Mailbag #115
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I liked [the post Keep Feeling Fascination] and it made me remember the words I heard from Michael Weber once, how we consider people we are performing magic for :
1- Audi ence ( From Latin for, to listen )
2- Spec tator ( From Latin Spectare, to look at)
3- PARTICIPANT ( From Latin Participatio, to share ) ( helpers)
I try to keep this words in minds and go for the latter and I believe that your post was also sharing the same thing.—KQ
Yeah, I think I was hitting on a similar idea.
Although in practice I tend to use all of these in my write-ups. “Audience” for when I’m talking about performing for a larger group, “Spectator” when their role is more passive, and “Participant” when it’s more active. Although, that’s not always the case. Sometimes I mix it up just for the sake of adding some variety to the language used in the write-ups.
I like to think I pioneered the descriptor I use most of all to characterize the person you’re performing for:
FRIEND (From German, meaning “someone you’re not just desperate to fool because you’re craving attention and validation you didn’t get in high school”)
A friendship is a mutually beneficial relationship with someone whose company you enjoy.
I think social magic is best when it fits into this framework.
If they sense you’re showing them something for your own benefit, then you seem needy and desperate for approval.
If they feel like you’re showing them something solely for their “entertainment,” then it becomes a weird dynamic for a social interaction.
But if it feels like you’re doing this thing became it’s both something that fascinates you and something you think will be of interest to them—then you have something that will feel like it belongs in the context of a casual interaction. Even if it’s something completely bonkers.
Was hoping you'd be willing to weigh-in. When it comes to card to impossible location, I've come around to the idea that the card being signed would make the effect weaker, not stronger.
This is for one reason: if the card is signed, and there's no such thing as real magic, then the only explanation that your participants would be able to come up with -- that you secretly moved the card without them seeing -- is the actual, correct method. In fact, if the card is unique, then that is the ONLY explanation.
It's guessable.
Conversely, if you plant a duplicate (and have a /decent/ card force), then you have a HUGE number of options. Show the destination empty, and you literally never go anywhere near it. Planting duplicates on the spectator before the performance begins ("putpocketing"), etc.
The method shouldn't be the effect, and if you use a signed card for your signed card to impossible location, then the method is the effect... and it's the exact method your audience would be able to guess on their own... and they'd be right.
Thoughts?—CS
The good news is, I agree with you.
The bad news is, you’re 100% wrong.
The part you’re wrong about is that the same trick performed either with a signed or unsigned card is always more impossible when the card is signed.
That’s true whether the card appears in your pocket, or if the card appears on the dark side of the moon. It doesn’t matter.
So this statement: “When it comes to card to impossible location, I've come around to the idea that the card being signed makes the effect weaker, not stronger” is not accurate, all things being equal.
The point I think you’re making, and where I agree with you, is that we as magicians (especially as amateur magicians without secret helpers or performing in a formal environment) can likely create stronger card-to-impossible-location effects with a duplicate rather than signed card.
As a solo performer, the most impossible location the signed-card can appear still has to be somewhere within my reach.
But if I use a duplicate, it can appear anywhere. Of course, using a duplicate on its own isn’t enough of a deception. But you can pile on the deceptions. You can use a force that is very clean and allows for free choices. You can allow them to determine where the card appears (by using DFB or something similar). And so on.
And don’t sleep on the torn corner. The torn corner gives you the best of a duplicate, along with much of what you can get with a signed card.
To recap, in theory, any individual card-to-impossible-location effect is made stronger and more impossible with a signed card. But all card-to-impossible-location effects are on a spectrum. And of the effects that are actually doable by magicians, I would say the methodologies and deceptions we can use with a duplicate are generally stronger than the ones we can use with a signed card.
Since my goal is to do the strongest magic, I would always choose to have the card signed, if that was an option. But since my goal is to do the strongest magic, I wouldn’t limit myself to only tricks where the card is signed.