Q&A Week: Bonus Coronavirus Post

This came in over email, not the Q&A form, but it seemed like a good time to address the situation.

Subject: Social Magic in the Time of COVID-19.

Just wondering if you’ve considered tackling the topic of social magic given the current reality that social distancing needs to be a thing. Any general or specific recommendations?

Well, the fact of the matter is, it’s the professional magicians who will be hardest hit by this. Vegas performers, table-hoppers, trade-show magicians… they may be the ones sitting at home with a lot of time on their hands for the first time in a while. Since I’ve started this site, I’ve heard from a number of professional magicians who say they like the site, but that they never perform socially. Perhaps after some downtime, they’ll get the itch to perform and decide to do something special for their friends and family.

For me, personally, the virus has upended some travel plans and consulting work I had coming up. It has also made me cancel an upcoming focus group testing session we had scheduled for the end of the month. But other than that, it hasn’t changed my performing too much. If anything, I find the people who are out in the real world are interacting more with each other than they were before. So while I wouldn’t do any tricks that involve touching or handing items back and forth for the time being, I have no problem doing other more “hands off” type effects for people.

The beauty of social magic is that it’s immune to the conditions of the outside world because it’s designed to work within those conditions in the first place. If you’re a professional magician and no one comes to your theater, you’re fucked. If you perform in a more traditional style and you have a gambling demonstration that requires a table and a close-up mat and five spectators, then you need to find a way to maneuver the outside conditions so you can get to that situation. But social magic is about conforming your magic to the situation, not the other way around, so it’s sort of indestructible. Social magic is great at a party with friends, but it also works in a Walking Dead scenario where we’re running from zombies and living in the forest. Humans are very adaptable but they will always need someone to entertain them or occupy their mind.

On Tuesday thru Thursday of this week, I’ll give three examples of ways I’ve used the current situation as a jumping off point for a performance of social magic in a way that I think feels natural and not like I was taking advantage of the situation or making light of it just to perform magic.

The goal of social magic is not to turn every interaction into a goddamn magic trick. But, when the moment is right, to be able to infuse magic into our lives in a way that is more seamless and ideally more affecting. This is a weird time, and there are certainly some people who find themselves or their loved ones dealing with something significant. But not you. You’re here reading a magic blog. So things are still going pretty well for you. Which will hopefully continue to be the case for all of us.