The Easy To Per­form Trap

It is not uncom­mon to see the phrase “easy to per­form” used in advert­ise­ments for magic items. As some of my research in the magic com­munity has shown, the major­ity of magi­cians (ama­teurs and pro­fes­sion­als alike) are attrac­ted to advert­ise­ments that use this or sim­il­ar copy.

Under­stand­able, because who isn’t inter­ested in tak­ing the shortest and easi­est route to a trick? And if easy to per­form means that I can “con­cen­trate on the present­a­tion” because I don’t have to worry about the technique/​mechanics of a trick or routine, so much the better!

Many magi­cians like to give the impres­sion that what they do is not easy, but an art. In their pub­li­city they claim to be artists (most of them even extraordin­ary). They claim that their art is unique, of high qual­ity and of the highest stand­ard. They claim that it has taken them years to mas­ter it and that they still have to prac­tise for hours every day. They want you to think that per­form­ing their magic takes a lot of study (it does), requires spe­cial tal­ent and incred­ible skill, and is not for everyone.

What a load of rub­bish! Take a look at some of the stuff on offer in our mar­ket. How much skill or prac­tice time do you need to turn on an elec­tron­ic device that gives the impres­sion of what a spec­tat­or has writ­ten on your hid­den iPhone in the per­form­ance case? How much skill does it take to press a but­ton on the remote con­trol in your pock­et to turn on the little motor hid­den in the jumbo pack of cards that then pushes up a card using your magic­al powers?

When lay­men start Googling for explan­a­tions of these won­ders (and they do), it is coun­ter­pro­duct­ive for them to find words like “A bar­gain at only $9.95. Easy to per­form, no sleight of hand required, com­pletely self-work­ing. Unpack and per­form in two minutes”. The same goes for dis­cov­er­ing things like “No manip­u­la­tion required. The built-in elec­tron­ics do all the work for you”.

When a lay­man has finally found some­thing and dis­cov­ers to his sur­prise that “magic tricks are often sold quite cheaply and are very easy to do”, the magi­cian is left in a piti­able pos­i­tion. His ‘art’ is gone, reduced to a grown man show­ing off chil­dren’s toys that any­one with a little more intel­li­gence than a mon­key could do. Not really a great image to present as a ‘mas­ter of deception’.

I blame the deal­ers (or who else writes such things?) for not being hon­est enough and try­ing to take the shortest route to the cus­tom­er­’s wal­let. With irrit­at­ing, false and seduct­ive copy. By pub­lish­ing thought­less and cheap phrases.

For one thing, there is no magic that works on its own. You have to deal with an audi­ence, write and mem­or­ise a script, rehearse the sequences and use the props, and much more. Take a trick where the meth­od is based not on sleight of hand but on some clev­er sub­tlety or math­em­at­ic­al prin­ciple. Of course, you don’t need to prac­tise sleight of hand, but you do need to prac­tise oth­er dif­fi­cult things like audi­ence man­age­ment, script­ing, block­ing. You should know them.

If a naïve per­son buys this self-work­er and then goes out and per­forms it, dis­aster strikes: the audi­ence sees an inept per­son doing unin­ter­est­ing things, bor­ing them to death and still hop­ing to be recog­nised and applauded as a magician.

Anoth­er harm­ful thing is that no lay­man out­side our circles should be allowed to know that some magic can be so simple. Thanks to the Inter­net, these Muggles can enter our secret world with just a few clicks of the mouse.

Let us pro­tect our secrets as best we can. It is the only chance we have of not fall­ing into the cat­egory of grown-ups demon­strat­ing gad­gets and pre­tend­ing to be artists.

Too much scorched earth already.