Mailbag #18
/
Really excited about the [new] book. Over the weekend I re-read most of Magic For Young Lovers again (I think my 4th time reading it cover to cover, not to mention reading my favorite parts even more times).
I was wondering if you're gonna tip anything more about the book to us. It's already December!! Maybe the title at least? (TOY?) I think with the past books you posted some descriptions of tricks on the site beforehand. Anything you can do would be awesome. —YR
There’s not going to be too much more information coming about the book. It sold out 10 months ago. It would be one thing to release some details here to whet the appetite of those who had bought it. But the vast majority of the people reading this haven’t bought it, and can’t buy it, so I’d feel like I was just teasing them with info in order to be a dick.
In fact, skip to the next question unless you’re a supporter and have the book coming to you:
I’ll just give you the basics. It’s 240 pages. 25 chapters. It’s about 60% unpublished material. There are some totally impromptu techniques and some big showpiece effects. It covers most of the major concepts I’ve worked on in regards to social/casual mentalism. And it has the results of the longest focus group study I’ve ever been a part of conducting. (120 hours total, because all the performances were done 1-on-1.)
Mentalism was an interesting subject to write about. It’s my belief that it’s very difficult to maintain people’s interest in the long-term when you present everything as a demonstration of your own powers. But that’s exactly what mentalism is: a demonstration of your own powers. Originally, when I had the idea to do a mentalism book a couple years ago, I imagined it would be me taking traditional routines and reframing them so that they were no longer mentalism. But that’s not what it became. In the end, all of these tricks are still mentalism, but the presentations are little less straight-forward than, “I can read your mind” or “I can predict the future.”
You’ll see.
Have you given any more thought to having a message board/facebook group/discord server or something to discuss The Jerx? You need to do it! —CF
No, I really don’t.
I have a lot of reasons for why I won’t be doing something like this. I’ve hit on some of them before.
The main reason is this: I’m just some dude.
Imagine you’re just some dude, or dudette, and people are saying, “We need a space where we can discuss your ideas.” Gross. It just feels weird to me. Especially because—unless I’m talking shit about Ellusioinist—most of what I write comes from my experiences with people in my life who don’t know I’m writing about these things. So then to have other people writing about those things publicly, that would be strange.
Here’s the thing, if there’s something I’ve written that you want to question or expand upon, you can just write me. I’m not dead. I want to hear about it. I don’t want to have to track it down on a message board somewhere. And if it pushes the subject forward, then maybe it will be in a post or a mailbag or in a newsletter or book. But even if not, it will go into my brain and become part of my thinking on the subject going forward.
I think that’s enough.
People will sometimes use the phrase (and I’ve used it myself) a “jerx-style” of magic. But keep in mind that that’s just my style. I’m not saying it’s a style you should adopt. I’m saying there might be something in my experience that you will find some value in; either because you have a similar personality, a similar friend-group, or similar performing situations. But I’m not hoping or expecting or wanting to “convert” anyone to my style. Just take the stuff that you think will work well for you and incorporate it into your own style.
Then the question might become, “Well, how about some sort of forum where people can talk about social/casual magic in general?”
Eh. I just don’t think you need more places to talk about magic. Especially not online. A forum or facebook group is kind of against the spirit of social magic, which I see as being about engaging people in real life, and discovering an approach that works for you in your own circumstances.
That being said, if Steve Brooks wants to sell the Magic Cafe, I’ll buy it and make it good.
My thoughts on your “Defining Reality” post.
[You write]:
They’re unlikely to think, “Well, there was the time he showed me a trick about a ghost dog who cut the deck to my card, and then there was the time he turned a red sponge ball into a red sponge cock, but now here… where he’s saying he’s reading my mind… you know, I think he’s really doing it!”
Though your conclusion is logical, it is (mostly) false.
Unfortunately, a very small percentage of people connect the dots as you assume they will ("I saw that he did card tricks, I've seen that he's good at tricking people, therefore the mindreading was also probably a trick.").
I've heard various people volunteer their conclusions: from hobos, to my patent lawyer grandpa, to Barbara Walters.
Of these responses I've cited, all but my grandpa's response are on video publicly viewable:
1. About 20 years ago my grandpa saw David Blaine or Criss Angel (I forget which) perform various tricks on TV, and then levitate. My grandpa said that the other stuff was tricks, but he thinks the levitation was something to do with spirits or occult, that David is messing with bad stuff.
2. Using his classic pass (one of the best classic passes ever), Derek Dingle performed Ambitious Card for Barbara Walters. He then fanned the deck and told Walters to think of a card. Dingle revealed the thought of card. Barbara said, "I can understand the card tricks, but when you read my mind!"
3. Hobo from Blaine's first TV special. Blaine threw hobo's card through window. After this (at least this was shown on the TV special as after) the hobo told the camera, "The card tricks I get, but the mind reading is real."
[…]
In conclusion, though it should be obvious that the guy who has spent years mastering the art of tricking people does not have a miraculous natural gift, I've heard expressions of belief (in the mentalism specifically) more frequently than the expressions indicating the correct, logical conclusion. This is despite the fact that I'm a card man.
Surprisingly, one of the very few who arrived at the correct conclusion (and also gave me his (correct) reasoning), was a 7 year old boy. It was a fundraiser held in a hoity toity home. There were a few younger kids--around age 7--who had been tagging along watching me perform for the adults. Towards the end, I did some mentalism for the kids--a book test with a book in their house, a drawing dupe with my business cards, etc. The boy said (after I probed for his thoughts) "Well.. I know that you can make cards go places. So maybe when I put my drawing back in, you made go somewhere where you could see it." —JF
I appreciate your perspective. And if you really believe people think this, I won't be able to talk you out of it.
But I think you're confusing this sentiment: "I understand card tricks and the idea of sleight of hand, but I have no clue how someone does the mind reading stuff." Which is very common. For this sentiment, "I think the card tricks were fake, but on the other hand I think he has genuine mind reading abilities." Which very few rational adults would think.
If Barbara Walters thought she had found a true mind-reader do you think she would have dropped it at that? One of the pre-eminent journalists of her day just relegating one of the biggest discoveries in the history of the world to her daytime talk show?
Also, I don't think the 7-year old had insights the adults didn't have. He just didn't have the filter they did. Many adults likely come to the same conclusion.
As far as your grandfather goes, he was, of course, reacting to a TV special effect, not something that could be done live. So that could play into things.
And finally, I was writing specifically about the amateur performing for people who know him/her. Perhaps there are some people who believe Blaine does some fake magic tricks, but also has some true supernatural powers. But I doubt those people are the people who know him in real life.
Look, the majority of people don’t believe in psychic phenomena in the first place. Of those who do, I would think a much smaller percentage believe it’s something that can be demonstrated so directly (knowing the word you wrote down on a business card, for example), and that percentage is going to be even less when the “psychic demonstration” is in an entertainment context, and then again less so if the psychic demonstration is mixed in with magic tricks. And, of course, once they really get to know you, it’s unlikely they’ll see you as having genuinely supernatural abilities. So we’re talking a percentage of a percentage of a percentage of a percentage of a percentage. Undoubtedly these people exist, but they’re the exception. (If you don’t believe this, it’s something that would be very easy to test. If you want to fund it, I have the people who can test it for you.)
Of course, confirmation bias gets in the way of us getting a clear picture of how people truly see us (which is why testing has proven to be so valuable). We take the nice things people say directly after a trick and act as if that’s representative of how they really feel.
A few years ago I was discussing a similar topic with a friend, Tom, and he said, “My wife really believes I’m psychic.” I was like, no, there’s not a chance in hell she thinks that. Then he gave me a list of things she had said which supported his assumption. I reiterated that there was no way she really thought he was psychic. So we decided to investigate. We had a third-party—a mutual friend who was with us—call her up and say, “I have something I need Tom’s help with. He has some psychic sort of powers, right?”
To which she responded, “What the fuck are you talking about? Like real powers? No, of course not.”
Tom grabbed the phone and immediately started asking her why she had said certain things in the past and responded to effects the way she had and why she would say things to her friends like, “Tom can read your mind,” or, “Tom can predict your future.”
She said something, the gist of which was: “What do you mean? I was just playing along. You pretend to have psychic powers and I pretend you have psychic powers. You thought that I thought you had real powers?” And then she laughed—cackled, really—into the phone for a straight two minutes. And that had me crying laughing too. Tom was so dejected. They had been married nine years at the time. For nine+ years she thought they had this sweet sort of inside joke. And for nine+ years he just assumed she thought he was psychic. (They’re still very happily married.)
Playing along is a natural human response from people who like you. Don’t discount that possibility. There’s nothing wrong with it either. It means they like you and they were genuinely fooled.
In this post you write:
If I tell you that I want to try an old gypsy ritual and at the end of it something amazing happens, you are likely to look at that ritual as part of the “theater” of the trick... But if I try an old gypsy ritual with you and nothing happens, then you don’t really know how to categorize that experience. It’s not presentation for a trick, because there was no trick.
I agree with this idea, but I feel that with some people this won't be the case if the presentation isn't up to snuff. It could be looked upon as "he had some weird theatrical presentation, but then the trick part didn't work." To shift the focus from the trick and onto the failed theater, I think it's important to attempt a fix (but still fail), but to demonstrate the fix is on the presentation side.
For example, with the coin vanish, instead of ending with the initial failure, close your hand around the coin casually but focus on readjusting your other hand's position on their shoulder. For the gypsy ritual, read the passage once more, with genuine concentration on the words. And then fail again.
Something like that subtly suggests that the ritual is the method. If it were a normal trick and the ritual just theatrical dressing, then an attempt to fix it would become completely mechanical - the magician focuses on the part that went wrong. We can also look at Harry Potter. In the scene where they are learning to cast spells, Hermione corrects Ron's pronunciation. She mentions his wand wave is too violent but doesn't seem concerned it will affect the spell (only that he's "going to poke someone's eye out" which has nothing to do with magic - that's just how sticks and eyes work together). The audience is left understanding that the words are the important part. And when Ron eventually gets it right, we're not thinking "oh he finally waved his wand correctly," but rather "he learned the words." —CC
Yeah, I think that’s a good idea.
The rule I would use is that you should do what you would really do in whatever faux situation you’re establishing. So, for example, if I really thought that I could affect someone’s perception via different pressure points, then I might try a few different variations if it didn’t work the first time.
On the other hand, if, for some reason, I really thought I might have an incantation that would make time flow backwards briefly, I wouldn’t keep trying it if it failed. I’d just say, “Oh, this is ridiculous. What was I thinking.”
Basing it off how you might actually address this sort of failure is going to make it feel the most legitimate to them.