Monday Mailbag #58
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Re: Ring and Campfire Coin Vanish
Hey Andy, I enjoyed very much your presentation for a one coin vanish in this post. I only got to read it today, but funny enough, I commented to my friends Ive been doing a trick from Ben Earls book Inside out called "The Vanishing". It’s also a one coin vanish, and my magician friends commented that, to only vanish a coin without reappearing it, generates an "incompleted-ness" feeling in the spectators. That the spectator wants you to bring it back.
They agree with the opening scene from The Prestige: "....you wouldn’t clap yet...because making something disappear isn’t enough, you have to bring it back"
Also, on Ben Earls trick, even after the vanish there is still some patter left, and some of my friends say there shouldn’t be too much patter after the magical climax
What are your thoughts on those minimalist routines, and regarding still delivering presentation after the magical climax? —BM
I don’t know Ben’s trick, so I can’t comment on that specifically.
If you don’t have a particularly good premise, then I would agree that it makes sense to vanish an object and then make it reappear—to go full circle.
But, if you have a good premise, then the opposite is true. If you have a premise where vanishing the object makes sense in the first place, then bringing it back probably doesn’t make sense.
One of my most performed tricks, I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, is to take a paper napkin, when I’m done eating, ball it up, and make it disappear. I do this somewhat absentmindedly, as if this is just something you would do if you could make stuff vanish. I’ve heard a lot of comments about that simple trick, but no one ever says, “Bring it back.” Because people understand why you’d make a napkin vanish.
With the Ring presentation of mine linked above, no one would expect for the coin to come back. That wouldn’t make sense.
Even if you just said to someone, “I’m trying to learn how to make a quarter disappear.” Then you made one vanish. And they asked you to bring it back and you said, “Oh, I don’t know how. I haven’t learned that part yet.” That would be more interesting than vanishing a coin and bringing it back. Because it suggests the coin is actually somehow gone.
So yes, if you have no solid premise, bring the object back. But if you have a premise that justifies vanishing something in the first place, it’s probably best to leave it where it is.
As far as whether there should be much patter after the climax, it depends really. If there’s patter after the climax it should have a different tone or be coming from a different angle than what preceded it. For example, looking back at that same ring/coin vanish story above, you wouldn’t put the vanish in the middle and then keep telling the story. The climax is what you’re building towards. Any talk that happens afterwards should be a reflection on that climax or should put a spin on what they just saw. What you don’t want to do is go back to the same points you were making leading up to the climax.
I bought Xeno off of your recommendation and have really been enjoying it. What pairing method do you use? —DR
I use the swipe mode of pairing, and I do essentially the same thing every time. I take out my phone and tell them I’m going to bring up a website. That’s when I go to the Xeno app. Then I stop and say, “Actually, let’s use your phone.” My hand with my phone drops to my side. I tell them to go to the website and then I stand next to them and look at the site on their phone with them. While I do this I’m saying something and getting the information I need and swiping on my phone at my side. I then step away or have them go to the other side of the room or whatever in order to allow them to choose something in private.
Regarding last Wednesday’s post, “medium”
I loved this post - there’s something really potent in the idea of interrogating whether there’s a “vessel” that carries the magic… I guess previously I’d have been tempted to think of the medium as “performance”. But that’s performer-centric thinking. The idea that it’s more about an interaction that profoundly (or maybe persistently) causes someone to question belief is something I’m going to stick with.
On first reading I actually got a bit pedantic and thought, “is it belief”? I thought it was more accurate to think about “confidence in the trust you place on the senses”. I think great magic makes you snap out of automatic sense-making and fall back on a slower “system 2” intellectual interrogation. But maybe that is about belief. I really like the image of that oscillation “between what they know to be true, and the crazy fantasy you’ve so carefully crafted”. I think we get that because it’s uncomfortable not to trust the senses. And when this is combined with our innate drive to “discover” there’s an impulse to question whether you missed something in the “magic” or miss things the rest of the time is nearly irreversible.
Thanks for the great post. —DR
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When I first read today’s “medium” post, I thought you were making a semantic argument that “belief” was the medium that was manipulated in magic. But after considering it for a while, I think you’ve offered one of the few practical ways to consider generating a real “magical” feeling in people. It’s not just about how fooled they are, it’s really about creating that shifting sense of belief.
I think an important piece of the puzzle which you didn’t quite get to is that having a story is the best way to engage their belief. If the trick is just “your bill is in my lemon,” you won’t have that push and pull dynamic with their belief because there is no “compelling fiction” to believe in.—ER
Yes. Thanks for the kind words about that post. It wasn’t intended to be a theoretical exercise… “What is the medium of magic?” 🤔 It was meant it to be an actionable idea for how we can create effects that feel“magical” and not just fooling. And I think the way to do that is by keeping their belief unbalanced. I’m testing a number of different ways to do this, many of which are extensions of other concepts I’ve written about here. If I have any breakthroughs in this area, I’m sure you’ll read about them somehwere.