Alexander de Cova

Here is an inter­est­ing and thought-pro­vok­ing art­icle you should read before going into my ram­blings: http://​blog​.sim​please​.at/​2​0​1​4​/​0​2​/​d​o​n​t​-​p​l​e​a​s​e​-​y​o​u​r​-​c​l​i​e​n​ts/

Good thought, right?

For a design­er, this is simply a truth. The qual­ity of the rela­tion­ship customer/​designer depends on how good the design­er is find­ing out what the cus­tom­er really needs.

In magic, we might have a sim­il­ar situ­ation. The pro­fes­sion­als will know. Most of the times the only thing of import­ance is what the cus­tom­er needs when hir­ing the magi­cian for his event.

But many magi­cians ignore this com­pletely and base the choice of mater­i­al and their atti­tude on what they per­son­ally like to per­form. Being people that love their toys, gim­micks and fancy magic stuff, they tend to over­see what is import­ant to their cli­ents. Too much boast­ing here.

Con­sequently, their choice of mater­i­al is made from their per­spect­ive, a per­spect­ive that has been shaped over the years attend­ing con­ven­tions, lec­tures and magic club meet­ings. The view­point is that from a magi­cian, an insider, a freak some­times. Barely noth­ing a ‘nor­mal’ per­son can relate to.

Devel­op­ing a set of ques­tions might help in choos­ing the right kind of mater­i­al. Instead of ask­ing ‘Will this kill them?’ ques­tions like ‘Why should they like this?’ or ‘Will they have a sort of bene­fit when see­ing this?’ might be of bet­ter help.

I that con­text, Tamariz’s Sev­en Veils of Magic come to my mind. Para­mount is that the audi­ence likes you genu­inely. For this to hap­pen, all the sev­en veils must be ful­filled. And then, even if there is no oth­er bene­fit, the audi­ence will enjoy a per­form­ance of a per­son they really like, which makes a good emo­tion­al impact.

This might look like being not too much, but then it is bet­ter than hav­ing them sit through a rude show-off.

Pass it on!

This is quite a good say­ing that someone reminded me of some time ago. I have been think­ing about it really hard. I’m talk­ing about what to do in magic in these times, and what to pub­lish and share with the magic com­munity and how to do that.

After see­ing what’s going on at the Black­pool con­ven­tion this year I was sort of hor­ri­fied. Hor­ri­fied from the fact that everything expan­ded to such a degree and hor­ri­fied from see­ing what kind of people are run­ning around at this con­ven­tion. Of course, every­body has the right to attend almost everything on this plan­et. But then I was think­ing how it were if I were to share all my secrets with all of them. And this is where I rad­ic­ally changed my attitude.

I real­ize that an estim­ated 70% of the people attend­ing the biggest magic con­ven­tion ever are not the kind of magi­cian I would want to share my know­ledge and ideas with. What I saw on all the pic­tures from the deal­er­’s hall in Black­pool con­vinced me again not to attend this anymore.

I’m fully aware of the fact that magic has changed a lot and that in these days the com­mer­cial aspect is pre­dom­in­ant. I see pic­tures of deal­ers selling their stuff to any­body who is inter­ested in. Even to obvi­ous lay­men of magic (at least, it appears from judging the pic­tures). Look at the vari­ous pic­tures from the deal­er­’s hall and you will see all this has changed into a huge industry, sim­il­ar to the toy industry. Gim­micks for grown-up kids, prices, selling and cus­tom­ers are import­ant. But not the secrets. Read­ing some of the quotes here made me think .…

Good magic has always been depend­ent on how well the secrets are pro­tec­ted. There have been times where really import­ant stuff was kept and handled in the under­ground. That means that only a selec­ted few people, who were con­sidered worthy of it and could handle those secrets, had access to this know­ledge. Nowadays every­body can know everything he wants; even stuff he can­not handle properly.

I fully agree with Jim Steinmeyer’s opin­ion that magi­cians are guard­ing an empty safe (con­cern­ing secrets). So prob­ably I’m not going to change any­thing. But what I can do is to lim­it the access to my own material.

I don’t want to say that it is a good idea to keep an inter­ested per­son away from some of the secrets he wants to know. We live in a free world and inform­a­tion is flow­ing freely as well. But I don’t think it is reas­on­able to make it too easy for any­body to access cer­tain stuff. One thing to make sure this hap­pens is to do advert­ising in the big magic magazines, on the Inter­net in the social media, and so on. Anoth­er way to make sure to dis­trib­ute the secrets is the price. All this price dump­ing, all that the bar­gain pack­ages the deal­ers are offer­ing only helps in dis­trib­ut­ing secrets on a big scale, con­sequently cater­ing to people who are only inter­ested in the know-how and in get­ting a good price.

Con­cern­ing my most import­ant work, THE DE COVA FILES, I will change the pro­ced­ure. These books are not going to be advert­ised on the offi­cial magic­al mar­ket. They will not be avail­able from any deal­er (except me). You will get inform­a­tion on it only if you are really inter­ested and into magic. Only then you will have the know­ledge where and when to get the books. Oth­er­wise, you prob­ably won’t even know they exist. And they will surely not be offered cheaply or with that usu­al dis­count, pack­age deals and bar­gain stuff.

Love it: yes, I do love magic and I do love the secrets.

Leave it: no way!

Change it: I just set what I’m going to change.

“A secret’s worth depends on the people from whom it must be kept.” – Car­los Ruiz Zafón, The Shad­ow of the Wind

“The best way of keep­ing a secret is to pre­tend there isn’t one.” ― Mar­garet Atwood, The Blind Assassin

Pass it on!

In the past years I star­ted to watch care­fully oth­er magi­cians’ selec­tions of tricks that they per­form in their shows. No mat­ter where I looked, again and again I saw the same tricks (at least here in Ger­many, Aus­tria and Switzer­land): Chop Cup (Paul Daniels style), float­ing paper rose (Kev­in James), float­ing table (Dirk Losander), $100 bill switch (10 Euro bill to 50 Euro bill and back), bill in lem­on, paper balls over the head, a vari­ation of the George Sands’ rope trick, the passé passé bottle or the mul­tiply­ing bottles. Anoth­er trick that recently got very pop­u­lar is the link­ing of three bor­rowed fingerings.

Now I don’t mind the clas­sics of magic and I don’t mind those tricks just lis­ted, if they are prop­erly per­formed. But the prob­lem is that each and every one of the magi­cians I saw per­form these tricks use the same old lines and pat­ter the oth­er magi­cians are using.

Maybe this is so because magi­cians love to go out and watch oth­er magi­cians per­form. When they do so they are mostly inter­ested in some­how record­ing and then copy­ing the other’s lines and present­a­tion­al details for their own shows.

If these magi­cians later com­plain that it is hard to get some jobs in these times, then it is because they don’t real­ize that with all that copy­ing they put magic into a sort of same­ness which makes it unat­tract­ive to book­ers, because all the so-called acts look more or less the same.

In my life I’ve read and stud­ied an estim­ated 2000+ books. I know for sure that there is enough mater­i­al to sup­ply 500 magi­cians with 500 dif­fer­ent-look­ing acts. Nowadays it is very easy to get access to all this know­ledge and vari­ety of mater­i­al. Lack of mater­i­al and ideas is no excuse.

I under­stand it can be trouble to search out new mater­i­al and ideas, to prac­tice and hone them, and then jump into the cold water and start to per­form them in front of live audi­ence. Simply because of the fact that at the begin­ning there is no ‹secur­ity› and guar­an­tee for suc­cess. The pro­cess of mak­ing a new trick or routine into a win­ner in front of an audi­ence is tough. Only very few magi­cians will want to take the road of hard-work­ing troubled to finally end up with an ori­gin­al and per­son­al per­form­ing piece.

I also under­stand that it is easi­er to watch anoth­er magi­cian per­form some­thing, which registers well and brings him suc­cess, and then to simply take the piece away from him and per­form it in one’s own ‹show›. Most magi­cians are copycats and they do this for many years. But in these times the num­ber of magi­cians has increased, as well as the expos­ure of these magi­cians on the media. So what the gen­er­al audi­ence gets to see from magic looks more or less same. No won­der that the interest starts to decrease.

Magic could be really fas­cin­at­ing per­form­ing art if we had more real artist-minded magi­cians per­form­ing ori­gin­al and unique stuff. What we have in the major­ity are hob­by­ist magi­cians who are lazy, without ideas and just simply dull.

The key to real suc­cess is hard work, a cre­at­ive approach and the desire to per­form per­son­al­ised mater­i­al for an audi­ence. All of this requires being pre­pared to put some effort into it.

So I chal­lenge you: ask your­self what it is that you like about a per­form­ance, and then ask your­self how you your­self could bring your own voice to a sim­il­ar cre­ation. Is it the wit­ti­cism of the pat­ter of one magi­cian? Is it the dex­ter­ity of anoth­er? Is it the com­bin­a­tion of mater­i­al that takes a col­lec­tion of tricks and turns it into a set–a piece of theat­er? First give voice to what you love about that per­former, and then find your own way of express­ing that aware­ness. In oth­er words, make oth­er magi­cians want to copy you!

I under­stand this is too much effort and most of the magi­cians don’t want to invest into their magic. They want to achieve max­im­um suc­cess with a min­im­um amount of effort.

This same­ness of per­formers and their effects makes magic dull. This is sad.

But it does­n’t have to be! Dare to be your­self. Dare to look at the acts of oth­er magi­cians as a begin­ning for you and not an end des­tin­a­tion for you. What makes a Harry Ander­son a Harry Ander­son? What makes a Bill Malone a Bill Malone? What makes a Tam­ar­iz a Tam­ar­iz? Don’t be merely a mir­ror: be a stu­dent of the art.

Pass it on!

Does going to the Black­pool Con­ven­tion, drink­ing in the Ruskins, social­iz­ing, mak­ing one’s ego big in front of oth­ers, chat­ting bull­shit to oth­er guys, hanging around and shar­ing use­less card moves really improve your magic?

Or maybe does it only charge up the ego?

When you attend the Black­pool Con­ven­tion, year after year, are all the ‘Black­pool­ers’ bet­ter magi­cians than after­wards? After see­ing all these great lec­tures and exhib­i­tions, did they improve after that convention?

I doubt it.

How is that feel­ing, sit­ting cozy in the dark back of the theat­er and wit­ness­ing shows, oth­er per­formers try­ing their best, and then laugh­ing and whist­ling at them at your will?

Many times most Black­pool vis­it­ors (who in the major­ity could­n’t even do only a frac­tion of what these people are offer­ing on stage) have the right to demol­ish oth­ers on the stage–those who try to enter­tain them. Where is the mutu­al respect for oth­er people?

How do these cow­ardly creeps in the secur­ity of the theat­er feel boo­ing a per­former (a human being try­ing his/​her best to please you on stage) from the secur­ity of your lousy anonym­ous seat in the theatre? Does it feel as com­fort­able as bash­ing oth­er people in Social Media – with an anonym­ous account, no name, no face?

And after­wards they write in the for­ums (anonym­ously) how bad it was. Show­ing their expert­ise and ‘exper­i­ence’? Telling oth­ers what they found bad, knew bet­ter, etc.? Where is the respect of you magi­cians and broth­ers? And, by the way, these humans you are whist­ling and boo­ing at are human beings like you. They try their best, and nobody is per­fect. They are onstage and deserve respect. Not one in that bas­tard theat­er audi­ence has the right to boo and whistle. They are not opera or theat­er experts. They are con­ven­tion­eers; pass­ive con­sumers who could­n’t do what the oth­ers are actu­ally doing onstage.

How would you feel if you were to stand on this stage in front of 3,000 people, present your act and then be whistled and booed of by a bunch of 2,000 crude and thought­less people lack­ing any respect for a per­former (no mat­ter how bad he/​she may be)? How would you feel?

Is it now the time of the stu­pid foot­ball rat-pack, some nasty and ego-driv­en people, who think they know about magic, because they know the Win­ter­gar­dens and which of the hotels in Black­pool is best, who think book­ing a cheap flight to Manchester and then buy­ing entrance tick­ets to a magic event qual­i­fies them to be magicians?

It is like this, unfor­tu­nately, but I per­son­ally don’t think that this rat-pack under­stands what magic really is about–the his­tory, the per­formers, the the­ory. Sadly, more and more really nice people stay away from con­ven­tions and also don’t want to mingle with that oth­er people.

But then – we have all rights, we want fun, we have the right to be enter­tained, we want all the know­ledge because we are someone and we are worth it. We have the right to own and have everything. Because we are. And if we decide to take up magic, then it is our right to do so. Tal­ent, ded­ic­a­tion and prac­tice do not matter.

I don’t think so.

This is no longer a magic con­ven­tion. It went even worse than the ancient Roman gla­di­at­or’s games. The Black­pool Con­ven­tion sadly mutated into a thing for the pub­lic, for the ‘fans of magic’. For a pub­lic that pays travel and entrance, to ulti­mately boo out per­formers (fel­lows) onstage. Pan­em et circenses.

I under­stand magic these days is an assembly of mostly ‘fans of magic’. People, inter­ested and curi­ous about magic, gath­er­ing to have a good time and learn some secrets. OK. Being togeth­er to show and exper­i­ence their being and belong­ing togeth­er. I can­not share that view of a magic con­ven­tion because I am old fash­ioned. In these days, it simply was­n’t pos­sible for every­body to attend a magic con­ven­tion. You had to be a magician.

Is there any respect left for magic from these audi­ences? The major­ity of the attendees in Black­pool is not what you would call full fledged magi­cians. Many back­pack­ers are run­ning around search­ing for the next emo­tion­al kick. It is an assembly of fans, which is OK if it were a beer fest­iv­al or con­cert … a thing for the masses.

But it was sup­posed to be an exclus­ive magic con­ven­tion. Nowadays, the biggest shouters and scream­ers get the atten­tion of the pay­ing pub­lic. But sadly not the exper­i­enced and cap­able magi­cians. Lay­men rule the world of a magic con­ven­tion; not the real magi­cians anymore.

I was really hop­ing to see a nice and excit­ing magic con­ven­tion in Black­pool because they said it is the biggest and greatest one there is.

I don’t think so any­more. I don’t believe that I will see a magic con­ven­tion that moves my heart. I do fear I will see a sort of football/​masses event, where stu­pid people without any know­ledge about the art of magic live out their lat­ent ego-aggres­sions against oth­ers, boast­ing around with pseudo-know­ledge, show­ing off stuff and ideas that are not their own. Just to try to shine bet­ter and light­er than the oth­er. Mor­ons shout­ing out. Real magic and art gets quieter and quieter .…

For me, the concept of that fab­ulous ‘Black­pool magic con­ven­tion’ has died. Sadly. This cer­tainly is a sort of con­ven­tion, but then, for me, the magic and the spir­it faded out.

Good­bye, Black­pool, farewell. You were won­der­ful many, many years ago. But now, I can­not recog­nize you anymore.

Now you are dead. The real nice people, which made you what you were, died or stay away.

Pass it on.

Recently, I was watch­ing the You­Tube clip of Dav­id Roth’s per­form­ance on the Penn & Tell­er show. I was inter­ested in see­ing his hand­ling of the open ser­vante. A glance at the pic­ture will tell you that the dir­ect­ors of the show made my stud­ies very simple. In fact, the Bird’s Eye view of parts of the routine are almost like out of an instruc­tion­al magic book. Okay, the logo cam­ou­flages it pretty well in this case … 🙂

This made me aware of the dif­fi­culties when per­form­ing on TV. I’m not a big fan of these types of record­ings because obvi­ously they want to give the audi­ence an all-around view. But why? To make the per­form­ance more attract­ive? Or is it the notion that an audi­ence these days has the right to see everything on their mega screens in detail? I am in no way cri­ti­ciz­ing the P&T show because these guys know what they do. And I am sure Dav­id was informed and agreed on all this. And there was­n’t really an expos­ure of the secret (at least for the laymen).

The prob­lem for me is not so much the secret-keep­ing aspect. In my opin­ion, this recod­ing atti­tude reduces the magic to a sort of puzzle. The routine is broken by the dir­ect­or and the per­son­al­ity of the per­former and the flair of the per­form­ance sort of gets lost. The focus is only on the hands and the props used. And all that is done so that a few stu­pid and bored couch pota­toes sit­ting on their sofas have a good view of things they don’t under­stand any­way. I don’t think this is the right way to make magic more attractive.

The solu­tion? I don’t really have one. I don’t per­form on TV, and when asked to do so (yes, I have been asked quite a couple of times in the past), I always refuse. I note that some per­formers handle it very well and they over­come these obstacles. But what I have seen with the major­ity of magi­cians appear­ing in morn­ing TV shows and talk shows (often inex­per­i­enced ama­teur magi­cians who are blinded by the appar­ent fame and pub­li­city) is a dif­fer­ent world.

Usu­ally, they don’t have the lux­ury of work­ing with the dir­ect­or who under­stands and respects the needs of magic on TV. There­fore, we see a lot of flashes and unin­ten­tion­al expos­ures, which is a sad thing. A solu­tion? I don’t have one … except maybe: “Don’t do it!”

Pass it on!

I am reflect­ing on the mag­ni­fi­cent magi­cians and people who brought all that joy to my life. Without them, I would­n’t be what I am.

Par­tic­u­larly, I would like to express my sin­cerest thanks to Mr. Dav­id Roth. When I was a young­ster, his coin work shaped me. Now I am ‘old’ and he still shapes me 🙂

He teached me so many things, after study­ing the clas­sics like Bobo’s and so on, what ‘hip’ coin magic has to look like. He showed a new world. Mr. Roth opened doors for me. That was not only inspir­ing, but break­ing all exist­ing rules.

Mr. Roth, thank you for what you have giv­en to us all. You are the undis­puted mod­ern mas­ter, who really shaped a generation.

In my upcom­ing lec­ture on mis­dir­ec­tion, I will demon­strate (NOT explain!) a cer­tain thing of yours, which I con­sider to be just bril­liant (O.S.). Some­thing I saw, and which fooled me BADLY. I had no f*** idea. That was bril­liant. It does­n’t hap­pen often, but you fooled me. Thank you for that. That feel­ing of magic again was on me …

All the young ‘stars’, com­plain­ing about the way Mr. Roth per­formed on the Penn& Tell­er show, com­plain­ing he trembled a bit, etc. – keep in mind: It is still this Dav­id Roth, on whose shoulders we stand. The young ‘I know it all and can do it bet­ter’ gen­er­a­tion. We were the same, young and cheeky lads. Maybe also Dav­id was that way when he was young. But then – he com­pletely changed the way coin magic was done. And most of us did not achieve that. A bit trem­bling does­n’t mat­ter so far, because it is the ideas and con­cepts, which he gave us, that count. How many do his sleights, moves and routines in reg­u­lar work?

Thank you, Dav­id Roth. Thank you for what you have giv­en us. Thank you for bring­ing really innov­at­ive think­ing to a ran­dom area of magic: coin magic.

I am still won­der­ing about and study­ing your mater­i­al. Only now with 52 years of age, I start to truly under­stand some of your think­ing and stuff. And I am proud to be allowed to stand on your shoulders. No mat­ter what oth­er people will be there – you will always in my heart be ‘the mas­ter’ of them all. I pull my hat.

Sin­cerely and with deep and mutu­al respect for your work and geni­us. Alex­an­der de Cova a ‘Dav­id Roth fan’? No – a true believ­er and follower.

Alex­an­der de Cova

Pass it on!