Dustings #99

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My Buddy Paul
a Clarification Technique

Building on ideas talked about in Wednesday’s Pre-Climax Summary post, here’s another way you can emphasize the fairness of certain conditions when you perform.

“I did this for my buddy, Paul, the other day and he completely forgot that he had shuffled the cards at the start and the whole experience was lost on him. So keep that in mind that we started this out with the deck shuffled by you.”

Or (as in yesterday’s Half Down technique):

“I did this for my buddy, Paul, and he was convinced that I somehow made him eliminate one of these halves as opposed to the other. So I want to slow down and make it clear to you that you have a completely fair choice of either of these packets. Which do you want to keep and which do you want to get rid of?”

If it’s not completely clear, you’re verbalizing anything questionable or anything you want to emphasize, and claiming it was something your buddy Paul said or questioned. (Your buddy doesn’t have to be Paul. (It could be Saul.))

So instead of, “Here’s what I want you to remember,” or, “Here’s what you’re probably thinking,” we have “Paul” as, like, an independent “third party” to give some weight to these points.”

I think it’s a fairly natural way to emphasize certain conditions when you perform.

Don’t overdo it, or people will start to wonder what Paul’s fucking problem is. But used sparingly, it’s helpful.

“Here’s my used rubber to take home as a souvenir.”
- A magician after having sex

I haven’t made this point in many years, but I was thinking about it again this week…

In most cases, it’s up to your audience to decide what is a souvenir and what isn’t.

I’ve had plenty of people who have kept signed cards from card tricks. And I’ve had plenty of people who have loved the trick, but wouldn’t even consider taking the detritus from an effect.

Telling someone, “You can keep that as a souvenir,” is like saying, “Hey, do you want my autograph?”

It’s kind of presumptuous to say, “You’re going to want to remember this so much, you’ll hold onto this piece of trash to remind yourself of it.”

Of course, if the item is something that they might feel like they couldn’t ask for (something seemingly expensive, or maybe something that they would assume is a “trick” magic item that they can’t take with them), then I’ll make a point that they can keep it.

But with, like, a signed card or a billet they wrote “Tree” on, I just leave that out on the table while I put the other stuff away. If they want it, they will either just take it or ask for it.

Okay, sure, this is lovely. But let’s be honest. He should have brought up a translator and then “talent swapped” with him. Or acted like he got shocked by the microphone and could now speak Korean. Or sent around a magic “elixir” to the Korean-speaking members of the audience so “you will hear what I have to say next as if it was spoken in your native tongue.”

If you’re going to bother learning something in secret, make the most out of it.

Half Down

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One of my issues with the Classic Force and many other forces is that they happen too quickly. If the purpose of any force is to make the person feel like they could have ended up with any card, then speed is your enemy.

When I was first learning magic, there was this idea that you shouldn’t just force a card and then do some kind of crazy reveal. Like, you shouldn’t classic force a card and then show that the card is printed on the back of your t-shirt. “If you do that, then people will know the card was forced.”

Well… yeah…but maybe that should give you some clue that it’s not a good force.

The classic force, the riffle force and other forces such as these are good for getting a potentially random-seeming card into people’s hands quickly. So they have their place in magic. But when it comes to getting close to convincing them that this was a random, free choice, they’re not well suited for that.

For a sense of conviction, there needs to be some distinct choices made by the spectator. Saying “stop” as cards riffle by isn’t a choice. Nor is reaching out into a moving spread of cards. Those are actions, not choices.

Here is a technique you can add to any force. This technique offers them a genuinely free choice that seemingly would have an undeniable impact on how things play out.

Start by having the deck shuffled by the spectator. Take the cards back and cut half of the cards off the deck and turn them over face-up.

“We’re going to start by eliminating half of the cards and it’s your choice. I’ll even show you what you’re keeping or getting rid of.”

You now start spreading through the face-up cards. If you spot the card you want to force, cull it under the spread and skip to the paragraph with a bee at the start of it.

If you don’t see their card in the face up half, turn everything over and spread again and cull the card out here.

So you’ve either shown them both halves of the deck, or just the half that was face-up originally. You have their card culled out of the deck beneath the spread of face-up cars.

🐝 Pull your hands slightly apart, so the packets are fully separated.

“It’s up to you. Which half do you want to get rid of? The face-up half, or the face-down half? … You’re sure? I just want to be certain because at the end of this I don’t want you to think I somehow made you take either pile. Whichever one you want to get rid of, we won’t use.”

They reiterate their choice.

Path One

If they say face-down. You can cleanly just toss the packet aside.

Path Two

If they say face-up. You bring your hands together, placing the culled card beneath the face down cards, as you square up and remove the face up cards and go to set them aside.

Now pause. “Final chance. Are you sure you want to get rid of the face-up cards?”

  • Branch One - If they say, Yes. (And at this point I’ve never had them not say yes, I don’t think.) I cleanly toss aside the face-up cards.

  • Branch Two - If they change their mind and say they want to get rid of the face-down cards. I double-check with them. If they’re sure, I place the face-up cards under the face-down cards and then start taking the face-down cards in groups up four or five off the top of the deck. I turn these groups over and toss them to the table. “Okay. You’re getting rid of these and these and these and these.”

What we’re going for here is a situation where the packets are fully separated, the spectator makes their final choice, and the packet they choose to discard is directly tossed aside and eliminated. That’s what happens here 95+% of the time. The other 5% is still relatively clean, just not perfectly clean.

Now, let’s back up. If they say they want to get rid of the face-up cards, and then confirm they want to get rid of the face-up cards (Path Two, Branch One), you will be left with a face-down half with the force card face-up at the bottom. You can either half-pass it. Or turn it against your leg on an offbeat. Or you can take small packets from the top of that half, turn them over, and show the audience some of the cards that are still left in play, and place them underneath that half. Eventually you’ll end up with all face-up cards with your force card at the face (this will also happen at the end of Path Two, Branch Two). Obviously, you don’t want to bring too much attention to that, so you’ll turn everything over and give the cads a shuffle that retains the bottom force card.

From here you can go into a Cross-Cut force or pretty much any other force (even a classic force) with the remaining half-deck. If at the end, they say, “You somehow made me pick the 4 or Hearts.” You can bring it back to this clear moment of choice, e.g,. “Well, I don’t know how I could make you pick the 4 of Hearts. I mean, I didn’t even know what cards were going to be in play at the end. You shuffled and got rid of half of them at the very start. What if the 4 of Hearts had been in that half?”

Pre-Climax Summary

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“Oh, shit. I’m gonna cum!”

No. Not that type of Pre-Climax Summary.

Jonah B. writes:

I wanted get your opinion on something I see as somewhat of a trope in magic. The trope is to summarise all of the strong, fair points of a trick to the participant just before the climax. For example, 'Remember, you shuffled the cards, you thought of any card at random, you shuffled the cards again and I never went near the cards. I was blindfolded and upside-down the whole time, and I have been illiterate since birth, so even if I did see the card I wouldn't be able to read it...' and so on. It seems to be common wisdom among magicians that this kind of summary of the 'fair' moments makes the trick stronger. I see the logic of this approach, and I've done it many times myself, especially as, in my experience, some participants actually do forget the fact that they shuffled the cards etc. Stylistically, though, I wonder if it comes across a little cliche, or at worst, desperate. If the emphasis on the fair points of the trick is strong enough throughout the routine, does this summary need to happen at the end? I'm torn, because it seems to make the trick seem stronger, but the experience feel worse. In other art forms where the audience is called upon to remember earlier parts of the narrative (I'm thinking in theatre, film or music), allusions or refrains that echo previous elements of the story seem to be more artistically satisfying than direct flashbacks or repetition ('Remember when that happened?'). 

What do you think? —JB

This is a great question.

I find the Pre-Climax Summary to be something of a necesasry evil at times. It frequently has to be done to remind someone of the conditions of the effect. But it also does come across as semi-pathetic in practice. And it certainly gives the performance the rhythm of a magic trick, rather than a more normal type of human interaction.

Sometimes you can’t get around the PCS, but I’ll give you some potential alternative ideas and advice.

Self-Assurance

I fucking hate mayonaisse.

Okay, Andy, that was an unexpected left turn. Where is this going?

Stay with me.

At a restaurant I’ll frequently find myself ordering a sandwich and saying, “No mayo.”

And then I get the sandwich and it’s fucking slathered with that shit.

This happened enough times that I would find myself reiterating it when I ordered. “You got that I wanted that without mayo, yes?”

That’s fine. But I could tell that asking that would annoy some people. As a competent person myself, I get it. It can be annoying when people treat you as if you’re incompetent. And asking for something with “no mayo” and then clarifying “no mayo” 14 seconds later suggests you don’t think the person is super competent.

But the issue is, there ARE a lot of incompetent people and I don’t know who I’m dealing with the moment I step into your sandwich shop.

So I came up with this technique.

“I’ll take the club sandwich. No mayo on that. And… I’ll have the fries. And a Coke please. I think that’s it.” Then, before the waiter leaves or I walk away from the counter, I say, “Oh… wait… did I mention ‘no mayo’ on the sandwich?”

You see? Now my message isn’t: “I think you might have screwed up.” It’s: “I think I might have screwed up. Can you reassure me?”

You can do something similar with the PCS.

Instead of saying, “And remember, you shuffled this deck before we even started.”

When you get to the climax you can say, “And if you look at the cards—oh hold on… I had you shuffle the deck at the start, yes? Okay, good. I thought so, but I wasn’t 100% sure. This will be much crazier knowing you shuffled at the beginning. Okay, so if you look at the cards…,”

That’s the idea. Instead of reminding you, I’m assuring myself.

This won’t work if you have a whole litany of stuff to summarize. But you can use it to clarify an important condition.

Clarifying Conditions

Last year I wrote a post (and a couple of follow-ups) on the biggest takeaway I’d learned in my time testing magic. And that was the idea that you cannot really overly clarify the conditions of an effect. People forget too easily. And if you take the standard (bad) magician advice that you shouldn’t tell them what to notice(e.g., “Don’t tell them your hand is empty before you put it in your pocket. Simply show it empty”) then they are even more likely to forget, becuase you didn’t mention what they were supposed to take note of.

That’s the whole point of the Pre-Climax Summary in the first place: reminding them of the important stuff they might have forgotten.

However, this is less necessary if you take the time to properly note these things as they’re happening.

Don’t be afraid to do this. If you’re the person demonstrating some incredible power, the EXACT thing you would do is make sure people understood all the conditions along the way that make this particularly impossible.

Third-Party Summarizing

But often, I’m not the one demonstrating an incredible power. In those cases, it might come off as weird for me to overly clarify the conditions as we go if I’m trying to play the part of someone who is also “along for the ride,” as opposed to the person driving the bus.

Fortunately, in those situations its even easier to justify the ending summary. You just treat it like a checklist to make sure you’ve done everything correctly.

So, for example, if I’m showing them some sort of psychological test, or we’re following a ritual my grandfather wrote in the back of one of his weird books, or we’re plaing an obscure game, then I can pause before the ending and go over the instructions or the rules or whatever and act as if I’m just clarifying to myself that we did this right. The instructions or rules don’t necessarily have to be phsycially in front of me. If they’re not I can just act like I’m running through them in my head.

“Okay… let’s see if we go this right. So we started by shuffling the cards, yes? And then you freely eliminated one of the the halves? Okay. So then we cut the remaining cards into four smaller piles. Then we made that blood sacrifice to the Guardian of the Dark Water Bog. Okay… looks like we got all that right. Let’s see what happened…. the four aces! Wow!”

Minimize

“And you shuffled. And you stopped whenever you wanted. And you cut the cards at places you chose. And you turned over the cards yourself.”

Does all of that matter? Probably not. Don’t summarize every last detail. Just the imporant ones. In this case, all that likely matters is that they remember they shuffled the deck at the start of the trick. Pointing out all those other details will just bury that most imporant point.

The nice thing about performing socially for friends and family is that you usually get a feel for the type of people who don’t need you to do the pre-climax summary because they were attuned to everything all along.

If at all possible, roll it into the presentation, But if that’s not possible I probably wouldn’t elminate entirely. It’s perhaps better to come off as pedantic than to waste their time with a trick they can’t fully appreciate because they forgot some element of the trick that really makes it sing.

Dead Goose

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Anthony O. writes:

So in April, my best friend gave me a late Christmas present in the form of Sherlock Holmes themed playing cards with different things on each suit.

She specifically asked me if I could come up with a trick with them. I said "Yes" because a lot of really basic ideas came to mind but I quickly decided I wanted to go bigger and do something truly inexplicable because she's important to me, she's never seen me do anything that extensive, and it's rare to get an opportunity to do a magic trick with a gift someone gave you.

The first thing that came to mind was forcing multiple cards to make a story. Like I'd have her pick a victim, killer, witness, weapon, and location. The only problem with that is that the deck isn't as straightforward as Clue cards where you have an equal number of people, weapons, and locations.

Here's what I counted:

  • 28 Characters (30 if you include the Jokers)

  • 12 Objects

  • 6 Animals

  • 6 Locations

So I was kind of stuck on how to force different things in a way that feels natural. If there were equal numbers of each type of thing, I could just use the same force for everything but because there's so few locations and objects compared to characters, I'd have to do something different for those and using multiple different card forcing procedures just seems excessive. I'm also having trouble coming up with a good reveal. I thought about doing something similar to your Humanity's Twins trick where her choices match up with something in an "unreleased" Holmes story or a fanfiction or something.

Another idea I had was to use "deductive reasoning" as a presentation and do something similar to your Closed Circle trick. So I'd get a few people involved and have them each select character cards and do some sort of real-time murder mystery with them.

I'm just not really sure what direction to take this trick and wanted to see if you had any ideas off the top of your head. I don't expect you to completely write out the trick (unless you want to of course) but just wanted to see if you had any ideas or suggestions to get the ball rolling since I want to do something special and don't want to waste this opportunity. —AO

You’re thinking along the same lines I would be thinking. Here’s exactly what I would do. I would first go and buy another deck of those cards. Having duplicates of something she doesn’t suspect you have duplicates of can be very useful.

I would force a card on her. I would take advantage of the duplicate I had and use that for some form of an ultra-fair force that involved a free choice at some point along the way. For example, by cutting the deck in half, in a way which leaves one of your force cards in either pile, you can fairly let them eliminate either half of the deck and then perform the force with the remaining half. You can make it clear that whichever half is eliminated will be out of play. They will remember that very fair elimination and will have a hard time getting around that, especially when they’re not conceiving of duplicates being in play.

So I’d force a card and have it hidden away without me knowing what it is (perhaps without her knowing what it is as well).

“I was really happy you got me this deck because it goes with something I’ve been looking into. Usually, card tricks involve sleight-of-hand or something. But there is a branch of card magic that actually uses techniques similar to what Sherlock Holmes used: observation, deduction, and reasoning. And I’m going to try and use those techniques to determine what card you picked.”

I would then have a group of cards chosen in some way. Perhaps cut the deck in thirds and then force one with equivoque. It doesn’t have to be super strong because it’s not going to be the focus of what they remember.

“Okay, these cards will be our clues. We can set the rest aside. But not all clues are equal. Very few are actually important. Some are red herrings. The key is being able to identify which is which. So we’ll use your choices to identify which of these clues are important.”

I would then do some sort of mixing procedure that leaves a certain pre-determined group of cards face-down. Think Shuffle-Bored. Think David Regal’s Letter Perfect. Think John Bannon’s Origami folding procedure. (I think those are all more or less the same sort of thing, but look a little different.)

So now you push aside all the cards other than the five or six cards that your spectator has seemingly chosen as the “important” clues.

“Okay, okay. Let’s see. We have a violin, we have a butcher’s cleaver, we have John Clay, a waterfall, and a dead goose. Hmm….”

I’d spend a few moments examining the “clues” and then look up, “Ah! I know what it is. You have the… the 4 of Clubs! Elementary!” She’d remove the card, showing I was correct.

“A very simple deduction. We had the violin and John Clay, of course. So that was making me think a red card. But then we had the waterfall, and the cleaver, and the dead goose. So then it was clear it was the 4 of Clubs.”

This will likely get a blank look.

“Okay, I didn’t really use deductive reasoning. I tried. But honestly these clues made no sense to me. But then I remembered that story. That famous Sherlock Holmes story. The one with John Clay, a waterfall, a cleaver, and a violin. And also a dead goose. You don’t know that story? It’s a good one.”

I’d walk over to my bookshelf and take down a book

“Yeah, this is the one. I’m pretty sure I remember the ending.”

And I’d flip to the last page of the book and rapidly read the last paragraph.

Holmes leaned back in his chair, a faint smile playing on his lips as Mrs. Hudson gathered the cards. The room was silent for a moment, the weight of revelation hanging in the air. Mrs. Thompson's eyes met Holmes's with a mixture of awe and gratitude. "The Four of Clubs," he stated definitively, confirming the unspoken truth that lingered between them. The flicker of the gaslight caught the glint in his eyes, and with that, the curtain descended on yet another chapter in the chronicles of the great detective.

“See, that’s how I knew. I just remembered this story.”

For me, that would be the right mixture of amazing and silly. And it’s the type of trick that grows in impossibility the more they think of it.

I might not actually reveal the card myself. I might have it just as the climax at the end of the book. I’d have to give it more thought.

And yes, I’m suggesting you make a hard-copy version of a fake Sherlock Holmes story. You could use AI to do it chapter by chapter, it wouldn’t have to make complete sense. And then print up a single copy. There are plenty of places online you can do that. Here’s one. You could bang it out in an evening, and it wouldn’t be that expensive.

That’s the route I’d take.

Justification as Presentation

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Joe M. writes:

My favourite maxim in magic is this:

"If you cannot hide it, paint it red."

Well - one of my interests is philosophy. And I was recently looking up the work of the philosopher David Chalmers. In the 90's - the most widely cited philosophy paper was one by David Chalmers called The Extended Mind.

In the paper - he argues that when you use either a phone or a notebook to remember something it becomes a part of your mind. 

Not just as a metaphor - but literally.

Here is a 5 mins clip where he explains his reasoning:

I wonder if this sort of idea could be used to justify having a spectator write something down in a mentalism trick?

You could say you want the spectator to remember something as part of their unconscious mind rather than their conscious mind. And then go into the spiel above. Perhaps it is easier to read a thought when it is buried in the unconscious?

If you watch the clip above - you can see how it would work well as the opening presentation to a mentalism trick where the spectator writes something down.—JM

Yeah, this is a good idea.

That video itself is a specifically good justification for why you might have someone write something in the notes field of their phone, which is a methodology I’ve been seeing fairly frequently recently.

But really I just wanted to use Joe’s email as a chance to talk about justifications more generally.

Here’s something that I’ve been thinking about….

The best justifications are disguised as presentation.

Here’s what I mean. I recently saw someone “read someone’s mind” and he went into it saying something like, “Often when people think of ‘mind reading’ they think someone can imagine any thought and the mind reader can pluck it out of their brain. But that’s not how it works. We need to get you to focus more directly on a word. Writing it down is one way to properly focus…,” etc., etc.

The message there is: “Here’s why I’m not just having you think of a word and telling you what it is.” But I think, ideally, that shouldn’t be the magician’s focus.

The justification shouldn’t come off as: “Here’s why I’m not doing X.”

It should come off as: “Here’s why I am doing Y.”

So instead of saying: “I can’t have you just think of a word. I need to have you write it down so I can focus your mind properly.”

You say something like, “When we write something down, it puts that information in our mind in a way that just thinking about it never could. There was this research study where they had people write down a phone number three times, or repeat it in their head 20 times. The group that wrote it down had far greater recall of the information when tested later on. Writing is both a physical and mental activity, so when something is written it becomes—in a way—highlighted in the mind. It makes it much easier to recall and project that information. I’ll show you something cool you can do. I want you to write down…” etc., etc.

Do you see the difference there?

The first way, I’m giving the audience an “excuse” as to why they need to write the word down.

The second way, I’m telling them something about the uniqueness of how the brain processes the actions of writing words. And then I’m demonstrating that. I’m not making any excuses. So it feels like my focus is only on this interesting thing I have to show them.

By giving the justification as presentation, it prevents the question of, “Can you do it without me writing it down?” from really ever coming up. It wouldn’t make sense to ask that given what I’m supposedly demonstrating to them.

Lead with the reason why, not the reason why not.

And if all you have is a reason “why not” then try to turn that into a reason “why.”

This might be confusing, so here’s another example:

“If I ask you to just think of a word, there’s a chance I could guess what that word is based on knowing you. So we’re going to have you choose a word randomly by flipping through this book.”

That’s a justification. That’s an excuse. That’s a reason “why not.” A reason why you’re NOT just letting them think of a word.

“Have you read this book? No? Consider yourself lucky. It sucks. In June of last year, I went on a 3-week hike on this offshoot of the Appalachian Trail with a couple of friends. And this book was all we had between us to pass the time. We thought there would be more opportunity to connect to the internet via our phone, so we didn’t really bring much else with us to keep us entertained. My friend had a copy of this book and we would just read it out loud to each other every night. Putting on all the voices. Eventually acting out whole scenes together just for something to do. We went through it at least a dozen times. We made up a sequel as we walked. It was a whole thing. I bought a copy just because I have good memories associated with it, even though the book blows. What’s weird though is that because we were so immersed in this stupid book for those weeks, I’ve noticed a bizarre connection to the material. It’s really strange. It doesn’t always work, but let’s try. Flip through the book and think of any word, go for something sort of interesting.”

That’s a presentation. That’s a reason “Why.” That’s a way to keep the spectator from thinking, “Can I just think of any word in the world?” without specifically focusing them on the fact that they can’t just think of any word in the world.

Dustings #98

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The Do Not Eat Imp

From the toe of your new sneakers, a silica gel packet falls to the floor.

“Oh damn. Sweet,” you say as you take the packet and tear the top open and go to dump it in your mouth.

Your friend grabs your arm. “What are you doing?”

“Oh, don’t worry. It’s cool. I’ll show you.” You start to lift the packet to your lips again.

Your friend stops you again. “It specifically says ‘Do Not Eat’ on there.”

“Oh, I know. Yeah, don’t eat this. It will kill you,” you say as you dump the packet in your mouth and swallow.

“It actually doesn’t taste awful, like you might expect.”

Your friend stares at you.

“Okay, here’s the deal. For the past… almost 20 year—well, closer to 18 I guess—I’ve been building up an immunity to silica gel. You see… if you can get past the toxic properties, it actually has some really interesting side effects.”

You then proceed to read their thoughts, levitate, or move an object with the power of your mind.

Candy filled silica packets are available here.

If you’re worried about your dumb friend actually believing you and maybe poisoning themselves, you don’t have to worry. Silica gel is non-toxic. It’s just a choking risk for little kids.

Thanks to Kyle O. for tipping me off to this product and suggesting its use as an Imp.

Does anyone know of a good locking drawer box? I have an idea for a trick with one. What I mean is something like this, but that locks so that it’s examinable/handleable by the audience.

Or maybe you’re someone who could make one?

That reminds me, I’m going to put out a call for any regular readers who are also craftsmen or artisans in some respect. It’s been a couple of years since I asked about this, but if you have a skill that might be useful in the production of props/gimmicks/etc., let me know. Now that I’ve started producing one-off tricks for supporters, I will have the opportunity to maybe take advantage of some of your skills in the future. You’ll have to be able to produce items at scale, but at a relatively small scale (more like 100-200 than 10,000). If you have an expertise or proficiency in anything you think might be useful and would want to partner up on something, let me know.

A couple good suggestions from Pete “Red-Red” McCabe inspired by yesterday’s post.

One thing I used to do to deal with my nerves was to open with a version Nick Brown’s Wonderland Dollar, because: you do not do anything secret. The audience sees everything you do. The result is not actually impossible but it really looks like it is.

You can not get caught.

I found this quite effective in getting me over the initial bump of nervousness. If I was going to do a few card tricks I would start with Gemini Twins for the same reason.

If you buy any new magic from the big magic retailers over the next couple of weeks, you’re a sucker. Wait for the black friday deals where you will undoubtedly get some bonuses for spending your money. The Jerx… saving you money. Just call me…

This is an interesting video by Lloyd Barnes.

And yet, it’s also sort of depressing that we’re now trying to expose a trick before it even fucking happens.

I’m going to up the ante. I’m going to expose a trick before it’s even conceived of.

Here’s how it’s done: A double lift and the spectator has an identical twin who was given up for adoption as an infant that he doesn’t know about.

The Attitudinal Key to Social Magic

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I’ve often written that in order to strengthen the casual feel of a trick and to make it so the interaction comes off as more genuine, you need to eliminate the theatrical trappings that so often go along with the performance of a magic. The overly-rehearsed patter, the bad jokes, the obvious magic props, etc.

But that’s the easy part.

The most important—and for some the hardest—things to eliminate to give your magic a more “normal” quality is going to be the feelings of fear and discomfort. Audiences can smell this all over you, and it completely undercuts a naturalistic style of performance.

I was listening to the Fly on the Wall Podcast which is hosted by Dana Carvey and David Spade where they talk to people from Saturday Night Live. On Amy Poehler’s episode, she says this about hosting SNL...

If you don’t look like you’re relaxed or having fun, the audience gets very stressed. When I see hosts and they’re either nervous, or stressed… it’s like, “Oh no!” I get so stressed [by them]. Because you are hosting a party. You’re supposed to look like you’re having fun. […] It’s the hardest piece to learn because you’re pushing or you're nervous or your head’s somewhere else. And then when you actually relax, the audience just relaxes with you.

This is so true in magic as well. If you’re doing your ambitious card routine and your hands are shaking and you’re clearly nervous… you have stripped the moment of any magic and whatever story it is you’re trying to tell. Even if your “story” is as basic and dull as “I’m a magician with the power to make cards rise to the top of the deck.” The only story the audience will perceive is, “This guy is a nervous wreck and I better smile along and encourage him or he’s going to totally fall apart.” You take away their ability to get lost in the experience because they have to babysit what they perceive as your fragile ego.

So above everything, whether you’re going for a casual style of social magic, or an over-the-top immersive style, you need to find a way to eliminate fear from your performances.

How do you do this? I’m not sure, because this isn’t an issue I deal with regularly.

And I don’t know that there’s one “answer.” I mean, I think there’s an answer for each person, but I don’t think there’s a “general” way to eliminate fear and nerves. (If there were, people wouldn’t struggle with fear and nerves.) But here are some thoughts.

Don’t push the boundaries of your skill set when you perform. If you’re nervous about performing in general, don’t compound that by trying to perform something that you’re not completely comfortable with. If you do, you’re dealing with two sets of nerves instead of one. There is so much strong self-working or nearly self-working magic out there, you don’t need to push yourself to go and perform something you’re not comfortable with in order to really entertain or fool people.

Feel the fear and do it anyway. I know a lot of people who get nervous when they show someone a trick… and so they only show someone a trick a few times a year. You’re never going to break the cycle that way. For most people, the more you perform, the more you will trust yourself and the less the nerves will affect you. Perform daily for a couple of months and just resign yourself to the fact that you’re probably going to suck while you do. You will almost certainly come out the other side more confident and less fearful in performance.

Don’t fight the fear. When you feel it coming on, note it in your mind and accept it. Trying to fight it and telling yourself to calm down is a sure way to amplify the negative feelings. This is true pretty much in all facets of life.

Contextualize the nervousness. If you don’t say anything about the nerves, then you’re going to look like someone who is worried about impressing the person you’re performing for with your magic trick. But if you weave your nerves into the storyline of your performance, you can make them congruent with the narrative you’re trying to tell.

  • “Okay, this guy cheated my friend out of $2500 in a poker game. This weekend we’re trying to get him back. I have a plan for how we could swindle him, but I get super nervous thinking about executing it. Can I try this idea out on you to work some of the nerves out of my system?”

  • “I have this audition for a super exclusive magic club coming up next week. I’m really anxious about it. Can I try something out with you to see how it goes?”

  • “Something strange is going on. It’s got my nerves on edge, but it’s also made me hyper-sensitive. My hands are even shaking. It’s like this weird sense of… I don’t know…a type of power. Can I show you?”

Doing something like this will allow you to disguise your real nerves in the story of the effect. I wouldn’t be surprised if having this safety valve built into your presentation actually diminished your nerves significantly, to the point where you need to start feigning a little fear to keep it consistent with your story.

Keep perspective. It’s just magic tricks. It’s just entertainment. The less you go into this seeking validation, the less your ego is on the line, the fewer nerves you’re likely to have.