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George Ledo Magic Café Columnist SF Bay Area 3042 Posts |
I was going to post this in Steve Mollett's thread, but then realized I'd be going off on a tangent. So here goes.
When I was a kid starting out in magic, I bought the same stuff every other beginner did back then: the ball and vase, a little cube inside a plastic box, the finger chopper, a special deck or two, and so forth. And then I proceeded to perform them for my friends. Actually, it was more like I proceeded to inflict them on my friends. At first I thought of these "things" as magic tricks, so my approach was to say, hey, would you like to see a magic trick? I wasn't thinking of myself as a magician, just as a kid doing magic tricks. But as time went on and I started putting several tricks together and calling it a show, I started thinking, hey, I'm a magician. That's when this weird little thought started nagging at me, but it was so vague that I couldn't grab it. It was like, hey, I just told you I'm a magician. A magician supposedly can do the impossible; it's magic. But I'm proving I'm a magician by showing you these tricks I obviously bought at a magic shop. I don't have any "special powers;" I just spent a few bucks. So what's to keep you from spending a few bucks and becoming a magician too? So, I reasoned in my twelve-year-old mind, if a magician is just a guy who buys a few tricks and does them, then he's just a guy demonstrating gadgets. It's all about the gadgets. It took me a couple of years of mental gymnastics that Mary Lou Retton would have been proud of, to wrap my mind around this and realize that if I claimed I was a magician, I would need to go beyond the gadgets. Because "me being a magician" was not about the gadgets. It was about me. That's when my whole approach changed. Heaven help us all.
That's our departed buddy Burt, aka The Great Burtini, doing his famous Cups and Mice routine
www.georgefledo.net Latest column: "Sorry about the photos in my posts here" |
stoneunhinged Inner circle 3067 Posts |
I watched a magician this summer who did nothing more than demonstrate his gadgets. He hadn't ever gone through the Mary Lou Retton stage that you went through. My son got bored by the performance and wandered off elsewhere.
I found it embarrassing and disheartening. And a little bit inspirational, too. |
gadfly3d Special user 963 Posts |
Good insight! We go to the magic shop and think we can buy magic, when what we can buy are props. The magic only exists in a matrix between the performer and the audience.
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Lawrence O Inner circle French Riviera 6811 Posts |
Quote:
On 2008-09-15 11:13, gadfly3d wrote: You could go as far as saying that without the imagination of the audience (which is what we are at the magic shop) there is no magical effect. Thus magic is not about fooling people, it's about an enchanting constructive dialogue over an actually impossible point.
Magic is the art of emotionally sharing live impossible situations
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The Magic Cafe Forum Index » » Food for thought » » Emphasizing the performer... a spinoff (0 Likes) |
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