Morning Pages

Imagine

Stacie, my first houseguest in months comes over to get some dinner and watch a movie. The dinner is Thai food (pretty decent). The movie is The Lovebirds on Netflix (pretty funny—better than I expected).

After dinner I ask for her help with a trick I’ve been working on. Stacie is someone I’ve only known since earlier this year and she’s only seen me perform a couple things in that time.

I give her a deck of cards, have her shuffle it, and then cut it into four piles.

“Okay,” I say, “So there’s a pretty famous trick where the magician is able to cut to the four aces. Now, I thought—how cool would it be—if I could make the someone else cut to the four aces. So that’s a trick I’ve been working on for a few months now.”

(I figure it’s much more exciting for someone to feel like they’re taking part in something new, rather than something that has been honed by a million magicians before me. I don’t feel guilty for taking credit for the spectator cuts the aces plot. I’m doing it for the audience’s benefit. And, in this trick, it’s only a plot point, not the actual plot.)

“Let’s see how you did,” I say and gesture for her to turn over the top cards.

She turns over the 4 of Hearts, 9 of Clubs, Ace of Clubs, and 6 of Diamonds.

“Shit.”

“Well, I got one,” she says sweetly. Seemingly wanting me to feel better.

“Yeah… but I think that was just luck actually. The Ace of Clubs should have been in this pile if it worked like it was supposed to.”

“Four-Nine-Ace-Six,” I say, absentmindedly, like I’m just trying to make sense of what I I’m looking at, or what went wrong.

“Is 4 9 1 6 your lucky number by any chance? That would still be a good trick.”

“It could be,” she says. “Do people have lucky 4-digit numbers?”

“Wait, wait, wait…,” I say, shifting tone to something a bit more serious. “Look at it from this side, 6 Ace 9 4. 6 1 9 4. Isn’t that…?” I look at her expectantly, but she doesn’t say anything. I’m a little less certain now. “Isn’t that… aren’t those the last four digits of your phone number?”

“Ah! Yes!” she says. “I mean, no. But it’s close. It’s 6 1 4 9.”

We sit with it for a moment. Is this sort of interesting? Is it not? Maybe it is. Or maybe if you cut to four cards you’re bound to find a number that means something to someone in some manner some of the time… especially if you allow for the numbers to not be in the exact right order. I think the general feeling was that it was mildly interesting, but not much more than that.

I put on my “thinking face,” furrowing my brow as if there’s something that’s not making sense to me. “I’m having such weird deja vu,” I say. “This feels familiar…,” I trail off.

It dawns on me.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait. Was that…? Oh man. Hold on. Actually… come with me.”

I take Stacie’s hand and pull her into my bedroom.

I pick up a notebook that is sitting on my night-stand.

“So, when the coronavirus started, a lot of people were having really crazy dreams. So I had the idea to keep track of any dreams I remembered when I woke up. It’s not that I think they’re interesting. Not to anyone else, at least. It was just a thing to do.” I say this as I’m flipping through the book.

“I think… I mean, I’m not really sure because I write them down just after I wake up and then they’re pretty much gone, but I think…. Wait… yes… here it is.” As I say this, I walk with her back to the living room and the cards she cut earlier.

I hand her the book and she reads the entry on the page.

Tonight I dreamt that Stacie K came over for dinner and a movie.
The movie was a comedy. I’m not sure what we ate. She was in a
red blouse or shirt. After dinner I showed her the ace cutting trick
I’ve been working on. But she only found the Ace of Clubs. Then
we realized if we flipped the nine of clubs and the four of hearts it
would have been the last four digits of her phone number. We
couldn’t figure out if that meant anything. But something about
it felt familiar to me.

We look down at the cards again.

“What in the fuck…” she whispers.

Method

This is so much fun.

I don’t share too many of my own polished effects/presentations on the site these days. I save those for the annual supporter’s reward book. But I thought I’d share this one (for a little while, this post will disappear at some point in the future) because it was borne out of someone’s submission to a contest I had on the site a couple months ago.

People who’ve read my work for a while will recognize this as just another dressing up for Spectator Cuts the Aces. I’ve written about this trick in the past, and also in general about the value of “blank slate” effects (effects that can easily be recontextualized).

You don’t have to use Spectator Cuts the Aces. You can slide in any sort of trick that ends with a known outcome. Mainly the idea I want to share is about burying a prediction in a dream journal. (I’m going to provide you with a very simple way to do this later in the post.)

I’m very happy with the nature of the prediction as outlined in the performance described above. My first inclination was, perhaps obviously, to have them cut to four cards and then have those exact four cards predicted in my dream journal. But something about that felt just a little too clean. Would I really remember four random cards upon waking up if there was nothing noticeable about them? By having the almost match of the phone-number, I get to actually name (or suggest) the value of all four cards, and the suits of three of them in the dream journal, without it feeling like I was noting the cards specifically so I could reference them later. And the almost match of the phone number feels like something that would be more likely to jog my memory of this forgotten dream than just seeing four random cards.

I also wanted to add some other subtle predictions in the write-up, but not go overboard with it. I could have said, “Stacie came over. She was wearing a red shirt and black shorts. She commented that she liked the color of my Artisan stand mixer. She ordered the pineapple fried rice. [Etc., etc.]” I could have just written that in earlier in the night (as I did write in the color of her top earlier that evening), but I chose not to. I just wanted to hint at the idea that perhaps there was even more in the dream that was accurate, but I just didn’t remember it or write it down when I awoke.

The idea for this presentation came to me after the Better with Weber contest a few months ago. That contest asked people to identify a goal they wanted to achieve for the month of April. Supporter, Lucas Jarche, wrote in to say his goal was to write down his dreams every morning. The next month, when the Better with the Jerx contest asked people to supply the proof of what they achieved in April, Lucas sent along a document describing his dreams from the previous month.

I immediately saw the potential for a strong presentation here. What if we buried a prediction somewhere in the journal?

Think of the difference between these two presentations.

1. “I had a dream last night that I performed a card trick for you. When I woke up, I wrote out that dream and I have it here on this piece of paper.”

2. Card trick happens. The ending reminds you of something. You go and get your dream journal and flip through it. “I swear I had a dream that was sort of like this.” Flip. Flip. Flip. “Huh… maybe I’m misremembering. I really thought… Wait! Here it is.”

The first way is sort of the standard magician’s way of paying lip-service to a potentially interesting premise.

The second version will go much further towards pulling the spectator into the world of the story.

Ideally, to perform this, you’ll actually create a dream journal. Either a real one that you keep for at least a month or so, or just one that you make up altogether over the course of a couple hours. The more entries you have, the better. I think it looks best with at least 60 or so. They don’t have to be long. Use different writing implements throughout the journal (there’s a reason for this). Leave a page blank near the middle.

The trick is personalized, but the prop is reusable. And that’s because I use a frixion pen to write the entry for the “prediction” dream. This is the reason for using different writing implements in the book, so it’s not just this one entry that looks a little different than all the others.

Don’t be lazy, it’s not that much work.

But, if you are a little lazy, I have another option for you.

Lucas Jarche is allowing me to share a file of his dream journal with you. So what you can do is go in and edit one of the entries so it consists of whatever prediction you need.

Then just print it out. It’s okay if the dream journal is done on a computer rather than hand-written (although it’s not as good). But either way it needs to be a physical copy that you show them for the reveal. If you just bring up a document on your computer or phone it will have significantly less impact. It’s not even really worth doing that way.

Here’s that document.

Again though, if you really want to make it as strong as possible, hand-write it in a bound journal. You want them to feel like: Well, he wouldn’t have gone to all the a trouble for just a magic trick, right? From their perspective you would have to remake the whole book to ever show the trick to someone else. (But due to the frixion pen, that’s not the case.)

You might wonder why I would act as if I’m surprised that it matches up with the dream journal, when theoretically, if I had dreamed it already, I should have been on guard against something like this happening when I performed this trick. The logic that I had in my head if I was questioned on that point was this: “I write in that book when I’m barely half-awake. I forget most of the details soon after. And because I do a lot of card tricks in real life, it’s not unusual for me to have dreams about them. They don’t really stand out when they happen.” But that wasn’t a logic leap my friend took, so I didn’t have to justify it in any way.

There it is. Thanks again to Lucas for allowing me to share his dream journal with you.

Also, if you have the charm to pull it off (I wouldn’t bet on it), you could put a description of a graphic sex dream between you and your spectator later in the book. Then, after the trick, you can be flipping through the book and be like, “Huh. Oh here’s another dream I had about you. Kind of interesting one. Especially now that I realize I’m having prophetic dreams.” Hand her the book and you’re off to the races.

My Work-From-Home Set-Up

I’ve worked from home on and off for the last decade or so, but this is the first time I’ve done it for such an extended period of time. Since the coronavirus situation started, I’ve taken an interest in other people’s work-from-home set-ups. What is yours like? —HD

On a given work day (that includes Jerx work, other magic work, and other non-magic work), I spend an average of probably 4-6 hours writing. At some points in time, depending on how the projects I’m involved with fall out, those numbers can double.

I’m too antsy to sit at a desk for a long time doing the same thing. I work best with regular changes of scenery. Pre-coronavirus, this might take the form of working for 90 minutes at one coffee shop, going to the library for two hours of work, and then another 90 minute evening session at a different coffee shop.

When everything shut down, that obviously threw me off my game a bit. I tried to work at my main desk in my “office” space of my home, but it was a struggle for me. I felt more distracted than ever.

So—and this may sound dopey—I started creating numerous work stations throughout my house.

I currently have 10 areas where I do work.

Living Room:

1. Couch - I use this laptop table. I can slide the legs under the couch and pull the table in towards me and slouch back like a slob. Or I can do what I’m doing at this moment and actually write from a laying down position with the computer above me and tilted down.

2. Chair - A standard living room chair. I usually sit in it at a weird angle, like a teenage girl, with my legs over the arm of the chair. I guess like this but with a laptop where her cat is.

3. Floor - I use one of these desks.

4. Exercise Bike Desk - This one.

5. Standing Desk - Same thing as above, I just stand on the opposite side from the bike.

Kitchen

6. Dining area table

Bathroom

7. Bathtub

Yup, sometimes I’m writing you buck-ass naked from the tub—cock and balls floating in a sea of bubbles. Those are probably your favorite posts. I use this bath tub desk. Yes, they make such things. From what I can gather, it’s primarily used by ladies to rest their wine, candles, and rose petals on while they bathe.

Bedroom

8. Bed - I use the same desk I use on the floor to work on in bed as well.

Office

9. I have a standard computer desk set-up.

10. I also have a workbench style work station that I work at as well.

So now if I have six hours of work to do, I’ll generally do an hour in one location, then move somewhere else for an hour or so, and then just repeat that throughout the day. This tricks my brain enough so that it doesn’t feel like I’m just stuck in one place doing the same thing all day.

Thankfully, things near me are opening up more and more, so I have more options each week. But this was what worked for me for the past few months.

The Juxe: Favorite Letterman Musical Guest Performances

David Letterman was well known for showcasing great music on his show until it ended in 2015. I was just going down a Letterman musical guest rabbit hole, so I thought I’d share some of my favorite performances. (I thought I had already written a post like this, but I searched and can’t find anything like it, so maybe I just dreamed it.)

The Orwells play Who Needs You

The Orwells were a pretty good garage rock band from the Chicago area. They went on Letterman and performed their song, Who Needs You. It was a memorable performance. The lead singer laid on the ground and humped the air and later stumbled over and sat in the guests’ chairs. At the end of the song, Dave—I think getting a sense of the band’s (or at least the lead singer’s) self-seriousness and pretension—immediately asked them to play the song again. The Orwells—I think getting a sense that Dave was messing with them a little—turned down the request, despite much cajoling. Eventually, the Late Show band just starts playing it instead and 65-year old bandleader, Paul Schaffer, gets on the floor and starts humping the air as well.

This became a somewhat well-known moment, and I think the band took a little heat for the way they came off. Even though I think they were probably just more confused about what to do than anything else. The band would return a few months later to play another song. This time, when Dave asked for an encore at the end, they indulged him.

Radiohead plays Karma Police

Jonny Greenwood on the Rhodes piano really makes this performance particularly great.

The New Pornographers play Brill Bruisers

The New Pornographers are one of my favorite bands to see live. If you get bored looking at one person, there are a whole bunch more to look at (even more true in this performance, where they have four people on stage just for hand clapping purposes). And this is one of my favorite songs of theirs.

TV on the Radio plays Wolf Like Me

Wild Flag plays Romantic

Carrie Brownstein has such great, high-energy stage presence, that it’s always a joy to watch her perform, whether here, with Wild Flag or with Sleater-Kinney. At the end of this performance, Paul Shaffer announces, “This is my new favorite band.”

Pulp plays Common People

Janelle Monae performs Tightrope

What a revelation she must have been for people that night.

Weezer plays Say It Ain’t So

The story goes that Rivers Cuomo, the lead singer of Weezer, had recently had surgery to extend his left leg. The surgery was so recent that he was more or less immobile and felt uncomfortable being on national television without being able to put his all into the performance. So he asked his bandmates to really rev up the energy and put on a show to distract the audience. Bassist Matt Sharp delivers.

Letterman Asks, “Are Those Your Drums?”

Stretch Testing

Of all the tragedies surrounding the coronavirus situation, by far the worst—I think we can all agree—is that it has put on hold the focus group-style magic testing I’ve helped conduct for some time now.

And that’s a particular shame because I recently received a very important question that needs research.

Ellusionist has released [an] effect called Stretch Cards. I went to look at the reviews on their site, and saw something that has me curious:

"The effect is so powerfully new to the mainstream eye that it can be used alongside pick up artistry. I have performed this trick to random women, and every single one of them has asked for my number, or reciprocated interest and given me their number. The wonder that it creates in the mind of the spectator is so powerful, so stimulating, that the memory it leaves behind leaves you glowing with an enigma of mystery and curiosity that is irresistible to the opposite sex."

Perhaps you could test if this is equally effective for attracting members of the same sex. I'd like to know if it would be best for me to save my money and just leave this effect for all the suave heterosexual magicians out there.

Thanks,

Ryan M

Before you ask, yes, that’s a real review on Elusionist’s site. And what exactly is this panty soaker the reviewer is raving about?

It’s this.

A deck of cards that has been cut and printed in a way that it looks like one corner is stretched. If you hide that corner in some manner, you can then pretend to stretch the card by slowly revealing the corner.

The ad says:

THIS IS METAL BENDING... WITH CARDS

Huh.

I’m not sure that statement quite packs the punch they intended it to. And judging by the fact this product is now over 50% off on Ellusionist’s site, that tagline probably didn’t capture magician’s imaginations as they would have hoped.

I sent a clip from the demo to some female friends. I think they were playing coy with me, because they barely seemed turned on by it at all.

But I’m smart enough to see through that sort of thing. For example, here is one of my conversations.

“Is there more to it?” Oh man. This horny little slut couldn’t get enough. She totally wanted to see more so she could finger herself to the imagery which is “so powerfully new to the mainstream eye.”

So yeah. I think that reviewer probably was right.

But will it work on men, as the question asked? I’m not sure. My plan now is to invest in a Rigiscan Penile Tumescence monitor.

Then I’ll get 500 testees (which would be 1000 testes), strap them in, have them watch the demo, and just see how hard it gets them. Hopefully from there we can extrapolate how likely it is to leave you “glowing with an enigma of mystery and curiosity” to members of the same sex.

New Organization Scheme: Part Two

Okay, so now here is the advanced organizational system. This is in Notion (as discussed yesterday). And it’s a way to not only track your repertoire, but also your performances.

The first step is to create a table called Friends or Contacts. In this table you can capture any information you want about the people in your life. At an absolute minimum I would have their name, the date you met (if that’s something you know), and the date of the last time you interacted. I like to keep track the last interaction, that way I can filter the spreadsheet to show me people I haven’t spoken to in the past 3 months or 6 months or whatever, and if they’re people I want to maintain a relationship with, that will be a cue to reach out to them

Then, within that person’s page (as discussed yesterday, every object in a spreadsheet in Notion can be opened to make its own page) you can put any other content you might want to capture about that person. Perhaps details about their family, their kid’s names, photographs, gift ideas for them. Whatever is important for you to capture about the people in your life.

So let’s say the Friends spreadsheet looks like this:

In reality, yours probably won’t be that simple. But the things I capture in my own personal “Friends” spreadsheet are the things that are important to me. So this is just a bare-bones look at what it might look like. You should have additional columns for the things that are important to you.

Okay, now we’re going to starting bringing it all together.

Create another spreadsheet. This one called “Performance History” or something like that.

This is where we’re going to start capturing the details of our performances.

In the first column, you will name the performance situation. I usually reference where it took place. (However if where you performed is very important for you to capture and search on, I would make that its own column.) So if I performed for some friends at McDonalds after dinner some night, I might name it: “Dinner at McDonalds.” If it was a unique performing situation then this name should remind you of it: “Christmas Eve at Mom’s,” “Kim’s Graduation Party,” “Afternoon Delight In the Park.” If it isn’t a unique performing situation, I just give it a sort of generic name and number it. For example, I have a lot of performances that happen at a coffee shop, not on any special occasion. So I might have an entry that is “Moe’s Coffeeshop #45,” the next one would be “Moe’s Coffeeshop #46.”

Also, I create a separate entry on the spreadsheet for each trick performed in a given situation. So if I did three tricks at McDonald’s that night (that would be sort of weird) I would have three rows, each with “Dinner at McDonald’s” in the first column.

Add a second column to capture the date of the performance.

Add a new column and name it Trick. Now we’re going to do something new with this column. In the place where it says “Property Type” choose Relation. What we’re going to start doing is cross referencing our multiple databases. It’s going to give you al little window that looks like this:

You’ll start typing in “Repertoire.” And then click on that page in order to link it in this column.

Now, once you’ve done that, you can click in any box in that column and select one of the items from your repertoire spreadsheet to populate that field.

Create another column. Call it Audience. And again choose Relation in the “Property Type.” And connect this column to your Friends/Contacts database.

Create another column called Reaction with a Property Type of “Number.” In this column you will rate the audience’s reaction to the effect (as best you can), on whatever scale you like. I just use 1-10.

Create a final column called Notes which is a text field for any quick notes on the performance. (Longer notes would be added on the page for each performance, which, again, you get to by clicking on anything in the first column of a spreadsheet and clicking open.)

When it’s all filled in, you’ll have something like this:

The Trick and Audience columns are being pulled from your Repertoire and Friends spreadsheet. So all these spreadsheets are connected now.

With just a few entries it’s not that helpful a tool. But think of how useful this is when you have dozens of tricks in your repertoire and dozens of people you perform for and 100s of performances. By clicking the Filter link near the top you can view the database in all sorts of different ways. If you’re meeting up with Anna that evening, you can filter the database so it shows you only the tricks you’ve performed for Anna that got a reaction of 8 or above so you can see what sort of thing she reacts strongly to.

Or you can add another field from a related spreadsheet (this is the property type called “Roll Up”). So you could, for example, bring in the tags field from your Repertoire spreadsheet into your Performance History spreadsheet and you could then filter it to show you tricks you did with a shuffled deck in the last three months of 2019 that got a reaction under four. Or whatever you may find useful.

One thing to note, once you link to spreadsheets with the “Relation” feature, you will now notice a column for that database in the other spreadsheet. So, not only is there a Repertoire column in the Performance History spreadsheet, but also vice versa. If you don’t want that column to show in the other database (or any column in any database) then just click the ellipses next to the button that says “New.” Then click Properties and you can turn off any columns you don’t want to see (but they’re still connected).

There you go. If you decide to pursue using Notion to organize your magic life, you’ll probably want to go on youtube and familiarize yourself with more of its features. You’ll find a ton of stuff there. I’ve barely scratched the surface. And you are likely going to modify what I’ve written to come up with your own system.

It may seem like overkill to track things like this if you’re just performing a couple times a month. With how much I perform (especially pre-Covid times) it’s a necessity, if only just to remind myself what I’ve shown people already. Even if you don’t perform a ton, I still think there are benefits to tracking your repertoire and keeping notes of your performance in some manner. This just happens to be the most efficient way I’ve found.

New Organization Scheme: Part One

I wrote about how I keep track of the tricks in my repertoire back in the first year of this site. I haven’t made and dramatic changes to that system in years until recently, when I upgraded in a big way.

Today I’m going to describe the basic organizational structure I use, which I think many of you will find some value in. And tomorrow I will give a deeper dive into the advanced set-up I utilize. The advanced set-up is based on the basic set-up I’m describing today (you won’t be duplicating effort if you decide to “upgrade” to the advanced set-up). So you can create what I describe today and then see if the other elements I add tomorrow are something that would be helpful to you.

For years now, I’ve tracked my repertoire in a simple spreadsheet. It worked well enough for me, but I’ve been constantly on the lookout for something that has the simplicity of a spreadsheet but with the possibility of being more robust in regards to the the type of information it can hold.

Recently, I stumbled onto something that is very, very good. Something I am now using not only to track my magic repertoire, but a dozen other areas of my life as well.

It’s called Notion. “A new tool that blends your everyday work apps into one.” What does that mean? Well, I’m not here to sell you on Notion. It can be utilized in a bunch of different of ways. I’m just going to describe this one particular usage. For our purposes, Notion is a program that allows us to create a spreadsheet that collects our repertoire of effects, but every item in that spreadsheet can then expand into its own page of information, video, pictures, etc.

The version of Notion that I’m currently using is free, and that will probably work well enough for you as well, although I’ll likely upgrade to the monthly payment plan ($4) to support the people behind it and take advantage of some of the upgrade features.

Now I’ll walk you through the basic version of my repertoire database. (You can skip this minutiae for now by jumping to the picture of Joshua Jay’s Magic Atlas).

Let’s say you’ve signed up for Notion.

On the left hand side you’ll see some sample pages already created for you.

Click, “Add a page.”

Where it says “Untitled,” write in Repertoire (or whatever you want to call it).

Then click where it says “Table.”

You’ll have something that looks like this:

Click on Name and rename that column Trick

Then click where it says “Insert Right” to insert a column to the right.

Click on Trick and click “Insert Right” again to create another column.

Click on the column heading Files and click Delete.

Click the Property 1 column and rename it Creator.

Click the Property column and rename it Source.

You now have something that looks like this.

Click the + next to Tags to create another column. Name it Notes and make sure the “Property Type” is “Text.”

If you click on Creator or Source, you’ll see that the “Property Type” is “Text” there as well. If you click on Tags, the “Property Type” should be “Mult-Select.”

So you click in the Trick column, and write the name of a trick in your repertoire. Then you tab over to Creator and put in who made the trick, then you go to Source and write in where the trick can be found.

Now you go the the Tags and create any tags you want to help you organize your repertoire.

Here are the standard tags I use:

FASDIU - "From A Shuffled Deck In Use" - These are the effects in my repertoire that require just an ungimmicked, unprepared deck of cards.

Carry On - These are tricks that require me to carry something with me. For example, Double Deception by Mark Mason requires me to have two gimmicked coins on me. Now, I'm not someone who loads up his pockets with shit before going outside. But I may take one thing with me before I leave the house in the morning, especially if I know I'll be hanging out with people that day. And then I kind of rotate my way through this list. I'll continue to take the same item until I perform it, then the next day I'll take the next item on the list.

FASLIU - "From A Shuffled Life In Use" - This is just my way of referring to impromptu effects with normal items that I don't have to make an effort to carry with me. Things that don't use cards and that I can get into at any moment.

Wallet - A list of tricks that would make sense to carry in my wallet (e.g., tricks with bills, business cards, etc.). I don't cram a bunch of stuff in my wallet, but I will keep one or two gimmicked items in there and rotate them out as I perform them.

Propless - Tricks that require literally nothing to perform.

Phone - A list of tricks on or using my phone.

Stack - Tricks with a stacked deck. Not necessarily a full-stack, but any effect requiring a stack that I can't get into in the moment of the effect.

MAD - (Marker and Deck) - Tricks that use just a deck and a marker. 

Gimmick - Tricks that require a special gimmick or prop of some sort and aren't the sort of thing I would carry around with me on a regular basis. (Tricks with gimmicked decks, for example.) 

Special - Tricks, like many of the ones I've written for this site, that are for special occasions. Meaning they require a large investment of time or set-up.

Perfect - Tricks that I think are perfect methodologically, that I can perform flawlessly, and that I have a perfect presentation for. The purpose of this section is two-fold. It allows me to identify tricks that are at the heart of my repertoire and that I would use if I was only going to interact with a person one time and wanted to have a particularly profound effect on them. And by having a section for "perfect" tricks it reminds me to make note of, and work on, the flaws in the other tricks in my repertoire.

I don’t use tags like, “Card Tricks," “Coin Tricks,” “Mentalism.” You certainly could, I just never felt the need to break up my tricks that way. Just add the tags that are useful to you. I have more than the ones I mentioned, but they’re more particular to me and not as generally useful.

In my old organization system, these tags were all separate tabs in a spreadsheet. Using tags is so much more useful because I can easily mark tricks with multiple tags and sort them however I like. I can then view the spreadsheet in many different ways. I can have it just show me all my impromptu tricks. Or have it show me all my tricks that just use and ordinary deck AND that I feel are “Perfect” effects.

But we’re just getting to the good stuff.

For the sake of explanation, let’s assume my complete repertoire was five tricks, all from the book Joshua Jay wrote when he was 9, or whatever. My page might look something like this…

Now here’s where we really take advantage of Notion as a tool. Because now I can go to any trick on the left there and when I put my cursor in that box it will give me a button that says “Open.” And now I can “open” that item into its own page.

And in that area where it says, “Press Enter to continue with an empty page,” I can now put all sorts of other information related to the trick that doesn’t fit well in a spreadsheet. I can write up a summary of the trick. I can put the details of the set-up that’s required. I can add photos. I can add videos of sleights or a performance of the trick. I can write up the instructions or link to files with the the instructions for the trick. I could make a whole other spreadsheet within this item on the spreadsheet, if i was so inclined.

Essentially you can create your own private webpage with any information you want, devoted to this trick and it just sits as an item in a spreadsheet.

Once you’ve added more information on that page, there will be a little “page” icon next to the trick in the spreadsheet.

So that’s the basic idea of what I’m using now to capture the effects in my repertoire.

Tomorrow I’ll give you some more information in regards to how I’m using Notion to track performances.

Restless

It’s 4:33 AM, Monday morning. I can’t sleep. Not because I’m tormented by anything, but just because I made the mistake of taking a long-ish nap yesterday afternoon and I’m not someone who recovers from that sort of thing well. It can mess up my sleep pattern for a couple of days. I’m a bit delicate that way. So I may take a long nap one afternoon and then that night I’ll fall asleep at what is a normal time for me but then wake up 15 minutes later completely awake.

So that’s what happened tonight and I thought, “Well… shit,” because it’s annoying. And then I thought, I’d make lemons into lemonade and just write a “stream of conscious” style post. This might be a terrible idea. It might only mess up my sleeping more. I was tempted to call this post, “Restless #1” because there’s a good chance it happens again in the future, but I decided I don’t want to jinx myself like that.

Speaking of making lemons into lemonade, I was once at a fair in New York when I was a kid. I made friends with another kid there whose family ran a food stand that sold spiedies and “fresh squeezed lemonade.” Spiedies are (is?) a Central New York dish. This Bon Appetit article describes them thusly:

“It's cubes of marinated meat—chicken, pork, beef, or lamb—skewered, char-grilled, and served in a hoagie roll or a slice of fresh Italian bread. The zesty marinade tastes a little like Italian dressing, and when it hits the grill, it caramelizes quickly on the outside and remains super-tender on the inside.”

It’s good stuff.

Anyway, the kid said to me, “Hey, do you want to see how we make fresh squeezed lemonade?” Don’t worry, the story doesn’t get disgusting. That sounded like fun to me. (Everything sounds like fun to me. I have some sort of disorder.) So he pulled off the near empty, clear multi-gallon container from top of the lemonade dispensing machine. It was something like this:

He walked me through a flap to an area behind their stand. He dumped out what was left in the jug. I was about to see how they made fresh squeezed lemonade. Do they have to cut each lemon? Does a machine do it?

And then he ripped open a large pack of Country Time Lemonade drink powder, dumped it in the container, filled it up with hose water, stirred it, then tossed in a few real lemons for looks.

It was pretty disillusioning.

Let’s see what I’ve got in my email…

Here’s an email from 12:58 AM

Amazing art you posted today. Always happy to learn about someone new and discover his work. Thanks. (Badass in barn with 4 women was my favorite) —JF

Ah, I was happy to hear some people took to Mort Kunstler’s art as I have.

Hmm… I think I’ve just had a revelation.

Here’s a painting by Monet. One of his paintings of water lilies. I guess he did a bunch of these for god knows what reason.

That is, apparently, great art. I’m too dumb to appreciate it. But I guess it is.

To me, this is great art.

This is Kunstler’s painting called, “Nine To Go.” What a story this tells! Not that it really tells a story. It’s not a comic strip. But there is certainly a story to be gleaned from this image. And that’s why it’s great art to me. You may read something different on the woman’s face than I do. You may imagine a different motivation for why he’s killing these guys than I have. But regardless there’s definitely a story told here.

I often write about the importance of story in the magic I perform. And then I always have to clarify by saying something like, “I’m not talking about tricks where your patter is a story that you’re illustrating with cards or something. I’m talking about the ‘story’ of this interaction.”

I don’t want to tell a story to go along with a trick. I want the tricks themselves to imply a greater story. Stories about magic, about me, about the spectator, about the fiction we’re experiencing—the world where such a thing that just happened could happen.

I look at the water lilies painting and I don’t get it. I mean, it’s fine, but I don’t really have appreciation of art for art’s sake.

Similarly, the cups and balls is one of the worst tricks in magic, in my opinion. With a few exceptions, it’s just magic for magic’s sake. There’s no story there, it’s just a ball vanishing and reappearing.

I lack the ability to appreciate art for arts sake, or magic for magic’s sake. I like art and magic to be in service of a story. I’m not making a judgment call on the relative worth of these things. Just my own ability to enjoy them. One of Monet’s lilies paintings sold for 80 million dollars. If you gave it to me and told me I had to keep it in my home, I’d put it in my fucking closet behind a laundry basket. So what do I know?

I’m not sure what my point is. I’m tired and not thinking super clearly.

I think what I’m getting at is this… I don’t think my inability to recognize the worth of art for art’s sake, and magic for magic’s sake is something special about me. I think the majority of people are like me. I think the majority of people need to relate to a piece of art (a painting or a magic trick) via story. The ability to appreciate a standard chop cup routine, for example, is probably rarer than magicians believe. We act like it’s somehow ingrained in people to enjoy magic as long as it’s fooling. But I’m not sure that’s true. We think it’s true because we surround ourselves with people who like magic for magic’s sake: other magicians.

Let’s look at that Monet painting again. I think there’s something interesting about it.

The interesting thing is that that’s a different painting than I posted earlier. But most of you probably didn’t notice that. So perhaps you can relate to laypeople who can’t differentiate between a trick where the jacks switch places with the aces and back again, and a trick where the four aces gather into the leader packet. For someone without a deep appreciation of paintings or magic for their own sake, it’s hard to make a distinction between things that tell the same story. Whether that “story” is a bunch of water lilies, or the story is, “I can make cards change.”

Ok. The sun came up a while ago. I’m going to go get breakfast. And then hopefully formulate some way to recapture a normal sleep schedule.

Update: A few people have written in to educate me about Monet. Thank you. There’s no need for anyone else to do so. I do understand his contribution to art and the style that he ushered in. That was, in part, the reason I chose him. The fact that you need to do research to truly appreciate Monet’s contribution, is the point I was getting at. Most people would have to have an appreciation of art history (that is, an affinity for art for its own sake) to be moved or enthralled by Monet’s work at this point in time. And that’s because there’s not an inherent story in the artwork. For those who do have the knowledge to appreciate Monet’s work, it’s because of the story behind the work, which they now understand. It’s not the image itself.

That goes along with the theme of this post—that story is the primary element that resonates with people in any type of art. (And that, in my opinion, one of the big weaknesses in magic is that we are so often presenting things to people that are completely story-less.)