Knocking on spacecraft window...Anyone Out There???
Mitchell Leary
vanishing act.
So, for those of you who have been waiting for me to write something,
here's some sage advice from that desert rat barricaded in the
double-wide outside Area 51:
-Learn to invent your own magic tricks or risk becoming enslaved by the
magic dealers who will do it for you.
-If you do buy a magic trick, don't open it. As soon as you do you'll
be off to buy another one. Place this UN-opened trick somewhere where
you can meditate on it. Knowing, not knowing, theorizing, speculating,
contemplating; the mystery still holds as long as you keep the package
sealed.
-I get far more pleasure re-working those old $2 tricks from Adam's and
Royal than buying new tricks. Invent a new way to perform the Ball Vase
or the Imp Bottle and you'll have guys scrambling for the junk drawer.
-Instead of buying new tricks, learn to do more tricks with what you
already have. There's no need to buy every new trick that comes out,
you've got everything you already need. How many times have you opened
that brand new trick only to read in the first line of the instructions
"This trick is based on a very old principle..." He took an ld trick
and reworked it, then sold it back to you.
This reminds me of the soap making in the movie Fight Club. To make
soap you must first render fat. These guys were stealing human fat from
the dumpsters of lyposuction clinics late at night. They used it to
make the most expensive soap on the market and sold it to Macy's and
other upscale stores. The women loved it and sang its praises. As the
two underground entrepreneurs put it, they were selling women their own
fat butts back to them.
Learn to create your own NEW magic with what you already have, it just
requires a new way of thinking. If that money is still burning a hole
in your pocket INVEST IN BOOKS. Magic books, creativity books, you name
it. I get some of my best ideas by pouring out a large box of hardware,
office products, odds & ends, and those little magic tricks I never use,
onto the kitchen table. Then sit down and just play with stuff. It's a
MacGyver approach to creating magic and it works!
-Leary-
Al Hastings
Still floating around inside the ship. Can anyone recommend any good
books on audience managment (i.e. conditioning, positioning, etc)?
-A
Ray Haddad
Al, start studying NLP or NeuroLinguistic Programming and you'll have
all the tools you need.
--
Ray
Mitchell Leary
Spina that may be what you're looking for. I haven't bought these or
read any reviews, they're brand new. I saw them at Murphy's Magic.
Mitchell Leary
Probably the best book ever writen on the subject.
Eric Haddix
> I can't believe I forgot this one: MAXIMUM ENTERTAINMENT by Ken Weber.
> Probably the best book ever writen on the subject.
>
Maximum Entertainment is in my top 10 list of magic books(it'd be in the
top 5 but the Apocalypse set takes up 4 of those slots) even though it
doesn't contain a single trick in the whole book. Thanks to it I have
scripted my performance and started paying attention to things that even
some of my friends who are seasoned performers haven't thought of. Every
performance is watched as if I'm the director of a movie.
I got "lucky" and got a bad copy of the book(pages were badly faded) so
I wrote Ken and he told me he'd send me a new copy. He even autographed
it upon my request and since he doesn't do lecture tours or the like,
it's a real collectible.
Jack Poulter
Ms Spina started writing a column in MAGIC Magazine in May (title:
"Directions") in which she critiques DVDs of performances by magicians.
Probably some useful tips for many, based on her long-time association
with S&R.
Old Jack.
Al Hastings
perform and they he has a strong show and it is better than the book
'strong magic'. I guess that just made my wish list....thanks!
-A
Mitchell Leary
hard-core card stuff and bought all of Lorayne's dvds a couple years
back for Christmas. Now the question is do I buy the first book or the
third season of Mannix. Hmmmm. A real noodle scratcher.
-Leary-