Lucifer's Lawyer -- Flourishes

I dislike flourishes. I hate it when flourishing finds its way into a magic act. I'm not a big fan of the work of Devo or Dan and Dave or any of those guys. If there's a pet peeve of mine, it's somebody who does a magic trick with a lot of flourishes, making all these overt displays of skill, and the secret to the effect itself is that one needs a certain amount of skill to pull it off.

Why would somebody do this? Does it make sense to do a thumb-tip production routine, handing them out to the spectators, and then moving into a hankerchief vanish? Why would you even think of tipping somebody off about the machinations behind your effect? Taken further, aren't we trying to avoid them from looking at our hands? Why on earth would we want to use flourishes, when flourishes invariably reward spectators for looking at our hands?

People frequently liken flourishing to juggling. To me, it's less juggling and more like somebody treating their deck of cards like it's a skateboard and they're some Tony Hawk wannabe. Juggling can come complete with the sense of challenge, build, true beauty, the concept of objects that are out of your grasp but yet still in control. Frankly, I think that trying to compare Z-cuts and Sybils to the things Jason Garfield does is an injustice to juggling.

Speaking generally, a flourish is an overt display of skill. If you are making a claim to power that is above and beyond skill, why would you want to dilute that claim by showing them skill? Mentalists aren't stupid -- pencil and paper is the key to their success in the same way that card skill is the key to a magician's, but you don't see them twirling their pencils or doing fancy paper folding before heading into a billet-reading routine. This I think gives a lot of insight into the way they build conviction in what they do, in that they don't allow their hands to get any of the heat. Why do magicians ignore this lesson? If the ultimate aim is to give them the illusion of magic, why would someone with that aim allow even a hint of manual dexterity to sneak into the overall show? One thing Tyler Erickson mentioned about his admiration for Juan Tamariz is how in so many of the images of Tamariz, the props aren't in his hands. For a while I've held the following belief -- every second that a prop is in your hands is a second that the prop is stealing credit away from you.

Now, this isn't a new debate. Nate Leipzig would frequently do everything that he could to conceal skill, right down to not doing a simple pressure fan. Arthur Buckley, as a rebuttal against hiding skill, stated that showing skill in the midst of a card trick is an important part of elevating the trick beyond a mere puzzle, that anybody could do if they were in possession of the secret (page 52, Dover edition). Hugard and Braue, on the other hand, state in Expert Card Technique that "The card expert commands the respect and admiration of those who watch him because apparently he does not manipulate the cards." (Read the that passage here -- the quote is from the middle of the second page)

Given all this, the fact that it's a highly subjective topic and a debate that's been going on for decades, only an arrogant buffoon would ever try to lay down the law about when it's ok to use flourishes. As such, I'm going to try to lay down the law about when it's ok to use flourishes.

If you are a manipulator, then flourishes make a lot of sense. For the most part, the manipulative magic act is one that is meant to appear beautiful, or, at the very least, aesthetically striking. Since flourishes are often just that, it makes sense that they would find their way into an act.

Flourishing can make sense as a direct means of displaying the fairness of a prop. This seems a little bit odd, but Whit Haydn, after doing his rising card routine, will fan the cards out. The nice thing about this is that it cancels many suspicions about something mechanical about the cards allowing them to rise out. Similarly, if you're producing card fans, being able to let the cards fall individually will help cancel the idea of their being some sort of fanning contraption made up of cards. Essentially, it heightens the plurality of the production, producing multiple individual objects at once would be much more impressive than just a single object. It's also worth mentioning that flourishes have potential as a misdirection tool, although I think it would cheapen it if the audience becomes suspicious that the flourishes were used to draw attention away from a key moment.

Incidental flourishes can weave their way into the right presentation. Again, the card fan. If I'm doing a magician-in-trouble effect where I've produced the wrong card, and then produced another wrong card, it would make sense for the magician character to take the deck and look through it in search of the selected card. What's faster? Spreading through the cards in both hands, or simply doing a quick pressure fan to scan the indexes? The pressure fan makes a lot of sense here, as it's an instant way of putting the cards in a state that's helpful for you. If you were a real magician, that's probably the state you'd want to get them in.

Flourishing as comedy. Richard Sanders had a great approach wherein you take the cards and focus on a spectator. "If you can shuffle the cards, that'll be great. You can shuffle them like this" overhand shuffle "or like this" riffle shuffle "or even like this" fancy two-handed butterfly flourishing cut thingy "or any other way you like." I think that's pretty funny, and it'd be hilarious if the spectator actually tried to do that last shuffle. Jay Sankey also had a great idea -- use flourishes to establish manipulative skill, but in the same routine move into a situation that manipulative skill can't get you out of. For instance, use flourishy productions of the three aces, but have the fourth prediction turn up wrong (say, the four of clubs). Quickly you ask the spectator to snap their fingers to either change the four of clubs into the last ace, or perhaps better, change the other aces into the other fours. I think flourishes in this context create an interesting dichotomy, that between skill and magic. Plus, there's the inherent comedy in that somebody who has such skill has made a stupid mistake.

If your character is as a card cheat, who does tricks without necessarily any claims to a magic power. The nice thing about being a card cheat is that you are actually allowed to show off your skill, whereas most other magicians try to conceal it. If you make your living with cards in the hand, it only makes sense that you be able to do some pretty impressive things with them. Plus, there's always the great (and authentic) patter line in which you explain how a card cheat needs to do whatever he can to make sure that he's unspectacular with the cards, so as not to arouse suspicion. "Doing something like this-" and head into whatever fancy flourish you like "would probably arouse suspicion." Ricky Jay and Harry Lorayne have both used this approach. Essentially, it's a way to motivate showing off, but the hint of education in there is something that an audience might appreciate, assuming they know nothing about what it's like to be a card cheat.

Checking the condition of a borrowed prop. This is perhaps the only seemingly gratuitous flourishing that I can understand. If somebody lends you a deck, and it's in questionable condition, then it makes sense that your repertoire might not fit with it. You might not know how it handles doubles, false dealing, palm steals, etc. Certain flourishes can give you the information you need to know -- for instance, a thumb fan will tell you if the cards are sticking together. That might be good stuff to know before you head into a trick that requires a push-through shuffle, for instance.

Setting yourself apart from Uncle Joe who knows the 21 card trick. As Darwin Ortiz talked about in Strong Magic, magicians need to understand the concept of prestige -- basically, how the audience is going to look upon this guy who is pretty much going to be showing off for the next little while. If you buy a ticket for a show, the magician is likely starting with high default prestige -- it's his territory, the ticket-buying establishes that people pay to see his act, when they sit down they basically are trapped for the next little while and are at the magician's mercy. What that means is that if the magician comes on stage and shows he's a buffoon with the props, people are more likely going to accept that as part of the theatrical experience -- ie: he's supposed to be fumbling with the props. If, on the other hand, you're at a strolling gig, things are a lot different. Suddenly, you're in their territory, you're interrupting their fun, they might have no clue who you are, and since they're getting it for free, there's a chance they might undervalue the performance. This type of worker has low default prestige. There are little things you can do to fix this, of course, but one technique that can help is to display mastery of the props. If you do something interesting that shows, basically, that you know what you're doing, people might be more inclined to give you a chance. That guy on stage who was fumbling his props, though, would have a harder time with the audience -- not only do they need to get that this is part of the show, they might not even be realizing that a show is going on in the first place. Being able to show that mastery (and there's arguably no quicker way to show that than by flourishing) will help establish you as somebody who CAN perform when they've otherwise got no other indication. Incidentally, this is part of what drove Sankey to develop that card routine that included both flourishes AND magic.

That's it for now -- I thought there were more I had in mind, so I'll post more when I can remember them. I guess if there is a pro-flourishing message that can come from this, it's that if you can find a motivated reason to flourish, then you can get the benefits that come from showing off your skills, and if you do it wisely, keep from having the disadvantages from affecting you. I just don't know if the kids out there doing it are really thinking about why. In art, every decision one makes has a purpose. I guess the best an anti-flourishing jerk like myself can do is hope that they've found that purpose, and aren't instead trying to showcase their m4d skills.