More Thoughts On Character

We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.
--Eric Hoffer--

In a previous post about character, I talked a little about how easy it is for the magician to miss the mark when establishing a performance persona and how it’s advisable that he play close to type lest he end up with an unbelievable creation. This time I’d like to comment on how liberating having a character can actually be.

Alexander Hermann, endowed with the natural attributes of a charming and entertaining showman, believed that great magicians were born, not made. Over the years I’ve known any number of performers who have concurred with this sentiment, and not surprisingly they have been people who were also naturally charismatic. I think what this view fails to take into account is the power of acting. If a magician is an actor playing the part of a magician, as Houdin observed, then wouldn’t one’s ability to inhabit a character be just as important as any natural characteristics he possesses that make him a good entertainer?

The fact of the matter is that many people attracted to performing are not naturally lively and outgoing. Johnny Carson, who started out with magic, was beloved by millions and became a comedy legend in his own lifetime; how many were aware that he was not as naturally engaging as he appeared onstage, that in reality he was quite reserved in social situations and ill at ease around strangers? What Carson had was not an innate ability to connect with viewers, but the ability to play the role of someone who could.

What I’m driving at here is that even if you’re not naturally gregarious, even if you’re not normally the life of the party, you can play the part of someone who is those things and succeed very well. This is done through the use of character. You’re in the business of selling you, but it’s an idealized version of yourself, a version more suitable for performing magic, if you’re naturally shy and retiring. And the ability to become a you who is lively where you’re withdrawn, fearless where you’re afraid, is very liberating indeed. Define your character well and there’s no reason to be nervous when you step onstage – it’s just a part you’re playing, a persona you’re projecting. It’s an opportunity to be the very best you you can possibly be.

If you’re not a born magician this is very good news. It means you don’t have to be held back by your limitations, that you can share your magic just as well as the natural performer. It’s really just a matter of how much you want it. Are you willing to go to the trouble of creating a character that works to your best advantage? If you truly love magic and want to share it, the answer is obvious. See you next time.

Spookey

I’d like to invite you to check out Spookey a brand new PDF from Unexpected Wonders. You can get the full details from the order page, but I do want to say this is an effect I’ve worked on for a number of years and I think the handling related in the PDF is pretty damn good – I’ve had much success with it anyway. I’m not comfortable hyping my own stuff, so I’ll leave it at that. If you’re interested in a psychokinetic effect that’s visual and not so hard to do, please check it out.

Ever Had One Of Those Days?

A young man moved to the big city in hopes of making it as an actor. He went to a lot of auditions, but couldn’t seem to land a role. One day he found himself with his rent overdue and his electricity about to be disconnected, contemplating a return home. That’s when his phone rang.

An agent he’d met had a part for him, albeit a small part, in a play – the actor who normally played the role had been in an accident. All he had to do was rush on stage at the end of the third act and deliver a single line: “Hark, is that cannon fire I hear?’ The catch was the play was about to begin and was all the way across town so he’d have to hurry.

Elated to get work, even if it was speaking but a single line of dialogue, he threw on his clothes and ran from his apartment. All the while he kept thinking to himself, “Hark, is that cannon fire I hear?” He ran to the subway and found the train he needed. As the train moved across town he whispered to himself, “Hark is that cannon fire I hear?”

He arrived at the theater with scant moments to spare. Backstage he was helped into a costume and shown where he was to make his entrance. All the while he kept reciting his line over and over, “Hark is that cannon fire I hear?”

He got his cue and stepped confidently on stage. There came a tremendous crash. He looked around and exclaimed, “What the fuck was that?”

I first came across this anecdote in a William Goldman novel many years ago and have told it off and on ever since.

New Bill Malone DVDs

Got an email from L and L yesterday announcing the release of some new Bill Malone DVDs. Be sure to check out the video there on their home page. If this set is half as good as the last they'll be worth having. Even if you don't perform a single trick of Malone's -- and you'd have to be pretty damn picky not to find anything you like in the first set -- it's a pleasure just watching him perform.

Free Magic Secrets

No, this isn't a post offering free magic secrets. Instead it's a look at how the secrets of magic are so readily available and what impact that's having, especially on beginning magicians. This was inspired by Steve Pellegrino's comment about having to earn information in yesterday's post.

It would seem that if being a good magician is all about one’s ability to access secrets, today’s magicians should be the best ever. Never before has so much information about magic been so readily available to so many. Not only are magic’s secrets easy to access, they’re being divulged more and more often at zero cost. There are sites openly and unashamedly devoted to the exposure and trading of magic secrets; YouTube hosts scores of magic tutorials on everything from basic sleights to tricks that are currently being sold. One need do little more than press a few keys to have more magic secrets than could be mastered in a lifetime delivered straight to his desktop at no cost.

Is this free access to magic secrets producing great magicians? It doesn’t seem to be. Too many of today’s young magicians demonstrate fundamental gaps in their understanding and execution of magic. It’s not unusual to see someone who can do a series of flashy cuts and color changes that flubs a double lift. Few seem interested in acquiring the basics; instead they’re forever hunting out the secret of the latest cool thing.

In a sense being a beginning magician on the Internet is like being a kid set loose in a candy store – free to sample whatever you want. It’s almost impossible to settle down and devote yourself to a single trick and master it because something new and enticing is always there to tempt you. You don’t yet possess the discipline or understanding to refrain from trying a little bit of everything. You don’t realize that by taking a little bit of everything you’re ironically going to end up with a lot of nothing.

But it’s more than that, isn’t it? I think it really comes down to value. Have you ever had the experience of winning or finding money? No matter the amount, you find that money won or found just doesn’t seem the same as money you’ve earned. It’s easily squandered and quickly gone.

The same is true of magic secrets. What value do you put on something you’re able to acquire for free? It’s likely you take a superficial look at it, overlooking completely its real worth, and reject it for something new. Getting the secrets for free tends to rob us of our ability to appreciate them for what they are.

We value something according to what we’ve invested in it, both monetarily and in terms of effort, and its overall scarcity. Many of us started practicing magic when secrets were at a premium and we coveted the few secrets we had. More we worked to acquire the knowledge; we weren’t complaining that Erdnase was too hard to understand – we’d dutifully follow the instructions and work to decipher the true intent. And when we found success we also gained something of value, something we would forever keep.

I don’t want to come off like some old guy bitching about how things were better in the old days, but in this instance maybe they were. Many of us mastered the basics of magic not because we were intrinsically better students than the kids today but because that’s all we had! You practiced what you had access to and in so doing gained an appreciation for why it was important. If there’d been this unimaginable thing called the Internet we’d probably have wasted our time hunting around for more and more secrets the way so many do today.

The genie is out of the bottle and there’s no going back. I guess the best we can do is point those just starting in magic in the right direction and hope they’ll listen. Many probably won’t. It isn’t an easy thing to ignore all those interesting secrets and concentrate on mastering a double lift or control. Who knows, maybe in a weird form of Darwinism those who survive the onslaught of secrets will be those most capable of carrying magic on into this new century. See you next time.

Exclusive Magic Secrets

I don’t understand the mentality, which is especially prevalent online, that all magic secrets should be made available to anyone who’s interested in magic. Are today’s magicians not allowed to have anything that’s uniquely their own, that distinguishes them from their fellow performers?

I’ve made it pretty clear that to my way of thinking the real secrets of magic aren’t secrets at all. That is to say factors like charisma and the ability to connect with the audience are more important than how to control a card or vanish a coin. Then again, the methods we use, however mundane and simple when viewed apart from their presentations, are what separate us from other performers and allow us to create our illusions. We’re instructed early on not to reveal our secrets. I don’t recall any annotations that said it’s okay to give up secrets if the other guy is a magician who really really wants the scoop.

I’ve seen this a number of times. Someone posts a video of something they’ve come up with that looks really impossible. People speculate, sometimes openly, about how it’s done, but keep missing the mark. Finally they profess astonishment and want to know the secret. The creator doesn’t wish to divulge the secret. The people who want it advise they’ll pay to learn how. The creator says he has no desire to sell his creation and prefers to keep it for his own use.

What happens next? People get mad. They want to know why the hell he made a video if he wasn’t going to put it out. They accuse him of employing camera tricks. They condemn him for coming up with something good simply because he wants to keep it for himself.

Richard Osterlind has a bent coin effect, and I remember a time when folks were going crazy because he wouldn’t tip it. I don’t know if he ever did, but why should he have to? Isn’t it okay to hold back a pet routine just for your own use? Is it selfish to want something in your repertoire that an audience won’t be able to see anywhere else?

There are some magicians who aren’t going to let a creator keeping a trick to himself stop them. If there’s a video, they’ll watch it a thousand times until they can reason out the method, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. It’s so bad that Armando Lucero was (I don’t know if he still is) allowing people to view his videos only by invitation. Why? Because he doesn’t want his work stolen and poor reproductions of it posted all over the Internet, I would imagine. Or marketed by one of the less scrupulous magic dealers.

Mickey Silver has a beautiful retention of vision vanish. He was kind enough to send me, and many others, a DVD of it just for the asking. He doesn’t tip the work, but he thoroughly outlines the theory of manipulating the retention of vision, and it’s utterly fascinating. I remember reading a thread where one fellow who’d gotten the DVD was openly saying that he’d worked out the method and was practicing it. Even though Mickey didn’t want to tip the work, even though he was kind enough to send out a DVD for free, this guy apparently thought nothing of working out the technique and appropriating it for his own use. Unreal.

I also remember Mickey being on a coin magic DVD and not tipping the retention vanish and people complaining that he didn’t. Of course.

We need to respect a creator’s right to keep whatever secrets he wants to himself. There are actually professionals out there who won’t perform certain pieces if they think magicians might be in attendance. The magic community is better than that. We need to all stop turning a blind eye to this kind of thing and speak up when someone attempts to lift another’s hard won material that he wishes to keep exclusive.

I hope we’re better than that. See you next time.

The Why Of It

Long experience has taught me that the crux of my fortunes is whether I can radiate good will toward my audience. There is only one way to do it and that is to feel it. You can fool the eyes and minds of an audience, but you cannot fool their hearts.
--Howard Thurston--


I’ve talked a little about how some professional magicians dump on amateurs and otherwise seem to think their title earns them king shit status online. What I’d like to do this time around is examine why someone might behave in such a fashion and what it really signifies.

First I want to make it clear that the majority of professional magicians I’ve known have been the friendliest people in the world. It’s pretty clear that they feel blessed to be in a position to do what they love and actually get paid for it – even when times are tough, which they can sometimes be. They aren’t worried about going to a magic forum or doing a blog and impressing everyone with their professional status; they don’t care about impressing other magicians. They care about impressing their audiences with their magic.

I think some people become performers for all the wrong reasons. While it’s probably true that most magicians crave recognition and acceptance, some few are absolutely consumed by such desires. They’re attempting to compensate for shortcomings in themselves, real or imagined, and are using magic to show the world that they’re worthy of love and adoration. Again, I think most of us want to be recognized and accepted. But those desires are but a component of the larger whole of sharing the art we love. Some few don’t really care anything about magic; they perform because it affords them a means to prove their worth.

The real problem is performing isn’t a substitute for therapy. It might even aggravate the problem. If you’re unable to connect with others in a meaningful way and get the love you’re missing, standing before them and doing tricks isn’t going to change that. They might laugh and applaud, but if you can’t connect the experience will ultimately feel hollow and superficial. Consequently resentment forms. You want to be a part of something and you’ve tried so hard but nothing has changed. Resentment ferments into anger. And hate.

What I’ve noticed about the people who come online and flaunt their professional title is that they’re almost invariably low level performers who’ve had limited success. This makes perfect sense to me, as you’re never going to succeed as a magician unless you can connect with people, unless you genuinely like people and they like you. You’ve tried and failed to show the world at large that you’re worthy of love and you’ve failed. The solution then is to show your fellow magicians what an expert you are.

I’ll admit that this is a lot of conjecture on my part founded on nothing more than personal observation. However, I sincerely believe I’m on the right track. It might very well be that those loud mouth know it alls who drive some of us crazy are crying out for help in the only way they know how. All I can say is that you’ll never get the kind of help you need online, and even when you succeed in proclaiming your status loudly enough that some of your ilk actually listen to your drivel it’s ultimately going to lead to another let down. I wish there were some easy answers, but there aren’t. A very good start can be made when you stop trying to belittle and demean and offer kindness instead. Just a thought. See you next time.