I saved it on word before, enjoy
I would be glad if you took the time to read this, this purely sums up everything I think and believe about creating magic and mentalism, how mentalism can change you forever, and how ideas are simply fragile things. This essay is the story of my journey through creating magic and mentalism, and how my mind and its creativity has evolved and brought new outlooks on life through creating. This essay will be written in such a way of purely pouring ideas onto paper with editing for errors laid over top.
I'll introduce myself first in much detail, as I believe my background has an essential part in how my thoughts and ideas work. I won't let my age deter your thoughts on this essay, so I shall keep my exact age disclosed.
I'm a young creator normally creating propless and purely psychological mentalism. I get ideas once or twice a week, think about them for an hour or two deeply and then test them as soon as I can on friends and family. My ideas are almost always bold and extremely simple. Most magicians my age group get a bad reputation for posting secrets on youtube, having awkward presentations, and creating ideas that to them seem revolutionary, but are really nothing new at all and are normally created just for the sake of creating. (example: very angle sensitive color changes). Now, I won't say all people my age are like this, I believe that there are lots of brilliant young magicians out there who simply get lost in the masses of those you aren't as great. I had always been a creative kid, so after about a year or so of doing magic, I began to output my creativity into my magic. When I started creating magic, it was for all the wrong reasons. All of it was for the purpose of being the next "magic celebrity" or just to be noticed on THE WIRE. Under this mind set, my creations were impractical, and I never actually used them in the real world, I would perform quite regularly and I just stuck to what I was doing and never used the things I created. As months went on I stayed in this mindset, but soon I discovered mentalism. I had done mental magic before, but never really mentalism. Even as I bought mentalism manuscripts and books, digging deeper the subject, I was still in the same mindset. Many months later, I began developing my own mentalism, for a certain reason I'll explain here. I was extremely picky when came to mentalism, I really only performed about 6 or 7 routines from the things I bought, simply because if the method didn't entice me I wouldn't perform it (that's changed now). Also, for the obvious reason, it was free. As I began to create mentalism it began to change everything about me. I was a deeper thinker; it let my creativity flow better than ever before, my ideas were AMAZING, and it made me a much happier person.
Enough about me and more onto my thoughts on mentalism. Mentalism it mostly everything I’ve ever been interested in, packed into a perfect golden gift box. Deception, psychology, the way people work, our minds work, the things I’ve been interested since I’ve been a little kid. Mentalism allows ideas to come easier to me and allowed me to realize the fragility of ideas. Once I realized that ideas are nothing more that thoughts, concepts, feelings, and beliefs. That they aren’t tangible or physical things, they are completely and utterly products of creativity. Once I reached this truth, it allowed me to reach ideas better, be able to relax easier, have the ability to control myself in any situation, and changed the way I solve problems. It seems so amazing that a simple idea can blossom into a beautiful deception that leaves concepts in our spectator’s minds that are different from those they experience on a daily basis.
To me, mentalism seems so much more impactful than magic, the presentations that are put forth in mentalism have so much more flexibility in the way they leave the moments in our spectators than in magic. Mentalism can make our spectators laugh and forget the stress or problems in their lives, or shake them to their core and evolve their thoughts and beliefs forever. There also seems to be an aspect of professionalism in mentalism, they don’t see you as somebody who knows a “few tricks”, they see you as someone who truly has a gift, psychic or entertaining. Within that professionalism there seems to be an aspect of realism as well, this is the reason people use mentalism to convince people of their “powers” , instead of sleight of hand magic (I don’t suggest convincing people you’re psychic). When I perform mentalism I don't want the people I'm performing for to necessarily be thinking how I did it, but focusing more on the ideas and presentations that I gave to them. I want these presentations and ideas to leave them pondering their life, how they can be a better person, how they have so many unique things about themselves that I might have led them to realize. I'll always have a special place in my heart for sleight of hand magic, but I feel like mentalism is a more valuable gift to my spectators than regular sleight of hand magic.
And with that I close my essay, that you for reading.