I. What is Ego?
We all have ego. In this sense, I'm talking about the inflamed ego: arrogance, self-indulgence, narcissism. All of us in some way experience and feed that notion. And I think a good example of that is with the modern magician.
By modern magician, I'm talking about teenagers who know only card tricks, little to no history in their field, and wouldn't know how to properly present themselves in a show if they had Derren Brown himself custom-crafting an image that directly suits them. Yes, that is what the face of modern magic has come to mean to a lot of people.
Right away, some of you are saying, Oh! Well, then, that doesn't apply to me. But really, it does - that's just, hey, your ego misleading you!
Maybe you do a little more than cards - but your repertoire is still 95% cardistry and flourishing and all that. Maybe you know a thing or two about famous magicians of the past, but you just know facts, not how to interpret what they've done to your own pursuit of the field (I can't honestly call what I see these days an advancement of art). And maybe you write your own scripting and have the fledgling basics of a persona, but you have no sense of theater or mystique in what you do. You're still bastardizing all your favorite magicians.
More and more, you're able to slip yourself into the Modern Magician role, but also, more and more, your ego says otherwise.
There's many reasons for this. The fact that you're a teenager, hovering around the 15 mark is a major contributor - teenagers are widely known and despised for the arrogance, assumed knowledge of things, sloth, immature displays of "creativity", and general ignorance to the application of their minds and bodies to things of importance (by anyone's standards). Teenagers tend to put themselves at the top of the game without working for it, assume they've advanced to what they need to advance to. The good part is, usually, this dies down when they grow up and turn into big boys and girls, and realize how foolish they were to begin with. They are forever Kierkegaard's aesthete, wandering and indulging, concerned not with matters beyond their reach.
Another factor is the nature of the field - we're magicians! That's really cool. We essentially play the part of gods, bending reality to our will. Start a thread asking, Why do you do magic?, and you get a thousand responses of, "So I can alter someone's reality and take them back to the childhood bliss of yesteryear!" They've taken a very rudimentary understanding of Paul Harris and turned that into an un-nurtured creed which they don't understand how to abide by. But it's cool to be a magician. It makes you feel powerful. You can do seemingly impossible things, and people are amazed by it. They're amazed by something you do! Yes, you! You made two cards switch places, or made a card come to the top of the deck, and boy are you special! It feels good, doesn't it? Go ahead, none of us can see you agree - you love getting those reactions, those freak-out moments, and you think those are the ONLY reactions. You think anything else means you've failed. You pine for wonder and awe, yet you actually put effort into shock, and can't tell the difference between them.
There's a certain sex appeal to that, isn't there? Walking in a room, doing some magic, drawing a crowd, and then leaving with people talking about you. That's where presentation has gone: to make way for our pale imitations of our current magical celebrities. We desire that sexiness, that screwed-up mystique. We envision ourselves as the wandering magician, amazing people and becoming a legend. And to do that, we can't add any character or presence to our performances - we've got to be simple, direct, obvious. We need to say, "Watch." We need to describe what we're doing as we do it. "I'm putting this card here. Bam, did you see it? They changed." We're channeling David Blaine, but we don't understand that Blaine had more depth than that - he has a character, a "Mysterious Stranger", and those TV specials were a project, not a career. He said, "How can I inject magic into everyday peoples' lives? What would sudden magic look like?" He didn't say, "What would make me look really cool?"
That's the real reason we say, "Oh, it's all just sleight of hand." We SAY it's because we feel bad saying, "It's magic!", or that that would somehow dupe or audience - no, the real reason you say that is because you want people to think, "Wow, that guy's good with his hands! He's really good!"
You want appreciation of your skill. Your dexterity. Your effort. You want people to, again, think you're cool.
The Modern Magician only tries to look cool. They want the sex appeal of Blaine without the imagination and purpose behind it.
That's your ego, trying to make you look, feel, and seem better. Trying to make that "betterness" natural and intrinsic, trying to convince you that there's only one way to look really cool in front of your friends, and here's how.
It's why a lot, lot, lot of Modern Magicians suck. They suck bad.
Let's get this disclaimer out of the way, since it's bound to come up: we're not talking about, say, Wayne Houchin, Danny Garcia. People who actually have presence and character. They choose to be direct and to the point with their magic, but they do it for a genuine love of the art, not to make people think they're awesome. Wayne has a character - the part of con man, the kid who never backed down from a dare, who's mischievous and tricky, yet good-natured (you hope). He chooses his tricks, his scripting, and his behavior to reflect that image - in truth, he never learned how to floss his eye with thread as part of a dare, he doesn't go around pickpocketing people (as he did the audience during a blindfolded driving stunt), and he doesn't carelessly attempt to damage his body for the thrill of it (swallowing needles, straightjacket escapes, stopping his own pulse). He is a trickster!
Then, Danny Garcia lets his humor shine through and tries to really, really entertain the audience - he's genuinely funny, and watching him, you feel like you're hanging out with some medieval jester, full of wit and magic. But there's a strange thing that happens - at some point, you get him going, and he comes out with something... different. Not just tricks anymore. Something like Fraud that just stops you, that gets your attention. He has a charisma all his own, and you will never forget meeting him.
No, they don't do it to be cool. What you see as a way to look good and to entertain some degree of passion for magic, they see as a way to genuinely connect and present theater to an audience.
II. Removing the Ego
Hopefully you now recognize the blight that's making magic suffer - you're really doing it for yourself, and not for the audience. (and by that I mean - of course you're doing magic for you, because you find it fun. But you're doing it for you 99%, and for them 1%, when really it should be more 50 / 50, or at least 60 / 40). And since you're doing magic just for you, the performance suffers. People freak out and are amazed, but it's because of what your hands did, not because you're a good magician.
Can you put the cards down, completely? Put them away, and entertain the audience without them? Without even mentioning cards? Can you do this for an hour? Or are they your crutch, because they're easy to manipulate, easy to look amazing, and have a wide range of support?
Can you entertain and amaze your audience without doing magic at all? Can you just tell stories, discuss the philosophical ramifications of astonishment, and just be a good host? Can you do this for an hour? Or does your magic do the speaking for you?
There's absolutely nothing wrong with putting some theater into things! There's nothing at all wrong about saying, "No, it's not me doing this - it's sorcery! It's pixie dust! It's psychic gamma waves! I'm just a helpless vessel. I'm just a curator of the strange." Because, believe it or not, your audience is often times smart enough to know that it's all show, and to enjoy it.
Try excising the ego from your performance. Try making a character that isn't, "You, but just really cool." I mean, sure, be yourself, nothing wrong with that, but, you know. Be you as a magician! Be you as a summoner or conjurer, a spirit-talker or ghost-whisperer. Summon the stars to shoot in the sky, or use peoples' imaginations against them in a stunning display of hypnosis. Just as an experiment, come up with an answer for your magic besides, "It's tricks." Some outside force or entity. Force yourself to say, "I'm not doing this. Don't be excited for me, be excited for the situation." Remove the magician from the equation, be faceless.
Don't try to look cool.
Be proud of what you do, have fun with it, and even whip it out at times to show off if you want, but don't let the ego consume you. Don't be a Modern Magician. Be, you know... you. Not another member of the crowd. Put flourishing away, because no one's entertained by it, you just to it to look cool in front of people. Work cards into your show, but not every trick. Put some variety in there! You're already ten steps ahead of the pack by doing something different and actually putting some personality into it, instead of being a good little faceless consumer, buying all the latest stuff, and imitating people who can do it better than you because that's how you think it's done.
Try it and see where it leads you, even if it's only for a change of pace.
We all have ego. In this sense, I'm talking about the inflamed ego: arrogance, self-indulgence, narcissism. All of us in some way experience and feed that notion. And I think a good example of that is with the modern magician.
By modern magician, I'm talking about teenagers who know only card tricks, little to no history in their field, and wouldn't know how to properly present themselves in a show if they had Derren Brown himself custom-crafting an image that directly suits them. Yes, that is what the face of modern magic has come to mean to a lot of people.
Right away, some of you are saying, Oh! Well, then, that doesn't apply to me. But really, it does - that's just, hey, your ego misleading you!
Maybe you do a little more than cards - but your repertoire is still 95% cardistry and flourishing and all that. Maybe you know a thing or two about famous magicians of the past, but you just know facts, not how to interpret what they've done to your own pursuit of the field (I can't honestly call what I see these days an advancement of art). And maybe you write your own scripting and have the fledgling basics of a persona, but you have no sense of theater or mystique in what you do. You're still bastardizing all your favorite magicians.
More and more, you're able to slip yourself into the Modern Magician role, but also, more and more, your ego says otherwise.
There's many reasons for this. The fact that you're a teenager, hovering around the 15 mark is a major contributor - teenagers are widely known and despised for the arrogance, assumed knowledge of things, sloth, immature displays of "creativity", and general ignorance to the application of their minds and bodies to things of importance (by anyone's standards). Teenagers tend to put themselves at the top of the game without working for it, assume they've advanced to what they need to advance to. The good part is, usually, this dies down when they grow up and turn into big boys and girls, and realize how foolish they were to begin with. They are forever Kierkegaard's aesthete, wandering and indulging, concerned not with matters beyond their reach.
Another factor is the nature of the field - we're magicians! That's really cool. We essentially play the part of gods, bending reality to our will. Start a thread asking, Why do you do magic?, and you get a thousand responses of, "So I can alter someone's reality and take them back to the childhood bliss of yesteryear!" They've taken a very rudimentary understanding of Paul Harris and turned that into an un-nurtured creed which they don't understand how to abide by. But it's cool to be a magician. It makes you feel powerful. You can do seemingly impossible things, and people are amazed by it. They're amazed by something you do! Yes, you! You made two cards switch places, or made a card come to the top of the deck, and boy are you special! It feels good, doesn't it? Go ahead, none of us can see you agree - you love getting those reactions, those freak-out moments, and you think those are the ONLY reactions. You think anything else means you've failed. You pine for wonder and awe, yet you actually put effort into shock, and can't tell the difference between them.
There's a certain sex appeal to that, isn't there? Walking in a room, doing some magic, drawing a crowd, and then leaving with people talking about you. That's where presentation has gone: to make way for our pale imitations of our current magical celebrities. We desire that sexiness, that screwed-up mystique. We envision ourselves as the wandering magician, amazing people and becoming a legend. And to do that, we can't add any character or presence to our performances - we've got to be simple, direct, obvious. We need to say, "Watch." We need to describe what we're doing as we do it. "I'm putting this card here. Bam, did you see it? They changed." We're channeling David Blaine, but we don't understand that Blaine had more depth than that - he has a character, a "Mysterious Stranger", and those TV specials were a project, not a career. He said, "How can I inject magic into everyday peoples' lives? What would sudden magic look like?" He didn't say, "What would make me look really cool?"
That's the real reason we say, "Oh, it's all just sleight of hand." We SAY it's because we feel bad saying, "It's magic!", or that that would somehow dupe or audience - no, the real reason you say that is because you want people to think, "Wow, that guy's good with his hands! He's really good!"
You want appreciation of your skill. Your dexterity. Your effort. You want people to, again, think you're cool.
The Modern Magician only tries to look cool. They want the sex appeal of Blaine without the imagination and purpose behind it.
That's your ego, trying to make you look, feel, and seem better. Trying to make that "betterness" natural and intrinsic, trying to convince you that there's only one way to look really cool in front of your friends, and here's how.
It's why a lot, lot, lot of Modern Magicians suck. They suck bad.
Let's get this disclaimer out of the way, since it's bound to come up: we're not talking about, say, Wayne Houchin, Danny Garcia. People who actually have presence and character. They choose to be direct and to the point with their magic, but they do it for a genuine love of the art, not to make people think they're awesome. Wayne has a character - the part of con man, the kid who never backed down from a dare, who's mischievous and tricky, yet good-natured (you hope). He chooses his tricks, his scripting, and his behavior to reflect that image - in truth, he never learned how to floss his eye with thread as part of a dare, he doesn't go around pickpocketing people (as he did the audience during a blindfolded driving stunt), and he doesn't carelessly attempt to damage his body for the thrill of it (swallowing needles, straightjacket escapes, stopping his own pulse). He is a trickster!
Then, Danny Garcia lets his humor shine through and tries to really, really entertain the audience - he's genuinely funny, and watching him, you feel like you're hanging out with some medieval jester, full of wit and magic. But there's a strange thing that happens - at some point, you get him going, and he comes out with something... different. Not just tricks anymore. Something like Fraud that just stops you, that gets your attention. He has a charisma all his own, and you will never forget meeting him.
No, they don't do it to be cool. What you see as a way to look good and to entertain some degree of passion for magic, they see as a way to genuinely connect and present theater to an audience.
II. Removing the Ego
Hopefully you now recognize the blight that's making magic suffer - you're really doing it for yourself, and not for the audience. (and by that I mean - of course you're doing magic for you, because you find it fun. But you're doing it for you 99%, and for them 1%, when really it should be more 50 / 50, or at least 60 / 40). And since you're doing magic just for you, the performance suffers. People freak out and are amazed, but it's because of what your hands did, not because you're a good magician.
Can you put the cards down, completely? Put them away, and entertain the audience without them? Without even mentioning cards? Can you do this for an hour? Or are they your crutch, because they're easy to manipulate, easy to look amazing, and have a wide range of support?
Can you entertain and amaze your audience without doing magic at all? Can you just tell stories, discuss the philosophical ramifications of astonishment, and just be a good host? Can you do this for an hour? Or does your magic do the speaking for you?
There's absolutely nothing wrong with putting some theater into things! There's nothing at all wrong about saying, "No, it's not me doing this - it's sorcery! It's pixie dust! It's psychic gamma waves! I'm just a helpless vessel. I'm just a curator of the strange." Because, believe it or not, your audience is often times smart enough to know that it's all show, and to enjoy it.
Try excising the ego from your performance. Try making a character that isn't, "You, but just really cool." I mean, sure, be yourself, nothing wrong with that, but, you know. Be you as a magician! Be you as a summoner or conjurer, a spirit-talker or ghost-whisperer. Summon the stars to shoot in the sky, or use peoples' imaginations against them in a stunning display of hypnosis. Just as an experiment, come up with an answer for your magic besides, "It's tricks." Some outside force or entity. Force yourself to say, "I'm not doing this. Don't be excited for me, be excited for the situation." Remove the magician from the equation, be faceless.
Don't try to look cool.
Be proud of what you do, have fun with it, and even whip it out at times to show off if you want, but don't let the ego consume you. Don't be a Modern Magician. Be, you know... you. Not another member of the crowd. Put flourishing away, because no one's entertained by it, you just to it to look cool in front of people. Work cards into your show, but not every trick. Put some variety in there! You're already ten steps ahead of the pack by doing something different and actually putting some personality into it, instead of being a good little faceless consumer, buying all the latest stuff, and imitating people who can do it better than you because that's how you think it's done.
Try it and see where it leads you, even if it's only for a change of pace.
