Certified Organic
/The shame of the downfall of the Magic Cafe is that it’s very rare for people to forward me a post suggesting I talk some shit about it. This used to happen all the time back in the mid-2000s. It was really the foundation of my old blog. Sadly, it doesn’t happen much these days. People sometimes ask, “Why don’t you bag on the Cafe like you used to?” It’s sort of like asking, “Why don’t you go to roller rink anymore to meet girls?” Because it’s dead, dude. The girls are elsewhere.
So I was happy recently to receive a link to a single post from three different people. It felt like old times.
The post comes from Cameron Francis, who was writing in a thread about a trick called, Thy Will Be Done. That trick is a variation and expansion of the Free Will effect. The spectator places three items in three different locations and that information (in this version) is (for some reason) predicted on a tarot card.
One person said this seemed very “organic.” Another person said it seemed that a custom printed Tarot card seemed the “opposite of organic.”
And that’s when Cameron chimed in
I like Cameron as a person, but this is indeed one of the dumbest takes on the Cafe in a while. He’s not alone though. I’ve heard other people rail against the word “organic” being used in magic. And, similar to this post, they don’t seem to have the foggiest idea what is meant by the word in a magic context. If you’re equating a sharpie, a deck of cards, a Ball and Vase, and a specially printed tarot card as all being more or less the same because they’re “friggin props,” you don’t quite have the understanding to be talking about this.
However, I will cut Cameron some slack here for one reason. The word is overused and abused. Like “impromptu” before it, the word is beginning to lose its meaning. When people were saying things like, “Yes, it’s impromptu, so long as you have the gimmick on you,” it was clear we needed to re-establish what the word meant. “Organic” could stand to be defined more clearly as well, because it is a useful label when accurately used to talk about magic.
Cameron seems to be suggesting that all props are the same. That because people don’t carry Sharpie markers with them every day, then they are pretty much viewed the same way as a Finger Chopper.
But, of course, spectators don’t view these sorts of things the same way. One they see as an everyday object, and one they see as an obvious magic prop. Unless this is your spectator’s first day on the planet earth they are going to have different expectations for these two objects. The thing they’re completely unfamiliar with is going to be fairly suspect. And the thing that looks like something they have in their junk-drawer at home will be much less suspect. This is not some crazy theory of mine. This is understood by anyone who performs for normal humans outside of a professional performing environment.
So there are objects used in performance. Some of them are clearly Magic Props. Some of them are Normal Objects.
What makes a prop “organic” is when a Normal Object is used in the environment in which it’s typically found.
Organic Prop - A normal object in the environment in which it’s typically found.
If I make a can of tuna vanish in my kitchen that would be a trick using an organic prop. If I bring the can of tuna to the coffee shop and vanish it there, then I’ve done a trick with an (apparently) normal object, but it’s not an organic prop in that situation.
Ah! But here’s where we get to another important concept.
A magic trick can use organic props, but it can also have an organic premise. And those two factors aren’t necessarily related.
Organic Premise - A premise which naturally flows from the real-world situation in which the trick occurs.
If we order a pizza and I notice I only have a one dollar bill, not the $20 that I thought I had, and so I use magic to transform that $1 into a $20, that is an “Organic Premise.” We needed a certain amount of money, so I took the money that we had and transformed it into what we needed.
As regular readers can probably imagine, I love effects with organic premises, because they don’t have the boundaries of a typical magic trick. It’s not: “Here’s where the magic trick starts. Here’s where it stops.” And that causes these tricks to have a different affect on people. It captures their imagination differently. And not because the trick feels more “real” but because it feels more vital.
Now, to be clear, a trick can have “organic” props and inorganic premises and vice-versa.
If I do the Cups and Balls at a coffee shop with a bunch of coffee shop items for the props, those are organic props used for an inorganic premise.
If we walk into the coffee shop and you say, “Shoot, they don’t have the sweetener I like.” And I say, “Hold on. I think I can help.” And I reach into my computer bag and pull out a strange little plastic box with a bunny on the top and I show it empty and then tap it with a magic wand I carry with me, and then I open it again to reveal packets of your favorite artificial sweetener, then I would have used inorganic props (obvious magic props) to achieve an organic premise (satisfying your need for something that’s not present).
So the word “organic” can be applied to a trick in a couple different ways.
“Organic” in the magic context simply means “emerging naturally.”
Organic Props come naturally from the physical environment.
Organic Premises come naturally from the situation you’re in.
In my experience, the hardest hitting magic is organic in both senses. It uses normal objects, in their environment, in service of a premise that seems to arise naturally.
Obviously it would be very difficult to construct everything you do so it meets this standard, but it’s definitely an ideal worth striving towards (for the social performer). In fact, making your magic feel more organic is about the single most important thing you can do to allow people to connect to your magic. So the attitude of “I wish we didn’t talk about organic! We should all just do Ball and Vase like R. Paul Wilson does!!” is one of the more bizarre ones that I’ve heard.
Cameron Francis is not the only person I’ve heard pushing the “Let’s do away with the concept of organic magic” notion. But it never seems well reasoned. It always just seems like an excuse for meaningless card tricks or 6-phase Okito box routines.
Here are the situations where “organic” magic doesn’t matter as much:
If you only perform for other magicians.
If you only perform professionally. (The professional performance is already a non-organic experience. So it doesn’t matter at all if your premises are organic. And doesn’t matter as much about your props either.)
If your personality/presence is already so awkward and artificial then yes, it might make no difference whether you pull out a Sharpie or a Finger Cutter.
If you’re paying close attention, you may see that I’m hitting on some similar themes as I have recently. And that’s because the concept of “organic-ness” is the inverse of the Hitch concept I’ve been talking about recently. Organic premises, organic props, and organic movements all arise naturally, they don’t cause the Hitch sensation in spectators that will happen when those things are questionable in some way.
Let’s loop back around. Is having the reveal for a Free Will-style effect on a tarot card organic in any meaning of the word?
No, not at all.
It’s not an organic premise (the placement of random items has nothing to do with tarot cards) and a specially printed Tarot card is not an organic prop. You might say, “They don’t know it’s specially printed,” but I think the fact the ancient magician is holding a pen in his hand might tip them off a little. (I haven’t seen the actual gimmicked card though, so perhaps it’s not so obviously a pen? Could it be a quill or some shit?)
But, similar to what I said in the Hitch posts, a trick that’s not “organic” in any way isn’t necessarily a bad trick. It just a trick that doesn’t have that particular quality.
Without trying it out, I can’t really tell how this trick—Thy Will Be Done— would go over with people. I think it will likely fool them. I think the reveal is “cute” (which may or may not be a good thing, depending on your sensibilities). And I think it could easily be an entertaining trick. I can certainly understand why people would want to perform this. So I’m not saying it’s a bad trick.
The point of this post is not to say every trick has to be “organic” in some way. My point is only that “organic” is a valuable designation when talking about the qualities of a trick. And while it’s perfectly fine to not be concerned about it for yourself and your performances, it’s mistaken to think that somehow audiences don’t register this quality. (I’ll have some old testing results to share on this sometime soon if I can track them down.) While it may be true that audiences assume a magician is going to do something random with some unusual objects, that doesn’t mean they don’t notice and appreciate it when the props and premises are organic.