The Penguin Magic Monthly Interview That Wasn't, Part 2

Continuing on from this post, here is Part 2 of the Penguin Magic Monthly Interview That Wasn’t…

It seems like you could easily make magic your fulltime career, but you don’t. Why not? Do you just love your day job? Are you nervous that if magic was your fulltime job that you’d get sick of it?

The other work I do outside of The Jerx is all writing/consulting work. So I just consider it all sort of the same thing. In magic I write and come up with ideas and outside of magic I write and come up with ideas. It wouldn’t make sense to solely focus on magic, because the other projects I’m involved in are as enjoyable and probably more lucrative if I broke it down on an hourly basis. And it’s not like I have some great love of magic or something. I’m only passionate about it in the manner that I incorporate it in my own life and in my own interactions. I hardly ever watch magic on TV or online. I don’t sit at home and think, “Ah, I know want I want to read…a biography of Thurston!” So it’s not like I’m looking to enmesh myself more in the magic world.

You have shared a lot on your blog, most of it for free. Is there anything that you regret sharing? Is there anything that you wish you could have kept for yourself?

Yeah, there are a few things I wish I hadn’t shared, but I’m not going to mention what they are because that would only bring more attention to them, when I’d rather they fly under the radar. Some things I’ve removed from the site completely because I realized I wanted less people potentially doing them. Almost everything that makes it to the books I find myself wishing I hadn’t released at some point. That’s probably because I tend to look back on the actual experiences of performing the trick and I want to keep the “magic” of those moment for myself. It would be like if you wrote a poem for your wife and she really loved it and then you said to people, “I’m going to put this poem in a book so you can give it to your wife.” That would be weird.

But I wouldn’t have the time to explore and create and perform magic without the people who support the site. So as much as I feel like there are things I’d rather hold onto for myself, they are part owners of the material, in my eyes.

What’s the best worst idea you have ever had? What’s an idea that seemed really promising but just fell flat?

I very rarely think, “this is promising,” only to have it fall flat. Sometimes a trick will need some tweaking but I hardly ever overestimate a trick. I underestimate tricks all the time. That why I made the rule when I started doing reviews in the newsletter that I wouldn’t give a trick a proper review without performing it at least a couple times first.

I can’t think of a “best worst idea.” But I’ll give the story of a trick I put a lot of effort into that just got an exasperated shake of the head in return. And that was when I ate my friend’s throw pillow. (I mentioned I was going to discuss this trick wayyyy back in 2018, but forgot to.)

My friend had this small, ugly, red, vinyl-ish throw pillow with black Chinese characters on it that always looked very out of place on his couch. It seemed like whenever someone was over his place when I was there, they would comment on it.

So one day when I had unfettered access to his place I took the insert out of the pillow and replaced it with white cotton candy. And when I was in the company of my friend I unzipped the pillow, emptied the “stuffing” out, folded up the cover up and set everything in my lap and began eating the elements of the pillow.

Inside of the pillow, along with the cotton candy, were a few squares of red fruit roll-up that I had another friend paint the pattern of the throw pillow on with edible paint. So the folded up cover of the throw pillow somewhat resembled this packet of painted fruit roll-ups. At one point while eating the cotton candy, I pushed the actual throw pillow cover, which was in my lap, between my legs. Leaving the duplicate edible cover visible under some of the remaining cotton candy stuffing. As I got down to the end (which went somewhat quickly because I was drinking water and dissolving the cotton candy as I went), I picked up the fruit roll-up packet—masquerading as the red, vinyl pillow cover—and I shoved everything in my mouth and chewed it up and swallowed it.

I think the extent of the reaction was him saying, “What are you doing?” As I went, “Mmm-mmm-mm!”

So I went to the hassle of special ordering white cotton candy and edible paint, and having a friend paint on fruit roll-ups to do a “trick” with no purpose. The only reason I thought to do it was because my friend had this bright throw pillow on his couch and one day another friend of ours said, “That pillow looks like a fruit roll-up.”

This was many years ago and I’ve become much better at giving these weird moments context.

What products do you recommend to other magicians (Your own products excluded)?

Outside of the recommendation I make in the newsletter, I don’t really.

But let’s pretend I do. If I were to recommend stuff, I’d recommend utility devices over individual effects. I like multi-taskers. If you buy “Grandpa’s Floating Top” then you’re just floating grandpa’s top like everyone else who bought it. However, if you buy a good IT system you can work on various effects and mix it up more.

Some of my most-used multi-taskers are: a Jak’s style wallet, Xeno app (to know a free choice), DFB or Inertia App (to force things), Loops, Vernet-Band writer, a thumbtip, and Quinta.

What do you think about magicians who take your amateur presentations and adapt them for their professional work?

It’s cool but a little strange because 99% of the material I’ve released came out of performing for friends. So seeing someone perform a trick of mine on stage is a little bizarre, but it’s interesting.

Unfortunately for the professional magicians, the best ideas I have—ideas about alternative ways of presenting tricks, getting in and out of tricks, extended the experience of the trick beyond boundaries of the effect itself—tend to be the things that don’t really translate to stage.

How do you find so many opportunities to perform in amateur settings?

If I’m doing something for my own benefit then I’m really kind of lackadaisical about things. But when the site became reader-supported, then I owed it to the people who were funding the site to schedule time to perform. So that’s what I do. I make sure I’m performing a certain number of times a week. Mostly my own material and ideas, but also trying out new releases for the review newsletter.

To perform social magic a lot—without wearing out the same people with magic tricks—you need to maintain a large social circle, meet up with them regularly, and put yourself in positions to interact with strangers. I make a lot of plans to see people, and I work in public places like coffee shops or co-working spaces. So I have a pretty good influx of new and old people to try things out on. I’ve become a lot more chatty with people since starting this site, simply because I need to be to meet new people and get new feedback.

Obviously Covid changed how I went about all that, but I’m gradually easing into a return to more regular performing.

If you want to see a numerical breakdown of a typical performing month pre-Covid, you can find that here.

As time goes by your blog moves more and more out of the “underground” and becomes more and more popular. What do you think of this popularity? Do you like that you are becoming more popular, or do you prefer obscurity?

I have no interest in being “popular” and, at the same time, I’m not trying to be “underground” or “obscure” either.

In my utopia, only the people who really like the site and feel they get value from it would bother visiting the site. This isn’t something I’m doing for a mass audience. If this site brings something positive to people, then I’m glad that they find it and enjoy it. But if people don’t like it, I’m perfectly happy with that too. I don’t need or want more readers.