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.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
The Measure of the Magical Philospher
Posted by vvssovann at 4:04 PM
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4 comments:
I have some trouble tying each of your points to each other. For example, you ask why someone would want to watch you right after you talk about how the invention of the Ipod is amazing. You call it a scientific breakthrough, even though... It's technological? However, what confused me is why you think someone looking for entertainment through music would not be entertained by magic. I wouldn't categorize music or youtube in the same class as magic. I would consider magic a live performance, similar to a play. I consider listening to your Ipod a means of passing your time, like when commuting. The point of me bringing this up is that everyone comes into different situations with different expectations. I don't expect a magician to entertain me in the same way as an IPod. With a magician, I expect to be entertained through visuals, unlike an Ipod.
Actually, I find the over lying message in this post to be... very similar to the one in your previous post, where presentation is what matters. Similar to what I wrote last time, companies spend time and time again rehashing the same things over and over but give it a new coat of paint in order to give the consumer the illusion something is new.
I think how you present your tricks is very similar to what companies, or what everyone needs to do every day. Actually, I think the way in which something is presented really says a lot about the person. For example, if someone tries to convey a certain point but is overly wordy, then you can assess the person may be disorganized and does not have the ability to properly articulate his or her thoughts.
The tricks you preform may have been done before, with the difference being how you show them. You can try to build hype around the trick, or try to save the best for last, or even try to introduce yourself with a bang by preforming your best trick first. Presentation, as I wrote in my last post, is probably more important than the trick itself. What you may preform can be simple, but the way you try to capture the audience will determine whether or not they are amazed by the trick.
I apologize if you find my post to be slightly repetitious. I enjoyed the implementation of videos and seeing what others had to say. I think in future entries you can preform your tricks in front of people and then analyze how you can evoke different responses in people by doing a, b, and c. You can even vary the order of your tricks to see if that has an effect.
I think that your outlook is very interesting. I happen to share very much the same point of view. I am a very analytical person; almost to a fault at times. It is liberating to push the limits of your perceived reality and to learn through direct experience.
In response to the previous poster, I do not think that the technological advancements were put in the piece with the intent to directly tie together. I think that they were included to illustrate the difference between technological mediums and his form of magic.
Magic provokes thought through direct experience. I think it is a great point that sometimes it is acceptable to not know the answer. People generally try and "find" the answer rather than find it in themselves. You detail this indirect search through things like Google. Your magic is about weighing your own conceptions and learning more about yourself in the process.
I commend the your magic and wish that more people thought in this manner. How boring and absent of progress would we be if we did not think for ourselves? Sometimes things need to be merely presented to you. It is not beneficial to always be given the answer. Sometimes there is not a concrete answer.
I also appreciate the way this was broken up. It made it easy to read in that it did not overwhelm the reader with too much literature all at once. This also made the piece straight forward and organized.
Good job! I look forward to reading more from you. Keep influencing people to think for themselves; one at a time.
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