The Awkward Quandary

I get emails pretty regularly about what to do after an effect. Especially when you do something that’s a little immersive or unusual, or something that doesn’t feel to people like a traditional magic trick.

There can be a moment after such a trick that feels a little awkward if the audience is really engaged. You’ve planned out how the interaction will go, but then the person you’re showing the trick to is extending the moment. They’re pushing past the climax to a moment you hadn’t anticipated. Their reaction is maybe stronger than you anticipated. Or they have questions you didn’t think would come up. Or they want to dig deeper into some aspect of the presentation you weren’t really prepared to talk more about.

It can be uncomfortable. I feel this a lot. And it used to bother me.

But I came to a realization recently about this.

Over the holiday season, I was with a magician friend of mine. He performed an old Sankey trick for some other friends. It’s a trick where you slide the tip of a pencil down to the middle of the pencil.

“That’s crazy,” someone said. And they all smiled and nodded. And my friend gave them the pencil to look at. “Yup, that’s in the middle alright,” another person said. My friend took the pencil back, gave it a look, and raised his eyebrows.

“Fun…,” someone said. And the interaction sort of sputtered out and talk shifted away from the trick.

My friend did the trick well, fooled them, they reacted positively. But there was still a sense of awkwardness at the end. But I didn’t get the awkward feeling from my friend, I got it from the audience.

They saw the trick, they reacted, but there’s only so much to say about the tip of a pencil moving to the middle. You can’t expect them to clutch their chest and say, “I always dreamed I’d see something like this! A pencil with the tip in the middle!”

How do avoid awkwardness at the end of a routine?

Well, if you’re performing professionally, it’s not really a huge issue. Either the lights go out. Or you say, “Okay, goodnight!” I’m reminded of this demo of Craig Petty doing Lucky Lotto. The trick gets a fine response. The girls smile. But within seconds of the climax, Craig asks for a round of applause, gives fist-bumps, and peaces the fuck out of there. There’s no real time for any awkwardness to creep in.

You can’t really do that as an amateur magician. You could, I guess, but you’d seem like a psycho. “Round of applause for me. I’m out of here!” And everyone is like, “Where are you going? This is your living room.”

As an amateur, you have to sort of let the ending of the trick play out. You have to ride out their reaction (or lack of reaction).

As an amateur, there’s no real set pacing for how long you “stay in the moment” after a trick is over.

And if you and the audience aren’t 100% in sync (which is hard to accomplish, unless you’ve performed for them a lot) then there are two possibilities.

Either you’re going to want to stay in the moment longer than them. Which can cause them to feel slightly awkward towards you, because it comes off as a little needy.

Or they will want to stay in the moment longer than you. Which can cause you to feel awkward and uncomfortable because you’re unprepared.

My point is: it’s likely someone is going to feel a little uncomfortable after the trick.

I want it to be me. Because that means they are the ones pushing the interaction forward. They’re the ones guiding the moment towards something I hadn’t expected. And I’d much rather have the awkwardness of them giving me more than I had planned for, than the awkwardness of me asking for more than they want to give.

Mailbag - When They Believe: Part Two

I've been doing the trick from Joshua Quinn's Christmas gift using DFB. The reactions I have been getting are... different. Even though the people I am doing it on know I do magic tricks, for some reason they are actually buying into the idea that I influenced them to pick that word by having them say the list of random words. 

 I'm curious what your thoughts are on this? Is there a way to make this even more fantastical so they realize it's a trick?—CY

Okay, this is an easier situation to handle than the ones from yesterday’s letter.

Influence effects frequently hover on the “believable” end of the spectrum. That’s why some people like them. And it’s why I’m not really a huge fan. (And it was the impetus behind last year’s “Influence Month” (March 2023)).

Fortunately, there are a couple of ways of “tuning” an influence effect to make it more or less believable.

The Exposure Approach

In Joshua’s effect, the spectator reads a list of random words:

Aisle
Pickup
Hey
Purple
Lane

And those random words end up “influencing” them later on.

The way Joshua handles it, they read this list of words, memorize it, and repeat it over and over to themselves.

I think the possibility that this process could influence them in some way is relatively high, because there’s a lot of exposure to the influencing stimulus. So, at the end, when you say, “Those words influenced you,” you’re likely to have people thinking they just saw something “interesting,” rather than that they just saw something “amazing.”

To push people more into a fictional, wondrous style of influence, then you will want to lower their exposure to whatever is doing the influencing.

For this trick, maybe they see this odd poster in your house:

That’s weird enough that it would draw attention, but you’re not telling them to memorize the words, it’s just something in the background you ignore.

Or those words could be contained in an email you sent them. Maybe the first or last word in each line.

Or there could be an aborted game of Scrabble on the coffee table with those words in it.

You get the idea. Put the influencing factor in their vicinity, but don’t make it a huge focus. That way, instead of thinking, “That random list of words influenced me,” they’ll think, “Is it possible I really could have been influenced by that poster? [Or whatever.] I remember seeing it, but I didn’t really take it in. I didn’t think so, at least.” At least that way, there’s some level of uncertainty.

If you’re going to use this type of premise, I would go back and read the stuff that was posted during Influence Month, as I think there are inherent problems you may want to address with this style of presentation as well.

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Imp-Based Approach

This is, I think, a better way to approach the influence premise. Continuing using Joshua trick as the example, his trick suggests: “those words influenced you.” With an imp-based approach, the premise changes to, “this thing (this thing I had you eat, or inhale, or watch, or listen to, etc.) has made you extra perceptive (or extra susceptible to influence—depending on how you want to play it).”

Do this with a group of three or four people.

ONE person gets the Imp, the others don’t.

But EVERYONE plays along with the experiment.

So, when using it with Joshua’s trick,, they would all try and memorize the words, and they would all look at the second list of words and name a number (refer to the trick write-up linked above). But only the one who was subjected to the Imp would end up having it “work” on him.

This is so much more compelling. Why? Because there’s the pleasure of seeing how the influence worked, compounded with the idea that some special thing allowed the influence to work.

So it’s not just:

X happened → due to the fact you were influenced by Y

it’s

X happened → due to the fact you were influenced by Y → because of Z

Which is just inherently more fascinating.

“I read off a random list of words and was influenced to think of another word because of them.” Cool. But pretty believable.

“Earlier in the evening, he asked me if I liked his new cologne. And apparently at the time when I sniffed his neck I was actually subjected to a pheromone mixture that heightened my senses. And he proved it because we all looked at the random word list, but I was the only one who picked up on the secret message encoded in them.” Cool. Much less believable. But… possible? How would he have access to such pheromones. But… you did pick up on that message.

This is the sort of thing I think about regarding the concept of using “belief as the medium.”

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Here’s another way of doing an Imp-based approach with a small group of people, that doesn’t require much in the way of props or anything.

You ask each person to rate themselves on a scale from 1-100 as far as how suggestible/easily-influenced they are. You turn to the person who gave the lowest score. “You’re pretty strong-willed? Not susceptible to influence?” Then you turn to the person who gave the highest score. “But you’re pretty impressionable, you feel? Okay, interesting.”

You write down a prediction and set it aside.

Then you go through Joshua Quinn’s effect, or a similar type of influence effect. You may need to apparently change the subject first. “Okay, I want to get back to that in a bit. But before that, I need to test your memory….” Or something like that.

Then at the end, have it so the influence works on the person who said they were least susceptible to that sort of thing.

And to show that it wasn’t just coincidence, you show what you wrote down earlier which says, “This will work for Bob. The person who thinks they’re the least suggestible is always the most.” Or words to that effect.

So, here the “Imp” used that allows the influence to work is the person’s own certainty that they can’t be influenced.

Which is a more interesting, in my opinion, than influence that works on just anybody.

To make the final twist hit more (that you predicted who it would work on from the start), you’ll want to focus your attention on the person who said they were most influenceable early on. You want to lead people down the garden path to think your attention is on that person because they’re the most susceptible to whatever you’re doing. Then there’s the twist that it ended up working on the one who was most confident they couldn’t be influenced. Followed by the twist that you knew all along that’s who it would work on.

Mailbag - When They Believe: Part One

I swear I’ve either seen you give a response to this or I may have emailed you about it before but I could not find it….so apologies

Any advice when maybe when they either believe your premise….or really think it’s a crazy coincidence.

To my recollection this has really only happened twice-

-Did Creepy Child, this was the first more immersive trick for this particular person. I got a strong sense they thought it truly was a weird coincidence (not really a psychic child).

-Spectator Cuts from JV1- different person, had seen me do a lot of magic... texted me after to make me swear I wasn’t involved or it wasn’t a trick because they were so freaked out

In both of these situations I didn’t want to

1. Ruin the immersion
2. Lie if they truly were unsettled
3. Make them feel dumb for getting caught up in the moment …if I either burst the bubble because they are asking or they realize later after seeing me do more magic that this was a fiction.

Most importantly I want them to feel like it’s okay to be caught up in it but not feel dumb later. —ZA

When it comes to “belief,” magicians usually fall into two camps

1. A small minority desperately want their audience to believe they have real powers (the sociopath route).

2. The majority will play everything off as “just a bit of fun” with their tongue in cheek, minimizing everything they do to the point that nothing could ever conceivably be believed (the safe route).

What I try to do is treat a performance like a horror movie. The person who makes the horror movie doesn’t expect you to “believe” it. But they present it to you in such a way that your mind can get swept away by it.

My friends know I’m into magic, and most have witnessed at least a few different tricks with premises that are all over the spectrum. So they have a decent understanding about the “believability” of everything.

And generally I don’t get too “immersive” when performing for someone who isn’t a friend and doesn’t know what’s going on.

So, 98% of the time, the “belief issue” isn’t a big deal.

But what if they believe a little too much?

Unfortunately, I don’t know of one clear rule regarding how to handle this. So I can only tell you how I’d hand specific examples.

It’s easier when the trick is strictly about me and something I’m apparently doing.

During the trick, I play everything fairly straight. The premise may be ridiculous (”I drink elephant cum and it gives me a super-powered memory,”) but I don’t try to find a bunch of jokes within that premise.

After the trick, if someone comes up and asks me about some fake skill I just exhibited. e.g. “Wait, did you really read that guy’s mind?” I’ll never say “no.” I’ll just say yes, in a way that should make it clear I’m not serious.

Only very rarely, maybe once or twice a year, do I think someone still doesn’t get it and I feel the need to make it abundantly clear. “No, of course, I can’t read minds. But it felt like it, yeah?” At that point, they get the game of these interactions going forward: I’m not trying to convince them I can really do something. I just want it to feel like that.

But let’s get to the writer’s specific examples, because these are different situations:

Did Creepy Child, this was the first more immersive trick for this particular person. I got a strong sense they thought it truly was a weird coincidence (not really a psychic child).

In this case, they believed it was “real.” But they believed it was a real coincidence, not a real psychic child.

If you present a fantastical premise, and they choose to believe it was some real everyday phenomenon (like “coincidence”), what I would do is agree with them, but then double-down on the premise in the future.

So in this case, I might be like, “Hmm… yeah, it’s probably just a coincidence.”

Then next time you see that person, you do something else with an even more unlikely (forced) outcome. Shuffle-Bored, for example. And you can be like, “Shit, I can’t believe this happened again….” And now the Shuffle-Bored prediction is in a new image or a letter you recently received from this creepy child.

Spectator Cuts Their Future from JV1- different person, had seen me do a lot of magic... texted me after to make me swear I wasn’t involved or it wasn’t a trick because they were so freaked out.

For those that don’t have the book, it’s a trick where the spectator cuts four packets to choose cards for a cartomancy reading and they “just happen” to match—at odds of 6.5 million to one—the illustration in the book you’re reading from that describes the “Transcendent Ideal Layout.” A pattern of cards that is supposed to represent the most idyllic future possible.

So, if I performed that for someone, and they asked me to swear it wasn’t a trick, what would I do?

…

That’s a hard one. Ethically, I don’t mind if a friend of mine goes forward in life thinking they won the cartomancy lottery and an amazing life is waiting for them. Maybe it’s a little boost in getting them to live such a life. Or maybe it sets them up for disappointment later. I’m not sure.

What I would likely do in this situation is say, “A trick? How do you mean? You shuffled the cards, right? [Yes] And you cut the packets yourself? [Yes] And you were the one who turned over the cards, yes? [Yes] Right.” Shrug as if that says everything. “How could that be a trick? I mean, look, I don’t really believe cards can tell your future, so I wouldn’t put too much stock into it. But who knows?”

I’d likely be noncommittal. Maybe that’s a cop-out on my part. I’d probably tell them something like, “Look, even if that fortune-telling stuff is real, it doesn’t mean you definitely end up with wealth and health and a perfect relationship and all of that. You can’t just stop working and live in the basement and achieve those things. The cards just tell you your capacity for success in those areas, given you put in the effort. It’s a path that’s open to you that not many people have available.”

As I said, noncommittal, and not too bad a message to give someone who is willing to think playing cards can predict their future.

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I think the best way to handle the “belief” issue generally, is to not look at it like a light switch that’s either on or off. Belief or disbelief. Instead, think of it like a dimmer switch. If they believe too much, dim it down. If they dismiss everything too easily, turn it up.

I don’t turn the dimmer back on forth on each trick. I turn the dimmer back and forth for each friend that I perform for regularly. So if the last few tricks they’ve seen from me are sillier stuff with absurd premises, then I’ll bring them back with something very “real” seeming.

But if they’re super credulous and seem to be buying into things a little too much, that’s when I break out a wildly fantastical premise—childhood invisible friends returning, time travel, telepathic dogs—something that is beyond belief.

The death of enchantment is certainty. If people are convinced that everything you do is 100% real or 100% fake, then they are too committed in their mind to ever feel that magical state of “What exactly is happening right now?”

And finally, when I say I try to keep people on a dimmer switch, that doesn’t mean that I try to keep them half believing and half disbelieving. That’s not possible, I don’t think. My friends are primarily smart, savvy people. My goal is not to get them to believe, or even half-believe. My goal is just to keep them on their toes enough that they can’t ever completely disbelieve some of this might be real. I want to keep a tiny spark of possibility alive.

Dustings #104

I was reminded recently of this trick by Pit Hartling. It’s a card calling routine where he drinks orange juice to imbue himself with a super-powered memory.

The book this routine was published in came out over 20 years ago. I think it’s a good example of “early Imp technology.”

As J.S. wrote in an email recently: “I'm sure people ask for his orange juice trick, not his card calling trick.”

I bet that’s true. As I said in Tuesday’s post, the Imp is usually the most memorable part of an effect to non-magicians.

But, this is also an example of what I referred to on Tuesday as a Weak Imp, because he never suggests why drinking orange juice makes his memory good. If there was more of a story there, more of a connection there, it would be stronger. As of now, it’s just kind of arbitrary. Which is why, if you had asked me about it, I would have remembered Pit’s OJ trick as a thing that existed, but I wouldn’t have remembered the premise at all (a memory demonstration).

Here’s the tweak I would make if I wanted to drink O.J. on stage and do a memory demonstration.

“Do you know how they say an elephant never forgets? Well, there’s some truth to that. Elephants have an extremely large cerebral cortex. And they’re able to recall people they encountered decades earlier. And, in some cultures, elephant semen is known for its memory strengthening capabilities. And uh… I have to tell you… it works. I’ve been drinking a liter a day. And… I mean… yes… it’s fucking disgusting… even just procuring it is… soul-crushing… but it works! I’ll show you. I have some here. I mix it with orange juice to mask the taste a little. The no-pulp kind. The semen itself already has a bit of a… chew to it.” 🤢

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One thing I didn’t hit on during Monday’s mailbag post about Xeno is that I think the best Xeno sites are the ones that have a reason for existing that is not already addressed by other sites online.

For example, I wanted a Xeno site for ESP symbols. Now, the easiest way to show someone the ESP symbols online would be to tell them to do a google search or wikipdia search. Not go to a specific site. So I created a site that’s about how to mentally send the ESP images. This isn’t something that can be found just anywhere, so it makes sense to direct them to that specific site.

Similarly, the site used in the trick Big Data vs Holistic Mind-Reading, is one that the spectator would have to visit in order to tell the story that goes along with the trick.

I think you can get into trouble if you’re like, “Hey, I’d like you to think of a band. Go to this random webpage with bands on it.” That can raise suspicion. Why do I need to go to a website? Why this website? etc.

So if you’re going to create a Xeno site, try to create one with information that can’t just be found somewhere else online or in the spectator’s own head.

For example, if the subject you wanted to use was bands, then maybe a site created by a guy who surveyed band’s fan bases to find the band’s most beloved song. So here is a site of 100 bands/songs. “So find a band you like. And one where you agree that the song listed is one of their best.” blah, blah, blah. The point being, this explains why you’re directing them to this particular site.

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Here are some ideas on the Damsel Cull Force (version 3) from G. Dabat. For me, the most valuable idea in the video below is—when forcing two cards—giving them the option of if they’d like the two cards above the card they inserted, the two cards below, or one on either side of the card.

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Uni-Multiple Selection

“I just had a funny thought. It was imagining you doing a multiple selection routine. You know, the kind of thing where like ten cards are selected and you find them all semi-rapid fire style.

But then that made me wonder - have you actually tackled a trick like that?”—JT

I get this sort of thing a lot. “How would you perform [some trick I’d never do].”

“I wouldn’t really do that trick.”

“Okay, well, gun to your head, how would you do it?”

“Oooh, gun to my head?”

“Yeah.”

“Pull the trigger.”

I would never do the Multiple Selection, just because it’s not my sort of trick.

But if I had to… gun to my head, and I didn’t want to eat a bullet and all of that…

Methodologically

I would do something that forces the cards in a relatively quick manner and then I’d hand the deck out to be shuffled. If the audience doesn’t shuffle the deck, then the trick is just: “He’s very good at keeping control of multiple cards.” I understand that that’s the goal for a lot of people with the multiple selection routine. They want to look like someone who has mastery over a deck of cards. But I don’t really like any trick where the audience is left with the feeling: “Wow, he must practice a lot.”

By allowing them to shuffle, they’ll still credit me with the magic (which there’s probably no way around in a multiple selection routine) but their mind will be forced to go to some weirder places beyond just, “I guess he can keep track of all those cards while he’s shuffling.”

I’d take the shuffled deck back and find the first card in a boring way. I’d spread through the deck and slide a card out. Card #1 which would be marked in some way on the back so I could remove it from the shuffled deck without looking at the faces. I’d give it to the first person. As I built up the reveal to that card—and the focus was on that—I’d do a deck switch for another deck with cards 2-10 ready to go on top.

Presentationally

Hmmm…this is where you run into a wall a little bit. There are some tricks that lend themselves to all sorts of presentations. OOTW, a 2-card transposition, Ambitious Card. But a trick like the Multiple Selection which consist of 10 or so variations on the same climax… that’s rough. I don’t even really love a three phase trick. So 10 phases is definitely a stretch. Not only that, but it’s sort of a trick that feels designed for a formal magic presentation—just the fact that you’re performing for a larger group of people suggests that

To make it feel like less of a “show trick”, what if we performed the same trick for less people? For example, imagine doing the multiple selection for one person. And I’m not just saying have one person select a card and then find it. I’m saying having one person select a bunch of cards and then find them one by one.

The question is… why would you ever do this?

I’m not sure.

How about this. What if you told your friend you were “auditioning” to get into this exclusive magic society, and you might need their help with something sometime soon.

Then the next time you’re hanging out at your place with them, you explain this society is kind of corny, but it would give you access to a lot of people and secret information that can’t be found anywhere else.

[Reinforcing the idea that there are magic secrets that aren’t to be found online is always a good thing.]

You explain that the audition process involves variations on the most classic trick in magic: they pick a card, you find the card.

“There are ten levels. It’s a system sort of like belts in karate. The higher up you test, the more advance you are. There’s a table of ten guys, they each select a card and return them to the deck themselves and shuffle the cards. And you go one-by-one trying to find their cards in increasing levels of difficulty. If you get past level three, you’re granted conditional membership into the organization. If you get past level five, you get full membership. At level eight, you’re in the inner circle. The final two levels are just theoretical.”

Then you have your friend select 10 cards in some simple manner and have them write them down (or just remember them if you’re performing for the World Memory Champion). Then have them shuffle up the deck.

Here I would do a slight variation on the method I was originally thinking above.

So you would have this list of the levels of finding a card.

Level One: With the cards face up.

Level Two: With the cards face-down

Level Three: Blindfolded

As you’re finding the “Level-One” card, cut or cull the Level Three card to the top.

During Level-Two, you’ll find the card because it’s marked.

At Level-Three, because you don’t have a blindfold, have your friend cover your eyes instead.

As you’re reorienting yourself after Level-Three, with the three previously found cards already on the table, that’s when you could switch the deck (This is a type of “Anchored” deck switch.)

After that, you just follow through with your stacked deck, level by level.

Essentially, this would be a way of presenting a wide variety of disconnected card revelations but with one cohesive narrative.

You could do some standard Multiple Selection reveals.

Level Four - With One Hand

Level Eight - Behind Your Back Spinning the Card Over Your Shoulder

But you could also work in some more involved ways to reveal the card.

Level Six - Wrap the deck in a handkerchief and cause only the chosen card to pass through

Level Nine - Mentally direct a 3rd-party to find the card

Level Ten - Find the card by stabbing it out of the air from a tossed deck.

You’d need a little acting ability to pull this off. For the first few levels, you want to seem relatively confident, but not 100% certain. For the next few levels, you want to make it seem like success is possible, but not probable. And for the final levels you want to make it seem you never thought you’d be able to reach these levels, like you’re a little astonished yourself, but we might as well try them because we’re on a roll.

You could do this presentation with an audience of 2 or 3 people (each taking a few cards). Or 10. Or in a theater setting. But I think the smaller your audience is, the more they’ll get lost in the premise. If I’m performing for an audience of 100 it’s unlikely that I’d be trying things that I didn’t think would be likely to work. But with just one or a few people, it’s possible I’d try things just for the fun of it.

Often I write about splitting up a performance over hours or days. But in this instance, I think you’d want to string them all together in one 20-30 minute interaction. And you’ll want to do stuff that feels different. Not just all flourishy card reveals.

Doing them all together (rather than splitting them up over time) will allow the trick to build momentum, which makes sense with this premise. You want it to feel like Who Wants To Be a Millionaire. Like you started off with something easy and only mildly interesting, but each revelation builds, becomes more difficult, and you want to push on just to see how far you can take. By the time you stab the card out of the air (or whatever) in Level 10, you should be as surprised and confused by your success as anyone.

Of course, then you come back a week later:

“So, remember the audition thing you helped me with the other night? I had it last night. I fucked up the first card. I can try again in five years.”

This keeps the focus on that one crazy night between you where everything worked.

Illuminated

Continuing on the Imp talk from yesterday, I’ve recently found a good one for use in the Spectator as Magician/Mindreader plot.

I’ve long argued that this premise needs some added element to it, or it’s just transparent to people. When we tested that notion, that proved to be the case.

And of course that’s the case. When they give the football to the Make-A-Wish kid and he scores a touchdown, he might feel he accomplished something, but that’s because he’s seven. An adult wouldn’t be like, “Well, I guess I’m now great at football!”

Similarly, if you tell someone, “You’re going to read my mind,” and do a trick with that premise, they’re not going to think, “Well, I guess this nice young magician just showed me that I have a power I’ve never exhibited before and never will again.”

I mean, that’s fine if you’re just looking to dress up the trick a little. “I’ll read your mind, then you read mine.” If you’re just using it as a throwaway premise, you don’t need to put much effort into it. (But also don’t expect to get too much out of it.)

If we want to genuinely mess with people’s minds a little and get them to at least consider the idea that they did something truly out of the ordinary, then they need to be subjected to something that will seemingly affect them in some manner. Something on the edge of plausibility.

Thomas H., recently wrote me about an app called Lumenate. This is a “light therapy” app where you sit in a dark room and hold the phone up to your closed eyes and the flashlight of your phone flashes in such a way that… well… here’s how the makers of the app describe it:

Lumenate uses research-backed light sequences from your phone's flashlight to neurologically guide you into an altered state of consciousness between that of deep meditation and classic psychedelics.

That may all be horse-shit, but I will say that using this app you definitely get a sense of: “This is different.”. It produces a kind of psychedelic-kaleidoscopic light show on the inside of your closed eyelids. And whether or not it actually has any effect on your brain, it certainly seems reasonable that it could.

You can get the app for free. There’s paid plans, but you don’t need them for our purposes.

Now, what you don’t want to do is tell people you have this secret technology that’s going to affect them in some particular way. You don’t want the chance of them saying “Oh, is this the Lumenate app?”

The approach I take is to tell people there’s an app that uses rhythmic light flashes to affect brainwaves. And I have a “friend” who has discovered a way to “hack” the usage of the app so that it can produce some interesting results. I then have them use the app, but I hold the phone for them and I move it nearer and close to their closed eyes at set times. The idea being that changing the distance of the light source in some predetermined manner can help “tune” the person’s brain for a particular ability (heightened intuition, photographic memory, etc.)

I don’t make them go through a full session on the app, which is 10 minutes. And I don’t have them listen to the audio from the app. I just do it for a few minutes and talk through it with them myself. You want to make sure it’s not too intense for them. And, of course, if they have some sort of sensitivity to flashing lights, you would never do this for them.

Altogether, it makes for a perfect little interaction. The Lumenate app will be a new experience for most people, followed by (ideally) some sort of amazing happening. And because—as you explain to them—the abilities they gain will wear off after a few minutes, they are no loose ends for them to pick at later on. They can assume it must have all been a trick. But they can’t ever quite dismiss the possibility that maybe for a few minutes they had telekinetic powers (or whatever ability you endowed them with).

The Imp Formula

An Imp is “the thing you do which causes the magic to happen.”

It’s a subject magicians cared so little about, that I had to invent the term for it.

Before 2017 if someone asked, “What’s the word to describe the thing the magician does that causes the magic to happen?”

The response would be: “Snapping.”

“No. I mean… that’s just one way of doing it.”

“Yes, correct. Sometimes I snap with my thumb and middle finger. And sometimes I snap with my thumb and index finger to give the audience a real thrill.”

“No… sorry. I guess I’m not being clear. I mean, what is the broad, general term for the thing the magician does which causes the magic to occur.”

“Oh, the general term? I don’t know… uhm… Rhythmic Finger…Clacking?? Or something? I’m not quite sure what you’re asking for.”

Look, I understand the utility of snapping your fingers. It’s quick. It’s easy. And it’s something. This is I heard repeatedly when learning magic in the 80s and 90s in books and videos. “You need to do something to let people know the magic happened. So snap your fingers.”

Oh. Okay.

I understand that if you’re doing table-side magic, you can’t slow things down and bring everyone out into the parking lot to harness the dark essence in the spot where you claim a drifter was murdered in 1986 in order to bring their card to the top of the deck.

And if you’re doing an office Christmas party, you can’t say, “Let’s all make out and see if we can channel our sexual energy into this Chinese coin and make it fall off this ribbon.”

But when performing in social, casual settings, we often do have the time to use a more immersive Imp than snapping our fingers or casting a shadow.

The thing to keep in mind is that it’s not just a decorative detail that’s nice to have. It’s not slapping a bow on the present. It is—when executed properly—perhaps the most memorable part of the trick.

Barring a wildly memorable, simple, visual climax (which many trick don’t have). The storyline to the trick (and a good Imp is part of a storyline) is what people seem to remember the most.

Sure, they might remember the general feeling of amazement and enjoyment. But a few weeks later, they’re not remembering: “There were three selections made. They were placed in different parts of the deck. The four Aces were dropped on top and the selections were now between the Aces. Then the Aces disappeared, and he was left holding just the three selections. If I’m remembering correctly, they were the Jack of Diamonds, the 5 of Clubs, and the 9 of Clubs. Yes, of course. It’s clear as day.”

Here is the Imp Formula. And it’s very simple.

Step One: Do something somewhat unusual.

Step Two: Tie that to the premise of your trick.

— If I come over your house, that’s not unusual.

— If I come over your house at 11 at night and show you a trick, that’s probably unusual. But if I don’t connect coming over to your house at 11 at night to the trick, then it’s not an Imp. It’s just me being a dickhead and annoying you as you’re getting ready for bed.

— If I come over your house at 11 at night and say, “I’m sorry. I know it’s late, but now is the only time I can show you this trick. It only works at 11:06.” And I show you the Ambitious Card, that’s what I call a Weak Imp. I’m telling you there’s some sort of connection between the Imp and the trick, but it doesn’t make much sense. So there’s no logical connection in your mind.

Sometimes a Weak Imp can still be intriguing. “I don’t know why it’s like this, but this is the only time that it works.” That can maybe be interesting, but it’s not ideal.

— If I come over your house at 11 at night on March 19th and say, “I’m sorry. I know it’s late, but now is the only time I can show you this trick. We’ve only got a few minutes.” And I perform On Edge by Angelo Carbone

and I tell you we have this brief window of time on the equinox where this will work.

Well, then you have a sort of symbiotic situation where the Imp and the Trick are both supporting each other. The Imp is the equinox. The Trick is making a card castle balance impossibly. The equinox suggests “balance.” It all works together nicely.

And the Imp provides another way into the memory of this event. You can imagine someone hearing about the upcoming equinox and remembering the time when their friend came over late at night to show them this weird quirk of the universe. And in their memory it was a huge card castle balancing on one little card.

Whereas if the magician created a card castle and made it magically balance with the snap of his fingers, it feels more like a weird, arbitrary power to exhibit. The cool visual of the balancing cards is still there. But it’s just sort of in a bubble with no tether to the real world.

You could say, “Well, that’s what I do. I’m a Magician. I do things that are untethered to the real world!” I get that. I can only say that in my experience, people want something they can relate to in some way. And a pointless impossibility is hard to relate to.

The Imp doesn’t have to be believable (it really shouldn’t be). It’s there to be story material. Use them to help tell a story other than, “I am the god of Dumb Miracles. Watch as I snap my finger and make some pointless, impossible, dumb thing happen.”