As I reflect on the effects in my shows both stage and close-up I have come to realize that almost all of them are classics of magic such as egg bag, torn and restored newspaper, cut and restored rope, the ambitious card, coins across, cups and balls and the list goes on. Why do I like these old classics and why do I continue to develop them and use them more than new effects? Well they work, I enjoy doing them, the routines I create entertain my audience. So I want to talk about why I think the classics work and how I go around working out their presentations.
First I want to mention why I think the classics are classics. The main reason I think this is because of the basic plots of these effects are easy to understand. Like an egg disappears and reappears, a newspaper is torn then restored to its original condition. Spectators can easily understand the point of the effect without any convoluted explanations. This is similar to classic movie plots that are constantly recycled. Why is this? Well they are easy to understand. I feel this is the same for magic effects, and is one of the main reasons the classics of magic are still relevant today.
Because the main plots of classic magic are easy to understand and follow they allow a lot of innovation for performance while maintaining the basic core of magic. If you look at Jeff Hobson’s Egg Bag, or Doc Eason’s bill to lemon routine you will see exactly what I mean. There are many many more examples of this. I feel the classics of magic open the doors to many great and entertaining presentations that are modern and don’t seem old like the effects themselves. These effects have remained for years because of these points. This does not mean that newer effect are not good, there are plenty of great ones, but these classic effects sometimes remain even stronger than some new effects.
As the plots of these classic effects are simple to understand, when working out you own presentations for them you can concentrate on the entertaining aspect of magic. You won’t need to create difficult to understand justifications for the effects because this effect is clear with these classics of magic. You can concentrate on how you want to engage with an audience and using the magic as the medium to do this. Sit down with any classic of magic and try to work out a new and fresh presentation for it and you will see what I mean.
If you are new to magic please do not skip over the power of the classic effects of magic, there are more to them that may appear on the surface and for this reason is why many professionals still continue to use them to this day.
Here is another post where I ties in my experiance of living in Japan to magic. Well I find so many great examples! Anyways, in the picture in this post is something called “Taiko Dai“. There are not found all round Japan but are popular in Shikoku and some other parts of Japan. Inside each of these big floats is a taiko drum and a drummer. Members of the taiko dai team carry it while the drummer plays inside. There are also guys on top and standing around it directing the poor guys carrying it how to move it and bounce it around. They have regional competitions during festivals and they can get quite crazy.
Ok Now why I am writing about taiko dais? Well it goes back to when I first saw them in the Summer of 2001. I went to the local festival in Sakaide, Kagawa Prefecture where on one of the days a Taiko Dai competition was the main event. They are big, heavy and the guys carrying them where doing amazing things I have never seen before. It felt like magic. I was seeing hearing and feeling something completely new. I will never forget it. This reminded me how many people may feel when they see magic for the first time. It is also important to pay attention to this and really do a good job of creating this feeling because if you do it right the spectator will never forget you. So when I work on my show on effects, presentation etc. I always keep this in mind. I always want to bring an enjoying feeling of something new and wonderful to my audience. I want them to feel the way I did. Which a good performance mixed with just the right effects you can create this. But it takes work and love for the art for this to happen. Also the magic and the presentation has to be who your performing character is wither its just you or a stage character you have created. When you have blended these together the audience will enjoy your performance and will remember you and have the same feeling I did when I went to that Taiko Dai festival.
I have been pondering something recently about magic and that is are we lost without good magic mentors? I was lucky and had a magic mentor who taught me the basics of magic technique, performing, doing shows, doing the business and much much more. Tony Eng had taught me since I was about 11 years old. And during that time it seemed to me that most, if not all, magicians looked up to Dai Vernon as the ultimate mentor. People would make magic pilgrimages to go and just meet the man. It seemed he was the one person who solidified the magic community. Unfortunately I never got the opportunity to meet him. I have noticed after Dai Vernon passed away in 1992, there has not been a single magician that has captivated and kept the magician community focused on one main professor of magic. There are of course many great magicians that people look up to and follow such as Jaun Tamariz, Michael Ammar and many more, but there is no one person that we all look up to. I am not sure if this is a good thing or not. I am still trying to think more about this. When Dai Vernon was alive one could say he was the mentor for all magicians. On the other hand now having not just one main figure we look upon we have many more to choose from with different schools of thought. Here in Japan most Japanese arts or certain schools of arts have a grandmaster, and then his students. When the grandmaster gets too old he passes on the torch to a worthy student to become the new grandmaster. This seems to keep the group solid and focused and organized. However sometimes when a new grandmaster is chosen things can fragment of other don’t agree on the new grandmaster. This is what I see with magic today. I see a fragmentation and people choose different people to look up to as a mentor, which is good. Brings different variety in technique and performance. Then there are those like me who had a mentor close by to teach and guide. There are of course many people who never had a magic mentor close by to teach and guide them. I also feel the magic community is somewhat fragmented as well today.
Today there are a lot of great magicians and a lot of material available to anyone who wants to learn magic. There are great people to follow and to mentor from. But sometimes I feel that the magic community has lost some of it’s solidarity from the Dai Vernon days. For me it seems he was the glue that kept our community together and focused. Also many people just getting into magic just buy DVD’s and learn the tricks and don’t really have anyone to guide them on how to craft a magic performance so we get people just doing tricks and emulating David Blaine which could be the one person that is the mentor for this younger generation in the past 10 or so years. And hence is why I feel sometimes we are lost without one central magic mentor figure such as Dai Vernon. Even from this blog posting you can see it makes me feel even more lost explaining it. Anyways what do you feel about this?
The picture in this blog is first time I went to visit Sekigahara. Sekigahara is where, well, the Battle of Sekigahara took place on October 21, 1600. It is where Ieyasu Tokugawa was able to gain power and become the Shogun of Japan. Anyways, this battle it probably one of the most famous battles not the most famous battle in Japanese history besides battles during World War II. Why am I writing this? Well it is about expectations. This visit was in August of 2006 when I lived in Shiga Prefecture which is about a 20 minute car drive to Sekigahara. I always wanted to visit this famous battlefield. I had always imagined it as a great field where some of Japan’s most historical Samurai fought in some very interesting circumstances and with controversial betrayals in Japan’s history. However, when we drove there I saw there was no more field but just the City of Sekigahara itself where the field once was. No longer was there the great field where Tokugawa claimed victory. The train station is very close to where Tokugawa sat at his camp and is located in a small park with overgrown grass. There is a small museum next to it and if I remember right it costs about 300Yen (about $3.00 US) to enter. It was good to see and see some of the real armor, swords and stuff actually used in the battle. Anyways, Sekigahara was WAY different that I had always imagined it, not really in a bad way but just what time does to places over a 400 year period. Anyways what is my point? Oh thats right I am going to attempt to tie this to magic. LOL I am kidding myself? Going for it anyway.
Ok this is about expectations and how what you perceive exists or what will happen in the future is often very different than reality. So when you routine a magic performance your presentation must lead the audience in some cases down a road of expectation that does’t exist in reality at that moment, and you as the magician control it completely. However, unlike my Sekigahara excperiance where I expected something that I thought existed but didn’t, you as the magician have to ease the audience out of the false experience so that they never knew it even existed. This way you can work some powerful effects and your magic can truly feel like real magic to the audience. This is something I hope to attain one day. How to do it? Well all I can say is that you must work on presentation as much, if not more as, the actual technical part of the magic. My thoughts anyway. Enjoy and good luck! May you become a Shogun of magic.
Today I wanted to talk about the magic delay. What is this? If you are experienced in magic you know about this concept, if you are new magic you may not have encountered it before unless you have used specific effects that use it. Again in this explanation I will not use any specific magic examples to explain the theory but explain the basic theory the best I can. The idea behind this is that there is a delay between when some effect is started and the the revelation of the effect. The time delay hides the method, so that an audience can not backtrack to find the method, because too much time along with other events in the performance have happened that people’s short term memory can’t remember the point where the method occurred. Make sense? Now the thing is to use the time delay technique effectively for certain effects a well structured routine or show is required. You need to really think and write and test the routine to find the proper time delay that fits in with the routine. This idea is VERY powerful and some of the best performers in the world use this theory. However to use it effectively you really need to think about your show and routines as I mentioned. This is a very short explanation but if you have any thing to add to the idea please post it in the comments on this website or send me an email! Until next time!
Since I have started blogging about different aspects of magic and magic theory I have met and talked with many great magicians over the ideas I have posted as well over what others have posted. This has a been a great experience. One of the people I regular talk about these with is Steve Dickson a magician from Vancouver BC Canada and he presented a theory to me. This is theory is using the spectators own life experience as a way to deceive them but in they really fool themselves because of what they believe. This concept is something I have thought about and have seen other magicians mention from time to time. It is also used as a way to explain how magic fools people. However if a magician can use this concept as a method rather than a way to explain why magic fool people it can be a powerful tool.
Ok now I will talk about what this is and hopefully I make sense. Again I won’t talk about any specific effects but rather the basics of the theory to make you think. Ok every person has their own life experience that influences how they understand the world. In magic we can use this to have the spectator deceive themselves by having them rely on what they know about objects and situations from their own experiences. Ok an example. If I you see a cup you know what it is. You know it is a object used to holds liquid so that you can drink it. You know how to use it and how it works with out any explanation. You also naturally understand the properties of a cup because since you were a child you have used one, and probably everyday. The instant you see one you know what it is how to use it and what its purpose is. Your brains does this all automatically with out any kind of conscious thinking. Now as you can see how this is used to explain why magic fools people as if you do magic with the cup that goes outside what a person knows about the cup it seems like magic. If you fill a cup then turn it upside down and the liquid inside does not fall out its magic. But what I want to explain is how to use this theory to create a situation that a spectator will assume is normal because they relay on this life experience. In this because the spectator will assume a certain situation exists when it doesn’t because of what their life experience tells them. Steve Dickson gave me this great example. “We go through life knowing what we believe we know through life experiences such as pushing doors that have brass square plates on them because that’s what the plates are for, to push, we don’t need the word push on them to understand. We pull on doors with handles on them, again we don’t need the word pull to understand, the object tells us what it is and what to do”.
When using this idea in magic with objects the magician uses the life experience as a tool. By presenting a certain everyday objects the spectators assumes certain things about it and understands it’s properties. In certain effects a magician can use an object that appears to be normal, however it has been modified to create a magical experience. From the spectators point of view they assume certain things about and the magician takes advantage of this. This theory relies on the object not being switched in most cases because the audience fools themselves into it being normal by their brain assuming it’s naturals properties. Then the magician does something that is not characteristic of it’s natural properties which creates the magical effect. This works for situation magic as well were the spectator naturally understands the natural properties of a real situation from their experience and the magician has created a false version of this which then in turn creates the magic from the situation. Now again I did not mention any real effects that use this concept because I don’t want to expose any specific magic effects, but rather have magicians think about this theory. There are of course many popular effects that rely on this concept. Now my homework for you is to think about it. I know because I didn’t use any real examples it may be hard to understand but this is a great psychological tool we can use as magicians. If you have any comments please let me know! I would like to thank Steve Dickson for presenting this topic to me.
