Casualness and Clarity
/These are some not-yet-fully-formed thoughts I’ve been having recently about two separate approaches to instilling belief in a spectator. Sorry if this isn’t 100% coherent. I’m still working through the ideas.
Imagine these two scenarios:
Scenario A: We go out for lunch. After the meal you head to the restroom. When you get back I’m putting my credit card away, “I took care of the check. You’ll get me next time, yeah?”
Scenario B: We go out for lunch. After the meal you head to the restroom. When you get back I say, “I took care of the check. Your meal came to 18 dollars, and mine was 19 dollars. Here’s my copy of the check. I left a ten dollar tip. I used my American Express card. Here’s my American Express account homepage. You see it says there’s a $37 charge, yes? That’s for the meal. But it’s just ‘pending’ at this time. When it eventually goes through it will be for $47 because it will include the tip. If you want, I’ll send you a copy of my credit card statement when it comes so you can be sure.”
In which scenario would you be more certain that I actually paid the check? I’m not sure what the answer is. In Scenario B you definitely have more evidence that I paid the check. But in Scenario A you would likely never even think to question it.
I’ve been finding it useful these days—when trying to find the right move or technique and the right moment to employ that move or technique—to think if what I want to emphasize at that moment is clarity or casualness.
These are, I believe, the primary ways you can reliably establish belief in your spectators. Either your actions can be so clear that they can’t help but believe what your actions indicate. Or your actions can be so casual that they don’t think to question them.
For example, if I very fairly and clearly draw your attention to me placing a coin from my right hand into my left—and my false transfer technique is flawless—you may be convinced the coin is in my left hand. And that’s because my technique is strong enough to overcome your scrutiny of that action.
But if I just tap my hands together and then act like the coin is in my left hand, that action may also overcome your scrutiny, because the casualness of the action didn’t arouse much scrutiny in the first place. Your mind may process it and take it at face-value before it even knows that was a moment to be questioned.
The key to this concept however is that casualness and clarity are at opposite ends of a spectrum. You can choose to emphasize one or the other but you can’t really mix the two. They don’t mix. (You can mix them in different elements of the same trick. But not in the same element. For example, I can’t casually show my hand empty and show it empty with absolute clarity.)
When I have a trick that’s not working it’s usually because some element of it is stuck somewhere between clarity and casualness, and I need to push it one way or the other. You need to be on either end of the spectrum. If you’re in the middle you’re kind of accomplishing nothing.
As a social performer I would prefer to only rely on “casualness” to instill belief, but that’s not really possible. Most effects require at least some clarity to make them hit home. For example, the Ambitious Card. You can’t use casualness to fool people with that trick. They need clarity that their card is going in the middle of the deck. If that’s not 100% clear, the trick falls apart.
The general rule I use is that if I’m trying to hide something, then I strive for casualness. If I’m trying to emphasize something (often something that’s not true), then I strive for clarity.
Here are the two primary mistakes I make or see others making:
Mistake #1 - Sacrificing the Casualness of a Simple Technique For Something That’s More Advanced
Let’s say you have an “okay” push-thru false shuffle. You can do one as long as you concentrate on it and go somewhat slowly. Your “okay” false shuffle is actually somewhat worthless as a tool of deception. It’s not something that gets you halfway to where you want to be. It’s something that has you stuck midway between the two extremes of fooling: casualness and clarity. You can’t do it with enough ease that it seems like a casual shuffle, and you can’t do it expertly enough to really have them focus in on it to see the cards “clearly being shuffled.”
In this case you’re better off doing a simple overhand false shuffle and some sloppy false cuts that you can do haphazardly, even if that’s theoretically less convincing a mix than the push-through shuffle. In practice, the casualness with which you execute the maneuver while interacting with your friends is going to make them less likely to question the action.
Mistake #2 - Not Effectively Demonstrating the Clarity of the Conditions Because They Don’t Want to “Run When They’re Not Being Chased.”
I find a lot of magicians end up in a kind of grey area between the “invisibility” that casualness brings and the conviction that clarity brings. And it comes down to one piece of advice that I think is overused: “Don’t run if you’re not being chased.” That advice leads to a lot of muddy effects.
Traditional magic wisdom: “Don’t run if you’re not being chased! Don’t say, ‘Notice that the card case is empty.’ Instead just flash the empty card case.”
This is such common advice in magic that I feel weird questioning it. But the truth is, if you actually perform for people, and if you end up talking to those people after your performance, and you ask for a critical assessment of what you did, you are bound to have this sort of conversation very often:
“Well, I think the card must have been in the case from the beginning.”
“No. I showed it empty at the start of the trick.”
“You did?”
“Yeah, before I set the case down.”
“Uhm, okay. If you say so. I don’t remember that.”
How would anyone know to make a concrete mental note of an empty card case unless you tell them to? And if you really were going to make something appear in a card case with magic powers, wouldn’t emphasizing its emptiness be the first thing you would do?
There’s nothing wrong with saying, “And I place this single quarter—and nothing else—in my empty left hand.” If it adds to the clarity and conviction of an effect, then you should say it (assuming whatever technique you’re using allows for the increased scrutiny of saying such a thing). What you don’t want to do is just leave it up to the spectator to remember the details of what happened, because they won’t be forgiving. “I bet he had two quarters. One behind the other.” Once you start trying to retroactively clarify what you did (“No! I showed you a single quarter. You saw the edge!”) then you’ve lost.
Okay, let me try and summarize the ideas here.
There are two primary ways you can create belief with a spectator:
Casualness
Make your actions feel so innocent and commonplace that the spectator doesn’t think to question them.
“Don’t run when you’re not being chased.”
Clarity
Make your actions so clear that they can’t be questioned.
“Go ahead and run. Just be certain you can outrun them.”