The Bubble: Part 3
/Here is an example of an extra-presentational—or perhaps meta-presentational (I haven’t quite landed on the terminology yet)—technique that majorly impacted the responses I was getting to a trick I’ve used for years.
For almost a decade now I’ve performed an effect by Andy Nyman from his book, Bulletproof. The effect is called Windows. In it, you have seven cards, each with a different emotion written on it. Happiness, anger, etc. The spectator selects one of the cards—apparently you don’t know which card—and they imagine a memory associated with that emotion. You look in their eyes and you’re able to tell them the emotion they’re thinking of.
The method is simply that the emotion cards are in a known order and you mix them in a way that doesn’t affect their order. Then you note which card they took by getting a peek at the card above it in the stack. It may be the least exciting method in the history of magic/mentalism, but still the trick usually receives a good reaction.
Then one time I did the trick for someone and their response seemed significantly more intense than usual, maybe three times as strong. I assumed this was just a quirk of the person I was performing for, or their relationship to the emotion they chose, or perhaps the specific memory they were thinking of prompted a stronger reaction in some way.
But then it happened twice more. a few months later. I was showing them the same trick that I had been performing for many years, but now—on occasion—people seemed to find it significantly more affecting.
Why?
Well, before I tell you what I figured out, let’s imagine the typical ways someone might try and improve the method for this trick. Here are some ideas:
Use more cards: Instead of just 7 emotions, why not 20 or 40? Surely more possibilities would make it more impressive.
Add a better false shuffle and a more sophisticated way to peek what card they chose. The handling Nyman recommends is super beginner-friendly. It would not be hard to come up with something more clever.
Hell, maybe we could use cards with little implanted electronics in them so we could know what card was chosen without getting near the cards at all.
Or, get rid of the cards altogether. Maybe use an app that would allow them to look at an emotion from a list and we could get a peek on our phone or watch. (Actually, that’s not a bad idea. Marc, add this to Xeno.)
Now, all of these ideas are fine. And likely they could make the trick somewhat stronger. But I think we’re only talking about very minor differences. These are changes that might affect the score “inside the bubble,” but they wouldn’t have much of an effect on the experience of the trick, so it would likely not change the impact of the experience that greatly.
So what was causing the stronger reactions I was getting?
Well, it took me a while to figure it out, but then I discovered what it was.
In almost all of my performances of that trick, I would pull out the cards with the emotions on them and then go into the effect. But the three times it got a much stronger reaction, that’s not what I did. In those instances I had grabbed some business cards from wherever we were at and made the cards in front of them.
It was the same trick. Same method. Same presentation. But here the “extra-presentational” technique used was making/obtaining the props in the audience’s presence.
Now, I was just doing this as a matter of practicality. This wasn’t a “technique” I was using. At least not at first. I wanted to show them the trick, but I didn’t have those cards with me, so I just wrote down the words on some cards with them there.
If you don’t see why this could be a significant change, try and put yourself in their position. If I bring out pre-made cards to show you something, you’re going to think, “Oh, this is something he’s planned. Something he’s done before. Probably a lot.” But if I just make the cards in the moment with you sitting there, that can feel like a spur of the moment thing between the two of us. Maybe I’ve never even done this before. Who knows. But even if you know it’s a trick, and even if you assume it’s something I’ve done before, it’s still going to feel more spontaneous and personal than if I pull out my pack of pre-fab emotion cards. Gathering/creating the props in the moment is an extra-presentational technique that suggests, “I hadn’t planned this, but there was something about this moment, with you specifically that makes me want to try this thing out.”
That runs counter to people’s expectations regarding magic. They don’t usually believe it matters too much who the audience is. When David Copperfield floated the paper rose for that lady, nobody thought, “Well, I guess he found just the right person that created the ideal circumstances to float a paper rose.” No, they realize he could do the same thing for any woman, or a corpse, or a ficus plant.
As discussed in the previous post, “The Bubble,” that I’ve been writing about in this series consists of the potential area within a person’s range of experiences that they might rate a magic trick. At one time or another in your past, you’ve probably performed for someone who considers magic frivolous or stupid and it didn’t matter how good the trick you performed was, they were just not going to see it as an enjoyable experience. And you’ve probably performed for someone who just really likes the experience of watching magic and they respond really well to anything you show them. If you’re lucky, you may have performed for both of these types of people at the same time. When that happens, the reality of this bubble concept I’m talking about becomes very clear. This is a good education that it’s not all about the strength of the trick. Their reaction is going to be dictated in a large part depending on where their “magic appreciation” bubble exists.
The reason I think it’s beneficial to recognize the bubble is because I know that for me, in the past, I wasted a lot of time jumping from trick to trick, dissatisfied with the reactions I was getting. Even though they were good reactions, I felt there was the possibility for something deeper and more intense. And I was looking for that in better tricks and techniques and presentations—but that’s all just bubble shit. You definitely want that all to be strong, but those things are limited in how much they can affect people. The real powerful stuff is everything that surrounds the effect.
It would be like if you were trying to create the best dinner experience for someone you were interested in and you concentrated solely on finding the perfect recipes, the best dinnerware, and the nicest table-cloth. Sure, that’s all part of it, but only to the extent the other person cares about such things (their “food appreciation bubble”) What’s going to make that the best dining experience is the conversation and the connection and the elements that stand out as particularly fun or interesting or romantic or surprising.
I think this is true with magic too. It’s the elements that surround the effect that truly make the experience for someone.
The best way to exceed the limits of their magic bubble is not to go on an endless search for a more amazing trick to show people. The way to get reactions outside their bubble is to defy their expectations of what the experience of a trick is going to be like. And I think there are countless techniques to achieve this. Read through this site if you need ideas (or if you’re a supporter and you’re a lazy bitch, wait for the next book).