Back in February, I attended my first magic convention in Columbus, Ohio, named Magi-Fest. Friday night, I met up with about 12 guys sitting around Daniel Garcia. This Jam Session began around 10 at night and didn’t end until 7 in the morning with me, Daniel, and another guy eating breakfast together. Around 5:30, as the crowd dwindled down to 7 of the loyal Garcia fans (who, by surprise, were all teenagers that love street magic), a 13 year old boy wonders into the lobby and sits down. The boy quickly pulls out a notebook and begins working on a few sudoku puzzles. His father, who happened to be the restaurant manager, wonders out and informs us how his son is a brilliant child and that he had woke up extra early today just to see some magic. His father leaves, and a few moments pass. Each of us take turns trying to impress this kid with me leading the back.
I begin with a appearance of a coin, followed by a routine similar to the one found on David Stone's Restaurant Magic. Finally, I finish with a jumbo coin. To my dismay, this boy quickly brushes me off and looks back at his puzzle. The next victim steps up and proceeds to try and dazzle this brilliant mind with a card trick. No reaction. This continues with another kid until basically the kid is ignoring any life form within a five foot radius. We decide to leave him alone and continue on with our jam session. Garcia starts talking to us about what we did wrong. It has been a while, but I remember it something like this. "You didn’t connect with that kid. Your coin routine looked amazing, but he could care less. He wasn’t interested in it at all. Same with your card tricks. I bet you if you walked over there right now and performed the square magic trick (I don’t remember what it is called, but basically you draw a square and start writing numbers and they all equal the same, or something similar to the idea.) he would be amazed. He is interested in that. It's just like his sudoku.
"So, what’s the point of this post," you ask?
Tonight, I was working on the Luke Jermay poker deal routine. Towards the end, he makes a comment how "I’m sure everyone has heard someone say, I would never play poker with this guy." I put my cards away and jumped in the shower. As I stood there, it dawned upon me. The late night Jam session I had with Daniel Garcia and a few other guys came to mind. I have been performing magic for the past 10 years just to perform. The same trick for everyone I see, same patter with little changes here and there. I have not tried to find someone's connection with a certain type of trick and used it to my advantage. I'm probably still not getting my point across.
For instance, you're standing at a bar, performing your best Ambitious Card routine when a woman looks you right in the face and says, "I would never play cards with this guy." Obviously, this woman has some sort of connection to poker or any other card game out there. What do you do? You proceed to make a paper ball float and dance and turn into a real rose. Wonderful effect that gathers a great response, but not an emotional connection. Jump on the moment. Insure her that you are OK to play cards with, and then show her your best poker dealing expo. Something that has to do with the topic, anything!!!
I have decided, after thinking about this long and hard, that I’m going to try and categorize my effects. It might not make sense to some of you, but to me, it does. Maybe not so much my effects, but my spectators. There, that is better. For instance, when I’m working a restaurant and I walk up to a table and ask a gentleman what he does for a living and he responds "accountant", I will proceed to pull some effect from my long term memory that has to do with math. Anything. Or for another example, many females have the tattoo of a butterfly somewhere that is sure to flash. Why not perform Life, also by Garcia? Isn’t that more of an emotional connection that pulling silver dollars from her ear?
I just feel sometimes that magic is taken as a kid's toy. Something that the kids sure would love if they were here right now. To really hit someone hard with an effect, I think it has to be the right effect to suite that person. Maybe I’m over thinking this, but to me, I would rather be taken as a artist than a kid's toy.

Sometimes I get random thoughts that come to my head, and I have record them somewhere, some place, show how. If some of my post don’t make sense, I apologize. It's a stream of thought that I must express until I feel I have expressed enough. Spelling doesn’t matter to me during these streams of thought, or grammatical error.

That was a really good article, man. I really enjoyed reading it and thinking about what your saying. It's funny how we all easily get caught up with new effects when we are forgetting the most important thing. Now, I probably won't be able to go to sleep since I'll be thinking about this. haha

Matt

Well, thank you. Believe me, I was up until 4 this morning taking notes and re-thinking a few points. I will post some of my new ideas at a later time.

Nice article, and I agree that you have to connect with your audience. You were talking about selecting the right effect for the right person.
But put it this way... If you do shows like I do, it is a very difficult task selecting the right effects since you have to make an entire audience relate to them. Just something to keep you awake at night.

-Matt

Matt, I perform for a living. I perform a comedy show and, believe me, I know you cannot connect to everyone. I am mostly talking about close-up magic.

Although I do agree with your basic statement ("connecting to the audience"), I do not agree with your approach to it.
In my opinion, you're missing one vital point: magic in itself IS a very interesting subject for pretty much everyone! So in order to connect with someone, you won't have to make it all about him or his profession, etc.
And as Matt already mentioned, as soon as you've got more than one spectator, your approach won't work anymore. You mentioned the mathematician. Now, assume his wife is with him. You think she will be happy seeing/hearing some more math stuff?? I bet in most cases, she will immediately be bored and dislike your magic.
But if you can find an approach which will appeal people, not through their profession but rather through everyday life experiences, you will be able to connect to everyone.

I guess what I'm trying to say is you shouldn't focus on the differences of people when trying to create an appealing approach, but rather on the similarities.

Even if you do not agree with my point of view here, the best tip I can give you is to pick up a copy of Darwin Ortiz' "Strong Magic" which deals exactly with this kind of problems in magic.
And if you're really interested in magic theory, you should also get Tommy Wonder's "Books of Wonder".

Just my 2 cents...

Also, if you are not interested in Magic Theory, you should get Books of Wonder. They are wonderful.

Dave

Magicjg,
Yeah, you got me thinking, and it is interesting that I was just re-reading the method for the Magic Square (I think that's what Daniel was talking about). It is a square, where no matter which line you pick, it will add up to exactly the same number as selected by spectator. It's a great effect.
About the thread, I think, yes, you should pick an effect that the spectator can relate to, mostly to bond with him more, but this can be done just for opening, or getting interested in. 'Cause like Nicd said before, magic is appealing to almost everyone, so once you get their attention, you can move on onto appearing roses, coin tricks, or whatever. That's my opinion, but just think about it. It's like, myself for example, I'm not really a fan of coin magic, not to perform it at least. I prefer cards, or common daily stuff. But when I see a good performer doing a nice coin routine, I can't but keep looking, and it's also great to see something different from your everyday stuff. Just a thought. However, I think you are going in the right direction, just don´t abuse. I think it would be boring for public that, if he is a math teacher, you just show him mathematical tricks.