You've Got Me Feeling Emotions
/Do you remember that Mariah Carey song, Emotions? “You’ve got me feeling emotions!” Like, bitch, that’s a super general thing to say. It’s not like “emotions” are inherently positive. I mean, sure, falling in love produces emotions. But so does getting a speeding ticket, grandma dying, 9/11. Would, “You’ve got me feeling like it’s September 11th,” be a good love song? Probably not. Next time, be more specific, Mariah.
Okay, now that I’ve addressed the real issue of this post—that 33-year old Mariah Carey song—let me move forward.
Whenever a new trick with a lot of of buzz comes out, I get anywhere from… say… three to 30 emails asking if I’m going to get it, and if so, how I’m going to use it. And I got a dozen or so recently asking me my thoughts on the new trick Evoke.
When I heard Craig Petty was releasing a deck of cards with emotions on them so you could use them as an alternative to normal playing cards, my first response was…
And if you’re wondering, “Why would you have that reaction,” then you might be the sort of person who is going to botch performing this. If it’s not obvious that this has the potential to be affecting to people in both good and bad ways, that’s because you’re looking at “emotions” as just another subject matter to be printed on cards. This doesn’t surprise me. What turned me off from spending time around magicians isn’t that I didn’t like talking about magic with people. It’s that magicians often turn to magic because of a lack of other certain social skills, including emotional intelligence. I admit, that’s painting with a broad brush. But that was the sense I often got when surrounded by magicians. A lot of these people aren’t comfortable in their own skin.
So, of course, that makes me wonder… is this the best group to go out and engage with people about the subject of emotions?
At first, I thought Evoke would solely be used for this effect:
The spectator looks through the cards and selects one. You tell them to think of a time in their life that they felt that emotion. Then you—psychically/empathetically—are able to pick up on that emotion.
That’s certainly something you can do with this deck, but after watching Craig discuss the deck in more detail, I realized it’s much more robust than that, and that Craig has added many more elements to this, allowing you to do a lot of different types of effects.
But I want to talk specifically about that trick I mentioned. They pick an emotion, think of a time they felt it, and you pick up on that emotion and tell it to them.
I’ve been doing versions of this trick for 13 years now and I have some insight into it.
My history with this premise goes back to 2011, when I learned Andy Nyman’s effect Windows.
In Nyman’s trick, you have cards with different emotions written on them. The spectator selects one. They think about a time when they felt that emotion. You look into their eyes, and you’re able to tell them the emotion. The nice thing about Nyman’s effect is that it’s just done with double-blank cards.
In 2015, I published a variation called Opia. This used some more specific/interesting emotions, which allowed you to seemingly get a clearer picture of what the spectator was thinking. And, like Windows, it used unmarked cards. And it had the benefit of not potentially triggering negative emotions. It had the downside of requiring some memory work specific to this effect.
In 2020, in this post, I noted a small presentational change I’d made to Windows that had garnered significantly stronger reactions.
And for the past few years, I’ve used Marc Kerstein’s Xeno at times as an alternative to Windows. The benefit to that is that it’s beyond clean. And totally impromptu (in the modern sense that you don’t need anything with you but your phone).
So this premise is something I’ve been doing for a long time.
My biggest takeaway from performing this premise for years is:
You need to downplay this effect.
There are two reasons for this.
First, if you don’t downplay it yourself, many of your spectators will. As I wrote in the Opia post…
I found that some people find this trick a little too believable, ('“I thought of a happy memory and you were able to tell I was thinking of a happy memory… so what?")
Emotions are pretty much the only thoughts that we do pick-up from people without them saying anything. For a lot of people, especially highly emotionally intelligent people, telling them the emotion they’re thinking is going to feel very much like a “no shit,” kind of moment. So if you build it up like you’re doing the most miraculous thing in the world, that’s going to make you look a little ridiculous.
The second reason you want to downplay it is this… Think of it from an audience’s perspective. If you’re doing a trick where you’re interacting with your invisible friend from childhood, or travelling back in time, then the fact that you’re using deception to create that premise is going to be accepted… even embraced. But, if your premise is, “I have such an empathetic connection with you, I can sense your emotions.” And they realize you’re using deception to fake something that people in real life value for its genuineness, you are going to come off as a total pathetic douchebag.
So I always downplay the “I’m in touch with your emotions” premise. I use it as a lead-in to something else, generally. Something to “get us on the same page” before trying to establish a more abstract type of mind-reading connection.
How to downplay it? After telling them they’re focusing on a happy memory or whatever, you say something like, “Of course, this is something everyone does. We can all sense emotional energy like that. You’ve all walked into a room where people have been arguing and sensed that negative energy, even if they’re no longer actively fighting. They might not even be in the room anymore. But now that we’re on that same wavelength. I want to see if we can push it into a completely crazy direction.”
Also, keep in mind that using Evoke, or Xeno, or Windows to do an emotion-based premise… this is training-wheels sort of stuff.
I have no doubt that Evoke is going to garner much better reactions for a lot of magicians than they’re used to. And that’s because they’re used to magic that is so emotionally bankrupt that their audience will crave something more interesting than a bunch of coins changing into other coins and that sort of stuff.
But ultimately, you’re going to find this sort of trick to just be a stepping stone if you want to do truly emotionally engaging magic. (And I say this as someone who wrote a book on the subject and numerous posts here throughout the years.)
I once wrote: “Attempting to engage people’s emotions by making your tricks about emotions or emotional things is like putting ‘Let’s Get It On’ on your sex mix playlist. It’s corny, dude.”
What I mean is, it’s a little too on the nose.
You want the trick itself to generate emotions. Not for the trick to be about emotions.
Like, if you were a singer/songwriter, you would want your music to stimulate people’s emotions with resonant imagery and evocative melodies.
But you wouldn’t write a song that was like:
Yeah, yeah, think about something sad
A sad thing that happened and it made you cry
Maybe your dog died or you lost your job
Tears are swelling up in your eyes.
Actually… I was wrong… that’s a fucking banger.
But you get my point. Ideally, the art would produce the emotions, not simply call upon on pre-existing ones.
As far as Evoke goes, I’ll definitely be picking it up. I’ll keep it on my shelf and say a company I worked for cheaped out and gave it as a Christmas bonus last year.
I’ll look for a good routine in the instructions that is focused on the spectator’s ability to feel and sense the emotions rather than my own. That, I think, is the best way to go with this.
For me it’s not an EDC carry sort of thing. It’s the opposite of EDC in my philosophy of casual magic. As there is no situation on god’s green earth where I’d be carrying around a deck of inspirational quote cards. In professional situations, you can get away with carrying around something like this and bringing it to the show. But in casual situations, I don’t think that flies. The moment you pull out a deck of mini inspirational poster cards and start doing magic with them, people aren’t going to think, “Oh, he just happened to have some perfectly ordinary mini inspirational poster cards with him, and now he’s spontaneously doing a trick with them.”
You have to keep in mind with something like this, it’s designed to look like something. These are designed to look like a collection of some sort of inspirational cards. So I believe you should give them a home that fits that story. In reality, where would I keep such a deck of cards? Well, in the trash, most likely. Because I don’t need that type of clutter in my life. But for the sake of performing this trick, I would keep such a deck on a shelf at home, or in my junk drawer, or on my desk at work (if I worked somewhere with a desk). Maybe I could get away with saying my friend’s mom gave it to me as a Christmas present and I tossed it in my computer bag and that’s why I have them on me. But just pulling them out of my pocket like I carry them around on the regular would be completely out of place and put way too much suspicion on them, in my opinion.
So Evoke will probably be an “at home” trick for me. If I want to do somethign emotion-based while I’m out and about, I’ll stick with Windows or Xeno.