Mailbag #96
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Excellent post today, well explained (though I'll go with the campfire analogy rather than the toilet one, thanks) of something that a lot of magicians have trouble understanding.
Pop Haydn has tried for years to get across essentially the same point--that the trick isn't the trick--the trick is the story that the participant tells to other people and convinces them that magic has happened. —JS
The anecdote in The Sweet Smell of Magic was originally one of the last things I wrote for the book coming out this October. And even I was like, No, this is too gross. I’ll put it on the site instead.
But the shit analogy is the one to take away from that post (the campfire analogy is an analogy about part of an analogy).
A campfire that doesn’t stay lit is pointless. But it doesn’t capture something that seemed good turning bad in quite the same way a seemingly pleasant aroma that turns out to be shit does.
If you show someone a great trick, and they’re amazed by it, and they google some terms, and it brings them right to Ellusionist’s website, that takes a memorable—potentially wonderful—interaction and makes it kind of forgettable. I’ve never had someone fondly remember a trick that they figured out. In fact, the more special you made the trick for that person, the more finding out this is just some garbage you bought online ruins it for them. Sadly, for most non-magicians, finding out the secret completely undermines the power of the experience.
“Then why would they bother googling it if they didn’t want to know?”
Re: The Myth of Audience Management
You have broached Audience Management before. It's certainly in the running for the G.O.A.T. of worthless magic platitudes, such as my personal favorite, Read Tarbell.
The core of the problem seems, to me, to be an inherent and highly spurious belief that all magic tricks are good and it's only the performer that is holding it back. Such bullshit!—IM
Yes, the maxim that says, “There are no bad tricks, just bad performers,” is perhaps one of the dumbest things ever said by any magician. (And I once heard someone say he likes Mark Calabrese’s neck tattoo.)
There are tons of bad tricks that could not be salvaged by any performer.
But more importantly, almost all tricks are flawed tricks in some way. There are very few effects that don’t have any weak spots or rough edges. Frequently, these things can be addressed with presentational techniques. But we can only uncover those presentational techniques when, as performers, we stop relying on that traditional way of dealing with flawed tricks:
Put the trick away and move on to something else
Tell ourselves we’re so entertaining that it doesn’t matter that the trick isn’t that good.
Assume the audience are all credulous idiots.
Do you know anything about Christian Grace’s new trick Enigma? There’s been a lot of discussion on the Cafe that has been pretty weird but the thread got shut down yesterday. Have you seen the trick? I know you sometimes get sneak peeks at new tricks from the creators and you’re one of the few voices I trust not to bullshit us on it. Thoughts? —DB
No, I haven’t seen it myself. But I’ve heard from a couple different people about the trick who have seen it and described it for me.
For those who don’t know, it’s a trick where the spectator thinks of any word and the magician is able to name it (eventually).
I think your description of that now-locked Cafe thread as “weird” is accurate. There are some people saying they just thought of a word, Christian touched their hands, and then revealed the word. There are people being weirdly cagey about whether the effect requires a phone or not. There are people saying they saw it multiple times and were still fooled.
If I didn’t know better, I’d almost think these people were setting up the release to fail—creating unrealistic expectation for the trick.
I will tell you what I’ve heard, without giving away more information than is already out there, out of respect for Christian.
Here’s what I’ve heard:
A phone is needed to accomplish the effect.
And there is—of course—a process involved to get the word.
The process is not extensive, but obviously the more this is repeated, the more it’s going to highlight the information that’s being used to narrow down to what the word is.
I don’t doubt this will be a good release, and I already have some ideas brewing for it. We live in a time when the ultimate financial success of a trick is frequently dependent on how much hype can be generated pre-release. The unfortunate side effect of that is that sometimes a strong trick gets blown up to something it’s not, and people end up being disappointed because it doesn’t meet the ridiculous standards that some were setting up for it. The buyers likely would have been happier if they had more realistic notions of what they were getting. But “temper your expectations” is not a marketing message anyone but me thinks is a good idea. And it is as unlikely to be adopted by people as my suggesting to my female friends that they should put their unflattering photos on their dating profile so when they meet up with someone it’s a pleasant surprise for them.