On Language, Magic, and Struggles

If there is a downside to all of this training I've been doing, it's that it's very, very difficult to absorb a proper ethic if you're already set in your ways magic-wise. Despite the ironic fact that I'm flying by the seat of my pants right now in life, I've always needed plans when I felt I wanted to do things correctly.

Last night I had to go through some abject humiliation. Despite all of this learning about general theory, studying the "creature of power", the technical training I've been doing, work put into designing a future repertoire, etc., when I was given the task of performing simple tricks on the spot, I wasn't able to do it effectively or confidently. That was pretty damning considering that I've been here for about six weeks now. In magic it's often been told that we need to not just practice technique but also rehearse our performances, but I think there's also a necessary middle ground. Assuming one wants to be a flexible magician and be able to operate outside of a set theatrical context at any time, one needs to be able to come up with "chunks" of performances to rehearse, things that fit a specific situation. For instance, "I'm standing, you're sitting, you've got your hands full, I've got to force a card on you" or "We're all sitting, and somebody at the table is unsure about whether they like card tricks". These situations are going to dictate what sort of material to perform, what techniques to use, how to tackle an impromptu script, and so on... Practicing isolated sleights won't help you there, and neither will it help to just focus on the ten tricks you want to do for the rest of your life.

There's a theory in language teaching language acquisition is best done in chunks. In other words, rather than doing straight rote memorization of vocabulary and building up the largest word-set, the real skill is in getting phrases down. Not complete and perfect sentences, necessarily, but phrases. Yes, proper spelling and a good vocabulary can be effective, and yes, in any satisfying written work there's going to be an overall, larger goal that needs to be satisfied, but there's also a necessary skill in the middle, finding the way chunks of language work. It makes sense, if you think about it. We default to set ways of communicating an idea because we've found success with them, and when a situation comes up, for the most part we have the skills to communicate our way through it. Much of actual dialogue is done in phrases, as well, with no real need to make sure every sentence has a proper full format, if it's not necessary. We might not get the results we seek out of the dialogue, but we can use the words to push things forward and at least have a chance of understanding the conclusion. It's one of those things you take for granted until you're trying to communicate in a second or third language and you find yourself relieved that you understood the words somebody just said to you, with not as much thought given to the meaning behind them.

I think there's an analogy there to being a flexible magician. The sleights and props are the vocabulary, the show is the book as a whole, each effect represents a chapter, but in writing, somewhere between individual words and the actual chapter there's the use of these chunks of language -- understanding phrases, both how to make the words fit into phrases, and how to make the phrases fit into sentences, which in turn fit into paragraphs. I think the analogy risks getting a bit too strained, but those scenarios I talked about earlier, they can't all be tackled with the same sleights, even if it's the same effect. In the same way that we frequently know how to adapt our language use to the situation (not using ten-dollar words when talking to non-English speakers, for instance, or not swearing when certain people are around), we also need to realize how to make this work with magic itself. In dealing with an audience, we need (or I need, anyway) to identify the flow of things, achieving a level of understanding that's above sleights and below effects, sets, and acts. Can you see everything I'm doing? Do you trust the prop? Are you following the actions? What are you thinking right now? Is what I'm doing significant to you? What IS significant to you?

When you start looking for this stuff, it creeps up everywhere. You can sense the way some performers approach different effects using their default approaches, much like we default to certain phrases when we want to communicate things. Ever tried to ween the 90210 mode of talking from your system? "He was, like, all pissed off." as opposed to "He was pissed off." etc. If it's a habit you've developed, it's a hard habit to break. Michael Ammar in those Easy to Master DVDs sure does end up saying "There's no question about what's taking place" a whole lot, and at times it's as if he's presentationally engineering the circumstances necessary just to get into that phrase. Richard Osterlind does the same thing with "Is that fair?" Tyler for a while had a bit of a love affair with the word "ultimately".

This isn't some earth-shattering phenomenon. In English teaching there's a concept called context-based language acquisition, and it makes a lot of sense. If you go to a foreign country where you don't know the language, the first phrases that you pick up and become comfortable with are usually those that correspond to specific, common needs. For instance, if you go to any country where the first language isn't English and they're pretty culturally homogenous (meaning, they don't feel the need to rely on pictures or symbols to communicate something, because they figure everybody reads the same language), then one of the very first words you'll learn is "Bathroom". At first, you'll start by saying "Bathroom?" in an inquisitive manner, and that'll get the point across. Afterwards, though, out of pride you might try to put a full phrase to it, and consequently you'll learn "Where is the bathroom?" giving you the "Where is the ... ?" language chunk. The more fluent you get and the more practice you have, then the more nuanced a situation can be and you can still negotiate it (eg: being able to find a nearby bathroom because the restaurant doesn't have one). But at the heart of context-based learning, it's this -- situation determines language use. It's no coincidence then that a current trend in Language teaching is something called "Task Based Learning", in which a student is thrust into a specific situation that they have to negotiate, and where they might not even have the necessary language to figure it out yet. It's reputed to be very effective in some schools -- some ESL courses in Europe focus exclusively on it. In trying to figure out the meaning of the situation, we get in touch with the real meaning of language itself. It's also no coincidence that this mode of study can be very frustrating to those who have no experience with it, since with every new task you're forced to confront the limits of your knowledge, essentially being constantly reminded of your own ignorance. Those who can navigate those waters become like linguistic problem solvers, and are a valuable commodity, far more than people who might have a larger vocabulary, but no idea how to apply it. In mastering a language, one must not only learn the word, but when and how to use it. In mastering magic, one must not only learn the technique, but when and how to use it.

The parallel there seems to stretch deeper. Amongst Asian ESL students there's a problem whereby the students think that understanding the language means sitting down with vocabulary lists and absorbing as many as they can. It's a tough situation for English teachers over there, since language is traditionally very difficult to teach with an objective marking system, and as such they rely upon evaluation methods like marking spelling or simple identification, rather than encouraging more creative use of a limited vocabulary. Because of this, there are a surprisingly large number of Asian students who have better English spelling than their Western counterparts, and yet have no idea how to put a sentence together (never mind an essay). I think, similarly in magic, we've fallen into the same trap. There are so many methods and techniques, and there's this tiny little high we get with each one, that it's easy to fall into the trap of neglecting to learn the necessary surrounding context for the technique. We see a base technique, we see an effect, and we figure that it's a relatively straight road from one to the other. I know I've definitely fallen into that trap, anyways.

This shit is hard for me because it's not intuitive. I like plans. I'm used to a different sort of performance contract being established -- namely, get them interested in seeing a trick, and using that as leverage to force them into my mode of performance. In essence, setting the stage so that it's ok for me to just perform at people. I think that's a byproduct of the time I spent performing in Korea. 250 shows with a predictable format will do that to you. It's also why I had difficulty busking, I believe. I had a small repertoire of tricks that I was trying to force on everybody, and that meant shoehorning them into every situation. I kept trying to engineer the circumstances needed to pull off the trick, as opposed to adapting the trick to the scenario. There was an episode of Friends where Joey wanted to buy an encyclopedia set in order to sound smarter in discussions, but he could only afford the "V" volume. After reading through it, he kept trying to bring the discussions with others around to anything that started with V. He tried starting a discussion about Vietnam, but everybody immediately switched to talking about a related subject that had nothing to do with it, and he was totally lost. This was essentially what I was like this past summer, and as a result, the outcomes were random. Some audiences would be willing to go along with me, while others weren't, and the randomness to those results led me to question the worth of the material I was performing, and my worth as a performer. Not being able to sense what it was that would make the trick work for a crowd was tough. Connecting to a person can be relatively easy -- just talk and listen. But a crowd can be its own organism.

That lack of confidence was a problem. I think this would also indicate my hesitance to perform tricks in many circumstances where magic would have been socially Ok. Despite the fact that it probably would have been received well, this lingering feeling that the time wasn't right would stop me. It's also had stunting repercussions on how I view basic magic effects. A coin vanish, for instance, was never just a coin vanish for me. It was actually something I saw as a tool in order to set up a subsequent effect, satisfy a context, and strangely, in so doing, I think I undervalued the effect itself. While impromptu and casual, I'd do a coin vanish and reappearance as a throw-away, in order to make a point about something that had nothing to do with magic (long story). While in "performance mode", I'd play it as sort of a "lousy coin trick" that would be used to set up a Miser's Dream-ish sequence followed by a Jumbo Coin production. But simply as a straight vanish, I'd never appreciated its own inherent power, never really put myself into it. Except, even if no single word in a novel can make or break it, you still do need words to finish it, and you need to know how to use the right ones, and how to surround them with the other right ones. Sometimes, in order to figure out that skill, you need to know how to write short stories before you can right novels, and it's frustrating if you're just so focused on writing novels. It's like seeing the German girl at the bar, and having your heart sing at the sight of her, except that you'll never be able to communicate that to her if you're still struggling through "Wo ist das badezimmer?"

So, anyway, this blog post was a bit more self-indulgent than most, and that's saying something. Apologies for that. Just part of trying to get through all this deprogramming.