Illuminated

Continuing on the Imp talk from yesterday, I’ve recently found a good one for use in the Spectator as Magician/Mindreader plot.

I’ve long argued that this premise needs some added element to it, or it’s just transparent to people. When we tested that notion, that proved to be the case.

And of course that’s the case. When they give the football to the Make-A-Wish kid and he scores a touchdown, he might feel he accomplished something, but that’s because he’s seven. An adult wouldn’t be like, “Well, I guess I’m now great at football!”

Similarly, if you tell someone, “You’re going to read my mind,” and do a trick with that premise, they’re not going to think, “Well, I guess this nice young magician just showed me that I have a power I’ve never exhibited before and never will again.”

I mean, that’s fine if you’re just looking to dress up the trick a little. “I’ll read your mind, then you read mine.” If you’re just using it as a throwaway premise, you don’t need to put much effort into it. (But also don’t expect to get too much out of it.)

If we want to genuinely mess with people’s minds a little and get them to at least consider the idea that they did something truly out of the ordinary, then they need to be subjected to something that will seemingly affect them in some manner. Something on the edge of plausibility.

Thomas H., recently wrote me about an app called Lumenate. This is a “light therapy” app where you sit in a dark room and hold the phone up to your closed eyes and the flashlight of your phone flashes in such a way that… well… here’s how the makers of the app describe it:

Lumenate uses research-backed light sequences from your phone's flashlight to neurologically guide you into an altered state of consciousness between that of deep meditation and classic psychedelics.

That may all be horse-shit, but I will say that using this app you definitely get a sense of: “This is different.”. It produces a kind of psychedelic-kaleidoscopic light show on the inside of your closed eyelids. And whether or not it actually has any effect on your brain, it certainly seems reasonable that it could.

You can get the app for free. There’s paid plans, but you don’t need them for our purposes.

Now, what you don’t want to do is tell people you have this secret technology that’s going to affect them in some particular way. You don’t want the chance of them saying “Oh, is this the Lumenate app?”

The approach I take is to tell people there’s an app that uses rhythmic light flashes to affect brainwaves. And I have a “friend” who has discovered a way to “hack” the usage of the app so that it can produce some interesting results. I then have them use the app, but I hold the phone for them and I move it nearer and close to their closed eyes at set times. The idea being that changing the distance of the light source in some predetermined manner can help “tune” the person’s brain for a particular ability (heightened intuition, photographic memory, etc.)

I don’t make them go through a full session on the app, which is 10 minutes. And I don’t have them listen to the audio from the app. I just do it for a few minutes and talk through it with them myself. You want to make sure it’s not too intense for them. And, of course, if they have some sort of sensitivity to flashing lights, you would never do this for them.

Altogether, it makes for a perfect little interaction. The Lumenate app will be a new experience for most people, followed by (ideally) some sort of amazing happening. And because—as you explain to them—the abilities they gain will wear off after a few minutes, they are no loose ends for them to pick at later on. They can assume it must have all been a trick. But they can’t ever quite dismiss the possibility that maybe for a few minutes they had telekinetic powers (or whatever ability you endowed them with).

The Imp Formula

An Imp is “the thing you do which causes the magic to happen.”

It’s a subject magicians cared so little about, that I had to invent the term for it.

Before 2017 if someone asked, “What’s the word to describe the thing the magician does that causes the magic to happen?”

The response would be: “Snapping.”

“No. I mean… that’s just one way of doing it.”

“Yes, correct. Sometimes I snap with my thumb and middle finger. And sometimes I snap with my thumb and index finger to give the audience a real thrill.”

“No… sorry. I guess I’m not being clear. I mean, what is the broad, general term for the thing the magician does which causes the magic to occur.”

“Oh, the general term? I don’t know… uhm… Rhythmic Finger…Clacking?? Or something? I’m not quite sure what you’re asking for.”

Look, I understand the utility of snapping your fingers. It’s quick. It’s easy. And it’s something. This is I heard repeatedly when learning magic in the 80s and 90s in books and videos. “You need to do something to let people know the magic happened. So snap your fingers.”

Oh. Okay.

I understand that if you’re doing table-side magic, you can’t slow things down and bring everyone out into the parking lot to harness the dark essence in the spot where you claim a drifter was murdered in 1986 in order to bring their card to the top of the deck.

And if you’re doing an office Christmas party, you can’t say, “Let’s all make out and see if we can channel our sexual energy into this Chinese coin and make it fall off this ribbon.”

But when performing in social, casual settings, we often do have the time to use a more immersive Imp than snapping our fingers or casting a shadow.

The thing to keep in mind is that it’s not just a decorative detail that’s nice to have. It’s not slapping a bow on the present. It is—when executed properly—perhaps the most memorable part of the trick.

Barring a wildly memorable, simple, visual climax (which many trick don’t have). The storyline to the trick (and a good Imp is part of a storyline) is what people seem to remember the most.

Sure, they might remember the general feeling of amazement and enjoyment. But a few weeks later, they’re not remembering: “There were three selections made. They were placed in different parts of the deck. The four Aces were dropped on top and the selections were now between the Aces. Then the Aces disappeared, and he was left holding just the three selections. If I’m remembering correctly, they were the Jack of Diamonds, the 5 of Clubs, and the 9 of Clubs. Yes, of course. It’s clear as day.”

Here is the Imp Formula. And it’s very simple.

Step One: Do something somewhat unusual.

Step Two: Tie that to the premise of your trick.

— If I come over your house, that’s not unusual.

— If I come over your house at 11 at night and show you a trick, that’s probably unusual. But if I don’t connect coming over to your house at 11 at night to the trick, then it’s not an Imp. It’s just me being a dickhead and annoying you as you’re getting ready for bed.

— If I come over your house at 11 at night and say, “I’m sorry. I know it’s late, but now is the only time I can show you this trick. It only works at 11:06.” And I show you the Ambitious Card, that’s what I call a Weak Imp. I’m telling you there’s some sort of connection between the Imp and the trick, but it doesn’t make much sense. So there’s no logical connection in your mind.

Sometimes a Weak Imp can still be intriguing. “I don’t know why it’s like this, but this is the only time that it works.” That can maybe be interesting, but it’s not ideal.

— If I come over your house at 11 at night on March 19th and say, “I’m sorry. I know it’s late, but now is the only time I can show you this trick. We’ve only got a few minutes.” And I perform On Edge by Angelo Carbone

and I tell you we have this brief window of time on the equinox where this will work.

Well, then you have a sort of symbiotic situation where the Imp and the Trick are both supporting each other. The Imp is the equinox. The Trick is making a card castle balance impossibly. The equinox suggests “balance.” It all works together nicely.

And the Imp provides another way into the memory of this event. You can imagine someone hearing about the upcoming equinox and remembering the time when their friend came over late at night to show them this weird quirk of the universe. And in their memory it was a huge card castle balancing on one little card.

Whereas if the magician created a card castle and made it magically balance with the snap of his fingers, it feels more like a weird, arbitrary power to exhibit. The cool visual of the balancing cards is still there. But it’s just sort of in a bubble with no tether to the real world.

You could say, “Well, that’s what I do. I’m a Magician. I do things that are untethered to the real world!” I get that. I can only say that in my experience, people want something they can relate to in some way. And a pointless impossibility is hard to relate to.

The Imp doesn’t have to be believable (it really shouldn’t be). It’s there to be story material. Use them to help tell a story other than, “I am the god of Dumb Miracles. Watch as I snap my finger and make some pointless, impossible, dumb thing happen.”

Mailbag #109 — Splooge, Xeno, and My "Legacy"

Will you ever do another Splooge week? Or even a book of non-magic content? —OW

Possibly to both. I think I have a book’s worth of non-magic content. A lot of it related to happiness, productivity, leading a full life. (And then other stuff like “How to Hear More Farts”) I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do with it all or what the interest is in it. But it will be mentioned here or in the newsletter if anything ever happens with it.

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I seem to use xeno quite frequently. Quick question.

How do you get them to go to the url and under what pretext?

"I found this web page blablabla?"

Or do you send it to them by message or what?

Maybe its just me but it doesnt feel natural to me to show them a QR of the web on my phone (one of the xeno options) to send them to the web.

Specially when its one of the websites created by myself. (Long weird urls) —JFC

Xeno is one of the most underrated magic apps out there. They go to a website on their phone, look at anything on the website, and you can tell them what they’re looking at. It’s just so direct and clean. And there’s no limit to the theme of the website and therefore the premise of the effect.

While there are some sites set up for Xeno that use a normal, easy to pass along URL with just a verbal prompt, e.g., “Go to star sign dot me.” The custom lists that users create have URLs that are a little funky. Not questionably funky. Like they’re not URLs that are like:

go0gel.com

But they look like this tinyhost.pw/list/87weR4tC80.

Which is not the sort of link you’re just going to casually mention to someone. “So, I was at my favorite site the other day. Do you ever go to this site? Tinyhost dot pee doubleyou slash list slash eight seven lower-case doubleyou ee upper-case are the number four lower-case tee uppercase see eight zero?”

So how to get people to these sites?

Marc Kerstein provides an easy option where you show someone a QR code on your phone, and they can scan that, and it takes them to the site. But honestly, I’ve never shown someone a QR code on my phone to take them to a site in real life, so I wouldn’t do it for a trick either.

Here are the ways I do it:

1. Text them the link. It will just look something like this.

2. If you’re performing remotely, email them the link.

3. If you want to have a URL you can say to them, go to tinyurl.com to shorten the link with a custom alias. For example, I could say to you, “Go to tiny URL dot com slash bandly.” And that takes you to a Xeno site about rock bands.

4. If there’s a trick you’re going to be using regularly and you want a really easy URL to direct them to, just buy one and redirect it to the Xeno site. This is cheap and easy. For example, I just bought

JoshuaJaysDickSmells.lol

for two dollars.

If they look at the URL again, it will be the more complicated Xeno URL, but that’s okay. There’s nothing magic-tricky about the Xeno URL. It’s just a complicated one. In the rare instance where they might look at the URL and wonder why it doesn’t say what they originally typed in, you just say, “Oh, I guess they forward it to that site? I don’t know.” It’s not your website. You don’t have to answer for it.

I emailed Marc and he mentioned that Xeno is on his agenda for an update. One that would add new features and also make it easier to create Xeno sites. In that update, he may also add the functionality to connect the Xeno site to your custom URL, so it wouldn’t just forward it along, but it would be at that URL itself.

As of now, there are a ton of user created Xeno sites. I would like to encourage the practice of users buying cheap domains for the best ones as well to share among other Xeno users (there’s a facebook page). So you create a page that lists, for example, a wide range of emotions. Then you buy emotionalbreakdown.info for 3 bucks and forward it to the Xeno site. (But turn off “autorenew” when you buy the domain, so you’re not on the hook for it in future years when the price goes up to $25 or $40 or whatever).

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I wonder how much you pay attention to these things:

• Sites that pop up that are clearly inspired by you. Sometimes just rewriting things you’ve already written, like a Jerx cover band.

• Premises you’ve championed coming up in other performers work.

• Your style of writing up effects showing up in others’ releases.

• How terms like “social magic” and “casual magic” are being used in ad copy much more frequently.

[…]

Do you ever think about how far your ideas have spread, or your legacy in magic? —MMB

I give zero thought to it. If I cared about a “legacy” in magic, I wouldn’t write under a pseudonym.

I’m happy some people find value in the approach I’ve written about here. But I also like that it’s not mainstream. If anything, I wish these ideas were spread less.

Much of what I write about here is stupid. And a lot of it is just general magic talk. However, some of these concepts I’ve written up I’ve been using to produce extraordinarily mystifying, or intense moments of magic with people.

Unfortunately, the more common these techniques/premises become, the less potent they will be.

So it’s a combination of wanting to get the ideas out to the people who will use them, but also not wanting these ideas to get fucked-out to the point where they’re no longer useful.

It’s like I’ve found this hidden tree deep in the woods that grows this unusual fruit. It’s delicious, and more than I could ever eat on my own. So I’m compelled to share the location with others. But if I share it with people, and they share it with more, and crowds flock to it, eagerly plucking its fruit, then there will be none for anyone. And the influx of visitors—trampling around the grounds and picking through the limbs—might just kill the tree.

And just selfishly, I don’t want the ideas overused because I want to be able to keep putting them into practice for myself.

So no, I’m not interested in my legacy. I just want to keep the tree bearing fruit and make sure it gets to the people who truly enjoy it.

Dustings #103

I’m not sure what the allure of such a thing is, but a number of times over the course of this site’s lifetime, people have asked me for a “random blog post” link. Well, Squarespace doesn’t have such a thing built into it. Or an easy way to code such a thing, at least not that I can tell. Fortunately, my secretary, Miss Nanny Finebottom, has been studying a little JavaScript and has come up with a way to do it. So now, on the right side of your computer screen (or under the first page of posts if you’re on your phone) below the Search box, you’ll find a link which goes to a random post. See below.

Sorry, I just wanted to be stupid and post a screenshot to illustrate a screen you’re already looking at.

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Miss Finebottom also found a great Hook for any effects that are done with a hypnotism premise. It’s a legitimate document called

You can find the full document here.

You can print out a copy and keep it on an end-table or something when someone comes over. If they notice it, they’re bound to comment on it, and this sort of thing can be used to naturally flow into a seemingly “unplanned” performance. Which is always a satisfying way to get into a trick.

Even if they don’t notice it or say something, an object like this is still a relatively gentle way to segue into a performance. Just ask them to hand it to you and make some comment about how you’ve been studying some of the ideas in here for something you’re working on. “Actually… can I try something with you?”

Here, the document serves to “soften them up” a little bit. Rather than if they were to just come over to your house and you say, out of the blue, “Hey, I want to hypnotize you!” With something like this, the Hook introduces the subject, then you comment on why you have the Hook, and then you can be like, “You know what might be fun?…” As if it’s just now occurring to you.

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In an effort to keep posts and ideas together, I’ve started adding an asterisk to posts that have been updated. (If there are more updates, I’ll add more asterisks. I don’t care. They’re free.)

If there’s a small update to a post, I’ll just make the update with no notation.

If there’s an update of some significance, I’ll make the update and add a * to its title.

If there’s an update that I think everyone needs to see, it will be its own post or mentioned here in one of the Friday posts. So you don’t need to go searching for asterisks unless you really want to.

As of now, only one post, The Protection Spell*, has had an update that I thought warranted notation. But I just wanted to let you know in case you see that in the future.

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The Juxe

“Today’s music is terrible. It’s just auto-tuned songs about ‘mother-effer this’ and ‘mother-effer that.’ Nobody can play an instrument or even sing anymore! ”

— Someone who hasn’t bought a new album since Billy Ocean’s “Suddenly” (1984)

It’s been ages since I’ve posted any music here. (Most of you can leave now.)

The idea that there’s no good music being made anymore is perpetuated by people whose source for “new music” is the Super Bowl Halftime Show.

There’s always great music being made by talented people.

An easy transitional step to listening to more modern music is listen to new music that’s been inspired by music of the past. So here are some songs that came out on albums last year that don’t sound too different from whenever you thought “good music” was being made.

1950s

Steven Sanchez recalls the crooners of the 50s with Until I Found You.

1960s

The Televisionaries recall the Merseybeat scene of the early 60s with You Can Do What You Want To Do.

1960/1970s

The Lemon Twigs recall the sunshine pop of the late 60s, early 70s with My Golden Years.

1970s

Girl Ray recalls the disco of the 70s with Everybody’s Saying That.

1980s

The Uni Boys recall the power-pop of the early 80s with Let’s Watch A Movie.

1990s

Palehound recalls 90s girl-rockers with The Clutch.

Spittin' Bars

Here’s a weird sort of prediction that’s not really a prediction. I’m not really sure how it would come off to people. I suppose if they know you do magic, they’ll think of it as a magic trick. Otherwise, this is something you could play off in another way.

It’s a stage thing. Or possibly a party thing. I’ve never actually done it. It’s just an idea at this point. But you might want to take it and run with it.

I was watching videos of a well-known improvisational/freestyle rapper named Chris Turner.

And I say “well-known” as in “he’s well-known for an improvisational rapper.” He’s not, like, Obama or Kardashian well-known. Your grandma won’t come home and be like, “My pastor and everyone in my sewing-circle is just buzzing about Chris Turner.”

If you haven’t seen him, watch that video. If you can’t watch it at the moment, come back to it. He does wildly impressive spontaneous rap songs based on audience suggestions.

And after watching a few the other night, I thought, “You could fake this.”

Using an AmazeBox from Vanishing Inc. (or something similar) you could force the randomly chosen words for which you’ve pre-written an entire set of lyrics.

You could hand out, say, four different colors of paper slips. You tell the people (or have instructions on the paper itself) that if they have a red slip they should write down a famous real or fictional person, if they have a yellow slip they should write down a historical event, people with blue slips should write down an activity, and people with green slips should write down any object. This way, when you dump out the slips, you can have an audience member (or members) select one of each color, and you wouldn’t have to worry about them picking duplicates of your force words.

You could also, I suppose, only hand out one color of paper and then have the force slips folded in four different ways, and then you do the choosing yourself. But I think that’s weaker. I think you really want to have the audience do the picking.

Out of context—in a talent contest or an amateur night or something—you could probably play this off as a real skill.

I could see it as an M.C. thing too. Like maybe you come out early on and say you were hoping to demonstrate your talent tonight, but your talent is “speed learning” so it’s not really something that makes for a good demonstration in and of itself. “But I have this list of activities that I thought would make for an entertaining demonstration. I’m going to have you randomly select one and I will teach it to myself backstage and by the end of the night I’ll be the best in the world at it.” The list includes things like breakdancing, yodeling, contortionism, hula-hooping, etc.

The next time you’re back on stage, you had out the slips of paper. And then for the finale, you collect them and then proceed to bust a rhyme.

It would be fun to come on all quiet and trepidatious before switching over to hyper-confident and spitting fire when the beat drops. Like…

Okay… so what suggestions do we have here. Okay… uhm… this one says Candle. This one says Shrek. This one says ‘the launch of Sputnik.’ And this one says Choking. Oh god… this is going to be impossible isn’t it…I don’t know…

CH-CH-CH-CHECK YOURSELF, BEFORE YOU WRECK YOURSELF
CHOKE ON MY DICK UNTIL YOU’RE GREEN LIKE GODDAMN SHREK HIMSELF

You get the idea.

In a straight magic show, you’d probably need some other element to it.

Maybe you say you’re getting out of the magic game and working on your freestyle rap career. And you’re going to hijack this performance to launch it tonight. Do the rap, but leave out one of the suggestions (maybe get five suggestions instead of four for this). And at the end someone will say (or you have a plant say) “Hey, you forgot [the other suggestion].” And you hang your head in shame and mumble something about how maybe you’re not a good freestyle rapper. And you should go back to magic. And you flip over the seven-digit number you predicted earlier in the performance to show that it spells out the final suggested word that you forgot to include in your rap. (Cryptext style.)

That’s as far as I’ve taken the idea. If you end up pursuing it, let me know.

Project Steg0saur

[The spelling of the title and throughout this post is so this phrase doesn’t come back to this site on a google search.]

Last month, I posted an idea called the PsychCrypt Imp. That was followed up by this idea in a mailbag post.

Pete “I wish people called me Petey Mac” McCabe sent along the following version of the concept/plot which has the benefit of being impromptu.

You don’t need to remember much of anything to perform this. So it’s a little performance piece you could always have on hand when you have time to kill. Thanks to Pete for sharing it.

In his words, here is the idea…

✿✿✿

The hook

Spies have always used secret codes to send messages in public. One version used personal ads in the newspaper, looking for a housekeeper, say, but the phone number actually coded the name of the target.

Not many personal ads in the newspaper anymore. Nowadays they use youtube. And they are always working on new ways to code the information.

The latest experiment is called Project Steg0saur, where the message is coded in a way that you can only receive it if you have a certain amount of psychic ability. Not a lot — you might have this ability and not even know it. But if you watch the video, you can tell what target it’s telling you to eliminate.

They made assessment videos to find agents who have the gift, and a couple of them are on youtube. I tried it and did okay. Want to try?

[Your friend goes to youtube and does a search for Project Steg0saur (spelled normally, with an o, not a 0, of course) Assessment/Training Video. There are two videos that I posted, with identifiers DDL-3 and DDL-7. I plan to post a couple more in the near future with similar names.]

Because it’s spy stuff, the video doesn’t give you a name—there’s a number hidden in the video, and the list of targets is separate. Normally a spy would memorize the list, but I have it on my phone.

[The spectator watches the video. They see nothing. Then they say the first number that came into their head. Let’s say it’s 17. You go to the list of targets, and the 17th name is Alex Dobbens.]

You say, That’s great! You did it! They say, I did what? You refer them to the description on the video, which ends with “If you read the steganography correctly, the target is Alex Dobbens.”

Method

Digital Force Bag. This is the concept that made me buy DFB, and it’s perfect for this presentation.

I’ve posted two videos to Youtube, both about 10 seconds long.

Project Steg0saur Assessment/Training Video DDL-3, which has Alex Dobbens as the target at the end of the description.

Project Steg0saur Assessment/Training Video DDL-7, which has Chris Park.

There are two lists in DFB, identified by the DDL number. If you have DFB you know more about this than I do.

I’ll tell you one thing I’ve learned—it’s a pain in the ass to type 100 random names into your phone. Much easier to have ChatGPT create a list of 100 common first and last names from around the world. I pasted that into a google Keep doc, which I then opened on my phone so I could copy and paste into DFB.

You can obviously make and post your own videos, with the title and description customized to your presentation. The videos can be literally anything. I made my own to avoid copyright issues.

By the way

It doesn’t matter how much you prime people that they won’t see the numbers, some of them will expect to see numbers in the video.

This is not their fault. Please don’t make fun of them for this. It’s just that seeing the numbers is the only possible thing they can expect to happen.

So maybe you say “You didn’t see an actual number, right?” They say no. Then you ask what’s the first number to pop into your head?

You might want to have multiple people watch the video. None of them see any numbers. But one of them gets it right. And you control which of them it is. So this routine can easily be the precursor to a different routine, after you see which of the three people has the gift.

Other ideas

You could point out Alex Dobbens as the target from the start, when the video loads. But I don’t like the idea that the trick ends with them finding the name in the list on your phone. I want it to end with them finding the name in the comment on the youtube video.

My first idea was that the video is coding the target of an assassination. That’s a bit dark, so in the description of the Youtube video I wrote “operational assignment” so you can choose how dark to go.

You could make a video that has something that goes unnoticed the first time but makes a post-trick convincer or something.

BTW Stegosaur is the project name because steganography is the technique of hiding a message in something else so no one knows the message is even there. This specific (fake) version of steganography bypasses your visual system and goes directly into your reptilian brain (the Latin root for reptile is saur). You do not need to explain this.

The original Psychcrypt Imp presentation was based on the idea that the information is only readable if you are on LSD, and you can certainly add that element to this hook.

Andy recommended telling people you laced their food with a chemical that has the same effect.

Here are two alternate approaches.

1. There’s a product called a “nano beauty spray device” which you can get for 10 bucks on Amazon. It basically emits a thin stream of mist, which you can spray in someone’s face as an imp if you fill it with water, or add a scent that does whatever your presentation requires. This was discussed in Dustings #85 on 5/5/23. If you use this, or any other imp like this, you can do an instant repeat for two people. Spray one of them, then they both watch the video, and name the first number that comes into their head. The one who was sprayed is right. Now you spray the other person and repeat with the second video, and the other person is right.

2. This is my favorite: Ask your audience if any of them have ever taken LSD before. If one has, that’s great. You know how people sometimes have an LSD flashback? This video will trigger that. You can also trigger that by drinking orange juice. Have a sip. If no one has ever taken LSD, switch to the nano beauty spray device.

The Carbonaro Effect

Michael Carbonaro is the master at deflecting questions his assisting spectators have about his tricks. This is the kind of thing that can happen in this kind of presentation. I noticed a pattern to his answers that is pretty handy.

Basically, if someone asks “How do they hide the numbers?” you reply, “They have to, otherwise it would reveal confidential information to the enemy.” The basic pattern is that if the spectator asks a question about how, you give an answer about why, which is what you want the spectator to think about.

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?

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.