Until October...

It’s that time where posting ends for this month and I go on to work on the other Jerx-related projects: the October newsletter, the next book, and some testing we’re finishing up.

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Thinking about the Hooper trick from Monday, I had an idea of a way to do it with no technology. The structure of the trick allows for this in a way that doesn’t really raise any red flags, even though the method is kind of blatant.

It would essentially look identical to the version described in Monday’s post, but you can toss your Apple Watch in the trash. It’s not needed.

In the no-tech version, instead of peeking the word, you just get it when you ask for it at this point in the routine:

“Okay, let’s try again and hopefully it will work this time.”

I start resetting the props. Dumping out the ashes and grabbing a new slip of paper.

“What word did you end up thinking about before?” I ask.

“Pudding,” she says.

“Hmm… I don’t know,” I start to say, and then catch myself. “Wait… what??”

Then you get the person to watch the video, and as they’re focused on that, you write the word on a card as you stand behind them. Sharpie on a double-blank playing card is essentially silent.

A couple people wrote in to suggest pocket-writing at this point. You could certainly do that. But it’s probably overkill.

Now, I know writing something behind someone’s back while they watch something on your phone is not the height of cleverness. But this is one of those amateur, one-on-one methods that can be surprisingly invisible. Specifically when the structure of the trick is designed to take the focus off of you.

Here’s the thing, if the Mystery Box gimmick you’re using is appropriately fooling, then even having the opportunity to write down what they said won’t really explain how it got in that box in the other room.

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What’s something you’re doing that you’re excited about?

This is what I’d like to know. One of the most enjoyable periods of communicating with the readers of this site happened at the beginning of the pandemic when I had a contest that involved people telling me their plans for how they were going to improve themselves during lockdown.

I really liked hearing and seeing about the stuff you all were involved in.

So now I want to know what you’re working on or planning that you’re excited about. You know those people who shit on anyone else’s excitement, and discourage their plans? You probably know someone like that. Maybe you’re married to someone like that. Well, I’m the opposite of that. I love hearing about that sort of stuff.

So if you want, send me an email and let me know about it. It could be magic related or something else. A personal project, a professional project. A new grandkid. A trip. There must be something you’re excited about. If not, that’s a fucking bummer. Let’s work on that.

This isn’t for a contest. It’s just because I’m interested. But know that my return email will probably just be a sentence or two. Only because I don’t have the time to give as thoughtful a response as I’d like when I’m getting a ton of emails. Don’t see it as a lack of interest.

And I won’t be sharing anything about what you write on the site, unless I specifically ask to. And if you’re sharing some magic thing you’re working on, don’t worry, I won’t blab about it. I like the opportunity to keep secrets.

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Supporters will get the next issue of Love Letters on the 1st, and I’ll be back here with new posts on Monday the 3rd. Until then, enjoy the last day of summer, the equinox, and these first few days of autumn.

Mailbag: Distracted Artist and Audience Belief

Finally got around to trying distracted artist style yesterday. Moved a fork with my mind at a strategic moment and it had a huge impact on a stranger. The only issue was they were convinced it wasn’t a trick. I created a kind of elaborate story around it that seems too fantastical to be believed, but I’m pretty sure they took everything at face value. Thoughts? —AG

The “problem” with the Distracted Artist style is that it’s a blank canvas. If I’m telling you I’m moving a fork with the power of my mind, you may believe or disbelieve it. If I tell you I’m moving a fork with trained lice, you’ll probably disbelieve it. If I tell you I’m moving a fork with via channeling the electromagnetic force in my cell phone and aiming it at the fork, you may think, “Is that possible?” Depending on the story I tell, I can dial in your belief somewhat.

With the Distracted Artist style you’re putting it in the audience’s hands as far as how they’re going to interpret the event. Was it something legitimately strange, or was it just some guy doing a trick?

My personal philosophy is this: I’m never trying to genuinely convince someone I have any type of powers or that this is anything other than a trick. But it’s also not up to me to babysit their mind. If they choose to believe something, then whatever. That’s a choice they’re making. This is especially true with the Distracted Artist style.

One thing I’ve maybe never made clear is the issue I have with claiming real “powers.” My primary issue is not that you’re really going to convince people and that that’s somehow going to harm their life in some way. My issue is just that it’s pathetic. “I want people to really believe I have magical powers!” [Or powers of persuasion, or psychic powers, or memory skills, or card-cheating ability, or whatever.] You want people to really believe you have abilities you don’t actually possess? That’s very sad. And it’s poisonous to your psyche.

If you can do entertaining, mystifying magic… that’s enough. You won’t feel the need to try and genuinely convince anyone of “real powers.”

I went off on a tangent there. To get back to your question, AG…

In your situation, if the person was taking it more seriously than I had intended, I would say, “Oh, I was just practicing a magic trick.”

Or go the other direction, “Please promise not to tell anyone. I’m Christ. I’ve returned. I’m moving forks at the moment. But I have bigger plans on the horizon.”

Hooper

Imagine

It’s Saturday night. My friend Bella has came to my place to have some dinner and watch the 1978 classic, Hooper. (“Classic.”)

After the movie is over, I ask her for her help with something I’m working on.

“Myself and some of my friends who are also interested in magic have a little competition going on. It’s kind of like a tournament where for who can come up with the best trick. You have head-to-head match-ups and the winner gets to go on to the next round. It’s a long-term competition. You have three months for each round. So with 16 of us ‘competing’ it takes about a year to crown a winner. There’s quite a bit of money involved, but really it’s just a way for us to make sure we keep in touch, because we don’t live in the same city anymore. So this is really just an excuse to get together—on Zoom at least—every few months. And then once a year we all meet up to do the ‘finals’ in person.”

I take out my phone and set it up to shoot video and prop it up against a candle on my end table.

“I’m so far behind on my submission for this round. Can you help me film something for it? It will be easy.”

I give her a piece of paper and pen, as well as a lighter and a silver bowl.

She agrees to help, so I start recording on the camera.

Speaking to the camera, I say, “Okay, guys, this is Andy. And this is my entry for Round 2 of the competition. I call it… Smoke Reading.”

I tell Bella that I’m going to walk over to the other side of the room with my back to her and the camera. I’ll stay in frame the whole time, so it’s clear I don’t turn around. I ask her to keep her back to me so that her body blocks anything she’s about to do.

“Before we do this, have I set-up anything with you before we started recording? Did I ask you to do or say anything in particular?”

She says “No,” and I ask her to say it into the camera.

She looks into the camera. “We haven’t set anything up,” she says, and gives it a wink.

“Wait… why’d you wink?” I ask. “Now it looks like we have set something up.”

“Oh, that’s not what I was going for,” she says. “We haven’t set anything up. I was just being cute.” She winks again at the camera.

Fair enough.

I walk to the other side of the room with my back towards everything.

“Bella, I want you to think of a word. Any word in the English language. Something that it would be very unlikely for me to just randomly guess. Do you have something in mind?”

She says she does.

“Great. Write it down on that piece of paper. Show it to those watching. And then fold the paper in half and in quarters. Now I want you to take that lighter, set the paper on fire, and drop it in the bowl. Be careful. Let me know when the paper is mostly burned away and there’s no chance I could read anything on it.”

After a few moments she tells me the paper is mostly burned up.

“Perfect,” I say, and turn towards her. “So even if I came up next to you I wouldn’t be able to see what you wrote down, yes?”

She agrees.

“Okay, I’m actually not even going to get close enough to look at the paper. Instead I’m just going to look at the lines in the smoke.”

I stare from the opposite side of the room into the smoke coming out of the bowl.

After a few moments I say… “Bella… be honest with me… were you thinking of the word… poetry?”

She smiles.

I smile back.

“No,” she says.

“Wait… seriously?” I ask. “It wasn’t poetry?”

She shakes her head. I walk over to her and stop the recording.

“What the hell,” I say softly as I contemplate what went wrong.

“Okay, let’s try again and hopefully it will work this time.”

I start resetting the props. Dumping out the ashes and grabbing a new slip of paper.

“What word did you end up thinking about before?” I ask.

“Pudding,” she says.

“Hmm… I don’t know,” I start to say, and then catch myself. “Wait… what??”

“Pudding?” she says again.

“Are you fucking serious?”

“Yes.”

“What the…,” I pause, trying to understand what just happened. “Did someone tell you to say that or anything?”

“Huh? No. What do you mean?” she asks.

“Are you positive?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know a guy named Woody Sullivan, by any chance?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she says, “I don’t know him. I don’t know any Woodies.”

“Fuck me. How the hell?…” I mutter.

I snap out of my reverie and pick up my phone.

“Here, check this out,” I say.

I pull up a video on my phone. There is a guy sitting at a table.

“This is Woody Sullivan,” I say. “This is the guy I’m competing against in this round of the competition. He sent me this video like two months ago.”

I play the video.

Woody says:

Hey. Okay, so my submission for the competition is in the box that I sent you. Feel free to open it up and take a look inside. It's not going to seem very magical just yet. But trust me... it will. So hang onto it until the deadline.

Best of luck with whatever you're working on. I look forward to seeing it.

Okay, I guess that's it. Take care.

"Check this out,” I say. I take Bella by the hand to my office area and show her a little plastic box sitting on a shelf. There is something folded up inside the box.

“Woody sent this to me two months ago.”

I open the box and remove the small white card in side. When I unfold it, it says…

Pudding

Bella’s arms reach out in front of her, palms to the sky. “Wait… what?!?!” she says. “Are you fucking serious?”

I shake my head. “I guess he’s going to win this round of the tournament,” I say, dejectedly.

Method

This idea came to me via Madison Hag1er. The underlying idea is to use the camera remote app on the Apple Watch to get a peek at something someone has written or drawn and shown to the camera on your phone. For those who don’t know, the remote app will show on your watch whatever your iPhone camera is looking at.

While this idea has probably been considered in the past, it likely didn’t catch on because “show what you wrote to my camera” is sort of transparent as part of a presentation. At the very least it would come off as suspicious if you didn’t have a fairly solid reason for why you wanted them to show what they wrote to the camera. Here, the reasoning is pretty unassailable, so long as they buy into the story you’re telling them.

But even more important than having a good reason for them showing it to the camera, the most powerful thing going on here is that you’re not taking credit for the impossible thing they’re going to see.

Not taking credit is the most disarming technique in magic, in my opinion. Laymen can conceive of the idea that you spent 100s of hours perfecting sleights. They can understand that there are maybe technologies unknown to them that would permit you to do things that look like miracles. They can imagine psychological techniques or mathematical methods that are beyond their comprehension, but which you could maybe harness to do this impossible.

But one thing they have a hard time grasping is that you'd put the effort into showing them something magical and not take the credit for it. It spins their brain off in a different direction.

That’s the real secret here.

The mechanics of the method are simple. I had the face of the Apple Watch (I never wear the thing) on a bookshelf across the room. And I had a card and a Sharpie in my pocket. As Bella was burning the paper I had far more time than I needed to take out the card, write “pudding” on it, fold it, and put it back in my pocket. I could have done anything at that point. She was setting something on fire—an action which people usually devote most of their attention to.

You could theoretically be in the other room when they show the camera the word, but I didn’t want her to think I was doing something in another room. If there was any question about what I was doing, she had video evidence that I was standing on the other side of the room with my back to her the whole time. From the camera’s perspective, you couldn’t see me doing anything.

I eventually removed “Woody’s” prediction from a Vision Box 2.0. These are mostly sold out at the moment, from what I can tell. But you could use any type of mystery box.

And you don’t have to use the camera remote peek. It you have some other stratagem to get the peek from across the room, you could do something similar. Maybe one of those clipboards that sends you an image of what they write/draw. Or perhaps there is a low-tech way I’m not considering. The nice part about the camera remote peek is how clean it is when paired with this premise/presentation.

Madison is responsible for both of those things as well. He had the general idea to be recording the video as a submission of some sort, and for you to get it wrong and have an outside entity be the thing that successfully completes the trick. Those elements are his. The only thing I added was this specific story.

And this story is doing a lot of work for you. It takes the focus off of you as the performer. It gives a much richer idea of what it’s like in the world of learning and sharing magic with other magicians. And it blows out the experience so it’s not something that just happened in this one 5-minute moment, it’s something that began weeks ago when you were sent this package in the mail.

I’m calling this trick Hooper, not just because it’s the movie I watched with my friend this weekend, but also because I see parallels between the movie and this trick. Hooper is about stuntmen. A stuntman’s job is to add thrills and excitement without taking credit for what they’re doing. They are doing this in service to the story and the audience’s experience. This is the goal of audience-centric magic as well. Not making every trick about you in a desperate attempt to seem special. But rather being a facilitator that creates a thrilling and mystifying experience for others without making it all about themselves.

Dustings #72

One of the weird things about doing this site for so many years now is the way certain types of emails will come in waves. There will be a wave of emails suggesting I start a Discord or Facebook page or something. (Nope.) There will be a wave of emails asking me about my Every Day Carry. (I’ll get to that soon. It won’t be satisfying.) There will be a wave of emails asking why I save my best tricks for my books that supporters get, rather than posting them free online. (As if the normal thing people do is giveaway the stuff they’ve worked hardest on for free.) There will be a wave of people asking my a/s/l and if I “wanna cyber.” (14/f/California, and yes I do, you sick fuck.)

Okay, “wave” might be a bit of a grandiose term. But these emails definitely come in cycles.

One subject I’ve been getting more emails about recently is if I’m available for consulting work. The answer, as of now and for the foreseeable future, is “No.” I have an exclusive consulting contract with one client. It’s an annual contract and won’t be up until February of next year. (Although it’s likely to get renewed.)

I wanted to announce that because there was a time where I did offer consulting, but as of now that’s no longer available.

Of course, this only goes for magic and mentalism. If you want to hire me for some other purpose—maybe to build a dock for you, or something—feel free to get in touch.

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More Bad Equivoque

From this trick.

It’s almost shocking how bad people are at using equivoque. You’ve lived on this earth for some time, yes? Have you ever chosen or eliminated something by raising it slightly? Well then that probably shouldn’t be your equivoque script.

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When people say that they’re not a magician, they’re a mentalist, I’m always reminded of this clip from Law & Order.

To clarify my point, I’ve subtly edited that clip.

It’s okay, guys. Come out of the closet. There’s no shame in being what you are. You’re a magician. Yes, you may be drawn towards mentalism. Which is a branch of magic. Own it, you sassy little bitch!

A Theoretical Bifurcated Trick

Here’s a theoretical idea for a trick. I say “theoretical” because it’s not something I’ve ever done. And it’s not something I would guess anyone would find themselves in the circumstances to do. But I find it interesting to think about. And part of my enjoyment in magic is thinking about “interesting” methods and techniques.

The original idea comes from an email from Pete McCabe. I’ll include that email at the bottom of this post.

Here’s what it would look like.

You’re sitting with two friends at a table.

“I’m going to ask you both to do a simple task. You will have no trouble doing your task. And yet you will be doing something incredible. Never in your life will the disparity between what you do and what you accomplish be greater than it will be right now.”

You give your friend Amanda a piece of paper and a pen. You give your friend Bob a deck of cards.

“Amanda, your task is this… I’m going to turn around. While my back is turned, I want you to just try and open your mind for a moment and then write down any word on that piece of paper. Then fold that paper up and put it in your pocket. Okay?”

You turn your back. She writes down a word. And puts it in her pocket.

You turn back around.

“Okay, Bob, your task is this. I want you to deal that deck of cards into two relatively equal piles. You don’t have to deal back and forth. You can deal however you want. Just end up with two piles about the same size at the end.”

Bob does this.

“Easy, right?” you say. “I know that felt like nothing. Writing down a word. Or dealing a deck into two piles. A five-year-old could do these things. But I’m being honest when I tell you that I think you’ve each done something amazing. Let’s see….

“Amanda, when I turned around earlier I was trying to send you a word with my mind. I didn’t know what word to send at first. I didn’t want to do something too simple like ‘house’ or ‘tree.’ But I wanted it to be a significant word in some way. So I chose something that is the building block of life itself. I chose the word… carbon. What did you write down?”

Amanda goes nuts because that’s what she wrote down.

“And Bob… you dealt these cards out completely blind, yes? You didn’t look at any of the faces or anything? And yet, look what you managed to do….”

You reveal that Bob has dealt all the red cards into one pile and all the black cards into another.

Method

Okay, don’t stop reading when you read the initial part of the method, because then you won’t get to the interesting part.

Amanda’s word is written down with any writing implement on any piece of paper and it goes straight into her pocket. You never see it.

But Bob does see what she writes.

And Bob codes you the word via Morse code as he deals the deck into two piles. So one pile is the “dot” pile, the other is the “dash” pile. Between letters he just needs to break his rhythm and pretend to “consider” where to place the next card. Once he’s spelled out the word he can speed up and deal out the rest of the deck.

So the “mind reading” of Amanda is very clean.

But think about the effect on Bob. He thinks he’s just coding you the information. He doesn’t know where his part of this is going. So that will be pretty mind-boggling when he sees—somehow—he dealt the cards into piles of red and black.

Now, the reason why this is more of a theoretical trick is because it depends on someone being willing to learn Morse Code for the sake of doing magic tricks with you. But also that person has to be not versed enough in magic to know about Out of This World. You’re probably not going to stumble across too many people like that. But hey, maybe you’ll run into a total newbie in magic who wants to learn stuff and you can convince them to learn Morse Code and pull this on them.

Here’s Pete’s original email…

I loved JFC’s idea of hot and cold.

Here’s an idea that popped into my head.

You are going to do two different tricks on two different people. One of them is your friend/stooge, the other is the audience.

First you do the trick for your friend, which is Out of This World. The order of their red-black guesses keys you to whatever you need.

Now you do the second trick, using the info your friend coded to you.

The best part is that, in the world of the trick, it’s impossible for their red-black guesses to have been a code because they all turn out to have been correct.

Second best part is that although your spectator helps you with the second trick, they will still be fooled by the OOTW.

Biggest drawback is that now your friend needs to memorize the morse code.

Make This: The Digital Thumb-Writer

This is a repost of something I wrote almost two years ago. It was up for less than a day before I took it down. I took it down because someone expressed a desire to work on this. Since they haven’t yet done anything with the idea, I’m now reposting this so that anyone who wants to take a stab at it can. Apparently it’s much more difficult to do than I imagine it to be. But if someone could figure this out, it could be a very valuable tool for anyone who does app magic.

[Update: I’m now hearing that someone may have cracked the code on this. If so, consider this post a sneak preview of something that may be out in the coming months.]

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Here’s an idea for one of you magic app makers out there. It’s an idea I had years ago and I’m surprised nothing similar has come out yet (as far as I know). So I’m putting it out here so that hopefully one of you will take the idea and run with it.

Essentially it’s an idea for an input method, which you could then attach to many different effects.

For example, let’s say we just met and I say, “I get a good vibe from you. I bet we have the same spirit animal. What’s your spirit animal?”

You tell me you don’t have one.

“Of course you do,” I say, “you just haven’t thought about it. Go ahead, take a guess at what yours is.”

You say it’s a duck.

“Bingo,” I say.

And then I show you my phone and my wallpaper is an image of a duck. “I knew we had that in common.”

Or, I show you a picture I’ve taken of a page in my high-school yearbook, zoomed in on the face of one person.

“This is a photo of my girlfriend my freshman year in high school. I got in trouble for carving her initials into my desk. That’s a very strong memory for me, and they say strong memories are the most easily read by others. So I want you to give it a shot. What do you think her initials were?”

You say, “S.R.”

I draw your attention to my phone and tell you to zoom out on the image. When you do, you see that under the photograph is her name: Stephanie Richmond.

So, as the name of this post implies, the idea would be an input system where the phone’s screen works as a pad that you can thumb-write on with your thumb.

You WOULDN’T write the word (or multi-digit number) across the screen in one go. Let me be clear about that. That would be difficult. Instead, you’d do it letter by letter. So if the person says “duck,” you would write a D in the middle of the screen with your thumb (get some sort of vibration saying the letter was recognized), a U, a C, then a K.

(And in the second example you’d just write S then R and the app would load an appropriate name for the person under the image.)

The phone could either look like it was off (as in the first example) or apparently be on a photo or webpage.

The beauty of this method is how disarming it would be. Most input methods for apps require some level of concentration on the phone at some point, but this would require none. Your hand would just be holding your phone down at your side, while you carry on a conversation. It’s very easy to write, letter-by-letter, with your thumb while maintaining your focus on someone else.

The difficult part would be—I assume—to get the handwriting recognition to work behind the scenes. But one thing that would make this much easier (again, I assume) is that it wouldn’t have to recognize words. It would just have to recognize individual letters. Even just individual capital letters.

Being able to input any word, without breaking concentration, and without looking at your phone would be a game changer in the app game. If any of you decide to give this a shot, let me know.

My Current Repertoire Organization System

A couple years ago I wrote about the system I was using to track and maintain the tricks in my repertoire using a database in Notion.

You can read those posts here and here.

A few months back I started using a new system, which I want to tell you about today.

Why I Changed Systems

While the Notion-based system was very robust and was great for cross referencing material, I was finding myself a little more disconnected from the process of tending to the repertoire of tricks. It was very much like data entry. And I felt myself wanting something that engaged me more in the process.

I was thinking I wanted something more like a paper-based system. Being able to handwrite my notes and easily include sketches and stuff like would make my tracking system feel less like a database, and more like something personal. I don’t think of my repertoire as just a list of tricks. I like to think of it as like a garden I’m tending to: planting seeds, pruning, and harvesting the material.

But a notebook wouldn’t really do the trick because then I’d have to leave blank pages after tricks so I could come back and annotate performances. And I wouldn’t be able to rearrange things or remove things easily.

For those purposes, a 3-ring binder and loose-leaf paper would be ideal because you can insert pages between other pages, tear pages out, rearrange things, etc.

But a 3-ring binder is bulky and ugly. It’s not the sort of thing I’m going to carry around with me. And portability is important because I want the ability to reference my repertoire on the go.

My New System

I ended up going with something that has both what I want from a digital organizational system and a physical paper-based system.

It uses my iPad and the GoodNotes app.

GoodNotes is a digital notebook app. But unlike a physical notebook you can easily add, delete, and reorganize pages.

I have three pdf templates I use within my Repertoire notebook.

The Trick Description Page

On this page is the name of the trick, who created it, where it can be found, and what “genre” the trick is in. (My “genres” are pretty much the same as the tags I describe in this post.)

Then there is an area to describe any set-up for the trick, an area to briefly describe the presentational premise for the trick, and a larger area for notes.

These notes might be more details on the method, drawings, presentational ideas, and so on.

Sometimes all the notes I need won’t fit in this one box. In that case I have…

The Notes Page

This is simply a page with a large empty space for more notes.

So, when I add a new trick to my repertoire, I add the Trick Description page for it to my Repertoire notebook in GoodNotes.

If the notes section isn’t long enough, I can add one or more pages for additional notes.

Then, once I actually start performing the trick for people, I add…

The Performance Notes Page

This is, as you would imagine, a page to keep notes on individual performances of that trick

And that’s pretty much it. Once I have these blank templates imported into my GoodNotes, I can just add in any of these pages wherever I need one. It’s a simple two tap process. So I can go back and add in more general notes pages or performance notes pages for any trick. I can rearrange the pages to keep all the tricks of a certain genre together. That means I can easily flip through and look at all my impromptu card tricks, or iPhone tricks or whatever.

It’s very easy to add any page to the “outline” for the notebook, which essentially creates a table of contents for the book that can be accessed from anywhere in the notebook.

I write in the notebook using the Apple Pencil. This is less efficient than typing. But the handwriting is still searchable.

And while this system is less cross-reference-able and sortable than my previous one, I’m willing to sacrifice those things for what I feel is a stronger connection to the material. I enjoy being able to flip through it like a book, being reminded of tricks that maybe I hadn’t intended to look at, and seeing my handwritten notes and drawings.

This isn’t my real repertoire notebook, but it will give you a sense of what an entry for a trick might look like…

While I do the work in the book on my iPad, it’s also available on my iPhone for reference which is super convenient.

I’m pretty sure GoodNotes is only for Apple, but there are similar note-taking apps for non-Apple tablets.

The only other organizational thing I have going on right now is a basic spreadsheet where I have people I perform for regularly and the tricks I’ve shown them. I don’t include any more information than that in the spreadsheet. If I want to know how the trick went when I performed it for them, I refer to the notes in my Repertoire notebook.

There you have it. I don’t know if this sort of thing will appeal to anyone else, but it may give you a direction to consider. You can find the templates I use linked in the section headings above. However you may want to come up with your own versions that collect different information. Mine was just designed to capture the information I need. Your needs may be more complicated.

I don’t know how long I’ll stick with this system, but it feels right for now. If I change it in the future, I’ll let you know.