Dustings #138

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Did you make any New Year's Resolutions? It's not too late. Don't get hung up on the idea that you "missed" midnight on January first. "Oh well, there's always 2027."

New Year's Resolutions can be made until January 15th. Where do I get that idea from? I made it up. But considering most resolutions are abandoned by that point anyway, I'm giving you permission to keep making them until then.

Don't know what resolution to make?

Here's one everyone can use. I call it…

Count Your Blessings

Create a note or a Google doc on your phone where you record every good thing that happens to you throughout the day.

It doesn't have to be big stuff. It doesn't have to be like, "Great news! In an 'Indecent Proposal'-style scenario, Sydney Sweeney offered me a million dollars to have sex with her."

It can just be little things. Good conversations. Good meals. A nice walk. A movie, book, or show that you really enjoyed. Some nagging pain that goes away. A blog post that inspired you.

You get a point for every blessing you note. Your goal is simply to get as many points as you can. Let this game always be running in the back of your life, reorienting your thoughts to search for the good moments happening around you all the time.

The magic isn't just in remembering—it's in training yourself to notice these moments while they're happening. Your brain will literally start scanning for things to add to your list. You're gamifying optimism and appreciation.

At the end of the year, you can look back and see hundreds of little moments that brought joy to your life.

I've been getting a lot of "Will you review my product?" emails in recent weeks.

That usually means it's been too long since I mentioned this:

I don't review products on this site.

In my newsletter, I do write about products I like and have been using in the previous month. Technically, I don't even know if you'd call those reviews. I'm just writing about the stuff I'm using and how I'm using it.

If you want, you can send me stuff—either to my email address or the mailing address in the contact link above. I'm always happy to receive something interesting you've been working on. And if you definitely want me to mention your product on the site, you can see the options for that in this post.

Otherwise, I'll just end up writing about it if I like it.

For reference, last year I received 46 free tricks, ebooks, downloads, or magic apps. I ended up writing about 12 of them. If you don't like those odds, or you don't think what you're offering is likely to cut through the noise with me, no need to send it my way.

In the most recent newsletter I wrote about a trick called Pathfinder.

I had forgotten (or perhaps never really fully understood) that you can do more or less the same trick with the spectator looking at any page on their phone using Marc Kerstein’s Xeno Anywhere and Momentum.

As Eli B. wrote to inform me:

Loving Keepers 1. Just a quick note for those who love the pathfinder  “go to any website and think of any word” idea but wish it was on a spectators phone, the answer is Xeno Anywhere combined with Inertia Pro (momentum) by Marc Kerstein. 

They can go to any website, pick any large word, and it generates a progressive anagram as well as giving you a screenshot and an AI summary if you like that. Not to mention xeno comes with an apple watch app and direct connection to the peeksmith 3 which makes it much easier to move “secretly” through the PA. But you could also do it with a bluetooth remote in your pocket, an earpiece, or even smart glasses (my favorite).

There’s going to be different trade-offs here, but if using the spectator’s phone is a priority for you, then this is a great option.

If you’re not using any secret devices to cue you, you can still use the presentation I wrote up in the newsletter which justifies why you’re looking at your phone throughout the process.

Tomorrow, and several other dates throughout this year, has this very powerful numerical property.

What does this mean exactly? I have no clue. But these dates make great "Calendar Imps." They're special days where you can reach out to someone and tell them you want to try something you recently read about, something that has a better chance of working on one of these particular dates (for whatever reason you come up with).

You can say to someone, "Are you free next Wednesday? There's this thing I read about recently… it sounds like bullshit, but it's from a source I kind of trust, so I'm intrigued. It only works on a few days of the year, days that reduce down to 1s in numerology. No, I don't really know what that means either, but I want to give it a try."

With the right person, someone who enjoys the sort of things you do, you get to build anticipation days in advance and tie your performance to something that exists in the real world. (The real world of numerology, at least.)


The Tenyo Agnostic's Guide to the 2026 Tenyo Line

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Tenyo Agnostic means I’m not a fanboy, but I’m also not one of those people who shits on Tenyo or says, “They just look like toys” or something like that.

I want to like Tenyo. In years past I’ve done full 20+ page newsletters on their new releases, but I realized much of that was me trying to find some value in things that weren’t so great.

If you’re a Tenyo collector, you’re going to buy everything they release, regardless of how good or bad it is.

If you hate Tenyo, I probably won’t be able to talk you into any of their tricks.

But if you are—like me—someone who appreciates some Tenyo that has actual performance value, then these brief comments may help you as you consider the most recent Tenyo Line.

Erase Away

This looks decent, but an eraser, a special close-up pad, and a servante is too much junk to have to deal with to vanish a coin in a casual situation. It’s too rinky dink for a stage or parlor performance. And it’s unusable if you’re going table-to-table doing magic.

And I’m unconvinced a spectator in real time wouldn’t just assume you knocked the coin into your lap under cover of the eraser.

4/10

Jailbreak

It looks cool and it’s fooling to the extent that they won’t know exactly how it works.

But in magic, you can get away with an abnormal examinable object, or a normal-looking unexaminable object. But you can’t really get away with an abnormal unexaminable object. Which is what this is.

So they’ll know the rods must move out of the way somehow, and that seemingly unnecessary boxy bottom piece will give many a clue to what’s happening. It’s puzzling, but not magical.

Also, I found the workings to be occasionally finicky, and not in the way that “more rehearsal” would help. You can’t really complain that Tenyo is cheaply made, because it’s cheaply sold too. But sometimes that cheapness means a not fully reliable product, which is what Jailbreak is.

5/10

Wish Bag

Trying to pass off a bag with a mirrored interior as anything other than a magic prop is hard enough.

The fact that it’s emblazoned with the name the trick is marketed under makes it essentially useless for anyone who might actually want to perform with it.

3/10

Puzzling Cookies

If you order all of Tenyo’s releases in a given year, and return your proof of purchase, you get a bonus effect. These effects are pretty much always terrible and a waste of your time to try and procure. It’s not just figurative trash, it’s literal trash—cheap paper/cardboard props. Only bother obtaining these if you’re a completionist, collector, or you want to turn around and sell it to some sucker.

I honesty barely understand what this trick is supposed to be.

1/10

Nothing this year is a must-buy.

If you want to see the clever workings behind a trick, get Jailbreak. But if you’re looking for actual effects to incorporate in a performance, save your money.

Breaking the Phone Habit

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This is another thing I'm going to focus on this year: a rule I've put in place regarding phone magic. Partly as a challenge to myself and partly because I believe it will create stronger magic overall.

iPhone magic is seductive because a lot of it is incredibly strong, it's convenient (you almost always have your phone on you), and most of it is very easy. And it seems perfectly normal to pull out your phone, as opposed to a deck of cards or four half-dollars.

Fifteen years ago, there were a lot of people who derided "phone magic." At that time it made sense. Most of the magic for phones was trash. There would be a cartoon-looking coin that would float around the screen and you could "pull it out" of the phone. Or cheap graphics of a deck of cards they could flick through and you'd know what card they stopped on.

Older magicians would say, "If you do a trick with your phone, people are just going to assume it's technology." With those types of apps, that was definitely true.

But in the years that followed, apps got much more sophisticated, streamlined, and invisible. And, interestingly, even though the technology involved got far more complicated—it also became more hidden. Cell phones became so ubiquitous that people didn't just assume it was the phone doing all the work.

But still, it's possible to rely on the phone too much. And that's what I found myself doing recently.

So my new rule is that no more than one in four tricks I do for someone will involve the phone. If all your tricks use a phone, or a deck of cards, or slips of blank paper, or keys on your keychain, then all the energy gets sucked into those objects. The "magic" doesn't feel like this expansive substance that might affect anything around you—it begins to feel like this thing you do with that one particular object.

"He does tricks with his phone."

"He does tricks with little cards he carries in his wallet."

"He does tricks with sponge balls."

Magic should feel like they have no idea what's going to come next. We've all had the experience of people losing interest in our magic, even when the tricks we’re showing them are better than the ones we showed them before. That's what happens when predictability enters the equation. Mixing up not just what you do, but what you do it with, is a big part of preventing that—which is why I'll leave the phone in my pocket a bit more this year, where the EMFs can slowly roast my sperm to the point of complete inviability. A small price to pay for wonder.

Charismatic Magic

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This is something I originally wrote in my post on Charms. But this concept is so fundamental to how I think about performing that it deserves its own post. In fact, it's going to be one of my personal focuses for 2026.

People don't like to be used, scammed, or lied to for the purpose of your self-aggrandizement.

And they're fairly indifferent to being fooled or impressed.

But, surprisingly, what I’ve found is this:

People like to be toyed with.

They like to be charmed, seduced, and messed with.

They don't even mind being lied to, if the lie is intended for their enjoyment and everyone knows it isn't meant to be believed.

So much of magic is just: "The card you named is at the number you named."

Oh, wow. Yeah. Huh… so it is.

They're fooled. But there's no sense you crafted this moment for them—just that you executed a procedure at them.

But when you embellish tricks with things like "Charms" or other "extra presentational" techniques I've written about—like Imps and Reps, or even just a lavish presentation—you are creating Charismatic Magic.

People understand you could have fooled them more directly. You didn't have to add these ornaments or take these detours. You only did that because you wanted to toy with them a bit more.

Being "toyed with" or teased may seem like a negative thing… but not when your lover or your friend does it. Then it adds energy and vitality to the interaction.

So much of magic is about efficiency. I got the card to their number. I did it quickly.

That's great, but this isn't the Department of Motor Vehicles. The value isn't in how quickly and efficiently you can accomplish the goal.

"In my ACAAN, if they name 40, I have them count 12 from the bottom of the deck to save time."

Do you have diarrhea? Are you on a NASCAR pit crew? What's the rush? Why are we killing tension in order to shave seconds?

My approach to magic (the Jerxian approach, if you must) follows two paths.

The Carefree Path: Can we make the effect simpler, more impromptu, more convenient to perform? Can we offload any element methodologically that might interrupt the flow of the performance?

The Charismatic Path: What can we add to the interaction to make it feel richer, fuller, more enchanting?

As magicians, it's easy to obsess over the mechanics—the sleights, the gimmicks, the details of the trick itself. We become like chefs perfecting a single dish, fixated on ingredients and technique to create the most impressive plate.

But the trick lives within a moment. And focusing on the broader experience has far greater impact than perfecting micro-details that only other magicians will ever notice.

To go back to the food analogy, this is the mindset not of planning the flawless dish, but of creating the perfect romantic dinner.

On the Carefree Path, what's a delicious but simple recipe that will taste fantastic but won't require me to be in the kitchen the whole time? What can I create ahead of time to get it out of the way? What shortcuts can I take that don't sacrifice quality but will allow me to be more present with my guest?

On the Charismatic Path, what music should I play? What should the lighting be? What should the tablescape be? What if I timed it so we went for a walk after the meal, and by the time we got back, the smell of dessert was meeting us from the oven? These are things that don't change the taste of the food, but they can create the memory of the perfect meal.

The Jerxian approach is to make the behind-the-scenes preparation and execution as simple as possible while layering the moment itself with details that don't just fool people but make them feel charmed, seduced, and toyed with.

There's a practical advantage here too: “Charismatic magic” is immune to the modern world. It can only exist in three dimensions, in real time, between real people. AI can't replicate it. Video can't capture it. No amount of online exposure can burn it. The magic isn't just in what happens—it's in how it feels to be there when it does.

Mailbag #159

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Some people have asked if I'll be taking January off like I did last year. As this existence of this post suggests, the answer is no. Last year I took January off to work on the book for supporters that came out in May. This year I'll be taking June or July off to work on the next book, which comes out in October.

Regarding the trick you mentioned in your last post [Note: It’s a trick where any word the spectator names is predicted in the color they chose.] do you think the color aspect of the prediction adds much to the effect? I can’t decide if it’s overkill or if it’s the tweak that makes it impossible. —SS

My concern would be that it might confuse whatever premise you're trying to establish.

If I asked you to imagine any living person—celebrity, friend, someone from your past, whoever—and then I said, "Also, picture them wearing any type of hat," and then I opened my closet door to reveal your childhood butcher wearing a sombrero... does the sombrero actually add anything? Yes, it technically makes it more impossible. But "more impossible" doesn't necessarily translate into stronger magic if it takes away from the purity of an already strong impossibility.

What I could do in that situation is something like this:

"I want you to think of any type of hat in the world. Focus on the style and the material. Hmmm... I'm not getting it. Do me a favor—I want you to think of any living person whose face you know well and imagine that hat on their head. That should strengthen the image and allow me to pick up on the style of hat."

Now when I open the closet door, someone steps forward with their head down and a sombrero on.

"Ta-da! I knew you'd think of a sombrero!"

Then the person looks up and it's revealed to be the person they were imagining too.

Now the hat is there not because it makes the trick more impossible, but because it adds an element of surprise and showmanship. We let them think it's going to be about the trivial detail, and then blindside them with the personal impossibility.

You could (in theory) do the same with this trick. You focus on the unimportant part and let the word reveal come out of nowhere.

"Last night I took a marker and scribbled on a piece of paper. I want you to see if you can focus on the color of the marker I used."

Later, you reveal your prediction and at first it just looks like you're showing they've accurately guessed a color you "scribbled" with. But as you further unfold the prediction, it's revealed to be a word they randomly thought of earlier. (Maybe you had them create a magic word earlier in the effect. Or maybe as part of the "color-focusing" bit you had them imagine any object and then think of it in a color it doesn't normally come in, and it’s that object that’s written on the paper. Either way, you make it seem like your focus is always on the color they're coming up with. This word or object is just tangential to the procedure.)

I don't know if this would work with the procedure from Pigmento, but that's generally how I would approach these things. Get them focusing on the smaller aspect, then hit them with the larger impossibility when they're not braced for it. It should feel like it comes totally out of the blue and completely overwhelm them—as opposed to focusing on the word and then saying, "It's also in the color you named," which feels completely superfluous.

Pigmento may actually use the approach I mentioned here. I have no clue because there's no demo of the effect.

I figure this might be a “it depends” or you have some general heuristics on this. 

When you have something pre planned to perform, is there a time during a gathering/social interaction you try to hit to transition to this. 

Thinking of a small gathering of people would transitioning to it earlier in the evening vs towards the end when it’s the last “thing” for the evening? —ZA

For most tricks, I don't think it really matters. But when I have something really immersive and strong, I tend to want to put it towards the end of the gathering or meet-up.

Here's why:

  1. It provides a sort of climax to the evening. Structurally, it feels right.

  2. It allows more time to build anticipation. "Oh, a little later there's something I need to show you. Don't let me forget." That little seed of curiosity gets to germinate while you're just hanging out normally.

  3. Rushing into the performance early on can feel a little desperate. Like you showed up for the trick rather than the people.

  4. A really immersive effect has almost a dreamlike quality to it. When you do it at the end of the night, you can leave people in that state when they go. They walk out the door still inside the experience. This is why I often have people text me after hanging out: "Okay, I'm still freaked out by..." or "I can't stop thinking about..." Whereas if you do it in the middle of the interaction, they need to snap out of the reverie just to get on with normal human interaction. The spell breaks because it has to.

Again, this is only something I think about when I'm doing something very strong—something I know is going to leave them a little rattled.

Until 2026...

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This, unbelievably, is the final post for 2025. I will see you all back here on Monday, January 5th.

The relaunched version of the newsletter, Keepers #1, will be in the email of supporters on January 4th.

Got a lot of positive emails on yesterday’s post. If you want to explore other stuff I’ve written from a similar angle, check out: The Three Highlights (about taking time to notice the things you appreciate) and Invest In Your Happiness (about feeding into the things that bring you joy).

Huh?

“Okay, we have two people applying for a job. A black guy and a white guy. Point to one. The black guy? Okay. So we eliminate him and hire the white guy.”

From Marc Kerstein, regarding an old post for a trick called Peruggia. His suggested tweak makes a lot of sense to me.

I tried this at a show(!) I did tonight and it went amazingly. Being able to really emphasise that the final card never left their hand was really great - they kept mentioning that particular point afterwards.

One small change I made was not to peek the bottom card on my stack of three (as you would do normally), but instead to double lift the top card of my stack as I showed it, peeking the one beneath it. It was really easy to do even with the index cards I was using as I just did a pinky pull down on the bottom one of my stack, and it also meant I didn't need to rearrange my cards before doing the Elmsley switch. It also left me holding one card which easily could’ve been the remaining TWO cards in my other hand, making that whole peeking part stand up a bit better to scrutiny.

To be clear, he’s suggesting you turn over the top card singly, then double lift it to display it, peeking the second card in the stack.

If you familiarize yourself with the trick, you’ll see why this is likely an improvement.

A heads-up to anyone marketing a magic trick: nothing reflects more poorly on an effect than making a trailer that doesn't show what the trick actually looks like.

You'd be better off not making a video at all. At least then I could convince myself the trick is great—you just couldn't shoot a trailer, or maybe you're keeping it low-key and not actively promoting it.

But when you set up cameras, shoot footage, edit it all together, and still don't show me what it looks like? Now I'm certain it must look like dogshit.

This is the first release of 2026 that I'm really looking forward to…

Chris showed me this a few months ago and I've been waiting to get my hands on it ever since.

I've been searching for a good impression pad for ages. I bought most of the highly recommended ones but never found one I loved. They either looked weird, required careful handling, or involved some odd procedure. Even the ones built into spiral notebooks weren't ideal—I'm not a hard-boiled private eye tracking down the killer of some Park Avenue heiress in 1947, so I don't actually carry spiral-bound notebooks around. Nor does anyone I know.

But I do carry these types of pads when I'm researching or taking notes on books. This won't seem out of place for me at all.

Looks like it drops in January.

We did it, guys. Another year in the books.

Have a great Christmas, Happy New Year, and all the rest.

Now step under the mistletoe with me and let me lay one on you, you beautiful son of a gun! Get over here!

Keepers

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Every few years I like to mix up the newsletter format a bit. (For those who aren’t supporters, the monthly newsletter isn’t just a long email I send out or something, it’s a 10-30 page pdf zine/digest-type of thing.)

Originally (2016-2019) it was called X-Communiciation

Then, in 2020, it became The Wanderer.

After that, it became the Love Letters newsletter for three and a half years.

That marked a change in direction for the newsletter as it was where I decided to only focus on writing about things that I liked. Writing bad reviews is a lot easier, and they can be fun to read, but ultimately I don’t think they’re super valuable. If I want to trash something, I can do it on the site. Keeping the monthly review newsletter focused on the releases of others that I enjoyed gave it more of a purpose.

I believe the more energy you focus on positive things, the more positive things will come into your life—and conversely, the more you focus on negative things, the more negative things will follow

And I don’t mean that philosophically. I don’t mean, “if you have a better outlook, things will look better to you.” I mean it quite literally.

Think of your life as existing within a larger field of energy that’s always in motion.

Within that field are two masses: one oriented toward light and positivity, the other toward darkness and negativity.

At first, both are small. The energy flows evenly around them.

But your attention gives them weight.

When you return again and again to positive thoughts, moments, objects, or events, the positive mass grows heavier. And like any heavy object, it begins to bend the space around it.

As that bend deepens, more of the surrounding energy naturally falls toward the positive mass and adds to it. The good in your life becomes greater—easier to notice and easier to access.

This creates a feedback loop: attention creates weight; weight creates gravity; gravity pulls in more experience of the same kind.

The same mechanism works in reverse: negativity, when repeatedly fed with your attention, also grows dense. It pulls more darkness into its orbit. Not because the universe is cruel, but because gravity is impartial.

You’ve seen this. You know these people. The ones who seem to move through life collecting beauty and opportunity. And the ones who catalogue every slight, every inconvenience, every setback—and only seem to draw more of that into their orbit.

Over time, your inner universe begins to curve toward whatever you have allowed to become most massive.

So anywayyyy.… this is why the monthly newsletter will continue to focus on the things I’m enjoying.

I'm a big believer in building routines that help you focus on the positive. Prayer, list making, journaling—whatever practice helps you notice what you're appreciating: the cool people you meet, the media you enjoy, incredible meals, perfect days, great conversations, moments that made you laugh.

Everything you want to remember or want more of.

The “keepers.”

So, after 41 issues, the Love Letters newsletter is being retired. But what’s coming next won't be all that different, just a change in name and a little less structure.

Love Letters was almost always a deep dive on the three things I enjoyed most that month. This incarnation may feature more or fewer highlights, giving me the freedom to offer shorter write-ups when I like something but don't have much to say about it. My target is about 12 pages per month, but we'll see if I can keep it to just that.

It will still come out the first Sunday of every month.

So, if you're a supporter, keep an eye on your inbox January 4th for...