Hello new magic friends,

I'm pretty new to magic as a serious pursuit, and I'm very glad to have found the Café. I've already gotten a lot of inspiration -- and some very good advice -- by posting, but also by simply reading threads new and old. I look forward to learning more, and to contributing more as I learn.

My principal interest is card magic, and I'm rather old-school about it, I guess. My biggest inspiration is Dai Vernon. (I'm just fInishing up the first volume of the David Ben biography of Vernon.) As for training, I began a couple of years ago with the Royal Road, most of which I worked through before taking a bit of a break, not really knowing or understanding where to go from there. Since last fall, I've started practicing again, and with much greater seriousness. I'm working through the Card College books and also (gulp!) slowly through Erdnase. I do my best to watch as much magic as I can, and I'm hoping that, despite my full time job, I'll be able to start performing with some seriousness next year. At the moment, my performances are strictly for friends and family, or at parties. But I'm not letting this stop me from working up some well-structured shows that might be further developed into semi-professional work for strangers. I'd really like to get to the point of doing walkaround magic or close-up/parlor magic for proper audiences in the near future.

Apart from cards, I'm also working on the cups and balls and teetering on the verge of getting into ring and rope routines to break up the cardotony.

Finally, I'm in my mid-30s and so obviously not looking for a career in magic, but I must say: I love it as much as I love anything I've ever done.

I still remember the first time I did magic. I had been at Disney World with my brother and my dad, and he bought me a sponge ball set from a magic shop there. I learned a few simple sleights and routines and did them for my astonished 7th grade classmates. But having no idea where to go from there, and having no exposure to magic on television or locally, my interest waned. I'm grateful to have rediscovered it!

Thanks for reading,

Jason

No problem Jason, your pretty much in the same boat as me I'm working on some coins at the moment to get away from my fixation on cards.
If you have worked through the royal road you probably are already as good as some walk-around magis out there trust me being in your 30's shouldn't stop you persuing a career in magic either if that is your dream go for it!

Best regards

Jason

Thanks for writing, Jason. And thanks, too, for your encouragement! There's no magic community where I live, so it's great to have the support of folks on the Café.

I'd love to do some work on coins, but I'll be ***ed if I don't find it intimidating! I suppose, however, that simply getting at it will, in the long run, substantially improve my sleight of hand abilities overall. Maybe the intimidation factor is that, to a layperson, bad coin work looks worse than bad card work. After all, bad card work can still fool people. Maybe that's what makes it easier to get into cards. But now really having a sense of what good card work is (and knowing that I'm at best something of an advanced novice), and having a sense of the rewards of hard work on it, I can go to coin work with a sense of those same rewards down the road.

Cheers,

Jason

Welcome jpleddington,

I like cards as well but you can't go wrong getting into Rope and Ring & Rope (and Rings).

They are so different than cards yet give good insight into writing a routine for all kinds of Magic. It's like cross training.

Mary Mowder

Hi Mary!

Thanks for the welcome. And I'm really looking forward to spending time on rope and ring and rope and so on. I really think it will enliven my performances! And improve my magic overall, as you say. Cross-training is a good thing!

Jason

Jason,

Welcome to the Café. You sound very enthusiastic. Keep practicing and you will land where you want to be.

John