The Measure of the Magical Philospher

The Measure of a Magician...



The real test of a person who bends reality is the affect you have on the audience you are blessed with. I am not a clown, a prankster, or person who just does tricks. I may employ such things to get a laugh, but the core of what I do is about moving the mind, and the heart that powers it, to a place where it might have never been before.



The Effect

One of the first things I ask myself about what I want to show people is how I, myself, would take it if I saw this illusion shown to me. Would I be moved by it? I assess the world, and it tells me that science rules the day. You can play 40,000 songs in one 4 by 5 inch contraption made by Apple. It took one whole record to play one song a few decades ago. You can talk to someone across the world by pressing a few buttons. The advent of YouTube, Cable, and just Internet in general allows you to see things you have never done before. In comparison, magic is pretty primitive.

Then I ask myself, why would someone watch me? What makes me, the performer, or the effect I am performing, so special, that someone would take time off of Facebook, their cellphone, and/or their personal communication with another human being just to see a mere trick? If I have something, it better be worth it.
What would the effect I show them do to them psychologically? Is this person more skeptical, more apt to believe, or just someone who is undecided? How do I persuade this person to believe if they don’t?



The Impact

After all the thinking, practicing, and building of bravery to take an effect to its infant-hood to where it can be presented, I get to test drive it. Test driving an effect for me has nothing to do with mechanics, presentation, and showing-off to my audience. What I am searching for is the impact I have on someone who hasn’t experienced magic close up. I am looking into their eyes, watching for both fear and confusion. I await the gap between what they thought they knew and what they experience to widen so far that their body must shiver or move away from me. That is the moment I am looking for. This is what proves that I am one of the greatest magicians around. I get to label myself, in that second, a modern day Socrates, without having to drink the poison.



The Residual Effect on Your Audience

What I hope someone leaves with is the ability to think differently about what they know. I want them to say, it’s okay to open up to a stranger and take what is offered. It’s okay to finally answer with “I don’t know.” They have the chance to think philosophically about their own lives without too much pressure or prison time. I offer a moment to learn something without making the mistakes, going to class, or googling it. We all get a chance to experience something both random and planned. The effects are my saxophone and the magic is my improvised Jazz.



The Point

You can have this effect on people even without the magic – everyone has a talent that can evoke wonder. Quality time with people, and genuinely wondering about them. You don’t even have to be friends to make friends for the moment. This is just my way of proclaiming what should be possible.
I am not saying that all things are possible all the time. I am saying that the belief of that possibility of what is possible is what eventually makes things possible in our world. If I can, even for a moment, induce this perspective, then I have done the job I wanted to do in this lifetime. One person at a time is all I need.