"What's a Wizard to do? Please!"
By Shane

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You know, very rarely do I get fired up about things magic-wise. My crank just don't turn that way, folks. I figure life is too short, my friends and family too few, and the amount of things I want to accomplish too damn many to fret about the things some folks get caught up on. Oh, I'll kvetch about things -- exposure, theft, rip-offs, laziness -- but to really turn my screws, well, it takes a lot.

Or so I thought.

Courtesy of Inside Magic, I was directed to a supposedly "depressing" article (which you should "read with a friend" according to Tim Quinlan, assumedly for moral support) in the Dallas-Fort Worth Star-Telegram written by staff writer Jeff Guinn entitled "What's a Wizard to do?" The article is short, well-written, and you should read it. Go ahead; I'll wait.

Boy, the future of magic sure is in the toilet, isn't it? The Harry Potter craze has destroyed magic as we know it, hasn't it? It's harder and harder to find gigs, right? Yep, it's time to go grab the old shotgun, load up both barrels, and decorate your fancy table -- you know, the one with the bunnies on it, the one you haven't used in years but paid a fortune for -- with the inside of your cranium.

Oh, please. If this is getting people of our ilk all nervous and antsy and performing messy bodily functions in our best Sunday-go-to-gigging suits, we've got a more serious problem than "magic is hard". And people are getting nervous. So many that it's been occupying my email of late with concerns.

So, rather than answer all those emails one at a time, here we sit together. And so, just this one more time, trust me a second. Take a deep breath. Close your eyes. Relax. And look at reality for a second.

First, there are a couple of themes going on in Guinn's piece. There's the whole "Harry Potter has changed magic" thing, then there's the "It's hard to earn a living in magic" bit. Both of which brings about the only reply possible, which I'll save for later.

Let's look at the scary bits of this article, starting with this bit:

Now, I'm not busting on Jeff Guinn here. Mr. Guinn is to be congratulated for even acknowledging our little piece of the entertainment world exists. Jeff, if you're reading this, I'd like to buy you a beer just for that. But this is something magicians and magic have been dealing with since the first man-ape executed the first false-transfer with a berry.

Magic changes. Magic changes when the environment changes. 'Twas ever thus.

We can go back a few centuries, to the days of Robert-Houdin putting tails on magicians and separating them from the jugglers they were considered. We can go back an aeon or two when the short con became a trick while taking some of the mysticism away from the priests in the temples. We can go back to radio becoming a common appliance in every home, and then television, and look at the pioneers there who brought magic into the world of mainstream entertainment. We can look at when "moving pictures" hit the scene, or even newspapers for that matter. Even we've changed magic just by doing something new and different (or did we forget that weird little guy, Houdini? Didn't think so).

So is it any surprise when a complete commercial enterprise rises around a book, a movie, a collection of characters and themes and worlds and all of that, that magic would change? That it should change a bit?

If your audience expects it, you're damn right it should. If it doesn't, if you don't try to adapt to what an audience wants, you're out of business. This ain't no mystery; it's simple supply and demand in the entertainment world. Another magician mentioned in the article, Earl Warren, knows this. In the article, he admits to telling his audience of kids that he ain't doing none of that Harry Potter stuff, but then he makes sure that elements of Pottermania is present in his act, even to a small degree. This is Mr. Warren making a sound decision based on his audience and Earl, if you're reading this and we're ever in the same area, I'll buy you a beer, too, just for knowing your audience like we're supposed to.

Feel free to add my reply (which I'll give later) with this one, too. It's hard to make a living doing nothing but magic. It's hard to make a living in show business, period. Mr. Warren is exactly correct with his statement "You have to constantly be on the lookout for work. It doesn't just come to you."

If you got into magic thinking you're going to be the next Copperfield or Blaine or whoever else, think again. Yeah, you can do it -- the great thing about the entertainment business is that becoming a star can happen to you or anybody else for that matter. Work hard, catch some luck, and you're there. But there are a handful of superstar actors around today and lots of actors working as waiters. Keep that in mind. Show business is a double-barreled, whiskey-swilling, ball-breaking bitch to court. But when she takes a liking to you, if she takes a liking to you, nothing comes close to the happiness and reward you'll get.

So I'm told, anyway. Me, I'm slugging out a few different things myself, but luckily they are all pretty related and things I happen to love. I do magic, I write, I do readings, I lecture (no, not magic lectures -- the other kind)... and somewhere around all of this I make a living. Not a great one, but a good one, and I have fun. Show business gets cranky on me sometimes, but those times are few and far between and, well, there really is nothing quite like it.

So show business is hard. I know. Earl Warren knows it. Now you know it. 'Twas ever thus.

Okay, now this one I call shenanigans on, though my reply still applies. Ken Stewart is right: magic is expensive. If he thinks $8,000 is heavy, there are some that go way beyond that (think in terms of six-figures and you're getting the right idea). Ken's right -- my beef is not with him -- in saying magic is expensive when you start adding up $25 trick decks and $50 trick coins and a twenty-page booklet that cost you $100.

My beef is that now the poorer of our brethren (meaning just about every damn body) will think they need to spend whopping sums of money to be a "professional" when they simply don't have to..

God, why do I feel like I just broke the biggest secret of all time?

If you were to ask me, and let's pretend you are, you'd be told that in my bag that goes out the door with me when I go to a gig carries props and odds and ends coming to the right princely sum of $127. The learning materials behind those pieces of magic run about $600 (off the top of my head). Naturally, I'm leaving off the real money-eaters, like a great suit (that fits, dammit), business cards, and the like -- we all know that's where we spend the big bucks (or should, dammit); we're just sticking to the commercial purchases generally regarded as "magic stuff".

Face it, we pretend everything we buy we're going to use, and we pretend we're going to use everything we buy and we end up with drawers and cupboards and bookcases filled with stuff we thought was neat or was the Next Big Thing or something We Buy To Have The Latest and Greatest and there we go spending a fortune.

In reality, Vernon was right when he said that bit about just needing a good pass, etcetera etcetera etcetera. Pick up one of the classics or neo-classics, learn it cover to cover, buy the required props, learn your craft, learn to entertain, and you're done spending money. Anything else you buy magic-wise is you learning a bit more, which is certainly laudable, but to make it in magic? Big money ain't required to entertain and get paid for it, but it certainly is fun to spend. 'Twas ever thus.

From there the article goes into quoting a salesman at a magic shop who doesn't know any full-time professional magicians (probably true; I've known some pros who avoid magic shops like they were opium dens which, if you think about it, is pretty close to the truth. Besides, the magic market in his area may be small), how going full-time is simply "dreaming" (for some it is, for some it ain't), and how one magician hopes to make $150 or so for an hour show after he does a little adapting and re-tooling of his character to the -- yes, here it comes again -- influence of Harry Potter (God love 'im for taking the jump and making the change in the first place)..

Rather than rail away on each of these points, let's go back to a basic idea: magic is show business, show business is hard, therefore magic is hard. That pretty much covers all of those points.

The funny thing was, as I was reading this article, I didn't get depressed, not at any point. There's simply nothing here to get depressed about -- it's all old-hat from old-school. Magic is tough, people. Entertaining people for a living is tough. There's a reason I have business books sitting next to magic books, and there's a reason I know my printer by name and usually what he had for breakfast but I can't name the officers of <fill in the name of any magic club here>. I can't rattle off all of Maskelyne's Rules of Magic but I can blather on about The Seven Common Mistakes To Avoid When Meeting Someone.

But the emails came and people were depressed -- some downright despondent -- and then I got a little worked up. I'm feeling better, thanks. But the point is, to anyone thinking about making a living doing magic full-time or even part-time, know what you're getting into. Magic is not all peaches and cream -- it's seldom even the bowl or spoon to eat them with -- but it shouldn't be, either. It's work. It's hard work. You gotta want to do it and you gotta want to do it bad and you gotta spend every moment either getting better at it or getting people to pay you for being better at it. And when you get to that point, you'll have to scrap everything you've done to match the latest changes going on around you and start all over again. That's not depressing, that doesn't need you to go cry on someone's shoulder... that's the way the business of show is and if you like that work, if you're happy with that work, you're a success anyway and all you're waiting for is the money to show up. 'Twas ever thus.

Or, as my reply to this article goes, "No shit."

Shane