MarloFan
2015-01-09 23:56:52 UTC
Let's see exactly who's actually reading this - Google Groups/Deja News/BBS-style discussion boards are deader'n disco. Kids(I'm 40 so feel I can legitimately use the term), though are still into magic. It's out there, not super popular - it never really was- but there's a fanbase to cater for.
What will entertain them?
Starting with my personal tastes for my own generation, I can well remember dreading the jaded, well-worn, cosy and bollocks be-turbaned mystics linking or unlinking rings and standing next to a cabinet of some fucking sort doing something too deadly dull to expend the mental effort to perceive.
Let's fast forward a bit - I can see myself becoming mightily fed up with seeing a bitten coin, levitations of *any* description, or anyone purporting to be demonstrating some other-worldly ability whatsoever. I'll still know it's a wire. I'll still know it's a trick. I'll still know that some tied-to-the-apron-strings whey faced shut-in with as much time on his responsibility-free hands as his "Hey, I still pay my board you know" excess disposable funds, allows his borderline Asperger's to try and pass as entertainment.
It's a good guess that the next generation will fell the same about them too.
I know out there that there are some for whom the cosy, 'clubby-ness' of magic within their usual realm of experience provides a moment of glowing warmth and fondness. Who doesn't like putting on a pair of comfy slippers?
Nice as they are, they can get a bit stale and you fancy trying on something new...
So what can be new?
Take a minute. Stop and think.
CARDS - can't be new. You (and indeed I!) may have a love for them regardless, but that's not what I'm asking. If it can be done with cards, we'll just take it as read that any effect you can ever conceive of can be performed somehow.
MENTAL MAGIC. No denying again that some of the finest and strongest effects are found here. There'll be some more thoughts on this after...
LINKING RINGS and a fucking THREE CUP ROUTINE can be drop-kicked into the sun.
I dunno, maybe the next rung in the ladder is to do some sort of effect that permanently redefines that person's experience of reality. Let's turn back your mental clock -all the previous stuff, if you paid attention, blew you away for a bit. You thought the rings were solid. How could the lady survive the saw? You didn't know the word 'gimmick', and took it all on face value. But that didn't last - did it?
What if you could achieve that state and sustain it in an audience. Not, I repeat, not for a viewing audience to act as spectators thinking "ooh yes, lovely" and clapping and then going for ice-cream. For everyone who is within sight of this performance to have an experience, not just of seeing magic, but of having the feeling of it personally happening to them. And (here's the kicker), them never realising otherwise.
So how? Haven't a clue. Haven't a Scooby-Doo. en-passant, maybe make them think they'd all seen a ghost? Something otherworldly and out of their experience anyway. Super memory? An appreciation of the raw power of technology? New state of mind? The ability to guess with unfailing accuracy, the number a friend merely thinks of? To turn the bathtaps off by winking at them for evermore?
Let me be clear. If you're making the statue of liberty disappear before a cooing audience of mullets and shoulder pads then I want to travel to the site and see it still gone. To make something feel real for anyone who condescends to lend an ear and eye, and change them forever.
That'd probably get the essence of what we do across nicely.
Any idea of the road it should go down?
MarloFan
What will entertain them?
Starting with my personal tastes for my own generation, I can well remember dreading the jaded, well-worn, cosy and bollocks be-turbaned mystics linking or unlinking rings and standing next to a cabinet of some fucking sort doing something too deadly dull to expend the mental effort to perceive.
Let's fast forward a bit - I can see myself becoming mightily fed up with seeing a bitten coin, levitations of *any* description, or anyone purporting to be demonstrating some other-worldly ability whatsoever. I'll still know it's a wire. I'll still know it's a trick. I'll still know that some tied-to-the-apron-strings whey faced shut-in with as much time on his responsibility-free hands as his "Hey, I still pay my board you know" excess disposable funds, allows his borderline Asperger's to try and pass as entertainment.
It's a good guess that the next generation will fell the same about them too.
I know out there that there are some for whom the cosy, 'clubby-ness' of magic within their usual realm of experience provides a moment of glowing warmth and fondness. Who doesn't like putting on a pair of comfy slippers?
Nice as they are, they can get a bit stale and you fancy trying on something new...
So what can be new?
Take a minute. Stop and think.
CARDS - can't be new. You (and indeed I!) may have a love for them regardless, but that's not what I'm asking. If it can be done with cards, we'll just take it as read that any effect you can ever conceive of can be performed somehow.
MENTAL MAGIC. No denying again that some of the finest and strongest effects are found here. There'll be some more thoughts on this after...
LINKING RINGS and a fucking THREE CUP ROUTINE can be drop-kicked into the sun.
I dunno, maybe the next rung in the ladder is to do some sort of effect that permanently redefines that person's experience of reality. Let's turn back your mental clock -all the previous stuff, if you paid attention, blew you away for a bit. You thought the rings were solid. How could the lady survive the saw? You didn't know the word 'gimmick', and took it all on face value. But that didn't last - did it?
What if you could achieve that state and sustain it in an audience. Not, I repeat, not for a viewing audience to act as spectators thinking "ooh yes, lovely" and clapping and then going for ice-cream. For everyone who is within sight of this performance to have an experience, not just of seeing magic, but of having the feeling of it personally happening to them. And (here's the kicker), them never realising otherwise.
So how? Haven't a clue. Haven't a Scooby-Doo. en-passant, maybe make them think they'd all seen a ghost? Something otherworldly and out of their experience anyway. Super memory? An appreciation of the raw power of technology? New state of mind? The ability to guess with unfailing accuracy, the number a friend merely thinks of? To turn the bathtaps off by winking at them for evermore?
Let me be clear. If you're making the statue of liberty disappear before a cooing audience of mullets and shoulder pads then I want to travel to the site and see it still gone. To make something feel real for anyone who condescends to lend an ear and eye, and change them forever.
That'd probably get the essence of what we do across nicely.
Any idea of the road it should go down?
MarloFan