Day 38! "Why 'Good Enough' is Great"

[meggisonj]

My Stake Show essay. Enjoy it.

Essay begins below this line.

Day 38! "Why 'Good Enough' is Great"

My mission: Share eight reasons why “good enough” is great. No further introduction. Give a read.

01 Spectators don't see amazing things.
With the right presentation everything is wonderful. Even magic. Presentations have to relate to the audience. No matter the medium. A trick. A movie. A book. How can you make sure it relates? Archetype storytelling. Stereotypical means “Culturally everyone does it.” Archetype storytelling uses one culture. With EVENTS and CONFLICTS everyone knows. Love. Acceptance. Greed. Money issues. These are the big ones.

02 Sucky trick? Learn to present it.
The sooner you perform. The sooner you can have an A+ trick. Magic is about “Doing more of what works”. Your trick will suck. Test it in front of an audience. Then, do more of what works. Alexander MacKendrick once said artist failure is not giving the desired emotion. You will fail. I will fail. Any magician will fail sometimes. No matter how prestigious. So fail. Learn from your mistakes. Do more of what works!

03 Good enough will help you develop something great.
Imagine a city called “Great”. The whole surrounding area is called “Good enough.” Don't get off the bus in Good Enough. Stick it out and don't quit! Just ride the bus. That's your job.

04 You'll psych yourself out and never perform.
Listen self-defined newbies. Pick tricks with quick wins. Practicing the same trick, in your room, for weeks on end will fail you. Brains hunt for negative things. In isolation you have nowhere to hide. In isolation you will feel inadequate. Get out there and perform. See what works. Failing while flying high is not failing at all.

05 Perform sooner. Get the true feeling of magic.
Perform quickly. Feel the magic. Then perform. Why did you buy the trick? Keep this reason close. That's your WOW factor. Make your audience feel the WOW. Don't wait, the wow factor will fade. Waiting is like water on a fire. Wet soot is disgusting.

06 Perform once. Perform more.
Performing is addictive. The good kind. When you start performing, concentrate on better reactions. Not before. It's a multi-step process. Learning leads to performances. Performances lead to better reactions. Once you're getting better reactions it's an accomplishment. Keep that accomplishment. If you practice the hard stuff. The easy stuff will lose lust. Then, you'll forget the easy stuff. Overcome the fear of performing. Perform those one move tricks. Then move up the food chain.

When I leave the house I pretend. I pretend that I'm paid to perform. I go to my destination with this mindset. The first performance daily is hard. “Not him” and “Not her” will enter the mind. Don't listen. Perform for everyone.

07 Don't enforce or enhance bad habits.
I was in isolation with my magic for years. I was performing for one make believe spectator. The camera. The camera got all the attention. That one “person”. The real world has many people. Not one. Everyone is at different heights. Learn your angles early. Don't enforce bad habits. Bad habits are a hard shell to crack.

08 Performing will get you better.
You should perform everywhere. I mean EVERYWHERE. This is Fred Moore's advice. I agree. Get experience. Perform. Fail. Get better. Fail more. Perform more. Start winning. Repeat with new tricks. Put the 10,000 hours theory at work. Today.

09 Bonus: Everything in isolation dies.... Even magic. Even love. Even chickens. And ideas too. I'll leave you to justify this one.

There you go magic “peoples”... Eight reason. Plus a bonus. Good enough is great. Good enough is easy.

Perform.

Until next time. You are good enough.

 

[Tower of Lunatic Meat]

For #5. Do you mean when you find a trick to quickly acquire to keep the 'wow factor' for performing it?

Sorry, I've interpreted it a couple of ways. I have one way where I agree and another where I disagree.

 

[meggisonj]

Understandable Mr hurley. If you lose that wow factor. You'll forget why you loved the trick. If you forget why you loved the trick. The presentation will suck. The longer you wait to perform. The less wow factor you will feel. Perform the wow factored trick weeks after learning it. Not months or years. Like buying a car. The rush dwindles quickly.

Perform the trick when its good enough. Then see what needs tweaking. The audience will thank you. Happy pandas.

 

[WitchDocIsIn]

01 Spectators don't see amazing things.
With the right presentation everything is wonderful. Even magic. Presentations have to relate to the audience. No matter the medium. A trick. A movie. A book. How can you make sure it relates? Archetype storytelling. Stereotypical means “Culturally everyone does it.” Archetype storytelling uses one culture. With EVENTS and CONFLICTS everyone knows. Love. Acceptance. Greed. Money issues. These are the big ones.

How does this even make sense? Your idea is spectators don't see amazing things. Then you talk about making something relatable.

It's true spectators don't often see amazing things. But nothing else in your follow up relates to this concept at all.

02 Sucky trick? Learn to present it.
The sooner you perform. The sooner you can have an A+ trick. Magic is about “Doing more of what works”. Your trick will suck. Test it in front of an audience. Then, do more of what works. Alexander MacKendrick once said artist failure is not giving the desired emotion. You will fail. I will fail. Any magician will fail sometimes. No matter how prestigious. So fail. Learn from your mistakes. Do more of what works!

This is just making excuses for not putting the work into creating the presentation that will be powerful. Performers who take something that's not ready and just try to refine it that way are going to do crap performance after crap performance trying to 'find what works'. You can create a good presentation before you take it on stage - people have been doing it for centuries. You write a script, you block out your movements, you rehearse it. You say your script out loud - nothing lets you know you're saying something stupid faster than actually having to say it and hear yourself say it.

Then you find a place where you can 'be bad'. A group of friends who will be willing to critique properly. An open mic. Somewhere where it won't matter that much if it flops. But it's far more likely to flop if you aren't prepared.

03 Good enough will help you develop something great.
Imagine a city called “Great”. The whole surrounding area is called “Good enough.” Don't get off the bus in Good Enough. Stick it out and don't quit! Just ride the bus. That's your job.

You realize you're contradicting yourself, right? First you say "Good Enough" is great .. then you say don't stop at "Good Enough".

04 You'll psych yourself out and never perform.
Listen self-defined newbies. Pick tricks with quick wins. Practicing the same trick, in your room, for weeks on end will fail you. Brains hunt for negative things. In isolation you have nowhere to hide. In isolation you will feel inadequate. Get out there and perform. See what works. Failing while flying high is not failing at all.

You do realize that most of the 'big names' in magic would practice tricks for YEARS, right? Teller worked on The Red Ball for most of a decade before it was even tested in front of Penn. This is what serious magicians do. They hone their work until it might qualify as art. Taking it out before it's ready is not only sloppy, it's disrespectful to your audience. You owe it to them to put nothing but your best foot forward.

05 Perform sooner. Get the true feeling of magic.
Perform quickly. Feel the magic. Then perform. Why did you buy the trick? Keep this reason close. That's your WOW factor. Make your audience feel the WOW. Don't wait, the wow factor will fade. Waiting is like water on a fire. Wet soot is disgusting.

If the 'wow' of a trick fades - then that trick probably isn't for you. At least, not in the way you're performing it. Change it. Hone it. Perfect it. There's stuff I've been doing for -years- that still gets my blood pumping every time I do it. If you can't get into the practice of a trick - magic probably isn't for you. The ratio is vastly larger on the practice side than the performance side. I would say it's probably something like 90 % practice, 10 % performance, but those are my numbers.

I believe it was Vernon that said, "If you don't love practicing then for god's sake, find another hobby."

06 Perform once. Perform more.
Performing is addictive. The good kind. When you start performing, concentrate on better reactions. Not before. It's a multi-step process. Learning leads to performances. Performances lead to better reactions. Once you're getting better reactions it's an accomplishment. Keep that accomplishment. If you practice the hard stuff. The easy stuff will lose lust. Then, you'll forget the easy stuff. Overcome the fear of performing. Perform those one move tricks. Then move up the food chain.

When I leave the house I pretend. I pretend that I'm paid to perform. I go to my destination with this mindset. The first performance daily is hard. “Not him” and “Not her” will enter the mind. Don't listen. Perform for everyone.

Performance on its own leads to nothing. You need to actively examine your performance and refine the script and blocking and such in rehearsal. Those hours upon hours you will spend talking to walls are what creates better reactions. You think comedians only say their jokes on a stage? No. They spend all day writing that stuff and refining it and testing their delivery with other comedians.

There's a funny thing that happens as you develop in magic. First, you learn all the simple stuff because that's what you can handle. Then you start learning all the complicated stuff because it's exciting and challenging. Then you start performing more and realize that the simple stuff is way easier to turn into a powerful performance because you're not worrying about executing difficult sleights.

Everything in my show is 'easy' stuff, mechanically. I use maybe 5 sleights (And that's defining 'sleight' as 'any hidden move') in an hour, and only one routine uses more than one move in it. Psychologically it's far more challenging, but that's another thing that develops over time.

07 Don't enforce or enhance bad habits.
I was in isolation with my magic for years. I was performing for one make believe spectator. The camera. The camera got all the attention. That one “person”. The real world has many people. Not one. Everyone is at different heights. Learn your angles early. Don't enforce bad habits. Bad habits are a hard shell to crack.

This is true. There is no substitute for performing for real audiences.

08 Performing will get you better.
You should perform everywhere. I mean EVERYWHERE. This is Fred Moore's advice. I agree. Get experience. Perform. Fail. Get better. Fail more. Perform more. Start winning. Repeat with new tricks. Put the 10,000 hours theory at work. Today.

I agree and disagree with this. I don't think you should perform everywhere. There will be plenty of times when performing is a bad idea. Learning this is a skill that far too many magicians have not bothered with. You're not learning properly if you're forcing your performances on people who just don't care. Of course you won't get the reactions you want - they don't care. As I said, performing on its own will not help you. You have to perform, then you have to examine the performance and review the reactions and see what in your performance needs tightening up. Just getting up in front of people without being sure to refine your work will just reinforce those performance habits.

09 Bonus: Everything in isolation dies.... Even magic. Even love. Even chickens. And ideas too. I'll leave you to justify this one.

There you go magic “peoples”... Eight reason. Plus a bonus. Good enough is great. Good enough is easy.

Perform.

Until next time. You are good enough.

Good enough is not great. You may be good enough, though, without realizing it. Easy is not always best and your audience deserves the best. Do not cut corners, do not perform before you've gotten your material to be the best it can be without a live audience. You seem to think you have some grand ideas figured out - but honestly your posts don't really back this up. I think it may be beneficial to spend some time refining your thoughts and organizing them.

 

[Tower of Lunatic Meat]

Understandable Mr hurley. If you lose that wow factor. You'll forget why you loved the trick. If you forget why you loved the trick. The presentation will suck. The longer you wait to perform. The less wow factor you will feel. Perform the wow factored trick weeks after learning it. Not months or years. Like buying a car. The rush dwindles quickly.

Perform the trick when its good enough. Then see what needs tweaking. The audience will thank you. Happy pandas.

I disagree a bit because I think one needs to figure out the ins-and-outs for performing every single trick. I think this will help in improvising and figuring out if the trick is actually a good fit.

I don't have the most liberal budget for magic in the world; so a lot of what I've been doing is scripting, routining, and grouping magic tricks together based on advertisements and their presentation. Which I think helps because I've been able to weed out a bunch of tricks because, initially, I was very excited about them and later decided that they wouldn't be good to use at all.

Most of the tricks I have had scripted on paper haven't changed from the initial script for a long time--so I figure that if they haven't moved for months, I'm working with surefire winners and that 'wow factor' should stay intact.
I think if you're performing a trick, you shouldn't do it solely because you want to 'wow the spectator' because you're excited about it. A little more has to be put into scripting and routining because, maybe, that particular trick just isn't a good fit in the long run.

At least, I don't want to have a collection of tricks I rarely use. I made that mistake once with a trick; it'll happen again, I'm sure. But I don't want it to become a habit all because I got excited.

 

[kennethcmerrill]

Hey meggisonj,

I thought I would chime in because you seem to be getting hammered with criticism, and that's rough. It's always nice to hear some kind words as well.

Overall, I think the philosophy you've got going on here is really valuable. There are a ton of magicians (myself included) who spend too much time in the bedroom and not enough actually interacting with people. A lot of that is because of fear, in various forms, and I think you're really speaking to that, which is valuable, and which I for one appreciate. Thank you.

Christopher rightly said that magic is 90% practice and 10% performance. For some of us, it can fall into more like 100% practice and 0% performance, which is a real bummer, and this essay is a nice pep talk to help me gear up to go out there and perform something.

Magic is a very personal thing; we all approach it in different way, and we all think we have it figured out to one extent or another. More than anything else, I've observed that people in the magic community are very opinionated about the right and the wrong way to do things. Heck, it seems I can't even ask the "right" questions sometimes. So I would say that first and foremost you should do what works for you and what helps you improve. Don't let someone beat you down for the way you approach the craft. If writing essays is helpful to you, keep doing it!

Having said that, guys like Christopher have been in the game for a long time, and they have a lot to offer. It takes a lot of humility sometimes, but take a listen to what everyone says because it could be valuable to you, even if they are different from you.

I probably don't need to tell you any of this because you're probably smarter than me, but I wish I had been a little more open to advice back in the day.
Then again, I think everyone could do with being a little less opinionated, even if they have a lot of experience to back it up. You're never too old to learn or glean something valuable from an enthusiastic novice.

 

[Tower of Lunatic Meat]

Then again, I think everyone could do with being a little less opinionated, even if they have a lot of experience to back it up. You're never too old to learn or glean something valuable from an enthusiastic novice.

If I came off as opinionated, I apologize. Not the intention at all.
Part of what I said comes from a lot of lurking on MagicCafe--namely the Table Strollers and Kids Entertainment sections.
Many a thread about what tricks a magician has that they rarely/never use and is just sitting in storage along with many other tricks which serve the same fate--all because they saw it, got excited, and thought it could work before working out the details.

And it's unfortunate because that's one trick that's doing nothing but another magician COULD be using.
I think that its easy for magicians to be enamored a trick at first glance.
Let's use Counterfeit for example.
It's new, not a lot of people outside of those that have it know the gimmick, it's flashy, and from the video; wows spectators to a high degree.
It's a lot harder to go 'does this trick fit my persona/set? Do I only want this because it looks like it amazed everyone who sees it? Is it really worth __$X.xx__?'

It just really sucks to be excited about a trick and acquire it, only to come to the realization that you're more than likely never going to use it for one reason or another. It's happened to me with a purchase I made last October and the feeling REALLY sucks--I allowed being excited to override rational thinking and get a $20 packet trick that just sits collecting dust now--especially knowing that if I waited a little bit longer, I'd instead have a trick I would actually utilize.

 

[kennethcmerrill]

If I came off as opinionated, I apologize. Not the intention at all.
Part of what I said comes from a lot of lurking on MagicCafe--namely the Table Strollers and Kids Entertainment sections.
Many a thread about what tricks a magician has that they rarely/never use and is just sitting in storage along with many other tricks which serve the same fate--all because they saw it, got excited, and thought it could work before working out the details.

And it's unfortunate because that's one trick that's doing nothing but another magician COULD be using.
I think that its easy for magicians to be enamored a trick at first glance.
Let's use Counterfeit for example.
It's new, not a lot of people outside of those that have it know the gimmick, it's flashy, and from the video; wows spectators to a high degree.
It's a lot harder to go 'does this trick fit my persona/set? Do I only want this because it looks like it amazed everyone who sees it? Is it really worth __$X.xx__?'

It just really sucks to be excited about a trick and acquire it, only to come to the realization that you're more than likely never going to use it for one reason or another. It's happened to me with a purchase I made last October and the feeling REALLY sucks--I allowed being excited to override rational thinking and get a $20 packet trick that just sits collecting dust now--especially knowing that if I waited a little bit longer, I'd instead have a trick I would actually utilize.

My remarks weren't directed at anyone in particular. I was just making broad generalizations based on experiences I've had, especially as a novice in the craft asking lots of questions, some good ones, some dumb ones.

I totally agree with what you said. I have fallen into the same trap countless times, and I think there's nothing better than planning a routine in as much detail as you can and learning as much as you can about effects in order to decide if the fit--before hitting the "Order" button.

I do sometimes use birthdays and Christmas as an excuse to get loved ones to purchase effects I could never justify purchasing myself. I think Counterfeit might fit in that category

 

[meggisonj]

Thanks for the pat on the back, Kenneth. You're right. Criticism can be rough. Until you realize why it was said. Criticism is like a nut. The criticism is a shell with no value. It takes some searching to find the nut value. Sometimes reading criticism won't be worth the headaches. So I don't listen to "criticism". However. Advice. Is. Priceless.
#ILoveAdvice.

Advice comes from someone you respect. Someone you know. Someone who knows you. Criticism is negative comments. Comments that comes from randoms. Criticism is never worth it.
#Comparison.

The people I know. They love what I'm putting out. That's all I can ask for. One person at a time. Until growth happens.
#OneByOne.

If your style or ideas sway with every breeze of criticism, it's not your thought at all. Is it?