Crack­ing Magic (1) — Intro

There are tons of books and cour­ses out there, even blogs dedi­ca­ted to the topic of self-orga­niza­tion. But for the magi­ci­ans, there isn’t too much on this. In the past years, hel­ping other magi­ci­ans create their acts and shows, one thing has been very pro­min­ently: They don’t seem to be orga­ni­zed magic-wise. When they have a show date, then the panic starts. Rush into the magic gar­bage room, search for the props, decide what to per­form, get the stuff tog­e­ther and finally head to the loca­tion com­ple­tely exhaus­ted. We all know it for years.

concept

An end­less array of books, eBooks, notes, DVDs, props, tricks, gim­micks and name it popu­la­tes their clo­sets, base­ments and gara­ges. They seem to be lost under the pres­sure of the infor­ma­tion over­load. Most of us have alre­ady lost track of what we have accumulated.

Because I know that I will con­ti­nue to help other magi­ci­ans crea­ting and put­ting their stuff into prac­tice, I will start this mini-series on the aspects of get­ting orga­ni­zed in magic: How to sel­ect mate­rial, archive it, vali­date it, improve it, learn it, rehe­arse it and finally built it into an act and per­form it.

Here we will go through all the neces­sary steps to get some order into the chaos. When you join me (and it only takes a few minu­tes each day, which you pro­ba­bly would waste on Face­book) you will be sur­pri­sed of your pro­gress within the next 30 days.

After that, you should be orga­ni­zed, have a clear plan of your act(s) and have all the neces­sary mate­rial ready to use. And you should have more enjoy­ment with your magic.

This little series is not inten­ded for the sea­so­ned pro­fes­sio­nals, who obviously do have their orga­niza­tion alre­ady. It is aimed at the “hel­p­less” ama­teur, who has a day job, family etc. and can­not spend the full time on magic. It is the ulti­mate “magician’s hacks series”. A crash course on how to make your magic life easier wit­hout sca­ri­fy­ing the magi­cal quality.

What has to be organized?
Coll­ec­tors usually are orga­ni­zed: They know what to coll­ect, where to put it and they have their coll­ec­tions archi­ved somehow alre­ady. No need to tell them what to do. For the cau­sal hob­by­ist per­for­mer, things look quite dif­fe­rent. Too much stuff available in the magic mar­ket, too much alre­ady bought and acqui­red, too much to sort out. basi­cally, I believe that in get­ting orga­ni­zed in magic, one has to think about the fol­lo­wing topics:

1. sel­ect
2. acquire
3. validate
4. archive/​store
5. modify
6. practice
7. rehearse
8. perform

In my view, it all boils down to build an archive that can be used as easily as an arti­san would use his tool­box . In this archive, there will be sub-cate­go­ries: lite­ra­ture, video/​audio mate­rial, moves, tech­ni­ques and props. Addi­tio­nally some infor­ma­tion on the actual acts or rou­ti­nes con­cer­ning presentation.

In this course, I will cover each and every aspect of that and will give you sug­ges­ti­ons, tips and hacks that will make your life easier in no time.

The First Step
Natu­rally, the first step with all change peo­ple do in their life is the rea­liza­tion that such a change is neces­sary. So you will have to ack­now­ledge the fact that your orga­niza­tion is crappy and you are living with a magic mess. And you will have to have the desire to change that. That is your decis­ion, but then you are rea­ding this so far and I sup­pose that you plead guilty and have made the decis­ion to do the change.

And here is the first suggestion:
STOP buy­ing any magic (books, ebooks, down­loads, DVD, tricks or wha­te­ver) just for now. This does­n’t have to be fore­ver, but only for the time until your archive is finis­hed and you have lear­ned the tech­ni­ques to sel­ect apro­priate stuff and have your orga­niza­tion sys­tem installed.

As the Chi­nese pro­verb says: “You can­not fill a cup that is alre­ady full.” Don’t make your cup spill, it is too full alre­ady. We need an empty cup in order to install some­thing new in there.

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