(Keep Feeling) Fascination

Why are you doing 3 Card Monte one day, a memory demonstration the next, and turning $1 into $100s the next? What do your friends see as your rationale for why you’re doing it?

I think the worst-case scenario is that they think you’re getting something out of fooling them. That you’re trying to impress them. Or trying to get them to think you’re more clever than them. Or just trying to point out that you know how to do something they don’t.

But what is the best-case scenario? That you’re showing them these things because you hope it will entertain them? That’s definitely better than the previous option. But it’s also still a little weird.

“I’m going to entertain my friends!” is an odd instinct. Certainly, us being together should be a fun time and “entertaining.” But if I’m learning a trick, practicing it, and then showing it to you for your entertainment, that doesn’t feel like a natural interaction between friends.

“I’m doing this trick for you.” Is weird.

So now I try and firmly establish the opposite.

“I’m doing this trick for me.”

I’ve said in the past that if your audience suspects you’re doing a trick for yourself, that they’ll be turned off. And they will shut down.

But I realize that’s not completely clear.

The truth is, if your audience gets the sense that you’re doing the trick for your own glorification, then they will shut down. (Unless they’re your mother or madly in love with you (or both).) It will come across as pathetic. “Give me praise! Be impressed with me! Look what I can do!”

But my attitude is not that I’m doing it as some sort of validation seeking exercise. Or that I’m doing it for their entertainment.

My attitude is that I’m doing it for my entertainment.

Magic, mind-reading, psychology, strange-phenomenon. These are subjects that fascinate me. And their role is not to applaud what I do. But to help me while I practice something, or test an idea, or explore a concept, or experience something new.

Their “job” is not to be entertained. Their role is simply to be a helper, a test subject, a witness, etc. They will be entertained, but that’s not why they’re there, or why we’re doing this.

My former downstairs neighbor in my apartment used to practice her flute occasionally. Not often. Maybe once or twice a month. When I would hear it coming up through the floor, I would usually lay down, close my eyes, and just enjoy the soothing, mellow sound of it. Thus, I loved when I would catch her practicing.

What if she came upstairs, knocked on my door, and said, “I’m going to play my flute for you.” Obviously, that would be a completely different—and probably uncomfortable— dynamic, even though the outcome is the same: it’s me listening to her play the flute.

By expressing my fascination with the subject matter, then I am allowing people to help me experience this subject that fascinates me.

They will hopefully be amazed, amused, impressed, intrigued, scared, unnerved, mystified, or whatever I’m going for.

But even if they don’t feel any of that, then the worst case scenario is that they just helped out someone they're friendly with as that person delved into a subject that interests them.

So I recommend you not forget that what you’re sharing with them should seem to be a subject of your fascination, at least until it becomes a subject of their fascination. Once people start asking you to show them something, then you don’t have to worry about this as much because they are putting themselves in the audience role.

But until then, you need to give them a reason why you’re doing this (because you’re fascinated by it) or they will come up with their own reason (that you need validation, or you have to resort to tricks to entertain them).

This song holds up.