didn't really happen (or any of these stories used in your style a lot). So do you ever just give a knowing smile or a wink at some point?

I ask, because if I did this, they would say, "okay, that didn't really happen, right??", whether it was this story, or one of the many examples you have in print using a setup (even if it was more believable or something that could be true, even if only constructed as back story). What they're really asking, is, "yeah I know there's no curse, but how did you do that?"

They'd know I'm telling tales. That means if I really meant to pull it off, it could never be revealed to look anything but spontaneous if you're doing magic that "comes up" situationally, or because you steer it in that direction to perform.

If you ever break character, then it's, "okay, he's just being the magician/mind-reader that he is".

I know that you know your friends know you are a performer/casual magician (or whatever), so do you just maintain the stories you create and stand by them? Or do you ever acknowledge that they know you're just "putting them on" so to speak?

Hard to explain, but I'm sure you know what I'm asking?

Strict example using this post, if I started that up, they would know I'm going into "that mode". It would still be fun and very engaging because that's a fantastic presentation, but I only know one person dumb enough to believe it, and that that's why the coin vanished. And I don't hang out with her.

Anyway, thoughts? Do you step into character/story mode, like a movie, where everyone then let's go of any prior beliefs and just enjoys the narrative? —NS

I’ll answer this in pieces…

So do you ever just give a knowing smile or a wink at some point?

No. Ideally I’m doing something so impossible/crazy/absurd that it would be kind of insulting to wink at them.

Imagine you’re dating someone and it’s Christmas and you sneak a gift onto the coffee table at some point in time. “Whoa… there’s a gift here on the table. It’s from Santa! Wow. I thought I saw something in the sky earlier.” Or whatever. You wouldn’t then say, “Just so you know, I’m only kidding around.” It goes without saying what’s going on.

Now, I don’t always get this right. I don’t always push things far enough. I made that mistake a couple times last month when I was doing some seance-y type stuff. It was almost too believable for the people I was doing it for (people who are open to that sort of thing). So when I found them more in a state of questioning (“is this real or not?”) rather than appreciation for the story, then I did need to give a metaphorical wink.

But usually I want to do something so outlandish that the wink is redundant. This is the idea of the Reverse Disclaimer. The “wink” or the “knowing smile” in this case is the same as the disclaimer. It’s something I want to get rid of.

I ask, because if I did this, they would say, "okay, that didn't really happen, right??", whether it was this story, or one of the many examples you have in print using a setup

If someone said, “That didn’t really happen, right?” I would say, “I swear to god it did. A gypsy put a curse on this ring and made it take my money. I swear on the lives of your children that’s a true story. Why would you doubt that?”

I know that you know your friends know you are a performer/casual magician (or whatever), so do you just maintain the stories you create and stand by them? Or do you ever acknowledge that they know you're just "putting them on" so to speak?

I will talk with them in a general sense about doing magic, or something I did for a mutual friend. And they will say things to me where they mention really enjoying a particular trick or story. And I’m not like, “No, no! It’s not a trick, it really happened!” So I’ll happily acknowledge the reality in a broad manner. And when you do that, you don’t have to worry about how they view individual tricks.

It’s like professional wrestling. In the 80s, they used to sort of pretend what they were doing was real in and out of the ring. Then, at some point, they realized that was stupid and they went to a model where they would just pretend things were real within the show. But when they appeared on talk shows or podcasts or something, they would talk more freely about playing a character and working on a story arc and whatnot.

The difference between wrestling and magic is that in magic there is less of a distinction between when we’re “in the show” and when we’re not. I intentionally like to blur those lines when I perform. But I’ve educated the people I perform for enough to understand that the performance world is fictional and then there is the real world. What I’m interested in doing is not making it 100% clear when you’re in which world.

So do I step into performance mode? Yes and no. Sometimes I make it very subtle and sometimes it’s more abrupt. The Campfire Story Performance Style, as described in the post you’re talking about in your question, would be on the more abrupt end. It would have a “gather around for this story” feel. But in other cases the people wouldn’t know they were “in” a trick until the climax. Playing around with this sort of thing keeps it interesting for me and the spectators.