We see them every day. We are surrounded by them. Signs, the floor, gravity, doors, anything we can see. Limits. We are governed by them. We are held hostage by them. We are suppressed by them. The very door we close to keep our homes warm and safe also confines us to an even more limited plane. Each and every human is so accustomed to these barriers that we have kindly given them a title - Natural Laws. In a moment of weakness, humanity closed its mind to many possibilities. Humanity labeled certain events as impossible. Any action whose result lies outside of the realm of “possible” is deemed a miracle. It is my object in this short essay to touch briefly on those things that lie outside of what man deems possible.
As a magician, think back to the first magic trick you ever saw. Think of how it inspired you. For me, I was a young child in Disney World. The illusionist’s name I will never know. His whole act I do not remember, I was merely four or five. What I do remember was what I felt when, from my small ear, this kind man produced a three inch piece of frayed, white rope. I only recently realized how deeply this single, simple illusion impacted me when I stumbled upon this small piece of rope I have been keeping for more than seventeen years. A piece of rope didn’t change who I was. I was changed by the feeling I had in my young heart of having witnessed something I had before thought impossible. This feeling brought me in my childhood to purchase magic kits. This feeling brought me in my teens back to magic with the hummer card trick, allowing me to cause coworkers to stare in amassment as I caused something to fly inexplicably around my body. This feeling brought me mere months ago to click on a video on You Tube of a performance of a card trick that I simply had to understand and be able to re-create. That feeling is what drives me today to carry a deck of cards in my pocket at all times and to have it in my hands every available moment. The unknown illusionist didn’t send me a message telling me that he could pull a piece of rope from my ear, he sent me a message telling me that NOTHING is impossible.
I bring to you a very simple example. Think back again to the first time you saw something along the lines of an ambitious card routine. You KNEW you saw the illusionist take your card and place it into the middle of the deck. YOU KNEW IT. But there it was, right at the top of the deck. Something so simple was impossible. You knew it was impossible, yet your craved to be able to do it too. You watched as said person once again placed your card on top of one half of the deck, and then lost it underneath the other half of the deck. You knew it again. The card on top was not your card. It couldn’t be, but deep inside you hoped it was. And so you watched, over and over again as a mere mortal continued, right in front of your eyes, to do something that defied the limit that you had placed on your thoughts.
Mundus Vult Decipi. The world invites deception. People want to be fooled. Deep down inside, everyone craves to see the impossible. The idea that the boundary of possibility can be broken awakens a hope in human hearts. Though people will try to undermine magic, ruin illusions, spoil the fun, they really want to be a part of what we as illusionists do. If it was possible for a human to make a card fly at whim, when a magician came around making a card fly he would merely be an imitator. Illusionists are not in the business of recreating previous events. Illusionists are in the business of accomplishing things never before done by man.
I arrive at my point. Picture in your mind that you have, just as trusted as your own doctor, a psychic advisor. Said person can tell your, after merely thinking, anything you need to know. You make your weekly visit to said paranormal counselor, and are walking home. Imagine being approached by a man professing to be a mind reader. He allows you to choose a card in secret, and then reveals to you your selected card. Where is the miracle? Where is the magic? Your psychic advisor could have done that for you, after all, lots of people can see things, right? That magician accomplished nothing extraordinary, you have seen it hundreds of times, and you know it is a normal thing for a gifted person to be able to read your thoughts. There is no magic.
I present to you my personal opinion. I lay it before you in hopes that you will take it and apply it into your art as I have applied it to mine. I believe that the more we focus on the impossibility of our art, the more mystifying it becomes. Here are a few examples to help you visualize my idea. As you perform an ambitious card routine, you stress the idea that the card, just placed back into the deck, has NO WAY of getting back to the top. If you are a thread worker, stress, at appropriate times, that there is no possible way for you to move the fork that just spun around on the table, mind powers included. With a simple mentalist display, stress that there is no such thing as mind reading. This nearly seems blasphemous, but hear me out. If I say I can read your mind, then tell you the name of the card that only you could possibly know, then the only logical consensus is that I am actually able to read your mind. This single thought takes you one step closer to believing in a lie that is not just harmful to you, but also takes away from the feeling you get when you see impossible deeds done. Instead, inform your spectator with something along these lines. “There is no way I have been able to sneak a glance at your card, correct? You have in no way told me what your card is, correct? I could tell you that I can read your mind, but that is impossible, but even with mind reading being impossible, and you having never revealed your card to me, I know that your card is the six of diamonds.” Obviously, this script is bland and can not be used word for word, I mean only to introduce the idea. When you give no fake cover for what you do as an illusionist, and let the audience come to their own conclusions about you and your art, you become more powerful. You find people telling you that they know there is no such thing as magic, but at the same time they know you are magic. They get to see impossible things. They don’t get to explain a trick away by “Well, he can talk to ghosts, so maybe a ghost told him,” they can’t explain it at all. The trick becomes permanently impossible, and makes an impression they will never forget.
My other point is simple – Secrecy. I do not refer to revealing methods to laymen, I refer to being ill-prepared. I refer to flashing, to slipping up, to choking. I want to simply make a point that there is NO excuse in the world for a magician to be caught in the act. NONE. This sounds harsh, but once again, listen for a moment. You, as a magician, have COMPLETE control over what illusions you perform. Nobody can force you into anything. As such, you will never be forced to perform a trick that you have not given just practice. If you can’t do an Erdnase color change flawlessly every time, why do you do it? Why risk it? It not only ruins magic for the person you flash, it allows for laymen all around to discover how it is done. Don’t ever post a video unless you know you did the trick perfectly without flashing. We can’t afford to, via You Tube, reveal all of our secrets to the world because someone thought it would be cool to post a video of the trick they just learned. There is no excuse for an accident. We have all the time in the world to prepare for a trick, so we must do so.
This is my call to you, fellow magicians. Become masters. Do the impossible. When you perform, perform so impossibly that no soul can understand how it was done. Tell someone their card when you shouldn’t be able to know it. Make stuff move and fly. Let that card jump back to the top of the deck. It is all impossible. Make no bones about it. You don’t have mind powers. What you have the power to do is to do the impossible. That is your power. That is your legacy.
Segachtek
