Magical Monks

Magi­cians are proud of their his­to­ry, the whole looooong sto­ry .…

We cher­ish the old stuff, but wrong­ly. We still per­form, like apes imi­tat­ing each oth­er, the same lame stuff. One copy­ing the oth­er, in the hope to get the same strong reac­tions from the lines, jokes and gags. Get­ting the applause for the ego.

Noth­ing wrong with the old stuff because there is tons of real good wis­dom in it. But the new gen­er­a­tion just blind­ly copies old-fash­ioned ways to do the tricks. The excuse: “It’s a clas­sic …” The rea­son: weak­ness? And maybe ego? Desire to be applaud­ed? Accept­ed? Being “hip”? Noth­ing to do so with mag­ic per se .…

For me, the truth is that most of us are afraid to dare to do some­thing dif­fer­ent; are afraid to leave the com­fort zone; and final­ly are afraid to do some­thing that nobody else has done before.

Sal­vano once told me: “Magi­cians in real­i­ty are afraid of mag­ic.” At first I did­n’t under­stand what he meant, but now I know: He was right! Magi­cians don’t trust the prin­ci­ples of their own trade, and always try to seek ways to be on the safe side and get the recog­ni­tion from the audi­ence. They are afraid of con­fronting the audi­ence with some­thing orig­i­nal, where there is no recipe, no proven success–something new and orig­i­nal (with­in their safe­ty-seek­ing minds).

There­fore, they rely on “trust­ed” tricks and pre­sen­ta­tions, tricks, where oth­ers have shown what works. These are then copied because it seems to be safe to do so.

But there is a dif­fer­ence between what we as magi­cians see and what lay peo­ple per­ceive. I will give you an exam­ple. This could (!) be the pos­si­ble thought process of a ran­dom spec­ta­tor wit­ness­ing a per­for­mance of the cups and balls (our old­est and most trust­wor­thy trick we have in the his­to­ry of leg­erde­main) .…

Human being think­ing:

Nice cop­per cups … will he pro­duce a drink from them?

What are these lit­tle red balls for?

Wait a moment … did he put them all under that one cup or the oth­er? Don’t remem­ber … does­n’t mat­ter … looks all the same any­way …

He’s mov­ing his hands so quick­ly …

Was that now two or three of these lit­tle balls? Does­n’t mat­ter .…

Ah! Now! I will watch his oth­er hand going to his pock­ets all the time .…

I am get­ting bored .…

I saw some­one doing this already … fuck … don’t remem­ber where this was .…

Oh no … not anoth­er time … he squeezed the balls already under that oth­er cups some­how .…

I am bored … always the same .…

Why does he put the cups onto the table upside down? Such bull­shit … can’t he place them the right way?

When is the last train leav­ing?

Gosh, I am bored … yeah yeah yeah … good for now … I know these peb­bles some­how are here and then there …

Hope I get my train in time …

WOW! Where did these lemons come from? Haha­ha … that was cute! WOW! lemons … the fuck … he squeezed the lemons into that cups … huu­u­uh­hh …

Are they real?

Can I take them home? I will mix a cock­tail with them, haha­ha­haaa .…

No idea where the f****** lemons came from … but wait: they must have been in the cups from the begin­ning … aha! That’s it! easy … but he did that in a way I could­n’t see it …

maybe col­lapsi­ble rub­ber fruit of some­thing like that … but they smelled real …

Okay, I have to go, got­ta catch my train and I wan­na see the Walk­ing Dead tonight …

Thank you, magi­cian, was a nice trick with those lemons.

I believe the prob­lem is not that the old tricks are bad. They are not. I believe the prob­lem is in the thought­less­ness and lazi­ness of the major­i­ty of magi­cians in not try­ing new ways and going dif­fer­ent direc­tions, mim­ic­k­ing the old (proven and sol­id) prin­ci­ples.

Espe­cial­ly the pre­sen­ta­tions of most of the clas­sic tricks should be updat­ed and made into more orig­i­nal ones. In some cas­es, they do the cups and balls using the very same words.  Don’t believe me? Take a look:

P.S.: This vid is the work of Josh Sil­ver­stein, whom I would like to thank for that insight­ful work.

What  a crap! The very same words over and over again, through all gen­er­a­tions (NOT Josh’s video is the crap — the pat­ter is) !!

Time to re-think for us?

Maybe … or stay safe with the his­to­ry. Stay in our safe com­fort zones …

Maybe we are on the wrong track, the way we treat mag­ic pre­sen­ta­tions these days …

🙂