Oops!
by P. Craig Browning

Ok…what’s my excuse going to be?

Between the holidays and general chaos of life I didn’t get a feature article completed… I’m working on a few but I’ve been pre-occupied with my new hobby: learning how to do magic.

It’s a strange thing actually: I’ve known about doing tricks but to learn how to create magic, now that’s some thing quite interesting and “different” in that it takes so little to make so much happen – the subtle things that, as one of my old teachers used to say, make us masters over the greater.

Recently I presented you with some points of view on my old friend John Riggs and this article will be no different. Shining a new light on an old friend – a friend of this magazine in fact -- I refer to the great bearded sage known to most as Kenton – but I’ve given up waiting for the little birds nesting in his beard to jump out and sing a song (something that he and Burger have in common) yet, like dear old Eugene, Kenton offers to us all some clever insights when it comes to the logic of logic as well as the "ill-logic" of the same. For instance, I’ve been studying "Secrets of Indirection" and "Mystery by Association" of late. Fortunately, I’m not buying these books for the sake of learning “a new trick”; I’ve invested into them for the sake of learning how to transform my tricks into something more miraculous, and Kenton will tell you rather directly I am one of the noisier wheels in the mix when it comes to the cost of his books at times. That was before I really started understanding both where he was coming from and the potential behind some of the “little ditties” he shares – little pearls of perspective 99% of us never even consider unless someone points them out to us.

Now my purpose for bringing this up, especially the ideas shared in these two particular books, has little to do with my respect for Kenton and his wonder-filled mind. Rather, it has to do with the premise from where he and most of the “Master Magicians” I’ve known over the years all worked – from the cornerstone of simplicity – the K.I.S.S. Method ("Keep It Simple, Stupid" as Vernon used to say…] The question is where does that simplicity rest? At what point are we over-complicating things?

One of the classic mistakes most of us make is trying to prove that something is normal, ungimmicked, etc. Even in instances, such as escape work, less is more… In other words, you needn’t waste time on stage with the act of proving the trunk is sound: first off, there are too many wise-asses in today’s world that know where the traps are typically located and true to the mind-set of today’s “I have a right to do what I want” culture, you run the risk of some prick opening the gimmick and showing it to the world (it’s happened to three people I’m aware of in the past year; thank you, YouTube, for promoting the public’s understanding of magic). The second reason you do not want to take this approach during your shows now days is the fact that audiences get bored fast and if you aren’t doing something that will hold their attention you will lose!

As a “Mentalist”, I spent at least two or more years re-learning how to do things, how to break myself of those nasty magician’s habits I’d developed that insist on proving everything is above board. In truth, if I were a real psychic, as the saying goes, then I’d just grab a handkerchief or two and make an impromptu blindfold or I’d use a night time eye-pillow or just pull a bag over my head…. I would not make it an issue; it isn’t the issue unless I/you make it so.

There are numerous ways of proving a blindfold, in this case, is legit without having to go out and let a dozen people try it on.

Again, thanks to YouTube and the lack of functioning cranial matter in today’s youth, the blindfold in its various modes has been exposed, e.g. inspection means you are running the risk of someone exposing it during a performance. That could stifle those of us that aren’t aware of alternative methods for doing things so why run the risk?

Allen Zingg shares a great bit of logic pertaining to the blindfold and making it “legit” within one of these books I’ve mentioned. It’s nothing elaborate and it is an approach all of us can use but it also depends on another simplicity that even Kenton seems to have missed when doing the write-up – patience! It’s what Shimada used to refer to as working “off the beat”

We are all familiar with misdirection but most of us fall into the rut of seeing it as a strictly visual and physical thing rarely weighing the other dynamics involved. Shimada discovered that knowing your music cues combined with movement and even a bit of deliberate, subtle “programming” allowed you to do things secretly by working outside the “rhythm” of the over-all action.

It’s a difficult thing for me to explain in words but the essence of it is that you are making your move where it shouldn’t be made if one were to look at the cadence and “flow” of your routine. In the case of proving the big megaphone looking tube is empty, you use it as a gag prop or something somewhere else in the act before you need it to do “the trick”; you “program” the audience, as it were, by using an item elsewhere and allowing it to be handled.

Think about that… you’re setting up your show and some kids show up (as they do) and see your rings laying at the edge of the stage. They’re curious… so let them play with them.

What?!

The set laying on the edge of the stage aren’t the ones you’ll be using in the act. They are simple chrome plated rings that resemble you gimmicked set but trust me, if you let a handful of kids or more importantly, the local college jocks play with the dummy set prior to your show, it don’t matter how terrible you handling is, if you can manage to conceal the key ring and do a half-way decent count off, you are going to drive them bonkers; the switch is made right in your little night club table or brief case or whatever it is you use.

I know that sounds rather abstract, but it is what creates magick and that’s something the public is clamoring for now days. They are tired of seeing mind puzzles and tricks, they want to experience magick… they want to be “enchanted” and that, my friends, is where we, as showmen, must take multiple steps away from the books teaching us new “tricks” that are used in our craft and embrace those that will teach us “the tricks of the trade", those subtleties that make the psychological difference. There’s a heck of a lot more to it than setting people up in ways I’ve suggested thus far, simple subtle tactics that are in a constant mode of refinement and fine tuning, everything from the words we say to how we say them and even where we are standing (or sitting) when they are stated.

Kenton points out how magic buffs tend to poo-poo some of his thinking all the while ignoring the fact that they have no legitimate theatrical connection for the most part: contrary to the rule of thumb 99% of magicians aren’t actors playing a part in that they aren’t actors to begin with. Most of them are jerks that learned a few tricks for the sake of winning bar bets or getting laid (just look at some of the thread themes in most any forum if you doubt me). The other truth is that the majority just want to know “how it works” and have no intention of ever doing a “real” show, thus they could care less about the finer points to it all, such as developing grace in their mannerisms and not just their stage presence but presence on the whole. They rarely know what stage right, left, up and down mean let alone all the other basics of standing on a real stage and working “the room”.

Why?

Because they avoid lectures and workshops on showmanship, they refuse to take acting or improvisation classes and when it comes to the lie of psychology, its existence stems from the fact that most pick and choose themes and key points versus actually studying the wider essence of the field so as to gain a greater and more realistic understanding as to both, the facts and the factual limitations. Rather, they are akin to a go’n to meet’n Christian that can give you “selected passages” for proving their point but no meat to go with the potatoes, let alone gravy.

I know that sounds harsh, cruel, but the truth oft-times hurts and we’ve all be lying for way too long when it comes to the idea that we are “actors playing the part of a magician”. Actors have training and lots of it. Kenton and others have shared just little tidbits about that world with us and they get mocked; mocked by the very same people who are screaming in frustration because they can’t get the same kind of reactions from an audience when they do this or that effect that they saw so-and-so do on TV last week.

Have you ever stopped to think that maybe so-and-so has numerous advantages going for him/her that you don’t, i.e. more time working in a specific area of practice, more live-audience time than you, more coaching resources… And in the larger sense, a greater willingness (desire) to learn about all those “little things” that will transform their version of the Haunted Deck into something miraculous versus another gaffed deck of cards or whatever the case may prove to be.

I’ve sat in on far too many production planning meetings -- not just magic but for trade show exhibition and other events -- and they all come down to one key handful of elements that can be summed up in the metaphoric term of "watch" or "clock-works".

Look inside an old mechanical watch at all the cogs and gears and how each little thing plays a part in making the great affect happen – dozens of little things working in tandem so as to create the illusion of time. Now, if that’s the case, what makes our illusions any different?

We still need to find all the right pieces and fit them into place in the same gentle, delicate and practical manner the jeweler does as they make a time piece, a device that tricks us all every day, into believing in the magic of time itself – an illusion mankind has yet to let go of, which is why you are wondering when I’ll finally come to an end of this rambling and let you move on to another section dealing with a new card trick instead of the “real tricks” of the trade…

Enjoy!

Craig Browning