Serenading
/I wanted to thank you for the question-poem trick you posted last week. I’ve been doing a lot of zoom magic recently and this has been stronger than anything.
You’ve written a few times about video chat magic and using it for predictions. I was wondering what other types of effects you’ve been doing over zoom recently? —HL
Nothing. I have stopped doing magic over any video chat platform for the time being.
I realize I was one of the first people talking about this. And I do think it’s still a great outlet for performing magic if you don’t have anywhere else. But I wanted to push myself to find different ways to perform, even amidst the social distancing and all of that.
(I do have a couple video chat magic ideas that I’m working on at the moment. But, oddly enough, they’re actually going to only be of use once things get a little more back to normal. They’re designed to be used over webcam, but you need certain elements of normal social interaction to pull them off. So those will have to wait a few months.)
I was sort of inspired to quit the video chat thing by a friend of a friend, Paisley, who has been doing “pandemic portraits” on her instagram. That is, she’s doing portrait photography of people from a distance or through a window.
I started doing something similar but with magic, last month when people were a little more on edge than they are now.
It’s a performing construct I call Serenading.
Originally I was going around to my friend’s apartments in my complex and they’d come out on the balcony and I’d show them something from down below. It had a real Romeo and Juliet vibe to it. Or Say Anything.
Then I expanded beyond my apartment complex and I’d call up a friend and ask if I could stop by and show them something, and I’d drive over and show them a trick through the window or from a distance.
I’ve been talking about video chat magic for years now. It’s a great medium for magic because you can get away with a lot of things out of frame. But for me, the real power was the novelty of it. But now with everything taking place over video chat, the novelty is gone.
I’m devoting a section in the next book to the power of changing the circumstances and the setting of your performances. It’s very effective in creating memorable magic. Previously, showing someone a trick over video chat was a rarity, so it brought an element of uniqueness to the effect. Now it just sort of feels like a necessity. There’s very little charm to it when it’s a necessity. Doing magic through a window, or from the sidewalk to someone at their front door, or up to a balcony is a little more exciting to me at the moment.
So what do I do when I do my social distanced magic when I visit my friends? Well, I fuck around with a bunch of stuff. I don’t have one particular thing. It’s just a good excuse to connect with people I haven’t seen in a while.
Generally, I have two main modes. Either I’ll stand on the front lawn and they’ll be on the porch. Or if they have something like a bay window at the front of the house, I’ll walk up to that and show them something close-up, but through glass. I’ll give you some specific examples of the sort of stuff I do on Friday.