I know I could get in trouble for not reading all 11 stupid pages before posting this, but if you have Gregory Wilson's Pyrotechnic Pasteboards then watch it.
When you get to the trick entitled "flashback" then think about your argument carefully and see why it isn't always true.
He makes the excuse that he hits a button on his watch (which is in fact a time machine
), and that is what causes the card to jump back to the top. Everybody laughs at him because what he is saying is irrational, and quixotic. Everybody knows that the card is in the center of the pack. Everybody knows he's merely
joking. Everybody believes that the card is lost and can't easily be located. Then, and only then, when everybody is convinced what he said was a joke, he turns over the top card. Everybody flips, because even though they saw the card go in the center, it has "magically" come to the top. They don't care if he told them the truth or not, they don't care if he outright lied, because
they don't have a better explanation. And for a brief second for all they know, that could very well be how it's done.
After everybody stops and thinks about it for a second, they begin to try and rationalize the trick (he used an extra card, he did some sort of move right after he put the card in, there is a little leprechaun up his front jacket sleeve pocket that helps him do the trick, whatever). Once they have some sort of rational explanation they don't care anymore because they know how it was done in their mind. So then when Greg says he'll do it again, everybody's watching with their "rationalization" in there mind. And when he stumps them again it seems even more impossible, and eventually the impossible becomes (in their eyes) almost believable. Now I'm not saying anybody walked out of that show and really believed that he could travel around in time, but everybody did believe that he did his job well, because
they couldn't figure out the trick. He
entertained them, and that is what they wanted. Entertainment.
As a magician your job is
not to
fool them. It is to
entertain them. If you just walk up to somebody on the street, show them a coin and make it vanish, they will treat it as a puzzle, and will wonder where the coin went. But if you walk up to them, tell them your a magician and you're there to entertain them, and you do that (with a good patter), and you do the same trick. You will get people to say
you're wonderful, and
you're great,
you've got a lot of talent. That is not because you can make a coin vanish, it's because you yourself are good at being a magician, and you did what you promised them you'd do. You entertained them. It only takes an average Joe to do a trick and fool someone, but it takes a skilled magician to do a trick and
entertain someone.
Call it mouthgarbage if you want to, but while you're sitting there fuming, we are out in the world making big dough because we can
entertain people.
-PTG
*EDIT* BTW I do believe that you can entertain people by keeping quiet (mimes do, dancers do, and even some magicians do), but what I'm trying to get across to you that most people enjoy our MouthGarbage, because it entertains them. I'm not saying you have to make it totally wild and random (because there does come a point when you can have too much stupidity in your "explanation".) But I am saying that most people enjoy MouthGarbage.
