Mailbag #20
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Please tell me you’re going to do a full review of Ellusionist’s How to Read Minds Kit. Your writing on that has made my December.
I got my own kit a few days ago. Here are my thoughts:
The thumb-writer is a grease pencil. What beginner is using a grease pencil when they perform?
The ESP cards have the most visible marking system I've ever seen on marked cards. You couldn’t even call it hidden, it’s the ONLY noticeable part of the design. AND you can see right through the cards!
The book test uses the first method a spectator would guess. It was the first method my daughter (who has no magic training) guessed after watching the performance. Also, for some reason they didn't cut the book to one of the standard dimensions a book comes in so it doesn't look or feel like a normal book.
The wallet is oriented like no wallet I’ve ever seen. On the Cafe, Geraint from Ellusionist says it’s a leather hip pocket style wallet but he didn't mention that it folds open along the LONG edge. No real wallet is made like this. It's too big for a business card or credit card wallet and too small to hold money. Also, it’s not real leather, that’s just a bizarre lie.
As you noted, the custom credit-card looks completely fake and that’s true whether you look at it from the front or the back. It's a clear magic prop.
The notepad is okay if you’re the sort of person who carries around a faux-leather notebook with you (I’m not).
The marked deck is fine.
Everything else in the kit is filler.
The quality of the items is about what I expected, but the decision making that went into them is so poor that I won't be using this at all. I'm not an Ellusionist hater by any means. I like a lot of the things they put out, but not this.
Can’t wait to hear your thoughts. —JR
Actually, you can wait to hear my thoughts, and you will, because I won’t be giving my thoughts.
Originally my plan was to make my final post of the year (on Monday) a big unboxing and review of this kit. I thought that would be fun. And then I got the kit and opened it and it’s just… not that fun. I found it depressing, in some weird way. And I don’t want to spend hours of my life writing any more about it.
Hey, I don’t know, man! I’m a complicated little bitch! I love talking shit, but it’s got to be fun. And writing more about this kit just feels like a drag. It’s not so good or so bad that it would be enjoyable to write about in full. I’m glad it was a successful project for Ellusionist. And I hope the people who purchased it are happy with what they received. I haven’t watched the teaching yet, and I’m sure that’s the best part of the kit. So I’m not in a position to talk about the overall value of it.
You don’t need me anyways. There are surely other reviews to be found online. One way to know if they’re legitimate or not is if they mention that the ESP cards are unusable. This is not a question of opinion, it’s a matter of fact. You can see the ESP symbols through the cards. They used too cheap a card stock. If the review doesn’t mention this, then you know the rest of the comments are bought and paid for.
Do you ever worry about not being able to pull off something “as good” as the last thing you did for a person/group? —DI
No. There’s no benefit to thinking like that.
First, because it’s impossible to maintain long-term. There’s no way to consistently do something “better” each time you perform. So why torture yourself with that goal? This isn’t running a marathon where you can improve your time each go-around. There aren’t quantifiable metrics that you can shoot for to strive for “better” each time.
In fact, when I do something that really hits someone hard, I usually intentionally show them something much less significant the next time I perform for them. I want them to realize that this is not a game of “can you top this?” that is going to go on eternally. As long as everything you show them is interesting and impressive in its own right, then you’re fine.
If you had a friend who cooked for you and one day made a gigantic 14-course dinner that was one of the highlights of your life, you’d still really enjoy them making some pancakes for you a month later, assuming the pancakes were good.
Even if I could do something a little better each time, I wouldn’t want to. It would feel too polished and prepared to me. I want these things to have a casual air to them, and showing someone 20 trick over the course of two years that gradually increase in impressiveness doesn’t have that feeling. In fact, I think it would start to feel predictable to anyone who saw it. Whereas, if you’re constantly mixing up the type of stuff you show people, it’s easier to keep them on the hook. And since you haven’t established a pattern of constantly one-upping yourself, there is not a .sense of “failure” if you do something that isn’t as impressive as the last thing you did.
You have mentioned many times that you keep track of which tricks you perform for which people. This is so you don’t do the same trick for the same person twice. Since you keep track of this info, I was wondering if you also pay attention to make sure you never will do a trick for someone where the PREMISE would contradict the premise of a previous trick that you once did for them. I would need an example to best illustrate what I mean, so here is the first one I could come up with, although there’s probably better examples in your work:
In a very early post (June 5, 2015- “Free Magic Giveaway – EVP by Alan Rorrison”), as part of your presentation, you mention the idea that it’s very difficult to read someone’s mind because everyone is trying so hard to guard their own thoughts. More recently (March 15 2019- “Earn the Elements”), you mentioned a presentation where you introduce the premise with the exact opposite premise: that when someone tries to guard a certain thought, it actually becomes easier to figure out because their conscious effort to hide it sets off all sorts of tells.
So, I was just wondering if this is something you pay any attention to, to never do both of these for the same person, or at least not without a lot of time in between them. —YR
No, I don’t really look for consistency in that way. Most people aren’t going to be super pedantic about these sorts of things. And even if they are, I just assume I can talk myself out of—or around—anything they may bring up.
For example, if they said, “Hey, in one trick you said guarded information is harder to read and in another you said trying to guard information makes it easier to read.”
I would just say something like, “Yeah, well both things are true. It’s like if you had a safe in your house. The safe protects your valuables, but it also tells me exactly where your valuables are. If I have one minute to rob your house, do I want a safe or no safe? I probably actually want you to have one. A minute isn’t enough time search through your whole house, but it is enough time to crack a safe, if I’ve learned those skills. The tools of mind reading are the tools of cracking the lock guarding the secrets in your head.” Just weaving a web of bullshit.
If I’m doing something long-form that unfolds over the course of weeks or months, I wouldn’t do anything that contradicts it during that time. But outside of that, it’s not really something I consider.
How do your performance styles as discussed in Amateur at the Kitchen Table (peek backstage, romantic adventure, distracted artist) relate to Presentation and Context? —DW
Performing Styles and Context vs Presentation are concepts I wrote about a few years apart and they came sort of in the reverse order they should have. Because I’m writing about this stuff in, essentially, real time, you’re seeing the way these ideas actually developed rather than necessarily seeing them in the most intuitive order to understand those concepts.
I’ll get to where they intersect, but first, here’s a brief overview of Context vs Presentation.
Triumph Presentation - “One time this guy walked into a bar and shuffled my deck face-up into face-down. Like this.”
Triumph Context - You drop the deck creating a big mess of cards face-up and face-down. “Goddammit,” you say, picking up the cards. You start to separate them. “Eh, it will be quicker to reset the deck.” You call a number on your phone and read off a few digits from the bottom of the card case. After a couple seconds you spread the deck and they’re all facing the same way.
Presentations are stories laid on top of a trick. Contexts are present-tense situations in which the trick occurs.
The Performing Styles, are these:
Distracted Artist
Peek Backstage
Wonder Room
Engagement Ceremony
Romantic Adventure
More information on them can be found in the glossary on the right (or at the bottom of the page if you’re on your phone).
The Performing Styles are just very broad Contexts.
Distracted Artist is when a trick occurs in the context of an absentminded action.
Peek Backstage is when a trick occurs in the context of you showing them “something you’re working on.”
Wonder Room is when a trick occurs in the context of you showing them an interesting object from a collection.
Engagement Ceremony is when a trick occurs in the course of some kind of ritual.
Romantic Adventure is just another name for a long-form immersive context.
What makes something a “Performing Style” rather than just a general context is that it could conceivably be the only pretense you use to show people magic; it’s that broad. You could, for example, only ever show people magic items from the walls of your Wonder Room. Or only show them different rituals you’ve collected over the years. Or whatever.
That’s the relationship between those ideas.
I’ve been thinking about Simon Aronson a lot since his passing. Which of his effects did you perform most often? —BR
None of these are deep cuts. They’re all on his DVD set.
Shuffle-bored - Obviously. Simon and John Bannon allowed me to put my presentational variation in the first book. And I’ve performed at least half a dozen variations on it over the years.
Among the Discards - This is one that has cycled in and out of my borrowed deck repertoire for 15 years now.
Self Control Lie Speller - If you have a smart spectator who can follow directions, this is a great one to do over Skype, where they have the deck on their end and you just talk them through it.
Side-Swiped - I created my own variation on the gimmicks used in this trick and a slightly different handling as well. But the heart of the trick is the same, and it kills.