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Crack­ing Magic (2) – Structure

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Let’s take a look at that mon­ster called archive. We have to build one from scratch. Much bet­ter than wast­ing time in try­ing to get some over­view of the mess we have already. This will be our new archive, that also rep­res­ents our new life as a magi­cian. And we want to build it right.

It has to be a work­ing archive. Some sort of sys­tem that is easy to use and clearly struc­tured. Noth­ing in there that is just dead weight. The sim­pler the sys­tem, the better.

The basic idea with this new archive is to focus on sim­pli­city and ease of use. Noth­ing wrong with the stuff you have already, but for­get that for the moment. Pre­tend it is not there.

I will describe things the way I do them. This came into being after many years of tri­als and error. I know the sys­tem works, but feel free to change as much as you want. It is flex­ible. My archive con­sists of the fol­low­ing three basic elements:

  • Know­ledge
  • Props
  • Abil­ity

Each one has to be handled a little dif­fer­ent. But that is basic­ally what we are deal­ing with. This is where everything in magic that comes along my way is sor­ted into. Each item belongs into one of the categories.

Know­ledge

Here we have everything con­cern­ing inform­a­tion. Prin­ted mater­i­al, digit­al mater­i­al, per­son­al notes, his­tor­ic­al stuff. Everything that can be clas­si­fied as know­ledge about magic.

Props

The title says it all. Here we organ­ize the phys­ic­al props we need for our magic: tricks, gim­micks, ward­robe, trans­port­a­tion, spare mater­i­al, tools.

Abil­ity

This is not a phys­ic­al stor­age place. This is your per­son­al col­lec­tion of the routines, moves, sleights, feints, pat­ter, gags and routines you can per­form (or want to be able to per­form). It is mainly what you can do already. This archive shows how good you really are as a per­form­ing magician.

That has to be organ­ized as well, because some tech­niques might war­rant con­stant refresh­ing (memo deck, sleights, set-ups, etc.) and have to be kept “sharp”. In order to learn a new tech­nique prop­erly, some plan­ning and organ­iz­a­tion must be there as well.

Ideally, your little per­son­al archive should enable you to cre­ate small acts, routines and tricks. Put them togeth­er and per­form them. The archive is per­son­al­ized for you only, for your abil­it­ies and your interests in magic.

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