Monday Mailbag #52
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Hi Andy,
1) How often would you perform for a person if you see them once per week?
2) How often would you perform for a person if you see them on a daily basis or live with them?
—CE
Well… here is a premise that you may or may not agree with. And if you don’t agree with it then you know not to put any weight in the rest of my answer. And that premise is this: The less frequently you perform, the greater impact an individual effect will have.
We see this all the time in magic. The first card trick you ever show someone freaks them out entirely. But then, as they become accustomed to seeing you do impossible things, it really takes something special to get that same type of reaction.
In addition to that consideration, I’m someone who doesn’t want it to seem like I have an endless supply of tricks up my sleeve. So for that reason I’m also in the “less is more” camp.
I think ideally I would show people a maximum of one trick a month on average. Now, if I only see that person once a year, they might end up seeing a bunch of tricks over the course of a couple days. And if I see that person frequently, they would go many interactions without seeing a trick. (I don’t know why I explained that. I think you all understand what “on average” means.)
This isn’t a hard and fast rule, it’s just generally what I shoot for. A lot of people in my life see something much closer to four times a year. That might be a better rate.
Seeing 12 tricks a year is a good amount. Especially if you can make them each powerful and distinct experiences for someone. Remember that most people probably don’t see any live magic tricks in a given year. So while once a month may not seem like much, it’s more than most are accustomed to.
I know people like to show their wives or significant others tricks all the time. I get that it’s convenient to try out stuff on your wife. But if you overload a person with magic tricks, you’re essentially making it very difficult for a trick to feel special for them. Do you hate your wife so much you want her to get burned out on your one hobby? Eh probably.
I don’t find a ton of value in having a go-to non-magician as a “test audience.” Once they’ve seen a ton of magic, they’re close to useless as a sounding board. They don’t have a magician’s knowledge to give you that type of insight, and they can’t give you an unspoiled laymen’s perspective either.
Now, I don’t always stick to that “once a month” average, of course. When I first meet someone, they may see a few tricks fairly close together early on. And if someone is asking frequently to see something, I’ll usually indulge them (over time, that is—not over the course of the same interaction).
If you have someone you want to perform for more often, or who is asking you to see stuff more frequently, then I find the best course of action is to draw a distinction between things you show them that are “just magic tricks,” and things you show them that are, “something really strange” you just learned or discovered or whatever. In this way, the “normal” magic tricks you show them more often can be used to set a standard. Then on those occasions when you show them something stronger and weirder and intimate that isn’t just your usual trick, then you can fuck with their heads a little more.
I have a new peek wallet I will hopefully be releasing in 2022. One of the peeks I use comes from your handling of the peek wallet in the post you wrote on November 16th of 2015 where you get the peek as you place the wallet between their hands.
Do you have any other credits for that peek or is it something you came up with yourself? I’ve seen other wallets recently that use the same peek, but I haven’t seen any credit to you or anyone else. Was that your idea? And how frequently do you get busted because the wallet is in their hands?—HF
Hmmm…. I’m fairly certain I came up with the idea of getting the peek while you hand the wallet to the person. But it’s certainly well within the realm of possibility that others had done it before me. I would assume they had. I will post your question so hopefully we can get a credit for you (I’ll update this post if/when comes in.)
As far as getting busted with the wallet in their hand, I think it’s happened once. But that’s because I was going the extra step (as described in that post) of having them clean up for me as well. So they were actually removing the card from the peeked position. I just used the technique mentioned in that post to brush off the incident and move on. So it wasn’t a big deal.
This reminds me. At some point in the past five years I’ve had a person or two message me saying they know how to make wallets, so if I ever wanted to create a magic wallet of some kind I should reach out to them. Well, I have an idea in mind, but I can’t track down who sent that email. So if you’re one of those people, please reach out to me again.
How do you present levitation effects that are not magician-centric? —CE
I will assume you’re talking about levitating an object (as opposed to yourself).
Well, remember, as I discussed recently in this post, the only defining characteristic of a “magician-centric” presentation is that the magician is taking credit for what is occurring.
So, if a magician-centric levitation is the magician saying, “I will make this rose levitate” (or not saying anything at all, which is the same thing) then a non-magician-centric presentation is anything that suggests you’re not the one causing this to happen.
With levitations, I personally like to imply that there’s something significant about the time or location at which the performance takes place. So, while on a day-trip, maybe I’ll make a small detour to this place I “read about online” and stop on the side of the road by an old farmhouse and show them this weird gravitational anomaly that exists there (look for gravitational maps online to add some credibility to this). Or it may be a time of the year thing—when certain planets are aligned, or whatever. Tying the levitation to something more grandiose won’t always stop them from wondering, “Hey, where’s the thread?” But I find it helps considerably in giving them a more interesting story to consider.
Other audience-centric/story-centric levitation presentation ideas; spirit energy, demonstration of some new technology, hallucination, etc. You could also just say, “I have something to show you. I need you to tell me I’m not losing my mind and that this is really happening.” This type of presentation, the “I have absolutely no idea how this is happening” presentation, is non-magician-centric. Used too much it just seems like laziness. But used sparingly, it can work well. Of course, to use that with a levitation you’d need a levitation that didn’t require you to be gesticulating around the object as if you are in control.
