Guerrilla Training, part the second

Went to the mall today to test out various things and try to reconnect with people I performed for the first time. Learned a few things as well.

First, the troublesome news... The Ambitious Card consistently went over well. If you read the olde blogge at all, you know this is problematic for me given that I detest the routine. That said, there are many things in its favour that I cannot deny at this point, even after just a handful of performances.

Aside from the usual strengths (can be done FASDIU often with a borrowed deck, straight-forward and easily understood effect, etc.) one specific virtue that I'm forced to accept is its flexibility. I greatly underestimated this particular aspect of it. While I tended to stay on a general script of about 5 or 6 phases, there were times today I could have just opened with a pass (phase 1), done a Tilt (phase 2), and then just moved into the Pop-Up Card as the climax (phase 3). One other time, though, sensing a wary spectator, I was able to put off the climax and add a few extra phases in there. Tyler has said that one of the notable things about the ACR is that there's probably no other piece of magic whereby you can create as much conviction in the effect, and while I agree with that, I think that it's also worth elaborating on the point, that there's no other effect whereby you can as easily alter the performance on the fly to gain the conviction that you need. To put it bluntly, you can use a switch if they suspect a control, and you can use a control if they suspect a switch, and if you've trained properly, you can make the jump from one to the other without really any outward difference in the appearance of the effect, and you can do this impromptu. That's fairly powerful. How many outs have we got for the key ring?

An example of how flexibility can save the day (which is certainly old hat to those of you who use the top change regularly)... one time, whilst jazzing, I had poor misdirection for a top change and the eyes went down right during what would have been seen as a suspicious move. Remembering what I was taught, it was easy enough to replace the card atop the deck, DL to show everything was copacetic, and then move into a different phase. I don't know if you're into top changes at all, but if not, don't be afraid of them because of the bustability factor -- just employ the out as described. It's a great way to add additional flexibility to the ACR.

Speaking of the Pop-Up Card, a while ago the Smiling Mule said that it was worth doing a bare-bones ACR just for the sake of doing this particular effect, and unless you're dead set against the plot being in your "A" set (like I am) then I agree with his judgment. As I've ad-nauseumized before, part of what makes me hate the routine is that it claims a power that I just don't want to be seen having, although I'm sorely tempted to keep the routine anyways, just spun under the presentation of its historical context and popularity amongst contemporary card magicians, and that's really just because of the climax. More on the Pop-Up Climax in a bit.

Other observations... In Strong Magic, Darwin Ortiz talks about how, in general, there are more similarities than differences between audiences. The more I get out there doing this stuff, the more I feel that his point is oversimplified. (Truth be told, I've had this suspicion for a while, but today cinched it) Yeah, we can learn to bank on certain things working, certain things not working, certain suspicion sets amongst spectators, certain misdirection tactics being reliable, etc. What's more, if we're doing large shows, I think we can predict certain group mentalities as well, that there's an overall social normalization that happens when a bunch of human animals are corralled together with a magician figure in front of them doing pretty stuff.

That said, I can't help but feel that we can easily make too much of this point. Between these mall-walkings, the time I spent busking, and whatever casual performances I do when other magicians aren't around, where most of the time the interactions were limited to myself and a couple of spectators, I found that the variances between performances were striking. Specifically, in order to figure out the best material for me to be performing, I've been making an effort to get feedback from different people about what routines they like best, and patterns are hard to find. Take today, for instance. Spectator X liked Dr. Daley's Last Trick the best because he can put his finger on the cards before the reveal. Spectator Y liked Triumph best because of the drama built into it (I've got a real-time presentation where I apparently really fuck up). Spectator Z liked the Ambitious Card the best because he was able to see the trick over and over again. Spectator Q freaked out the most over the repeat Card to Pocket, but when asked, his favourite trick was Dr. Daley's Last Trick. Spectator K can't even narrow down a favourite trick... I could go on. This sort of thing happens all the time. The striking thing isn't so much the fact that different tricks played strongly for different people, but that the reasons for those differences reflect different attitudes from the spectators about what they think magic is all about. This strengthens my belief in my theory that there are multiple archetypes for magicians, and there's just no supporting any argument that says "Magic should be like 'this' and not like 'that'" with varying quantities for what 'this' and 'that' might be, when it comes to things like comedy, theatrics, level of challenge, level of impossibility, the effects themselves, etc. This would seem so self-evident in any other art form, and yet we're still plagued by nonsense bullshit discussions on magic forums: "Should I go for bewilderment or astonishment?" "Is the magicians' job to entertain or mystify?" "Is it meaning that turns tricks into magic?" etc. Ye eyef, yea verilie, rolle upwardfe. Be thankful that people don't all expect the same thing out of a magic performance, and tell anybody who tries to browbeat you with mantra to shove it.

(That said, Strong Magic is an excellent book that everybody should read etc. etc.)

Another observation... (again, old hat for those who already do this sort of thing regularly) if the routine requires the card be signed, insist upon the card being signed up front, even if people resist because they don't want to ruin your fancy shmancy cards, or because "they trust you". Just get it over and done with. I asked a guy if he wanted to check out the cards, and he waved it off, saying that he trusted me. Two phases into the Ambitious Card and he concluded that there were duplicates. D'oh. I've not quite figured out how to make the signing of the card presentationally interesting without ripping off the usual lines (ie: To the pretty girl: "Make sure you've got your phone number on there NYUK NYUK NYUK!"), although I've got some ideas... which I'll be keeping to myself at the moment.

One other thing that was tough today was the guilt about being in a store, getting some clerk to watch my magic, and then buying nothing. My way of dealing with that guilt? Buying something. So now I'm sitting here typing this, wearing my fancy new Golden Gophers baseball cap, with a stomach full of salted cashew nuts and wondering what to do with these five casino chips in my back pocket. Bleargh. If this keeps up, I'll be lucky if I leave Minnesota with any money at all.

I'll conclude this portion of the blog with this query from Peng Huang yesterday: Ahhh yes...the famed Card to Pocket and ACR. Speaking of which, are you going to perform them as seperate effects, or combined? And if the latter, do you think it is possible to do Card to Pocket first, then the ACR? Cheers, Peng

To answer, I ended up performing them separately in most instances. Of the times that I performed them together, I found that the Card To Pocket, while it played alright, wasn't as well-received as the ACR, and neither seemed to play as well Dr. Daley's Last Trick, if you can believe that. My personal belief is that it's very difficult to do anything after the ACR because it's such a strong demonstration of power over a selected card. As for whether or not you can do them together, my instinct says that in order to properly sell the effect in Card To Pocket (particularly Grippo/Carlyle's approach) you need to create a massive distance between the deck and the pocket, and the gestures necessary to communicate this are just too damned awkward if you're closely surrounded. If they're close, I think a well-done ACR is better, since the stage is so small and everything can happen under pretty intense scrutiny. Up on stage, the Card To Pocket just has greater visibility. That's just me pulling theories out of my ass, though. (So what else is new?)

.............

At this point, I've got to get some thoughts out of my head, a cranial evacuation as it were, on the Pop-Up Card climax and the concept of magic moments.

After writing yesterday's entry where I said I wouldn't use the Pop-Up Card, I figured "What the hell..." and went ahead and decided to give it a shot, figuring that signatures would be destroying the card anyway. Having seen the reactions, I believe that if you want to stay within the realm of the Ambitious Card plot (and not deviate outside of it by segueing to a Card To Impossible Location effect or some other) then it's worth having this down. Never mind card magic or the ACR, there are very few effects in magic period whereby something visible and undeniable can happen at a determined moment without any apparent action on the part of the magician.

Which brings us to a necessary brief aside for some Tyler Erickson theory here: Part of the problem with many magic moments is that they don't correspond in a plausible manner to the effect. For instance, many magicians ask the audience to believe that snapping the fingers makes a card rise, or else sorts out a face-up-face-down mess of shuffled cards, or perhaps something else. For the most part, if the magic moment cannot be perceived, if there's an element of mystery about when it might have happened, then the magic moment gesture must adjust to the effect. If we show mastery over a full deck of cards, ala Triumph, then we should contact the entire deck somehow before the reveal. (Didn't I just rail against the use of 'should's earlier? Yeesh. Anyhoo...) If we show a card rise, we should riffle the deck or else do a twist of the deck, again, implying contact or an impossibly quick sleight. Keep in mind that these "moves" should not themselves explain the action, but they should create their own weird sort of plausibility.

Sometimes it's hard to know what that plausibility should encompass. We all know that in most cases the "magic" is well done before any magic moment 'action', rendering all magic moments logically false, and yet this does not render all magic moments equivalent. With apologies for conveniently poaching a supporting argument from a book I'm currently reading, Derren Brown talks about this in Absolute Magic a fair bit when it comes to mind-reading. The process of getting the information, the external reality of it, needs to be connected to the effect. One could, for instance, steal the necessary information via center tear and then say that a quick rendition of "Hello My Baby" will allow him to reveal the hidden information verbatim. Alternately, one could use the same secret method to get ahead, enter into a struggle-dialogue with the spectator to try to wrestle the information from their head while the spectator remains silent (Brown outlines a nifty example in the text itself). Now, in both cases the performer is in a position to make good on his claim and reveal the information, and from the point of view of the internal reality, both outward explanations of what makes the effect happen are equally false and even ludicrous, and yet from a dramatic standpoint, the "Hello My Baby" approach is clearly inferior given the nature of the claim. I believe that Tyler's argument says that there's a similar relationship between snapping one's fingers to show the card has risen to the top, and riffling the edge of the deck to show the card has risen to the top (in the context of the ACR).

And yet, in contrast to this, one cannot argue with the Pop-Up Climax. If I were to say that tapping my wand on the deck causes the card to rise to the top before I show it to be the case, it would be met with some healthy skepticism, and rightfully so. And yet, if I tap a wand on a deck, and something striking apparently happens at the moment I tap the wand, with no other possible explanation at hand for what else might have caused that something striking to happen, I believe now the choice of the more "unbelievable" magic moment is justified. Brown's idea of the relationship of "cause and effect" is more fully realized, so long as the cause is clear and unmistakable, with no ambiguity that there might be some other cause.

If any of this theorizing on my part means anything, then it's this... On the surface, it would seem that snapping the fingers is a weak way to show you're making magic happen. Paradoxically, though, it might actually be that snapping the fingers to make the magic happen is in many instances too STRONG of an implied claim. We might as well just omit it altogether in most effects, since it's difficult to come up with a demonstration of an effect, with the surrounding conditions, to give it any credence. It's not that finger-snapping is itself a trivialization of the magic moment, it's that the unbelievability of it renders the magic that follows less credible. To make finger-snapping a believable magic moment, every other detail, no matter how trivial, must point towards finger-snapping being the only catalyst possible for the effect. Rather than just making it a perfunctory action, the audience must accept that the state before the finger-snap is fair, and the state after the finger-snap is undeniably different, and that there is a direct corelation between the action and the moment of the effect. If the noise is one of the defining features of the fingersnap, then it follows that we must surround the magic moment with silence, a contrasting sound-picture that shows that all other noises are unable to cause the magic to happen, allowing us to create the specific moment in which the only thing in existence is that snap. If the suddenness of the fingersnap is another defining feature, we should preface the action with a delay of some sort, to highlight the corelation between the suddenness of the fingersnap and the suddenness of the effect undeniably occurring.

Does this mean that the fingersnap cannot be plausibly used early in an ACR routine? I think it's possible to still get away with it, particularly if you eventually move to a presentation whereby the fingersnap comes into its own as a "magic maker" (as it can with the Pop-Up Climax). But this is the really interesting thing about all this to me, in that the power is not just from the perception of the effect, but in a magician's ability to make the magic moment itself resonate somehow. Consider the implications that this can have for developing individualized characters. The story the spectator leaves with changes from "the card changed" to "he snapped his fingers, and the card changed" or "he coughed, and the card changed" or "he waved his hand, and the card changed" or "he looked away, and the card changed" or "he flicked the card, and the card changed". Arguably, one could take the same effect and make a hundred different stories out of it simply by coming up with a hundred different plausible magic making actions.

I get the feeling that, despite the fact that this line of thinking excites me tremendously, many people reading this might think, "Well duh, moron. Didn't you know this already?" I guess what makes this particularly interesting to me is the fact that I believe that many modern conjurers, inundated with so many books and DVDs and tricks and stuff, are tempted to take some things as a given, and look at magic moments as things that are to be glossed over, lest we insult the audience's sensibilities. Perhaps in some sort of post-modernish cynicism we pay cursory homage to the magic moment by just creating any identifiable moment in time that we can, so that we can get on with arriving at the effect. Perhaps these magic moments are made deliberately quick and painless so that we can pack more of them into our multiple-phase darlings and not worry about them becoming interruptions. And yet, if we take Derren Brown's advice seriously, and look at things not just as "effect" but also "cause and effect", with much emphasis given to both, perhaps we stand a better chance of making our performing personae unique.

But now we've got a problem. If a magic set has a few routines in it, each of which contains several magic effects, now we might have a dozen individual magic moments or so that each need to be properly developed and fleshed out. And by problem, I'm not thinking along the lines of magicians being lazy or anything -- that's the easy analysis of the problem. Now the problem is finding a way to correctly balance those magic moments within the context of the show. If we don't make every magic moment resonate, we risk diluting the magic itself. On the other hand, if we make each one as powerful as they can possibly be, we might be walloping our spectators over the head so much that they become tired of it after the second trick.

This (along with many other arguments) might point towards the case for a smaller performing repertoire. The more effects we clutter our repertoire with, the more disparate implied claims to power there are, the larger a set of necessary magic moments are required in order to make those claims believable, to the point that if we were to look through the different requisite gestures the magician has to make in some sort of slide show, it would come across as a sort of epileptic fit. Usually, in fiction, when we want to make a strongly-defined character, we look for consistencies. If we bring this idea to the magician character, that means that, assuming we don't want a weakly-defined character, our effects must not only maintain some form of consistency, but our chosen magic moments must also have some sort of consistency as well. If we have a wide, varied repertoire, it would make sense that in order to keep that consistency, we adopt a vague magic-making moment, such as a snap of the fingers or the waving of a wand. If we do a wave of the wand here, a finger-snap there, a magic word here, a riffle of the deck there, an audience-determined action here, an unintended magical occurrence there, we're giving the audience too much to chew on. It's practically a parody of magic, in much the same way that Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls, by embracing the motifs of so many incompatible film genres in a single story, becomes a sort of parody of film. A more generalized action on the part of the performer would be the best approach, since it would allow a consistently even relationship between the action and the effect brought about.

And yet, when confronted with the idea of vague magic-making moments from before, we're brought into a dilemma. Either our Swiss Army Knife magic maker does not do the effect justice, or else we have so many different magic makers appropriate to all the different effects, that it becomes difficult to come to terms with what our character is all about. The suggested solution, for somebody who wants to embody a true magician character, seems to be reining one's self in, choosing fewer effects with greater consistency between them.

Fewer effects with greater consistency? That sounds pretty damning. I suppose perhaps it's less about limiting one's number of effects and instead limiting one's range, and I also suppose that given the endless potential for human creativity one could come up with an approach to magic that allows a wide variety of effects that doesn't have too much variation in the power that lets the magician do them. Arguably, on that second point, we've got one of the triumphs of mentalism, since so much of the power is internal, inside the performer. But for regular magicians, if any of this is true, we're in disturbing territory. Now, all of a sudden, a magician has to ask himself why he needs a wand to make the ball travel from his pocket to underneath a cup, whereas he doesn't need a wand to make a card travel from the deck to his wallet. I wonder if this is the sort of soul-searching that most are going to want to do. Hell, I'm not even sure I'm ready to do it myself.

God, I was excited, but I'm depressed now.

Time to go eat some more cashews.

EDIT: I finished off the cashews and came back to have another look at this. After a re-read, I realize that not only am I saying nothing new, I'm using a hell of a lot of convoluted phrasings to say it. Bleargh.