Two Comedians: Part One
/Today’s and tomorrow’s posts will be about two lessons I was reminded of by two different comedians.
Those comedians are Louis CK and Bill Cosby.
And, of course, the lessons I learned are about how to deal with women.
Relax. I’m kidding.
They’re two lessons that apply to the performance of magic.
First, Louis CK
I can’t properly credit this, because I heard it from a friend who heard it on a podcast by someone who was quoting Louis. I’ve looked up some keywords but can’t find the quote. So he may have never said this. Or he may have said something similar but not exactly this thing, but the general idea behind what he said was this:
There is reciting, and there is talking/communicating, and those two things occur on opposite sides of your brain.
Now, whether this is scientifically true doesn’t really matter to me. It’s effectively true.
When you are reciting patter, you are not in communication mode.
Social magic should feel like communication, not a lecture.
When it comes to the “patter” for an effect, I spend a lot of time thinking:
What is the story I want to convey?
I spend ZERO time thinking:
What are the words I want to say?
I see a lot of magicians who have clearly memorized the words they want to say, only to say some bland bullshit nobody cares about. They’re focusing on the wrong part of “scripting.” They’re focused on the words, not the point.
Once you know the point you want to convey, the words will work themselves out.
Now, you might say, “But I’m not comfortable speaking extemporaneously.”
Okay, so what? The goal—in social magic— isn’t for your patter to be clever and well-spoken. The goal is for it to be congruent with what speaking to you normally is like. That way, when you go into a trick, it doesn’t feel like…
Do you script out all your other conversations? No. Do you trust yourself to tell the story of how UPS delivered the package to the wrong house, and you paid for insurance, but the sender says you need to work it out with UPS, and UPS says you need to work it out with the sender? Okay. Well, if you can tell that story without scripting it out, you can tell the story of the weird ring you bought at the garage sale without scripting that out.
This way, rather than engaging the part of your brain that is concerned with remembering words, you can use the part of your brain that is focused on connecting and communicating.
