Being Yourself

We don’t make enough about the fact that—after decades of performing magic specials at the pinnacle of the art form—this is how David Copperfield’s final magic special ended.

Feeling the pressure from David Blaine, Copperfield chose to end this special with a non-magic stunt, The Tornado of Fire.

This “stunt” involved—from what I can tell—standing relatively still for under ten seconds.

It’s short enough to gif.

If there was any potential danger to this stunt, it’s not obvious in that four minute segment. He couldn’t even fall into the fire if he wanted to, given that he was being held in place by the guys on opposite sides of him.

At the end of the sequence, David yells, “I’m hot” which doesn’t do much to sell the supposed peril he just faced. He sounds like me on any given August afternoon. Or when I open the oven to see how my stuffed-crust Digiornos pizza is coming along.

Artistically, it was a total failure too. A stunt that lasts 8 seconds where you can’t see the “star” the whole time? That’s what you’re going to end the special with?

The lesson here is: Be Yourself.

Instead of an earth-shattering orgasm, Copperfield’s last special ended with a wispy fart, because he was trying to do what Blaine was doing.

Being yourself is even more important when performing socially. There’s nothing more unsettling when someone starts being a “character” in a casual scenario.

Just be you.

Ah, yes, Andy. I see what you’re saying. Don’t put on some bizarre character when you’re dealing with your friends and family. Just be an amplified version of yourself.

No. Not even that. Not amplified. Just be you. Be your real personality. Let everything feel kind of normal except this bizarre thing you’re showing them.

But Andy, my everyday personality isn’t that interesting. I need to put on a bit of a persona to really make the experience entertaining.

Okay, then you’re focusing on the wrong thing. Work on your everyday personality so that it’s more interesting and engaging to people in general. Needing to play a role and show people tricks to get them to pay attention to you is no way to go through life.

Mailbag #125

[Craig] Petty had plenty of nice things to say about you in today’s video. I wondered how you took his comments, did they seem genuine to you? I’ve never been certain about your feelings on Petty.

And what about his attacks on Flom from the same video? —MF

Do his comments about me seem genuine? Yeah, I thought they were genuine. But to be honest, if anyone ever says anything nice about me in any context it never really occurs to me to question their motivations. That would feel like a weird way to go through life. I’m very fortunate with the way I’m wired that nice comments make me happy but negative comments have zero effect on me. So it wouldn’t be like me to question a compliment.

As far as my feelings about Craig, I have no issues with the guy. I get a lot of hate for him in my email but I don’t harbor any negative feelings for him myself. There are a couple of his effects that I use somewhat frequently. Others aren’t for me or my performing environments. I don’t watch all of his videos, but I do watch one or two a week when they seem like they’re on a subject that I have interest in or he’s performing a trick I’m curious about, and I’ve always found them valuable.

He’s a polarizing guy, for whatever reason. But that makes magic more fun, in my opinion. I think it’s funny when he gets all riled up, or someone gets all riled up about him.

I end up mentioning him more than most magicians on this site. But that’s just because I’m doing commentary on magic, and to do commentary you need touchstones. And because he puts out so much content, he provides more potential things for me to comment on than pretty much anyone else.

Craig’s biggest issue, from my perspective, is that he’s not someone who wants to self-edit. He puts out 15 videos a week. He makes 9 hour trick tutorials. He releases many tricks every year. And because no one could be consistently brilliant, his greatest ideas get mixed with his good ideas and with his ideas that are sort of less inspired. This ends up bringing down his “batting average” when you compare him to someone who releases just their best ideas. So maybe he doesn’t get his due because of that. But I think that’s his style. He’s almost like a human brainstorm session. And he leaves it up to you to sort out what you think are his best ideas.

I’d be curious, as an exercise, how it might go for Craig if instead of releasing 15 videos a week, he released one 90-minute video called The Craig Petty Show which would have an interview, some reviews, some live performances, discussions, rants or a monologue, etc. So, essentially, his daily video segments but just greatly redacted, and repackaged with added structure and production quality. It’s probably a bad idea for youtube engagement, though.

As far as his thoughts on Justin Flom go, I thought they were fair. I didn’t really see them as an “attack.” I know Justin loves magic, but other people who also love magic are free to take issue with what he does.

I haven’t seen enough of Justin’s online videos to know what he’s exposing or how he’s going about it. If I look at his youtube shorts in order of popularity, I don’t see any real exposure in the first 25 videos. The first “exposure” video I see is probably this one, which shows D’lites.

That’s not exactly the sort of thing that would get me riled up, but once you have any element of exposure in your content, you’re giving people the right/opportunity to get upset about it if they want. I’m not a fan of exposure content. But I also don’t believe it’s that much of an issue unless you’re performing the exact trick soon after. For the social magician, it’s far better to focus your energy on your own work than worrying about what’s happening on tik-tok.

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Any idea when the next drop in the Good Enough Canon can be expected? —MO

Do you have a schedule in mind [for the Good Enough Canon]? I’m sure it’s a lot of work but I loved your 21 Card Trick piece and I’m looking forward to what’s next. —AC

If you let this project fall by the wayside after the first entry I will haunt your ghost.—CB

These are a few of the messages I’ve received in the last month asking about the Good Enough Canon, which was a project I mentioned a year ago. The idea was to go through the list of card plots and find a “Good Enough” version of each plot. One that was strong and fooling, not overly difficult, and ideally impromptu. The first entry in the canon was a version of the 21 Card Trick I put in a newsletter earlier this year.

I’ve been asked quite a few times now when this will come back.

The answer is… don’t hold your breath.

The hours of research, practice, testing out the variations, evaluating them, and working on the presentation is kind of overwhelming.

With the current schedule I’m on, it would take me decades to go through the full list of card plots. So it will probably become a project I work on in the future when I don’t have the site, newsletter, books, and outside work to do. It might be its own book in the future once things settle down.

Until November...

This is the final post until November. Regular posting resumes Monday, November 4th. The next Love Letters newsletter for subscribers will be sent on the 3rd.

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GLOMM Lodge #4, The Otters, has now been established in Sacramento, CA.

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Great Moments in Patter

“Nah, never seen one. What even is one?”

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What’s your favorite card color change? The Erdnase color change? The Shapeshifter? The Snap change?

My favorite is definitely the Triple Changing Pedestal.

What could be more magical than saying, “Hold on, let me go get my everyday card pedestal. The one we all have in our homes to rest cards on,” and then doing the impossible with that common object?

And you get the bonus effect of the card magically rotating 45 degrees.

And guys, just because you can get chicks with this type of strong magic, doesn’t mean you should. Be cool and don’t abuse this power.

Also, keep in mind, if you flip it over and shove it up your ass like a buttplug, it’s EDC.

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Hey all, have a great rest of your October. If you do anything cool costume-wise or magic-related for Halloween, let me know about it.

Otherwise, I’ll see you next month as we move from the spookiest part of the year to the giving-thanksiest part of the year (in the U.S., at least).

Chicken Scratch

Here’s a nice prediction idea that came to me via Nathan Wilson. It’s the sort of thing I like in that it’s couched in a sort of typical magical performance, but then it takes an unexpected left turn.

Imagine

You have your friend scroll to a random article on the home screen of CNN or the NY Times or any site like that.

You ask them to think of any word in the headline to the article they randomly scrolled to and to concentrate on that word.

You grab a nearby piece of paper or napkin and—after a few moments of focusing—you write down a word.

“Does the word you’re thinking of start with an E?” you ask.

No.

“It’s not ‘Egypt’?” you say.

No.

“Damn. This was one of those mornings I woke up, and I felt like my mind was really on top of things. You know? Like I’ve been practicing this stuff and some days I really feel like my mind is processing things and anticipating things on another level. Today was one of those days, so I thought I might get this one. Can I see the headline? I want to see if I can pick out the word you’re thinking of.”

Your friend shows you the phone.

“Hmmm…,” you say. “No. I’m not getting it. Was it ‘mystery’? That’s just a guess. No? Oh… ‘unravel.’ Okay.”

You look more closely at the phone.

“Wait… what is that? This picture…? I’ve seen that before.”

Your face scrunches up a little as you try and put the pieces together.

“What the… wait…,” you grab the prediction you just wrote and turn the paper over. On the opposite side of the paper or napkin is a doodle you were distractedly doing earlier in the interaction.

Your doodle matches up with the image from the article they randomly selected.

“Fuck, that’s crazy. I knew I was feeling some kind of weird energy today.”

Depending on how they respond, you can go deeper into describing the different “energies” associated with reading someone’s mind as opposed to “seeing the future.” And how you’re not really familiar with these things enough to differentiate them all. But you definitely felt something weird this morning… etc., etc.,

Method

This is just a presentation for Inertia by Marc Kerstein.

I think the key is to make your doodle abstract. It’s not like, “Oh, I was drawing a picture of a bear in a tree and you randomly stopped on a bear in a tree!” No. You’re just drawing simple lines and shapes that end up matching with the image they’re looking at in an impressionistic way.

Looking at the image upside down first can further delay exactly how closely your image matches, to sort of give an extra bit of drama to the final reveal.

Below is Nathan’s original email to me…

During dinner, you absentmindedly draw on a napkin. You never bring any attention to it, just doodling. I then have this presentation to get people to think of words and try to mentally send them to me. But instead of them writing it down this time, I have them scroll through a news website and find an interesting word. This, of course, is Inertia.

The trick continues by you messing up the word, and when they show you the image, you seem confused. You aren't confused that you got the word wrong—mind reading is hard—but that the image looks so darn familiar. That is when you look at your napkin and realize that your doodle is a pretty close match to the image of the headline they selected. 

I have only done this once, and it was presented more as a trick with a prediction in an envelope I gave them earlier that day. But the doodling seems way more interesting to me. 

D'Lite'd

D’Lites are probably the best selling magic trick of all time. This, I’m sorry to say, is just a fact.

For undoubtedly some legal reason that I’m not all that interested in, Rocco (the inventor of the D’lite) rebranded and came out with Prisma Lites a few years back. They’re the same thing.

At the end of the download for Prisma Lites, Rocco is talking seemingly off the top of his head about the “millions” of things you can do with Prisma Lites. And then offers three examples…

Let’s rate these examples.

“Maybe you wanna take ‘em on a dance floor next time you go dancing.”

Pros: The idea of lights and a dance floor go well together.

Cons: He doesn’t exactly suggest a trick with these. Just that you would take “em” on the dance floor. Also, I don’t spend a lot of time on a dance floor. I guess maybe at a wedding? Do I want to be the guy who brought two d’Lites to a wedding? Hmmm…

Rating: 5/10

“Maybe you wanna show your friends how you can take a light out of their ear and blow it and make it disappear.”

Pros: Simple. And pulling something from someone’s ear is classic.

Cons: Pulling something from someone’s ear is also shorthand for what a hackey magician does.

Rating: 4/10

“Go up to your mother and tell her, ‘Look, you dropped something on the floor.’ She looks down, you reach up and pull a little red light and make it disappear in frunna ‘er eyes.”

Pros: An absolute masterpiece of trick structure. Your mother will be amazed.

Cons: None.

Rating: 10/10

It’s clear from these examples that the d’Lite has many uses. It can be used to make a light appear on the dance floor, with your friends, or in front of your mom.

Andy, isn’t that all essentially the same thing?

No. Shut up. Those are all wildly different applications of what must certainly be the greatest gimmick of all time.

In fact, I just thought of another great trick in the spirit of Rocco’s ideas. Maybe you go to your grandma’s for Sunday dinner and you say, “Grandma, there’s something in the marinara.” And you reach in and pull out a light and make it disappear right in front of her fat face.

See? Like Rocco and Einstein said, use your imagination.

If, for some reason, Rocco’s ideas aren’t enough. Here are some other uses for d’Lites/Prisma Lites that I’ve written about.

Make snow glow

Prove you had your brain removed

Freak out your girlfriend

Swingin' Enigma

Here’s an idea for Christian Grace’s Enigma effect. This isn’t an effect I do, and I’m not in the Facebook group for it or anything, so if a similar idea has been expressed somewhere, let me know, so I can add crediting.

The idea was inspired by an email from Alexandre M. who was writing to me about performing Enigma using some divination tool that is outside of the performer’s control. That way, you as the performer don’t have to justify the more “process-y” aspects of the trick. They’re just part of this “ritual” or this “system” that exists outside of you.

That gave me this idea.

So you would start by having your friend think of a word.

Now you spin a story about this pendulum you bought at… whatever your story is.

You mention the interesting thing is that this pendulum can supposedly harness actual thoughts.

You draw this on a piece of paper.

You have the spectator imagine their word letter by letter. They dangle the pendulum over the drawing and see what direction the pendulum starts swinging in order to see if this pendulum can really pick up on their thoughts.

Three things will happen, and they’re all equally good.

1. It will work perfectly.

The spectator’s ideomotor response is strong, and the pendulum will swing in exactly the direction it should on each letter.

If they don’t understand how pendulums work, this will be completely inexplicable and already something of a miracle.

You say: “I know! Isn’t that insane?! But wait… check this out. I’ve been working with this pendulum for a few weeks now and have become really attuned to it. Let me show you something….”

2. It doesn’t work at all.

Either it swings randomly or barely swings at all. You do your best to interpret which direction it’s swinging for each letter, but sometimes it’s right and sometimes it’s wrong. There’s no real rhyme or reason to it. It’s just random.

You say: “That’s weird. I’ve had much better results than this so far. You know, what sometimes happens is because you know the direction it should move, and you’re holding the pendulum, that sometimes you subconsciously prevent it from moving in that direction. Let me try holding it, and it might be able to move more freely since I don’t know your word at all.”

3. It does work… but they sort of understand how pendulums work and that they’re controlling it, so they’re not that impressed.

If they imply, “Yeah, it worked. But it’s just me moving it subconsciously,” this is may be the best case scenario.

You say: “Yeah, I’ve read that idea too. That you’re just moving it without thinking about it. There’s a name for the phenomenon, but I forget what it is. Anyway, I don’t think that’s what going on here. Because… look… I don’t know what word you’re thinking of. But let me try holding it.”

For the second part, you’ll take the pendulum and hold it over the paper in one hand, while you hold a pen below it in the other.

You act as if you’re going to try and follow along the swinging of the pendulum with the pen. At first, you’ll just draw back and forth as the pendulum swings. Then you’ll act as if the pendulum is moving in more distinct orientations and you’re doing your best to mimic it with the pen.

If you want to build up the reveal, you can sort of block what you’re writing with your arm and hands as you hold the pendulum over what you write.

Try to interpret what you wrote…

“Is it…hmmm… I don’t know what that is. A C? C-O-N-O-T? Or…hmmm….”

They—as seemingly the only person who knows what the word is—will see their word immediately in the scribble. Comet.

You: “Oh yeah, yeah, I can see that now. I wish I understood how this works.”

NOTES

1. The first phase with vowels and consonants can either be played as a demonstration of the pendulums abilities, or as almost a “tuning” exercise to get the pendulum “aligned” with their mind.

2. If, after the first phase, you still need to narrow down their selection, you can add a second beat where they think of specific letters or shapes of letters. You ask them to try to not let the pendulum swing, and you try and interpret what you’re seeing based on the tiny movements of the tip of the pendulum. “It seems like a curved letter at the start. Yes? An O or a G or a C or something?” And so on.

3. Obviously, as they’re futzing around with the pendulum, you have a bunch of freedom to do what you need to do to get their word via the Enigma process.

Update: It looks like the earliest reference to using a pendulum with Enigma can ve found in a March 30th post in the Facebook group for Enigma by Gordon B.

Mailbag #124

[Re: The Delayed ESP post]

After the person chooses an esp shape, you can tell them to look for things that are that same shape during the day.

Then, when you are reading their mind, you can ask them to send you the image(s) they saw during the day.

This way, instead of reading their mind to learn an essentially random shape, you’re reading their memory of what they saw, and you can also see it, well enough to get the basic shape.—PM

You could definitely do it like that, but it might be of limited effectiveness because in the end you can’t actually tell them the objects they’re thinking of. You’re still just revealing the shape. And I think they might be expecting you to say what they saw earlier in the day.

Instead of using “real objects” as part of the set-up, it would probably be stronger to use them as part of the reveal.

You talk about how they’ve been focusing on their shape all day, and in particular how to transmit that shape to someone else.

You then take their hand or have them rest their hand on your shoulder and you’re “guided” to different objects in the room, which turn out to be the shape they had in mind.

This would be super straightforward with a circle or square.

The plus sign could be “found” in any two intersecting lines you find.

Wavy lines might be tricky, as you won’t find exact representations of that in most places. But that imagery could be found in the drapes, or anything fabric. Or in anything liquid in the room. Or let them guide you to the fridge where you pull out a package of bacon.

The star could be difficult if there’s nothing star-themed in the room. Here’s what I would do. I would let their mind guide me to different objects all over the room. And I would act like I don’t get understand why I’m being drawn to those objects. A soda can. A picture on the wall. A book on the shelf. The door. A birdcage. Again, I’m drawn to those objects. And again. Soda can, picture, book, door, birdcage.

Ah! Then it hits me. I’ve essentially mapped out the shape of a star on the floor by walking from object to object in the pattern I’ve been guided.

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In [this post] you wrote about having a “small display” of decks in your house. What constitutes a “small display” in your mind? Is there a minimum or maximum you shoot for?—SL

Hmm… I don’t know that it’s that important generally.

But personally I’ve made a change to my deck display in recent years. I used to display all my decks (like, all my ungimmicked decks, I mean). But now I’ve cut that down to about a dozen or so decks. 

Why?

Well, when I had 70 or 80 decks on display, it was because I wanted people to notice them and be drawn to them, which would naturally allow me to transition into an effect. 

But I asked myself if I would have such a large display if I didn’t want to use it to transition into a trick, and the answer was “No.” Large collections of objects aren’t really my thing. It suggests a sort of obsession that I don’t really feel for objects. 

A small display of a dozen or so decks will still draw people’s attention. But I feel like it implies a relatable level of interest.

Most guys probably have one bottle of cologne. I have a half-dozen or so. So you might say, “Oh, this guy likes cologne.” But if I had 50 bottles, that might come off as “weird cologne guy.”

A dozen decks represents a slightly outsized interest in playing cards without seeming goofy.

Of those dozen decks, half are normal decks (some of which are stacked in some manner) and the other half are decks that are unusual in some way (e.g., they’re not typical playing cards, or they’re playing cards that supposedly have some strange history, or something like that). This is the other benefit of a smaller deck display. It allows me to more easily funnel them towards a deck I want to do something with than if I just had these dozen decks mixed in with 50 other normal ones.