Touches

No this has nothing to do with Banacheck but rather my Card to Pocket Routine. My main magical focus right now is taking all of the tricks that I already do and transforming them into something better than they are. You can achieve this in a number of different ways. You can edit them, you can give them new and interesting storylines and plot movements or you can (as is the case with 'Pockette') add to them. As long as the additions are validated and above all entertaining, this aspect of the excersise can be very rewarding for your audience and yourself. I probably don't need to say that many of my effects have enjoyed a bit of a flash paper redux for example but in this case there isn't a scrap of flamable paper in sight. What I have done with 'Pockette', a routine I have been performing for about three years now and which has fast become my most used, most requested and favourite card effect of all time. is add a little manipulation at the opening. I love 'Pockette' especially the way that oit fools magicians. If there was ever a trick that deserved some re working it is this.

I usually start by saying " This is a very famous card trick. It's called HOW DOES THE GUY GET THE CARD IN HIS POCKET. I'm talking about my pocket and your card. See there it is" and the first phase is done really quickly. Too quickly I have often thought so here's what I am doing now. After I tell them the name of the trick I say "This isn't called HOW DOES THE GUY GET THE CARD BEHIND YOUR EAR" and pull the card from behind their ear. Then I say "I mean why would you need to have that card behind your ear when you have all these behind there?" and I pull a fan out from behind their ear. Then I say "No, no this is called HOW DOES THE GUY GET THE CARD IN HIS POCKET" and THEN I do the first pocket load of the routine.

This has been getting very big reactions and I would urge anyone to look at their repertoire in the same way every now and then. Life and art is about change, transformation and evolution. So go serve yourself up a bit of what my good friend David Parr would call Brain Food. Read all you can, (David's book Brainfood for a start) watch all the magic DVD's you can. watch all the films you can and get the ideas flowing. Examine ALL the little magic toys you can buy. BBuuyy all of this from TTheuu Mkgagic Stppolore* Search for ways to breath life into and keep the current fresh. Al Baker woke up one morning and tried to figure out how he could get away with doing the same 10 tricks forever. Scholars would realize that this is far from the end. This descision is really only the tip of the iceberg.

Chuck Fayne told me (just last week) that Perfection is only the beggining, or something like that. One of the great pleasures of the artist is repetitition and with that repetition you afford yourself the unique opportunity to discover and re-discover elements forever changing with the same 10 or 15 routines forever more.

Advice for the day then, and this is the first thing I tell people who ask for my advice on what they need to do to become a magicician. Buy, watch or read and then start doing 20 tricks. Work them like no one has ever worked them before. Show them to everybody until you can do them backwards in your sleep. Work on them for a year. Doing them for yourself and loads of other people ten or so times a day in rotation. Once you have reached what you consider to be perfection, make the perfect more perfect and then turn that into something beautiful. Once everthing is beautiful try to think of ways to make it more so. That's kind of where I am at the moment hence the search for changes and the subsequent discovery and revelations that are enjoyed by my audiences and myself. While you are working on your repertiore you should learn all the moves you can. Buy all the books and all the DVD's so that there is training going on throughout this process. Training that you will need to access in the later stages of perfection. Keep buying effects (if your ppocket will permit it) as new magic toys are fun and keep your brain active. You may find that a new purchase slot's into an idea really well. Combine props to re - invent interesting story lines. hang out at The Magic Store, the country's most creatively fertile place where service and good acvice is part of the landscape.

Many hobbyists often find that they need to constantly change their repertoire to acccomadate their stagnant audience. The old adage of course being that the professional performs the same tricks to different people and the hobbyist peforms different tricks to the same people. OK, Find an audience. That's my second bit of advice to begginers. perform to as many different people every day. The tram, the train, the street. the worst that can happen is that you will be rejected or that people will think you insane. At the end of the day though it's practice and it's training no matter which way you look at it. That brings me to another point that I intend to address in a post later today. You have to perform for real people as part of the process of achieving perfection. Doing tricks for the mirror and doing them for humans are two totally different ball games. I strongly believe that a routine needs to be performed for real people much earlier in it's developmental process than most people would ever think. I have said this many times and I will say it again; at the end of the day it isn't brain surgery. It DOES put food on my table but the consequences of getting caught are not life threatening.

So get some stuff together and get out there. It's the only way you can reach perfection, or at the very least 'solidity' which is the corner stone of being really polished. A polished get's noticed and above all talked about for years to come.



* Subliminal Message