Vibes
/As I suspected, yesterday’s post led to a number of emails which have helped me understand how clear or unclear the concept is. I’ll devote next week’s mailbag to the subject. But before moving on to normal posting tomorrow, let me clarify my intention with an analogy.
At any large school, or large office, you’ve probably encountered a guy who is super-handsome, who is a complete dud with the women. Like, when they first meet him, they’re really taken with his thick hair and his chiseled jawline. But once people get to know him, they’re pretty disinterested in his company.
Then you’ll have a guy in the office who is maybe not traditionally attractive. Maybe he has a receding hairline or a little gut. But people—including many beautiful women—are drawn to him.
The hot guy walks into the break room. He sees the average guy at a table in the far side of the room. The average guy is pushed back from the table and leaned back in his chair. He’s gesturing widely as he tells a story, or maybe it’s a joke. Claire and Susan from HR are on either side of him. And Brenda from accounting is sitting on the edge of the table in front of him, leaning in with her elbow on her knee and her chin in her palm as she listens attentively.
The average guy’s voice builds. “I’m going nuts. I’m rushing down the stairs. I’m pushing down my hair. Brushing the crumbs off my shirt. I open the door…” He pauses. The women lean in. “And it’s my mom.”
“Nooooo!” Brenda shouts.
“Oh my god,” Claire says, resting her hand on his shoulder.
They all laugh and put their stuff away as they get ready to head back to work.
Susan says, “You’re coming this weekend, right?”
“Absolutely,” the average guy says. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
They exit the break room, squeezing past the hot guy, with only the average guy acknowledging him at all with a quick head nod.
“What the hell…,” the hot guy thinks. “What’s that guy’s deal? Why are they so into him? His stomach isn’t toned at all. It’s crazy.” He stands there wondering what it is he has to do to attract these women. His frustration turns to excitement as he thinks…
“I know! I’ll lift more weights!” He nods to himself. “Ooh… and maybe I’ll get an eye-catching hat!”
The hot guy has a vibe problem. A charisma problem. He doesn’t generate the right energy when you’re around him.
But he focuses on muscles and hats.
Magic has a vibe problem.
It frequently comes off as egocentric, try-hard, and needy. You could argue that it’s inherently those things. How else would you define learning how to do some arbitrary thing that seems impossible (but isn’t) and then showing it to people and not telling them how it’s done?
That is what magic—as traditionally performed—comes across as to many people.
This is why they can watch you do something impossible. Be shocked by it. And never think of it again after 30 seconds.
You fooled them, but you didn’t connect with them. And it’s very likely because the vibe was wrong.
I think a lot of magicians sense this disconnect. And their solution? Stronger tricks.
Stronger tricks = muscles and hats.
We’re focusing on the wrong thing.
It’s like a guy who bends thick steel bars, and he’s not getting as good a response as he would like from the people he bends steel bars for, so he thinks, “I need to bend thicker steel bars!” That’s probably not the answer.
Creating the right vibe is the answer.
Consider this…
If you do a trick that is a 10 out of 10 for impossibility, but has a bad vibe, people will immediately say it was “just a trick.” People always have that means of dismissal at their disposal. “I don’t know. It was some kind of trick.”
But…
If you do just a good trick for people, and the vibe is on point, they will talk about it for the rest of their lives.
The biggest improvements in the quality of the reactions I’ve gotten from performing have come from generating a better vibe for the performance. Creating a more natural flow into the trick and setting myself up to exude comfort so they can experience genuine comfort too.
When I saw Punch Drunk Love years ago, a homeless man entered the theater halfway through and sat in the front row. The entire theater gagged at the smell of old jeans that had been pissed in, left to dry, pissed in, left to dry, and pissed in again. The smell was unavoidable. Breathing through my nose was torture. Breathing through my mouth felt like chomping on a piece of piss-flavored Freshen-up gum.
Why do I bring this up?
Well, do you think I was swept up in the majesty of Punch Drunk Love during that showing?
No! Because with every breath I was assaulted with the fetid musk of sopping, hot Levis.
If there is tension or discomfort in the air, you can’t build on that.
And this is an issue with magic because that tension is baked into it. As I mentioned yesterday, a spectator who has never seen you perform may never have even seen any real life close-up magic. So they might have tension about what exactly is the nature of the interaction. They might be worried about feeling stupid. Or they might be concerned they have to coddle you and pretend to be fooled.
This is part of the reason why there is that disconnect—why the reaction to magic so often seems shallow. The vibe isn’t right. And performing magic as most people do just reinforces that bad vibe.
But when they’re comfortable and they know what type of experience they can expect, they open themselves up to the fiction. They want to get swept up in it. It’s not a competition or a battle of wits.
In one word, I’m describing that vibe as “Carefree.” But don’t get too hung up on that word, it’s just to have an umbrella term that describe a general state that includes feeling: comfortable, relaxed, present, confident, non-needy, worry-free, effortless, normal, relatable, fun, unforced, natural, etc.