What is magic heaven like for you?

Josh Burch

Elite Member
Aug 11, 2011
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What do you like most about magic?

I've been listening to a few really great podcasts and interviews lately, and it seems like it's a reoccurring thing...magicians love to perform. Hahaha! That sounds obvious but it's not one of my favorite aspects of magic.

It strikes me as odd that many magicians believe that performing is "the thing that makes it all worth it". There are many other things I love about magic more than performing. Performing, in my eyes, is a necessary part of magic but it's not what I like to do.

I think Alex Elmsley and Woody Aragon shared similar sentiments, in order to share my magic I must perform it, but I really don't consider myself a performer.

What do I like most? I like watching good magic. I like creating magical experiences from behind the scenes. I'd much rather be on a technical theater crew than on stage. I want to create, and build, and test, and then sit back and watch how other people enjoy my creations.

Luckily, I think I've been able to do that and it has set me up to do more.

I think my dream job has to do with being an imagineer for Disney, a special effects director for a theater company, or a producer for a magician. I think there are 30 other jobs that I'd rather do than stand on stage performing magic.

What's your magic dream job? What would be magic heaven for you?
 
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Gabriel Z.

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Apr 26, 2013
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This is a good thread.... Magic heaven for me would mean an endless supply of cards coming in and practicing my false deals false cuts way more often than what I am doing now.... Some leisure time to just perform and polish up my presentation general. I like to think about card magic as well , so maybe tossing me new ideas to work with from time to time wouldn't hurt either.
 
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WitchDocIsIn

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Sep 13, 2008
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Having a sold out show for four nights a week in my own small theatre and everything it would take to develop that show.

Basically, that ^

Having a dedicated space with a solid audience where I could really explore my personal style of bizarre mentalism, preferably without having to spend all my time selling the tickets myself.
 
Jun 13, 2019
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How many of those podcasts and interviews were with/by people who aren't usually the ones on stage/camera, though? Those people will say performing, because that's true for them. That's why they do that. If you ask techs, they might give you a different answer. (Though some may also just say they wish they could be the ones up there!)

For me, it's about learning. Maybe I don't know enough yet, but performing and sharing it isn't of huge importance to me. I learned the Brute Force Ace Cut last night, and after performing it I just did it again and again. It felt so good to do it. I did want to show it to people, because I think it's an incredibly cool trick, but I just wanted to do it for myself.

Magic heaven for me would probably be learning everything, knowing every trick, every card control, meeting and learning from all of my favourites, and then forgetting it all and doing it again.
 
Jun 18, 2019
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What's your magic dream job?
Performing magic.
Being a web-designer or developer for any of the multitude of magic websites coming up.

What do you like most about magic?
The very idea that I can take an absolutely uninteresting and useless thing and do something downright astonishing, and maybe even beautiful, with it.

A cylindrical skin-coloured piece of plastic which can fit around my thumb is inherently super-uninteresting (and of course, creepy). But in the right hands it can defy physics and apparently, vanish matter.

What other encouragement do I need in life, than the lesson that even the apparently useless and ugly things (and in life, people) can be magical?
 
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Josh Burch

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Aug 11, 2011
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How many of those podcasts and interviews were with/by people who aren't usually the ones on stage/camera, though? Those people will say performing, because that's true for them. That's why they do that. If you ask techs, they might give you a different answer. (Though some may also just say they wish they could be the ones up there!)

There's definitely a pervasive thought in the magic community that says something along the lines of, "Magic isn't any good unless you can perform it for someone". Michael Weber said this, and I think he's right, "Magic always has too few good performers and too many hunger dealers in the making." David Hira, in one of his lectures, talks about how selfish it is to have magic at the bottom of our drawers that others will never see. This is why the old guard had a hard time understanding Cardistry when it first came on the scene. They called it self pleasing mast******ion. The idea that you might learn it and never feel the need to perform it, was selfish and self-centered. When the old such a huge swath of people claim that performance is the best part of magic it's difficult to argue with.

The specific interviews were with Chris Kenner, Homer Liwag, David Copperfield, and Barry(from Barry and Stuart). The general consensus among these great writers and producers of magic was that performance is king. Michael Weber, Chris Kenner, and Homer Liwag are much more well known for their behind the scenes chops than what they do in front of an audience.
 
Nov 3, 2018
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Magic heaven for me would probably be learning everything, knowing every trick, every card control, meeting and learning from all of my favourites, and then forgetting it all and doing it again.

Now that I can relate to. Almost exactly what I feel, but much better said than I could.
 
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Jun 13, 2019
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@Josh Burch - Yeah, I just cannot get behind that at all. I can understand people not looking cardistry, it's a niche within a niche, but to argue that it's in some way bad to learn things just for yourself is... So wires. Like, you can find somebody else to be shown things. There will always be somebody who does want to show it, not everybody has to.
 
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RealityOne

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Nov 1, 2009
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There's definitely a pervasive thought in the magic community that says something along the lines of, "Magic isn't any good unless you can perform it for someone".

Marc DeSouza has an old Genii interview where he talks about there being many types of magicians - professional performers, casual performers, creators, historians and even those who just love the knowledge of how things are done. We are all drawn to different aspects of the art and that's OK. Because the art can't progress without all of those different aspects.

In my mind, Jim Steinmeyer is one of the greatest magicians out there... who just happens to hate to perform. That to me is an advantage, because I love performing his pieces.
 
Jun 19, 2019
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In my opinion the ideal world for my magic would be a world without the preconceived generalisations or prejudice that surrounds the stereotypical magician.


I’m not saying I don’t want hecklers, hecklers can be good at times so you can

1. Improve your magic

2. Teach a lesson to the skeptics and

3. Because of their inherent skepticism, if you absolutely immerse them in the magic, leave them with an experience that will hopefully stay with them for years.

(I do strongly believe that if you perform just right then hecklers can be the ones who are affected and moved by the beauty of this art the most)


My point is, my ideal world for magic would be a place where everyone is willing to watch you perform and not leave a restaurant early because there is a “magic show” on at 7

(which my parents actually said once when I was a child and now I have taken on the challenge of proving to them the beauty of magic)

I would love a world with hecklers and laypeople, skeptics and the more suggestible types, but just without this instinctive stereotype of “pick a card and I’ll find it” or “watch me pull a rabbit out of a hat!”

There is nothing wrong with either of those routines, I just strongly believe that those generalisations strip the magic of performance from those, what can be, beautiful and magical routines. It disregards the effort a good magician would put into his/her/others character or their performance and the theory and work that goes on not for the more impossible of an effect but the more beautiful of a presentation.


I hope I answered your question well, if anyone has any questions please ask and I can elaborate my point.

Good question by the way, it really had me thinking!
 

Josh Burch

Elite Member
Aug 11, 2011
2,966
1,101
Utah
Marc DeSouza has an old Genii interview where he talks about there being many types of magicians - professional performers, casual performers, creators, historians and even those who just love the knowledge of how things are done. We are all drawn to different aspects of the art and that's OK. Because the art can't progress without all of those different aspects.

In my mind, Jim Steinmeyer is one of the greatest magicians out there... who just happens to hate to perform. That to me is an advantage, because I love performing his pieces.

Amen. I love and agree with all of this. Aaron Sorkin is a great writer, he doesn't have to be an actor too.
 
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