A guy approached me when I was out with some friends. This was just a casual night out but I had some magic props with me.

Someone there recognized me and introduced me to his friends. While I was being introduced he told his friends some of the things he's seen me do.

One of the things he described was that I balanced a coin on it's edge on the table. Then I balanced a match on top of that. The I put a glass mouth down over the coin and match.
I magically caused the match to burst into flames. Then I removed the glass and slammed a bottle onto the coin and match and they went right through the bottom of the bottle. And the match was still burning in the bottle.

Now, I have never done this routine. I don't think I ever would if I could. I have in fact done the coin in bottle. A trick with a coin balancing on it's edge and a few tricks with matches. I've also used flash paper on occasions. So his mind put this coin trick, the coin in bottle, a match trick and flash paper all together into one trick.

In there minds this was all one event. I honestly don't think the guy was making all this up. He was in fact telling a true story as he sees it in his mind.

I think there are a lot of important lessons for magicians here and I'm sure many of you have had similar experiences.

For one thing it kind of shows that they really don't remember every moment of your act. Some key moments will stick with them while other moments are discardded from there memory. This isn't just true for magic. Think about the last stand up comedian you saw. The show may have been an hour long but I'd bet only a few of the things they said really stuck with you.

This ties into another lesson. When a mistake happens in your show. It doesn't matter if it's your fault or not. Don't focus on it. If you focus on it you might be making that mistake a key moment for them to remember.
Let me share an example. Let's say you vanished something with a T-tip and accidently dropped the T-tip on the floor. It's best to just pick it up and move on. It's true, you just messed a trick up and you probably can't continue with it. You may have lost out on one of the best moments in your show. But it's better to have lost one positive moment then to make a negative one.

There are some occasions where a mistake brings moments that where better then the one you had planned. in this case go ahead and play up on the mistake. But if it doesn't present a good memory or experience then move on to something that does.

When they remember things that didn't happen. It's not always a bad thing. It can actually be a good thing. Sometimes it means you presented so well that you really did take them on an emotional and astonishing journey. They might have been so into the moments you created that it all became one journey.

Ron Jaxon

LOL ... I love the way they described your performance! ... One of the most fullfilling things about this art is listening to descriptions afterwards. Someone was describing to another person an arm twist illusion I did for them once (you probably know it) and said that I had twisted my arm three complete revolutions in the shoulder socket ... LOL ... of course that wasnt the case (not even as an illusion), but the spec clearly believed that this was what she had seen.

Twice in the last week I have heard people run off and tell their friends that they had shuffled my invisible deck, and once about a month ago, someone vouched to his boss that in anniversary waltz, they had both held their cards seperately, because they remember me instructing them to hold their cards close to their heart and remember when they got married... absolute comedy... I love magic

I wish I had a dollar for every time someone asked me about David Copperfield's making the "Empire State Building" disappear!

It's been said many times before: The best magic happens in the audience's mind!

I agree totally. Houdini recognized this and strangely enough is still the magicians name most mentioned by the lay public when asked a magician's name.

I was at our local oil change place when the Manager who had seen me before at another venue asked me to do a trick, so I told him to finish my oil change then I would.. he finished and asked agian so wanting to exit quickly I levitated for him ala balducci. He was flabbergasted and wanted to see it again so I told him it used a lot of energy and to do it again would cost him the cost of the oil change... he agreed and I levitated again.....fast forward 3 months/ 3000 miles. I go in and see the manager talking to another guy and pointing towards me... the other guy comes out and introduced himself to me as the regional manager and said I could have a years worth of oil changes if I would float up to the ceiling as I had done for the other manager. I told the regional that I was to tired to get to the ceiling but for todays I would get as hi as possible, I did the balducci again and left with no charge....If I was as great as they think I would be realy good.....

Jeff

Pretty SLICK (pun intended).

Kind of proves that eyewitnesses aren't wrth squat, doesn't it?

But that's what makes this art of ours so wonderful - if we do it right, the wonder grOWS in the minds of the people we have performed for. This is the kind of magic to really strive for - the "they'll be talking about it in the retirement home, when they're 95" effect as Michael Ammar calls it.

It's why certain tricks are remembered, but not remembered accurately!

Lee Darrow, C.H.
"Now where did I put that skyscraper?"