May 21: A lesson in patience
A famous magician once said
that magic is unique among the arts because it allows a rank beginner to
appear like a master with very little work. This is offensive and
probably a little true.
The late magician Don Alan invented something called the Invisible Deck. It is one of the best-selling magic tricks of all time. The idea is you "hand" someone an invisible deck of cards and you have them shuffle it, take one card out, look at it, turn it around, and slide it back into the deck. Then they give this deck back to the magician who magically makes the deck become visible. To prove this, he runs through the deck and discovers one card is upside down. You guessed it, it's the card the guy "looked" at.
The Invisible Deck is easy to do. You really can buy it at one in the afternoon and be fooling people with it at 1:15. It is a trick that every magician performs the same way. Poor Don Alan died hating magicians. He must have felt the same way Thomas Edison would have felt if anyone who owns a light switch claimed they invented the light bulb.
I hate watching magicians rip off Don Alan's Invisible Deck routine. Hate hate hate hate hate. I actually dread walking into restaurants that employ strolling magicians. This makes me sad because close-up magic has the capacity to astonish much more than anything in the arsenal of grand illusionists. Really, I should be feeling anticipation. Instead, that inner cynic groans "Please, not another Invisible Deck." I don't believe in being rude to fellow magicians, especially when they are performing, but I don't think it's rude to hand them my own deck of (ungimmicked) cards and say "I'll give you a five dollar tip if you can do something with these." I hope I'm not sounding too elitist here but if you can't do a couple tricks with a borrowed deck, I don't think you have any business calling yourself a card magician.
I suspect that magic store owners don't like dealing with professional magicians. They prefer the dreamers, the serious hobbyists, the 12-year-old boys who want to learn to do something cool, the young men who want something to help them pick up women. Take a look at the copy written to advertise certain magic tricks. You'll read things like EASY TO DO. PERFORM IT MINUTES AFTER YOU GET IT. EVERYONE WILL THINK YOU'RE A PRO. NO SLEIGHT-OF-HAND REQUIRED - THE INGENIOUS GIMMICK DOES ALL THE WORK FOR YOU.
Watched a magician do a set once. He did three cards tricks with three different decks. Now if he could do real magic, why would he need a different deck for each trick? If he wants to convince the audience that he's doing real magic up there (which he should) then, conceivably, he should only need one deck. If he must switch decks, he'd better have a darned good excuse for doing so. If he doesn't the audience is going to get suspicious.
There's plenty of card magicians out there who absolutely refuse to work with gimmicked decks or individual gimmicked cards and I say God bless 'em all. These guys are purists, dedicated to using sleight of hand and misdirection instead of gaffed cards. I'm not quite so extreme. There are some routines that are greatly enhanced by a gaffed card, two examples being Darwin Ortiz's Back Off and Dan Harlan's Little R&B. But a caveat, neither of these routines can be performed 15 minutes after you get them. You're gonna have to work, baby, if you want to pull them off.
Here's a true story. Not a word of a lie in this one because I really want to illustrate my point here. I was flying home from Calgary and I had my magic suitcase in cargo. I had a close-up show to do the next evening. There would be about 50 people there. It was a fundraiser for a local charity.
And wouldn't you believe it but the airline lost my luggage. I had my entire close-up act in there. I was mad but I was not devastated. Instead, I went to the store and I bought two packs of ungimmicked Bicycle cards and I did the show with those and although it wasn't the show I had hoped to perform, it was still a good show and the audience was pleased.
It was a good show because I had put in the practice time.
What is practice time? Quite simply - it is a safe venue for failure.
Ever see a magician perform a flawless magic trick? I guarantee you that's the result of that same magician failing to perform that same trick at least a hundred times (usually in the privacy of his bedroom.) The same is true of every juggler, every acrobat, every artist. What you see on the stage or the street is only because the performer was willing to endure hundreds of dropped clubs and bruised knees in the pursuit of excellence.
Understand that failure is the back door to success. That's a great lesson in patience.
The late magician Don Alan invented something called the Invisible Deck. It is one of the best-selling magic tricks of all time. The idea is you "hand" someone an invisible deck of cards and you have them shuffle it, take one card out, look at it, turn it around, and slide it back into the deck. Then they give this deck back to the magician who magically makes the deck become visible. To prove this, he runs through the deck and discovers one card is upside down. You guessed it, it's the card the guy "looked" at.
The Invisible Deck is easy to do. You really can buy it at one in the afternoon and be fooling people with it at 1:15. It is a trick that every magician performs the same way. Poor Don Alan died hating magicians. He must have felt the same way Thomas Edison would have felt if anyone who owns a light switch claimed they invented the light bulb.
I hate watching magicians rip off Don Alan's Invisible Deck routine. Hate hate hate hate hate. I actually dread walking into restaurants that employ strolling magicians. This makes me sad because close-up magic has the capacity to astonish much more than anything in the arsenal of grand illusionists. Really, I should be feeling anticipation. Instead, that inner cynic groans "Please, not another Invisible Deck." I don't believe in being rude to fellow magicians, especially when they are performing, but I don't think it's rude to hand them my own deck of (ungimmicked) cards and say "I'll give you a five dollar tip if you can do something with these." I hope I'm not sounding too elitist here but if you can't do a couple tricks with a borrowed deck, I don't think you have any business calling yourself a card magician.
I suspect that magic store owners don't like dealing with professional magicians. They prefer the dreamers, the serious hobbyists, the 12-year-old boys who want to learn to do something cool, the young men who want something to help them pick up women. Take a look at the copy written to advertise certain magic tricks. You'll read things like EASY TO DO. PERFORM IT MINUTES AFTER YOU GET IT. EVERYONE WILL THINK YOU'RE A PRO. NO SLEIGHT-OF-HAND REQUIRED - THE INGENIOUS GIMMICK DOES ALL THE WORK FOR YOU.
Watched a magician do a set once. He did three cards tricks with three different decks. Now if he could do real magic, why would he need a different deck for each trick? If he wants to convince the audience that he's doing real magic up there (which he should) then, conceivably, he should only need one deck. If he must switch decks, he'd better have a darned good excuse for doing so. If he doesn't the audience is going to get suspicious.
There's plenty of card magicians out there who absolutely refuse to work with gimmicked decks or individual gimmicked cards and I say God bless 'em all. These guys are purists, dedicated to using sleight of hand and misdirection instead of gaffed cards. I'm not quite so extreme. There are some routines that are greatly enhanced by a gaffed card, two examples being Darwin Ortiz's Back Off and Dan Harlan's Little R&B. But a caveat, neither of these routines can be performed 15 minutes after you get them. You're gonna have to work, baby, if you want to pull them off.
Here's a true story. Not a word of a lie in this one because I really want to illustrate my point here. I was flying home from Calgary and I had my magic suitcase in cargo. I had a close-up show to do the next evening. There would be about 50 people there. It was a fundraiser for a local charity.
And wouldn't you believe it but the airline lost my luggage. I had my entire close-up act in there. I was mad but I was not devastated. Instead, I went to the store and I bought two packs of ungimmicked Bicycle cards and I did the show with those and although it wasn't the show I had hoped to perform, it was still a good show and the audience was pleased.
It was a good show because I had put in the practice time.
What is practice time? Quite simply - it is a safe venue for failure.
Ever see a magician perform a flawless magic trick? I guarantee you that's the result of that same magician failing to perform that same trick at least a hundred times (usually in the privacy of his bedroom.) The same is true of every juggler, every acrobat, every artist. What you see on the stage or the street is only because the performer was willing to endure hundreds of dropped clubs and bruised knees in the pursuit of excellence.
Understand that failure is the back door to success. That's a great lesson in patience.
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