[Magic] Be Real, Be Magical by Alex Hui
Be Real, Be Magical Written By Alex Hui
(The Chinese translation of this article was first published in Vol.1 Evocation.)
‘Mysteries are not yet miracles.’ -Goethe
Being magicians, we always perform. But how many are performing real magic? Before answering this question, shall we ask where is real magic? Or preciously speaking, what is real magic? Jon Racherbaumer once wrote a short essay (“Really?”)1, discussing the in-depth meaning of ‘real world’. Though I personally hate the overuse of ‘real’ because all advertisements of magic dealers, recently, have put too much emphasis that their latest products are for ‘real world, real people’, with the ‘real secret/work’. Anyone can work in a magic shop to buy a product, and perform the trick immediately. If you pay attention to my wordings, you probably understand that my intention of using ‘trick’ instead of ‘magic’. We are magicians, not the God-figure who can snap the fingers and make the marvels happen.
Everything in the world has cause and effect. Too many times we just pretend to be God-figure and change the world according owns’ will. Magic without cause is not possible to human begins. To tell the truth, we are all the human begins at the end, and no one can change the nature of the world with merely a snap of fingers.
So?
Make the magic with cause, even though the cause is not plausible. Let’s talk about one of the magicians’ favorites, Ambitious Card, to illustrate my points:
A selection is put into the middle of the deck. A magician snaps his fingers and the card jumps to the top. The magician acclaims his magical power and receives spectators’ applause.
An ideal story? Stop thinking about it!! Don’t believe any audience member over age of six believes that you can cause the card to rise to top by merely snapping the fingers. Naturally in minds, spectators will question ‘How he did that? His hands didn’t move, but he must be using sleight-of-hands. Then it is a good trick’, and so on. Take a look at another scenario:
The magician inserts the selection in the middle of the deck and square the deck unnaturally. Moment later, the selection rises the top. This time, spectator inserts the selection freely into the middle and the deck is immediately handed to spectator. Spectator is asked to concentrate and feel any movement of the cards. Without any touch by the magician, the card has raised to the top. An ideal story? Not so, but at least a better one.
Why? Squaring the deck unnaturally makes spectator believes that the magician is doing some dirty works. Later when the selection rose to top, spectators know that the trick is done by sleight-of-hand. The magician diverts suspicion by providing a false solution. Meantime, spectators also teach themselves. Max Maven, paraphrasing the philosopher Pascal, stressed the importance of self-education. “When a spectator teaches something to himself, the impact of that learning will be far greater than if it is taught to him.” (Maven-Lamont interview, Los Angeles, 3rd February 1997)2. At the same time, when the effect is repeated, previous effect has created a false expectation and diverted all attention to an indifferent direction. So when the selection rises to the top in spectator’s hands, the previous solution does not sound valid to spectators any more. ‘The remaining solution is magic’ becomes more plausible, then.
Though I might over-simplify the route to create real magic in the example above, making magic real is not an easy road and will take one’s lifetime to understand. Always believing your stuffs to be real, and make it real. I shall quote a valuable passage from Tommy Wonder’s wonderful book, The Books of Wonder:
‘If I pretend to place a ball into my left hand, but really palm it in the right, I would hold the left fingers slightly cupped, just as I would if I genuinely held the ball. If the ball were in my left hand, I would be able to see it. But since it isn’t there, I can’t really see the ball. However, I can force my imagination to see the ball. It is part of my silent script. I see the image of the ball being held in my left hand. Then I think the words, “Now vanish, my ball,” addressing the ball in my left hand. As the ball obeys, I might see it first lose its color, becoming transparent until it eventually disappears. But whatever the imaginary mode of vanish I have fixed on, I actually see it go in just that way. When it’s gone, I might think something like “Good!” while I open the hand. I can open the hand now because the ball is no longer there and the hand needn’t hold it.’ 3This is how one master creates the real magic.
The road is long, but the goal is one.
1 Essay from JonRacherbaumer.com, 1st January 2003
2 Magic in Theory: An Introduction to the theoretical and psychological elements of conjuring, Peter Lamont and Richard Wiseman, Hermetic Press, 1999
3 From Acting is Not Making Faces, The Book of Wonder Vol.1, pp.295
Alex Hui 3rd October 2004. 5:56p.m.
(The Chinese translation of this article was first published in Vol.1 Evocation.)
‘Mysteries are not yet miracles.’ -Goethe
Being magicians, we always perform. But how many are performing real magic? Before answering this question, shall we ask where is real magic? Or preciously speaking, what is real magic? Jon Racherbaumer once wrote a short essay (“Really?”)1, discussing the in-depth meaning of ‘real world’. Though I personally hate the overuse of ‘real’ because all advertisements of magic dealers, recently, have put too much emphasis that their latest products are for ‘real world, real people’, with the ‘real secret/work’. Anyone can work in a magic shop to buy a product, and perform the trick immediately. If you pay attention to my wordings, you probably understand that my intention of using ‘trick’ instead of ‘magic’. We are magicians, not the God-figure who can snap the fingers and make the marvels happen.
Everything in the world has cause and effect. Too many times we just pretend to be God-figure and change the world according owns’ will. Magic without cause is not possible to human begins. To tell the truth, we are all the human begins at the end, and no one can change the nature of the world with merely a snap of fingers.
So?
Make the magic with cause, even though the cause is not plausible. Let’s talk about one of the magicians’ favorites, Ambitious Card, to illustrate my points:
A selection is put into the middle of the deck. A magician snaps his fingers and the card jumps to the top. The magician acclaims his magical power and receives spectators’ applause.
An ideal story? Stop thinking about it!! Don’t believe any audience member over age of six believes that you can cause the card to rise to top by merely snapping the fingers. Naturally in minds, spectators will question ‘How he did that? His hands didn’t move, but he must be using sleight-of-hands. Then it is a good trick’, and so on. Take a look at another scenario:
The magician inserts the selection in the middle of the deck and square the deck unnaturally. Moment later, the selection rises the top. This time, spectator inserts the selection freely into the middle and the deck is immediately handed to spectator. Spectator is asked to concentrate and feel any movement of the cards. Without any touch by the magician, the card has raised to the top. An ideal story? Not so, but at least a better one.
Why? Squaring the deck unnaturally makes spectator believes that the magician is doing some dirty works. Later when the selection rose to top, spectators know that the trick is done by sleight-of-hand. The magician diverts suspicion by providing a false solution. Meantime, spectators also teach themselves. Max Maven, paraphrasing the philosopher Pascal, stressed the importance of self-education. “When a spectator teaches something to himself, the impact of that learning will be far greater than if it is taught to him.” (Maven-Lamont interview, Los Angeles, 3rd February 1997)2. At the same time, when the effect is repeated, previous effect has created a false expectation and diverted all attention to an indifferent direction. So when the selection rises to the top in spectator’s hands, the previous solution does not sound valid to spectators any more. ‘The remaining solution is magic’ becomes more plausible, then.
Though I might over-simplify the route to create real magic in the example above, making magic real is not an easy road and will take one’s lifetime to understand. Always believing your stuffs to be real, and make it real. I shall quote a valuable passage from Tommy Wonder’s wonderful book, The Books of Wonder:
‘If I pretend to place a ball into my left hand, but really palm it in the right, I would hold the left fingers slightly cupped, just as I would if I genuinely held the ball. If the ball were in my left hand, I would be able to see it. But since it isn’t there, I can’t really see the ball. However, I can force my imagination to see the ball. It is part of my silent script. I see the image of the ball being held in my left hand. Then I think the words, “Now vanish, my ball,” addressing the ball in my left hand. As the ball obeys, I might see it first lose its color, becoming transparent until it eventually disappears. But whatever the imaginary mode of vanish I have fixed on, I actually see it go in just that way. When it’s gone, I might think something like “Good!” while I open the hand. I can open the hand now because the ball is no longer there and the hand needn’t hold it.’ 3This is how one master creates the real magic.
The road is long, but the goal is one.
1 Essay from JonRacherbaumer.com, 1st January 2003
2 Magic in Theory: An Introduction to the theoretical and psychological elements of conjuring, Peter Lamont and Richard Wiseman, Hermetic Press, 1999
3 From Acting is Not Making Faces, The Book of Wonder Vol.1, pp.295
Alex Hui 3rd October 2004. 5:56p.m.
posted by Zenneth | 6:21 pm
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