Kinkaku-Ji in Kyoto

Magic like all art forms is about sharing feelings, and experience. However, I see very few magicians sharing their experiences through magic. I have seen many that use canned experiences to fit a certain effect but I am talking about sharing real experiences you have had. You often see comedians telling funny stories about themselves, and as well hears songs whose writers write about their experiences. I believe that magic is the perfect medium to share your real life experiences because you can create the same feeling you had with your experience in the audience by the effect you perform that relates to your experience. Not only does this give your magic meaning it makes the magic truly yours. I try when I can to do this with my own magic. Here in Japan I try to talk about my life in Canada, as well as what it is like for me to live in Japan as a Canadian. I use my magic to relate to my audiences my experiences living in Japan both good and bad and how I over came them. This is a great way to come up with routines. So the next time you are stuck working on a new effect or routine try to draw form you own life experiences, you may just find the creative pool you were looking for.

Aaron

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Japanese Flag

I have written about performing in Japanese and in other languages before in my blog, but today I wanted to write a little more on the subject and this is, it is not just enough for me just to translate or write my show in Japanese but I have to take care to incorporate cultural aspects of the culture into the show. This goes for pop culture, political culture, history, and much more. The reason that this is important is that here in Japan my audience is 99.99% Japanese people. In many of the causes many of the people in a show may or may not know each other depending on the venue. In those cases it is my job to be able to connect the people in one way, with a shared common experience. This I can achieve by making some joke, or commenting on some shared Japanese cultural experience they all have and that I have. I do this by making a comment at the beginning of my show or by making a joke in my introduction. This then right off the starts makes the audience connect psychologically by connecting them to this mentioned shared cultural experience. This really breaks the ice between the audience members so that they are now “primed” to react better to my performance. It also benefits my relationship to them. One it brings me into their shared experience as well. This is very important for me in Japan as a non-Japanese performer. They seem to one find it interesting I know and understand some cultural Japanese experience that they thought that I would not possible have had. This breaks the ice between me and the audience and creates the bond of the shared experience between us. They become more relaxed with me and they start to talking to me like I am Japanese rather than a foreigner, which can be a problem for foreigners living in Japan. This technique I use for my show I also do in my real life in Japan and it has the same effect. So remember if you are performing a show in a different language in a different country make sure you add this shared cultural experience into the show it will go a long way.

Aaron

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Mental Magic

I enjoy good mentalism, and over the years have always tried to incorporate some kind of mentalism into my show. After moving to Japan in 2003, however I have had trouble integrating good mentalism into Japanese. Visual mentalism has been no problem or very simple effects, but trying to perform more sophisticated mental effects in Japanese had been difficult for me. The main reason being of course language. I can speak Japanese but many mentalism effects rely on having good language skills to be able to full control a situation. Recently I have really wanted to get back into performing mentalism again and this time in Japanese. So one way I thought to help was to learn some new mentalism effects in Japanese for the Japanese language. So I picked a book by Ichiro Araki called Mental Magic: Technical Mental magic. I will spend some time over the next few weeks learning some of the effects from this books and concentrating on the language used in Japanese to present them. My hope is that I will be able to create a simple language base where then can adapt some of my old mental magic effects to work better in Japanese and as well learn some new ones. This should be fun!

Aaron

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Magic For People!

Only June 18th and 19th I was performing at  Terushita’s Magic Bar Intiki Magician. Terushita went to Malaysia for a magic convention and some us other Shikoku Magicians took over his bar while he was gone. During the past 3 years I have not had a chance to work a full evening at a magic bar, I have done a few short spots, but not all evening like I used to do 3 times a week when I worked at the old magic bar Momentos. On Friday, June 18, I worked with my good friend Mame Jiro and a University Student Magician Shohei. Another University Student Magician Masashi came at the start of the night but had to leave and came back to help us close up. It was a great and busy night. The picture in this blog is from that night. We were so busy we were not able to take many photos at all. We opened at 7:00PM and finally left the magic bar close to 2:00AM

On Saturday June 19  we “held” the meeting of the Shikoku Magic Friends Club. We were so busy we could not actually hold a meeting. Again we were packed and a lot of people came after the Japan vrs Netherlands World Cup game. Japan lost so people came to watch magic! We had great people all all night. Magicians that performed that night were and I hope I don’t forget anyone, Mame Jiro, Shohei, Shinnotsuke, Kiniku Kun, Jack Amano, Uru, Masashi, and myself. It was good we were all there because it was that packed that we were all kept busy. Shinnotsuke and I left to head back to Ehime at 2:30AM and the last customers were still there. Thanks to Jack and Uru for closing up that night.

It was great to get back to working all night at a magic bar, I have really missed it. Recently I have only been working private events for a shorter set time, but getting behind that bar and enjoying the people like they are enjoying the magic was really good and very motivating. Going to have to do this again very soon. I want to thank Mame Jiro for letting me crash at his place Friday night.

Aaron

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Enjoying Magic

In this age of demand media we love to watch our entrainment when we want and how we want. We use our computers, DVRs, iPhones, iPads, video games consoles and a lot more devices to watch TV, movies and consume content when and where we want. We have busy lives and many of us prefer not to go to the entertainment but rather have the entertainment come to us. Well, I feel magic is one of the few art forms which can come to the customer. Depending on the needs of the customer we can perform at almost any venue, from a clients home, office, or theatre. We magicians can bring the entertainment to our clients. We can create the entertainment in the comfort of our clients most conformable places. I believe we should work hard to be able to perform for clients and where they want and bring a magical entertainment experience to them. I believe this to be very powerful and one of the reasons why I love magic. Magicians can bring a magic experience to groups, then bring more powerful experience to individuals in those groups in their own spaces. This I truly believe makes magic unique and fit the entertainment needs of the modern age. Just something to think about.

Aaron

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Before you read my blog you need to watch the video below if Jamy Ian Swiss on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.

I really enjoyed Jamy’s spot on this show. Thanks to the Internet I was able to see it here in Japan. There are a few things that I really learned from this spot, and they are also the main reasons why I really enjoyed it. One of the reasons is that Jamy had a conversation with Craig. The whole performance is like a conversation with magic as the glue. He interacted well with Craig without any strange awkward feelings of trying to get back on “script”. He was able to go with what Craig said and worked it into his performance frame work and used it for the effect. This made it feel so real and at the moment, which make it very entertaining.  Another reason each of the effects he performed had a reason why it was next. When Craig asked him to do one more he had it ready and linked it with the previous effect by talking about the ways one can choose a card. I loved this premis and made sense for this set. Lastly his effects were perfect. The effects were simple to understand to Craig, the studio audience and on TV. They were powerful and enjoyable with out needless ramble.

So what did I take from this and what should we take from watching this as Magicians. Well we need to enjoy showing magic to our audience and engage in a conversation with them. Clearly Jamy enjoyed talking with Craig and the same with Craig. This then transferred to the live studio audience and to the TV audience. Magic allows us to interact with the audience and Jamy does this without any awkwardness as I mentioned. I feel motivated to create this same kind of feeling in my own shows. For me it really shows how magic should be performed, no ego, no showing off, but and entertaining experience of magic between the Magician and his audience. Well done Jamy you are truly one of the greats of our time.

Aaron

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It has been a while since I have had any time to blog. I have been busy working on some projects which has kept my brain busy so I have not had a chance to blog or AudioBoo. However this week I should be back at it at a regular pace! Anyways What I wanted to talk about today is making you magic understandable to the audience.

Over the past few weeks I have had the chance to see a few magic performers perform live and watch some magic on the Internet. I saw some great magic and great technique. But one bad thing I saw a few times was some magic that was a bit confusing. What I mean the effect was not clear. Even I did not understand what the trick was supposed to be, so I figure a non-magician would also not understand what the effect was. One video I was asked to watch, I watched it over five times but I failed to see what the effect was. The flourishes were great but I did not see any magic and I was supposed to be a routine. Some of the live ones I saw again, I saw great technique but the effects were so long and complicated that sometimes after the magician had o explain what had just happened. It was not clear to the audience, which I think makes them feel very uncomfortable on a few levels. I think that when an audience member sees and effect and they don’t understand what happened they feel that maybe it is their fault, and that other people do understand when in fact they don’t. This makes it hard for the audience to react to the magic and the applause and feedback from them comes back all staticy. The last thing you want to do is make your audience feel awkward. So when you work on routines check them and make sure the effect, and the motivation for the effect is crystal clear. This will improve your show and improve the experience for your audience as well.
Aaron

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Today’s Magic AudioBoo Is about magic and culture.

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Bicycle 125 : Anniversary Edition Playing Cards

Today I have a nice but simple story about my magic. A few weeks ago I went out to a farewell party for a friend, after the party I went to another place close to my apartment that I often go to, with 3 friends.  I have never done any magic up till now there. Well that night I my friends asked me to show some people at the small pub/bar some magic. So I did. I just did a bit of close-up magic I had with me and it went over well. We finished eating and headed home. On Thursday my friends went back there, however I could not go. On Friday they told me that  the small pub had placed decks of cards at each table. It was because the owner really liked my magic so he put card at the tables to give it a magic feel. I felt that was cool because my simple magic I did that night effected someone in a cool way. Next week of course I am going to go back there and have a look. To me this show that magic can have a strong effect one people. This is just a simple story but over the years I have heard many stories , I am sure if you are a magician you have too, about how strongly magic has effected a persons life in a positive way. To me this tells me magic is a powerful tool and helps motivate me to work on my magic so that it can be the best it can be and a powerful entertainment and art form, as all artists want their art to effect the people that see it. This of course is the same for magic. So let’s go the best magic we can do for the people we show it to!

Aaron

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Today’s magic AudioBoo is Brainstorming Magic.

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