Cracking Magic—Part 1: Introduction

There are tons of books, courses and even blogs ded­ic­ated to self-organ­isa­tion. But for magi­cians and their magic-spe­cific needs, there isn’t a lot of inform­a­tion out there.

Over the past few years, I have helped other magi­cians cre­ate their acts and shows, and one thing I have noticed is that they seem to be dis­or­gan­ised. When they have a show date, panic sets in. They rush to the magic store, find the props, decide what they are going to do, get the stuff together and drive to the venue exhausted. We have known all this for a long time.

An end­less array of books, e‑books, notes, DVDs, props, tricks, gim­micks and whatever else fills their cup­boards, base­ments and gar­ages. They seem lost under the pres­sure of inform­a­tion over­load. Most of us have already lost track of what we have accumulated.

So I star­ted this mini-series on the aspects of get­ting organ­ised in magic: how to select mater­ial, archive it, val­id­ate it, improve it, learn it, rehearse it, build it into an act and per­form it.

We will go through all the steps to bring some order to the chaos. If you join me (and it only takes a few minutes a day that you would oth­er­wise waste on Face­book or social media), you will be sur­prised at the pro­gress within the next month.

You will be organ­ised, have a clear plan for your act(s) and have all the mater­ial ready to use. You will cer­tainly have more fun with your magic.

I am not aim­ing this little series at seasoned pro­fes­sion­als who already have their organ­isa­tion in place. I am aim­ing it at the “help­less” ama­teur, most of whom have a demand­ing job, fam­ily, friends, another hobby and a social life. They can­not devote all their time to magic. This is the ulti­mate “magi­cian’s hacks series”—a crash course in how to make your magical life easier without sac­ri­fi­cing your magical qual­ity. Sav­ing time, money, energy and frus­tra­tion is the goal.

What needs to be organised?

Col­lect­ors are organ­ised: They know what to col­lect, where to put it, and they have already archived their col­lec­tions in some way. There is no need to tell them what to do. Things are dif­fer­ent for the cas­ual hob­by­ist. Too much stuff on the magic mar­ket, too much already bought and received, too much to sort out. I believe that in order to get organ­ised in magic you need to think about the fol­low­ing issues:

1. Choice
2. Acquisition
3. Validation
4. Archive/Store
5. Modification
6. Exercise
7. Rehearsal
8. Performance

It all boils down to build­ing an archive that you will use as a crafts­man would use his tool­box. In this archive there will be sub-cat­egor­ies: lit­er­at­ure, video, audio, moves, tech­niques and props. Inform­a­tion on how to present your routines.

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

The first step

The first step with any change is know­ing that it is neces­sary. So you have to acknow­ledge the fact that your cur­rent organ­isa­tion is crap and you are liv­ing with a magical mess. And you have to want to change it. That is your choice, but if you have read this far, I assume you have pleaded guilty and made the change.

And here is the first piece of advice: stop buy­ing magic now (books, ebooks, down­loads, DVDs, tricks or whatever). It does­n’t have to be forever, but for the next time, until your archive is ready and you’ve learnt the tech­niques of selec­tion, and until you’ve installed your organ­isa­tional system.

As the Chinese pro­verb goes, “You can­not fill a cup that is already full”. Don’t fill your cup with use­less mater­ial, it’s already too full. You need an empty cup to put some­thing new in.