Brad Henderson Essay On Magic

Brad Henderson Your post caught my eye and then I was surprised to
see my name in the comments!

I have given this a lot of thought and may someday put those into a
cogent essay; in the meantime here is a mishmash of some of those
ideas:
The problem is not just magic conventions but the entirety of the
magic marketplace. Most magicians do magic to please themselves.
They are not concerned with, nor do they need to be concerned with,
the feelings of an audience. They are interested in creating a
pleasurable experience for themselves. A very successful seller of
magic once shared with me a secret he attributed to Paul Harris: To
make money selling magic, make sure the trick looks great from the
magician’s perspective. Just look at all the posts on the Café – how
many mention how much “fun” the trick is to do. Well, I’m happy they
are having fun, I truly am, but a magician’s job is to create a feelingful
experience for his or her audience, not for him or herself. It’s not quite
magical masturbation, it’s autoerotic exhibitionism.
Further, most magic being sold today is interesting ONLY IF you
already know how the trick is supposed to work. For the audience’s
perspective, there is no difference. Only someone familiar with forces
or rough and smooth might notice that he showed both sides of the
deck.
Now, let me be very clear – method affects effect. To say that all
methods are equal is simply untrue.
However much of what we are currently heralding as innovation has no
net effect on the impact of the audience’s experience – unless that
audience is a knowledgeable magician. This brings us into this weirdly
vicious circle of performing for other magicians.
Now, I will admit that like anyone I enjoy the respect and admiration of
my peers. Who wouldn’t? But for some reason we in magic bestow our
respect not upon those people who are actually out there making a
living creating real moments for real people, but for those who sell us
new secrets to tricks we will never use to create real moments for real
people.
Perhaps this is because many people will never pursue enough real
world performing to learn how to evaluate and judge magic intended
for real audiences. I can read 100 magic books (wait, who am I
kidding) I can watch 100 magic DVD’s and quickly develop an
appreciation for tricks that do the same thing but with different
methods – but it takes years of blood, sweat and tears before someone
can look at a routine and understand why or why not it will play
strongly in the real world. And it takes years to develop a trick that
plays strongly in the real world, and you cannot do it without
performing it IN THE REAL WORLD.
Knowing that it takes years to develop strong material for the real
world, we have a problem. The people who have developed this
material are often reluctant to share it because after years of
investment, they are usually reaping financial benefit from use. Plus,
once they do share it, the hobbyist is already looking for the next
diversion. Well – where is that going to come from? Not the real world
worker because they, as a rule, aren’t creating new tricks every week.
They spend years honing masterpieces. Instead, we look to those
people who ARE creating new tricks every week.
The history of this practice is saddening. (At least for me.) I have
several thoughts on this and where the blame lies, but without going
into details I think one merely need look to those people who built
their empires teaching and selling tricks others were using in more
visible outlets. These same people quickly jumped on the “be famous”
bandwagon, promising glory to those who sold tricks and secrets, not
who honed them and made livings actually performing them.
There are many issues which arise from this approach. The need to fill
the hobbyist hunger leads people eager to be recognized by their peers
down dark paths. Sure, some of their early work is often “original” (and
by original, I mean they sincerely believe they came up with it
themselves), but soon those wells run dry and they start putting out
every little brain fart they’ve ever had and when those dry up they
begin looking for “inspiration” elsewhere. This is when we see “original
miracles” reluctantly becoming advertised as “variations” when the
truth of origination starts to leak.
And since these empires are driven on selling product and not actually
teaching magicians how to be magicians (because, let’s face it, a real
magical education leads people AWAY from buying the latest and
greatest) we see pushes to sell compartmentalized information –
single tricks become the norm. And what of these tricks? Well, in
addition to playing to magician’s values of method they also play to the
strengths of the media through which they are sold, NOT the
environment in which they are performed.
In other words, the industry has taught magicians to value tricks that
“read well” on video, because those are the easiest tricks to sell via a
media based on video (ie the web). Visual tricks are touted as superior,
but are in effect the weakest magically. (Some may disagree with me
on this point, and we can have that discussion later.) Worse, we now
we have magicians on the café who judge a trick not based on any
criterion beyond the reactions the trick gets on the demo.
And here we get to the big secret, the root of the big lie: Screaming
and running is an incredibly shallow reaction to the magical
experience. Take away all of the reality TV bs that would force any
sentient being to question the legitimacy of the reactions, but any
person who has truly touched people with magic knows that surprise
is merely the first level of magical intensity.
But the more interesting, the deeper levels, don’t film well. And you
can seldom reach them by just following the steps of a recipe. It takes
a performer who is in the moment, more connected to their audience
than to their moves; someone who is listening and responding, not
pattering and giving lines.
We have trained an entire generation of magicians to aim for
shallowness, which is great if you have crappy tricks to sell, but not so
great if you care about magic as an art or want people to have
profound experiences when they encounter it.
Conventions are merely vehicles for people to sell product – whether
that product is a DVD or themselves. And the people who attend
conventions are magicians who buy products, and those magicians
who buy products are hobbyists. So conventions play to the values of
the hobbyists – they bring in acts that fool magicians, or impress
magicians, or entertain magicians. And you know what, there is
nothing wrong with that – in and of itself.
The problem is when these magicians confuse that which is really
entertainment for a niche market with educational material for those
who want to perform outside of that niche market.
Just because someone makes a living doing magic, does not mean
they are a skilled magician. And there are many cases of terrible,
hackneyed acts which, although they are working, should never be
placed into a position of authority or considered a guide for best
practices Learning to perform powerfully in the real world is a
challenging hurdle and many working acts never achieve much beyond
"diversion" or "glorified baby sitter." I am not advocating a caste
system. I'm suggesting that different audiences have different values
and being successful with one does not mean one would be successful
with another. But just because one works for one audience, doesn't
make them "better" than those who work for the other.)

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Brad Henderson Your post caught my eye and then I was surprised to

see my name in the comments!

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