Spont: Wallet Cards

I’m trying to think the best way to introduce this idea to you. If I tell you how much I’ve been getting out of this idea recently, your expectations are going to be raised and when you read it you’ll say, “Huh? That’s it?”

But if I don’t hype it up for you somewhat, I think you’ll underestimate the idea.

It’s definitely a small idea.

It’s possibly something that other people are already doing without thinking too much about it. But I just stumbled on it myself recently.

It’s a Spont.

What’s a Spont?

A Spont is a concept I wrote about a few weeks ago. At that time, Spont was a placeholder name, but now I’m sticking with it.

Sponts are techniques you can use to make a trick feel more spontaneous. They make the interaction feel less planned. And they lower the friction between performing and not performing.

This is a Spont for use with wallet card magic.

As you probably know, wallet card magic is magic that’s done with a card you keep in your wallet (and if you didn’t know that, I’m sure you could have surmised that).

Some examples that I have carried around are Chroma by Mark Lemon or Pictionary by Michael Weber.

Contact by Rick Lax is a that uses a single playing card you can keep in your wallet.

Paul Carnazzo has a whole series of them. (I’m not familiar with his work, so I can’t comment on them, good or bad.)

The best thing about wallet card tricks is that you can carry them around in your wallet. Very convenient.

The worst thing about wallet card tricks is the, “hold on, let me get my special little card I carry with me to show you a trick” moment.

There’s really no way to naturally stumble into the trick. The card is hidden away in your wallet. Sure, I guess if someone says to me, “I was just thinking about the subject of color cognition,” I can pull out Mark Lemon’s Chroma and say, “Oh, I just happen to have a card on me that tests such things.” But sadly, it’s a subject that rarely comes up.

So there’s always that moment between our normal conversation, and the point where I’m digging in my wallet to get a card to show you a trick.

I know most performers don’t care. Most magicians would say, “Just tell them you want to show them a trick and reach in your wallet and pull out the card. What’s the big deal?”

I get it. But that moment—that moment where they go from a normal interaction to being the audience for a magic trick—is my least favorite moment in casual magic. The more abrupt it is, the less natural it feels, the more their guard is up. Sanding the edges off that moment is an essential element of social magic.

Okay… enough build up. So what’s the technique I’m talking about?

I don’t keep wallet cards in my wallet.

Instead, I use them as bookmarks.

Underwhelmed? That’s fair.

But I’m telling you, it feels so much better to get into one of these tricks this way, rather than pulling the card out of my wallet.

I can have the book out when I’m at a café or elsewhere in public where I might interact with people.

I can have it sitting on my coffee table or my night stand. On the passenger seat of my car. On my desk at my co-working space. Anywhere where people might see it.

Sometimes they’ll spot the bookmark and ask what it is.

Sometimes they’ll ask about the book. I’ll flip through it as I talk about the plot and casually set the bookmark on the table. At this point, they may notice the card and ask me about it.

Sometimes I’ll just be talking to someone, and I’ll absentmindedly be flicking the edge of the bookmark with my thumb. Then, I focus on it as if I’m just taking in what it is myself, I say, “Oh, could I try something with you?”

So even if they don’t notice the card or comment on it, the card is already in the world, and it’s serving a purpose other than being this thing that I carry around in order to do a magic trick with. It’s not something that’s been squirreled away in my wallet. If they don’t happen to notice it, then I can notice it. And my attitude is, “Oh, yeah. I have this with me. It might be fun to try [whatever].” That’s still perfectly normal. It does not feel forced. If I was using a coupon for adult diapers as a bookmark and I happened to notice it and mention, “Oh yeah, I don’t know if I told you, but I’ve been shitting my pants recently.” That would feel like a natural moment. You wouldn’t think, “I bet he uses that as a bookmark because he WANTS to tell me about his fecal incontinence.”

This is especially good for tricks that use a single playing card like Contact. It’s actually less normal to carry around a single playing card in your wallet than it is to carry around a full deck of cards in your pocket. So if someone asks to see a trick and you say, “Ah, I don’t have anything. Well, actually, I have this single card in my wallet,” then that card is already suspect, and your actions clearly pre-planned.

But a playing card as a bookmark? This isn’t uncommon. You can genuinely play this as if you’re caught off guard. “Sorry. I don’t have anything on me… well, actually….”

My appreciation for this little idea might not resonate with you. But I’ve already gotten a lot out of it in just a matter of weeks since I started doing it.

(In my obituary, please make sure it says: “To get a feel for his intellect, in middle school, he struggled to write one page about the American Revolution. As an adult, he wrote the equivalent of a four-page essay on using wallet card magic tricks as bookmarks. He will not be missed.”)

Sleight Exposure Technique

This is an idea from Sam “Stuck In the Middle With You by Stealers” Wheeler.

He wrote me about it after my Beta Test Performance Style post last year. He offered it up as another “ego saving” performance style. It’s another way to take the pressure off when you perform. This is for when you have a sleight-of-hand-based routine that you’re not 100% comfortable with yet.

Here it is, in his words:

I read your post today about The Beta Test Performance Style. 

I like the concept a lot. As someone who struggles with feeling guilty about performing I can see this being very useful, I can put that guilt onto someone else! 

I wanted to share another ego saving performance style I've played with for a couple of years. 

Essentially its for use when you are a little afraid about using a new technique or move. For example, I've always felt a little afraid of the palm, the fear of getting caught holding out a card. So I never used the palm. I came up with this performance style specifically to start using the palm, with the eventual goal of not being afraid of using it any more! 

I have a couple of variations on how I introduce this, but at some point, you say "do you want to see what sleight of hand actually looks like?" 

You build up an expectation that they are going to actually see what the sleight of hand looks like... And then you perform the trick. 

The benefit now is that if they do catch the palm they will believe that you intended to show it to them, so your ego is safe, and now you can have a conversation about sleight of hand and that move in particular. 

If they don't catch the palm, you then have a bit of a punch line of "well that's what sleight of hand looks like". 

Of course since I started using this, I relaxed significantly, and nobody seemed to catch the palm. 

I trust that they are being honest, because they all believe I am going to expose the move, so wouldn't need to protect my ego by lying, and all generally say something like "well where was the sleight of hand?", or "I didn't see the sleight of hand". 

I grew to like this performance style so much that I've been using it permanently as how I perform the homing card: 

I start the performance by honestly explaining that I find some methods in magic scary to do. There's one move in particular that's always terrified me, and explain that I'm trying to face my fear and start using it. (I really like that this is honestly letting them into some truth about me) 

Then I do the "do you want to see what this move actually looks like? You'll get to see real sleight of hand, and know what sleight of hand actually looks like..." gambit. 

Going into the effect, the palm happens at a bit of an unexpected time which I think helps. 

After the first phase I know I am going to repeat even more cleanly... So if they caught the move I'll offer to do it again but how it normally looks without exposing the move. If they didn't catch the palm I'll just offer to do it again. 

I think that’s a really solid idea. It’s rare for me to do a trick with a sleight that I’m not comfortable with. (But that’s only because I don’t push myself too much sleight-wise. Not because I’m some sleight-of-hand master.) So I haven’t had the need to use it myself, but I can definitely see the value in it, not only to release the pressure a bit on yourself, but also to intrigue the spectator somewhat regarding what they will (or won’t) end up seeing.

Thanks, Sam.

Mailbag #114: Approaching Test Subjects

I’m taking this email slightly out of context. I’m intepreting the question more generally than it was asked. The basic idea is how to approach people for help when you’re testing out new tricks or techniques.

If I'm to have a friend or three selected especially for this task provide discrete and prompted feedback on individual magic tricks, what excuse do you think I should use to avoid the real reason?

I'm thinking that I'll just say that I'm part of a secret society that values actual feedback […] and I've been enlisted to test some of the creations of the society out on them.—JN

I don’t have one approach to this, so this is going to be a mishmash of thoughts and ideas.

Identifying good “test subjects”

To me, one of the joys of amateur magic is finding my ideal audience. That is, finding people who not only like watching magic but also enjoy losing themselves in weird experiences. I don’t force this sort of thing on anyone who isn’t into it. There’s no pleasure in that for me. That’s another problem of magician-centric thinking. “I like to do magic. And you’re someone I know. So you’re going to have to watch me do the type of magic I want to do.”

The feeling I get seeing many amateurs perform for people is the same feeling I get seeing a six-year-old pester his mother at the public pool. “Mommy! Mommy! I can dive. Hold on. Look mommy. I’m going to do a BIG DIVEY!” And then he goes and flings his dumb little body into the water, coming up moments later, flailing and sputtering. “Did you see? Mommy? I did it mommy, did you see? Did you see my dive?”

“Yes,” she says, as she stares into the novel she’s reading. The one featuring a woman who doesn’t have a kid constantly begging for her attention. The only person wanting that woman’s attention is the guy she just met. The one with the shredded abs and the new little shop in town where he sells his home-made pastries. “Yes, sweetie. Great job. Let mommy read now.”

I never want that needy vibe when I perform. So I’m always focusing on building my audience by giving people a peek at the type of stuff that fascinates me and then moving forward with the people who are genuinely intrigued by this sort of thing.

When it comes to performing for people who are going to be in my life regularly, I start to categorize them regarding their appreciation for the type of magic I want to do.

• There are fans, and there are superfans. They make up my core audience.

• There are people who are purely anti-magic. They just can’t appreciate it on any level. I’m not going to bother with these people. (Unless I feel like torturing one for some reason.)

• Then there is a final group that likes magic somewhat, and they’ll ask me about it from time to time. But they’re incapable of letting it truly affect them. It may be because they know a bit too much about magic and how it’s done. Or it may be because they’re just too guarded. Whatever the case may be, I’m not going to waste a truly special presentation on them. But they do make good test subjects when you’re looking for people to take a more analytical look at magic.

Two Things Worth Testing

#1 Sleights

I don’t learn too many new sleights these days, but when I do, I usually try to test them out in some form. You might think you could ask another magician if you’re flashing or if the sleight looks good. You can’t. They’re just as blinded as you are. And they want to believe that something looks normal, and fooling.

Instead, you want someone who doesn’t know what they’re looking for.

I like to test new sleights with zero heat, and then with 100% full heat. Knowing that when I perform them for real, the heat will likely be somewhere in the middle.

For example, let’s say I was learning a second deal.

— Zero Heat Test

“Can you help me out? I’m going to deal some cards into different piles. Will you make a note of how many I deal into each pile?”

They would watch me deal out some cards, and then make a note of how many I dealt.

What I’m actually doing is second-dealing on every deal, or on some particular deals.

There’s no heat on this. I’m just asking them to help out with some sort of administrative task. I’m just looking to make sure that they don’t say something like, “Why are you dealing in that weird way?” Assuming that doesn’t happen, I can feel confident knowing the sleight is at least somewhat workable.

— Full Heat Test

“I’m going to deal twenty cards onto the table and count them out as I do. On two of the cards, I’m going to deal in an unusual way. I want you to try and spot when I do and remember what number I called out when I did it.”

Let’s say I deal out 20 cards and I second deal on cards 8 and 11.

I now ask them which cards I did something weird on.

I’ll get one of three responses:

1. Totally Unsure - “I don’t know. It all looked the same to me.” Great. That means I can probably use the sleight freely with no worries.

2. Totally Sure - “You did something funny with cards 8 and 11.” Okay. That doesn’t mean the sleight is worthless. Or that doesn’t mean the sleight is unusable. It just means I’ll want to give it some more practice and not use it in circumstances where there is a lot of heat on the dealing itself.

3. Somewhere in between - “I don’t really know. I thought I spotted something in the middle there. Maybe around 10 or 11?” This is fine. This tells me it’s a usable sleight and as long as I’m not telling them to specifically focus on the cleanliness of whatever action I’m taking, it will most likely fly by them.

I always try to test sleights and moves outside the context of a trick. Most people want to be nice when you’re showing them a trick. But if you say, “Watch me cut this deck of cards 10 times, and tell me if you see anything odd,” then they’ll feel no need to be nice.

You can see why this type of testing is great for someone who is analytical and happy to help. But you wouldn’t want to use someone who’s willing to really “dance” with you in more magical ways. Don’t waste their time.

#2 Suspicion and Transparency

The other thing worth testing is how suspicious or transparent a trick or the deceptions used in a trick are.

If people are suspicious of something, and you can’t allay those suspicions in any way, then it doesn’t matter whether those suspicions are true or not, the impact of your trick will be greatly reduced.

For this type of testing, I need to present the trick to people in some way, but I don’t always perform it for them.

Often I will just describe the trick for people. Other times I will show them a video of someone else performing the trick.

Then I can just play dumb. “Do you have any idea how someone could do that?”

Now I listen for their responses. Are they focusing on the exact method simply by hearing about or watching the trick? That tells you if the method is transparent, or if there’s something they would naturally be suspicious of.

When Leviosa came out, we tested it by putting a demo video in front of 47 non-magicians. 100% of them were suspicious of the deck. I don’t have to now buy the trick and perform it myself to know that this is something that’s not going to work for my performing situations. And you don’t need a 47-person virtual focus group to test this on. You could show the demo to three or four people and try and get their earnest thoughts on how it might be done, and if you have most or all of them being suspicious of the deck, you can be pretty certain that’s what you’ll have if you performed it in real life too.

I have a friend who was interested in a recent iPhone trick where the spectator would type something in your Notes app and whatever they typed would be revealed on your phone in some manner (I don’t remember the details). Before buying it, he decided to test it out by describing this trick “someone showed me” and then asking his friends if they had any idea how it could have been done. The majority of the people he asked said that it was probably some trick with the phone—some kind of app or something. It wasn’t an app (I think it was a shortcut) but really, what’s the difference as far as the spectator is concerned?

And this is all the type of testing that can be done without actually performing.

Approaching Test Subjects

When testing out a trick, you really need to frame it as if you’re doing it on behalf of someone else. Most people aren’t comfortable giving their friend or loved one honest feedback. If they were, you’d never need to test anything. You could just perform and people would say. “I believe the card was in your hand before you put your hand in your pocket.” But most people aren’t going to call you out like that, even if you indicate that you’d like them to.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, the story I tell people if they’re someone I’m going to be testing tricks out on regularly, is that I’m a member of this group of magicians that helps test out new tricks, to give feedback to the creators. This allows me to ask very direct questions after the trick is completed, as if these are just the questions I’ve been tasked with getting answers to.

This is similar to what the email-writer is considering. But I don’t call it a “secret society” or anything like that. (I use talk of “secret societies” in my “real” presentations. But not for these purposes.) I intentionally make the thing seem as dull as possible. This is one of the more boring aspects of my interest in magic. It’s just this thing you can sign up for if you’re part of one of the regular magic organizations and they’ll send you tricks from time to time as long as you give your test them out and give feedback. The testing group is run by these guys.

So clearly it’s not anything exciting.

This is similar to what I wrote in the Beta Test Performing Style.

What Not To Test

I don’t bother testing premises or presentational techniques.

I mean, I do test them in an informal way, in the sense that I perform them, and then I make note of how people respond to them.

But I don’t break these things down with people specifically. I don’t say, “Okay, so I framed this deck cutting itself as if a ghost was doing it. Do you think it would have been better if I said I could astral-project my essence across the room to cut the deck to your card? Please rate those premises on a scale of 1-10.”

Magic presentations have already been focus-grouped to death. That’s why they’re generally so bland and homogenous. They’re designed to go down easily for the widest possible audience.

As an amateur, I want to test things like sleights and techniques to make sure the fundamentals of the deception are sound. But I don’t believe you should leave it up to the audience to decide the stories you want to tell and the experiences you want to deliver. Those things are supposed to be an extension of yourself, and a way to connect with people. You shouldn’t leave the outward expression of yourself up to committee.

Dustings #107

In Monday’s mailbag, I wrote about taking advantage of recurrent, seasonal events as the backdrop for your effects. This is an easy way to imbue them with a little more sense of “special-ness.”

This is just simple supply and demand. If you only got a boner when the seasons changed, you would cherish every one. If, like me at 14, you have a boner 23 hours of the day—acting as either a tent pole or a kickstand when you tried to sleep at night—it would be meaningless at best, and annoying at worst.

“I can do this anywhere, any time, with anybody,” is the opposite of a “magical” experience.

Many of us will have an opportunity this Monday to take advantage of the eclipse for one-such Sky Imp when the eclipse happens.

It’s all about picking the right trick, of course. You can’t be like, “I can stack any poker hand with two shuffles during an eclipse.”

I will be up near Niagara Falls in the path of totality. My intention is to demonstrate the cool gravitational anomaly that occurs with the gyroscopic effect when the sun and moon are aligned.

I’m going to demonstrate this “anomaly” using Grandfather’s Top (minus the disappearing phase, of course).

I think the image of a top spinning in the air in the midday darkness will be cool and memorable. Any other similar floating effect or balance effect feels like a good match for the eclipse.

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A few times over the past couple of years, I’ve had people question me when I describe a trick and suggest grabbing a couple of business cards that are lying around a café to write something down on. They’ve questioned if business cards are commonly found in cafés still.

Yes. I don’t know if this is a regional thing. But in New York state, if you’re in a coffee shop that isn’t a Starbucks, there is almost always a place for people to leave their cards. Business card magic—which may be a dying concept in some situations (handing out your card at a cocktail party, for example)—is alive and well at coffee shops around me.

I visited my friend (and the publisher and distributor of the Jerx books) who lives outside of Syracuse NY, to plan out the release of the hardcover edition of the Amateur at the Kitchen Table. We camped out at one of his usual hang-out spots where I took these pics:

There were over 150 different little stacks of business cards. So yes, business cards are still quite natural objects in certain circumstances.

If you happen to have a coffee shop as your “third place” where you spend time and perform occasionally, I recommend spending $15 and printing up 1000 cheap business cards for some unexciting sounding business. “Proofreading” or “Commercial Real Estate” or “Vending Machine Repair.” Put a fake name, an email address, and maybe a Google Voice number on it. You don’t have to ever bother checking the mail or the phone number, they’re just there so the card looks normal. The reason I recommend doing this is that many modern business cards are so thick and have so much printing on the front and back that they become not great for billet work, or anything along those lines. Having a cheap stack of these fake cards lying around in a place that you perform regularly assures you that you won’t have to go digging through cards to find one that works for your purposes.

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Random Trivia.

When I write a book, I listen to the same song over and over the whole time. I do this because it blocks out the surrounding noise from where I’m writing, and I prefer it to white noise. If I listened to different songs, it would be too distracting. But listening to the same song over and over is almost meditative. And I’m sure it helps put me in the headspace to work.

During the writing of my last book, Young Girls Are Coming to the Canyon, I listened to this song 14,989 times.

I thought it would make a good song to write a book to because there aren’t many lyrics to get in the way. I love songs with harmonies and ba-ba-bahs. And this song is almost only harmonies and ba-ba-bahs. Plus, the Beachwood Sparks, are reminiscent of some of the Laurel Canyon bands (specifically the Byrds and Buffalo Springfield) that inspired part of that book. And this sunny tune usually put me in a good mood to write.

I was feeling bad because I listened to my own copy of the song rather than streaming it on Spotify to make the band some money. But I just did the math and it looks like my 15,000 streams would have made them about $60.

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Don’t forget to send in your T.W.A.T. picks.

(Not your “twat pics.”}

TWAT - The Worst All Time - Magic Tournament

It’s often said, “There are no bad tricks, only bad performers.”

With your help, we’re going to put this notion to the test.

I would like you to submit to me what you believe to be the worst magic release of all time.

I will take all your nominations and we will put them in a single-elimination tournament over the course of a few weeks to crown one trick the worst of all time.

Then we’ll take that trick and see if there’s some way to perform that trick in a way that makes it “good.”

Depending on how many nominees I get for the worst trick of all time, this will go on for maybe 1-3 weeks.

To start this off, I’d like you to send me an email where you nominate the worst trick or tricks you’ve seen.

Rules:

1. Let’s limit it to tricks that have been released separately. Not something in a book or magazine.

2. The trick should “work.” Like don’t nominate a trick that uses an app that wasn’t updated and no longer works. I want tricks that function as they were intended to. But they just happen to suck.

3. Nominate real tricks, not gags that are intentionally stupid.

4. I’m not looking for rationales like, “This is the worst trick ever released because it’s stolen. It’s a copy of a trick by so & so.” Stealing a trick doesn’t make the trick bad, it makes the person who stole the trick bad.

5. Don’t just name a trick. Tell me why you think it’s no good. Is it overly complicated? Meaningless? Dull? Too unimpressive?

6. Being overhyped doesn’t mean a trick is terrible. Don’t confuse these two things. You might think Dex by Lloyd Barnes didn’t live up to the hype, but that doesn’t make it anywhere near the “worst” trick of all time.

Submit as many tricks as you like and your rationale for why they suck via email. Put TWAT in the subject line. I probably won’t reply to each email, so I’ll thank you now for taking part.

(Keep Feeling) Fascination

Why are you doing 3 Card Monte one day, a memory demonstration the next, and turning $1 into $100s the next? What do your friends see as your rationale for why you’re doing it?

I think the worst-case scenario is that they think you’re getting something out of fooling them. That you’re trying to impress them. Or trying to get them to think you’re more clever than them. Or just trying to point out that you know how to do something they don’t.

But what is the best-case scenario? That you’re showing them these things because you hope it will entertain them? That’s definitely better than the previous option. But it’s also still a little weird.

“I’m going to entertain my friends!” is an odd instinct. Certainly, us being together should be a fun time and “entertaining.” But if I’m learning a trick, practicing it, and then showing it to you for your entertainment, that doesn’t feel like a natural interaction between friends.

“I’m doing this trick for you.” Is weird.

So now I try and firmly establish the opposite.

“I’m doing this trick for me.”

I’ve said in the past that if your audience suspects you’re doing a trick for yourself, that they’ll be turned off. And they will shut down.

But I realize that’s not completely clear.

The truth is, if your audience gets the sense that you’re doing the trick for your own glorification, then they will shut down. (Unless they’re your mother or madly in love with you (or both).) It will come across as pathetic. “Give me praise! Be impressed with me! Look what I can do!”

But my attitude is not that I’m doing it as some sort of validation seeking exercise. Or that I’m doing it for their entertainment.

My attitude is that I’m doing it for my entertainment.

Magic, mind-reading, psychology, strange-phenomenon. These are subjects that fascinate me. And their role is not to applaud what I do. But to help me while I practice something, or test an idea, or explore a concept, or experience something new.

Their “job” is not to be entertained. Their role is simply to be a helper, a test subject, a witness, etc. They will be entertained, but that’s not why they’re there, or why we’re doing this.

My former downstairs neighbor in my apartment used to practice her flute occasionally. Not often. Maybe once or twice a month. When I would hear it coming up through the floor, I would usually lay down, close my eyes, and just enjoy the soothing, mellow sound of it. Thus, I loved when I would catch her practicing.

What if she came upstairs, knocked on my door, and said, “I’m going to play my flute for you.” Obviously, that would be a completely different—and probably uncomfortable— dynamic, even though the outcome is the same: it’s me listening to her play the flute.

By expressing my fascination with the subject matter, then I am allowing people to help me experience this subject that fascinates me.

They will hopefully be amazed, amused, impressed, intrigued, scared, unnerved, mystified, or whatever I’m going for.

But even if they don’t feel any of that, then the worst case scenario is that they just helped out someone they're friendly with as that person delved into a subject that interests them.

So I recommend you not forget that what you’re sharing with them should seem to be a subject of your fascination, at least until it becomes a subject of their fascination. Once people start asking you to show them something, then you don’t have to worry about this as much because they are putting themselves in the audience role.

But until then, you need to give them a reason why you’re doing this (because you’re fascinated by it) or they will come up with their own reason (that you need validation, or you have to resort to tricks to entertain them).

This song holds up.

The Essential Story

This is a subject I’ve written about before, but it’s been about five years, and it came up again recently in real life, so I want to re-address the idea here today.

In the last week of March, I spent time with two different magician friends who were dealing with similar, but opposite, issues.

To maintain their anonymity, we’ll call the first person Magician A. And we’ll call the second person—

Yeah, yeah. Magician B. We get it. Just get on with the post.

No. Actually, we’ll call the second person Professor Creighton von Bigglesworth the Third. Don’t get ahead of me.

Magician A was having issues with expanding the premises of the tricks he performed outside of simple “meaningless” tricks. He felt odd delving into a weirder subject matter. Maybe the jacks switching with the aces wasn’t inherently interesting, but it felt natural to him to perform. He was comfortable with it. More comfortable than he felt saying, “I found the weirdest thing at the thrift store recently.”

Professor Creighton von Bigglesworth the Third has the opposite issue. He is completely comfortable presenting tricks with more fanatical premises. His issue is that there are more tricks he would like to perform than there are unique, interesting premises. And he feels weird moving from some crazy story to some pedestrian coin trick.

I understand where both Magician A and Professor Creighton von Bigglesworth the Third are coming from. I’ve been both of them. For the first couple of decades that I was interested in magic, I felt like seeing something impossible should be interesting on its own. And it wasn’t natural to me to try and give a trick any more meaning than that. Shouldn’t a card changing into another card be enough? That’s something impossible. Why does there need to be more to it than seeing something impossible?

This is an attitude a lot of magicians have. And it’s accurate in the sense that the first few things you show a person don’t really need to have much more going on besides seeming impossible. But impossibility loses its novelty remarkably quickly.

In the last decade or so, I’ve learned the power of recontextualizing effects. How you can create a story around the effect that leaves them not just fooled, but completely enraptured in the experience. And that type of performance can stick with people in much more significant ways. And as I delved into that style, the pendulum of my performing swung heavily to Professor Creighton von Bigglesworth the Third’s end of the spectrum.

The problem becomes, if you only want to perform highly affective or immersive magic, you are greatly limiting your opportunities to perform and the material you can use. Because not every situation is conducive to that type of interaction, and most tricks don’t lend themselves to that style. You also quickly learn that for the sake of pacing, you want to have your most powerful magic effects spaced out a little. If every time you see them you take them on a 45-minute magical journey, then that will soon become routine. So you mix up those moments with impossibilities that are just cool or fun or “eye-candy” or thought-provoking or whatever the case may be.

I think the hard part for people can be navigating their way between these two types of magic. How can you do Sponge Bunnies one week and then hope to get people to lose themselves in a more immersive trick the next? Or vice versa. How can you predict someone’s actions via a Groundhog Day situation one week and then get them to care about Color Monte the next?

The key is The Essential Story.

You need to have a narrative that accounts for everything you might want to ever show people. Once this is established, you can twist balloon animals, and bend a key with your mind, and display a piece of secret government technology you bought on the black market. Not all in the same interaction (because that makes no sense) but over time. Your story needs to allow you to “code switch” between fun little tricks and deep mind-bending experiences.

What is the story that covers all these things?

Well, the basics elements are these:

1. When you were younger, you had an interest in magic.

2. You learned all you could through the normal channels—the library and teaching videos.

3. You started digging deeper. Started going to magic stores. Maybe got a mentor. Sent away for books that couldn’t be found in normal bookstores or libraries. Started going to conventions.

4. Through this process you encountered some interesting people. And through those interesting people you met some strange people. And through them, you’ve learned about and encountered some weird things.

So the story is rooted in truth: When you were young, you had an interest in magic. And that seed of truth can be followed as it branches out into weirder and weirder areas. My uncle showed me a magic trick. Because of that, I wanted to learn magic. I learned everything I could from the library. I started going to a local magic store. The owner told me about a convention where magicians would speak and teach tricks. I started going to conventions regularly. One time I met this guy there who was selling a floating dollar trick, but it didn’t use any of the methods magicians know about. It used a special kind of powder that this guy claimed he got from another guy who lived in a cabin in the woods in Minnesota. And that guy claims the powder is made from grinding this material that he found in a meteorite that crashed on his property. Well… the government claims it’s a meteorite. But this guy believes it was some kind of spacecraft.

etc. etc,

Now, I’m not saying I would ever tell the story in that way. I wouldn’t go back to my uncle showing me a trick in order to tell the story of this special powder that is made of ground-up alien bones. I’m just making the point that if people understand this essential “story,” then it can really lead to any type of trick.

The story is: I had an early interest in magic, and by pursuing that I was introduced to all sorts of weird people, concepts, and objects.

People in my life know this about me. And because people know this is my backstory, I can go from a psychological trick during one meetup, to a gambling demonstration the next, to invoking possession by a demon the next, to the Hot Rod the next. It all “works.” Nothing throws them off. They can enjoy the frivolous tricks, but still get wrapped up in the deeper mysteries.

Magician A’s issue was that he never hinted that his “story” involved an evolution of his interests beyond standard magic tricks. So it felt strange to bring up anything too “out there” to his friends.

Professor Creighton von Bigglesworth the Third’s issue was that he didn’t embrace his interest of traditional old-fashioned magic. So anything that didn’t fall in his narrow presentation style (which was a collection “unusual objects”) was unusable for him.

Of course, if you only ever want to perform material with ONE style of presentation (e.g. “I’m a master of deductive reasoning.”) then you can have a much more focused backstory. But most of us enjoy performing a wide range of material in various styles. And if that’s you, then establishing a backstory along the lines of what I’ve written here will allow you a great deal of freedom. It allows you to perform the most trivial magic effects as an example of the tricks that originally got you interested in the art. But at the same time, it doesn’t get in the way of you presenting something that’s designed to feel weirder and more engrossing than “just a trick.”