fun exercise

Do a trick with a gimmick deck of RED bicycles.
When the spectator asks too see the deck hand over some BLUE bicycles
watch as they fail to notice and realise you can get away with anything with the right mind set

Ambitious Card

Today I'll be working on the Ambitious Card. It's a lovly rutine which has the same effect performed in several ways, each way compounding the believe that what the magician is doing is impossible. I'll be useing the Crash Course in Card magic volume 2 from Eluionist

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU-60XXJ5m8&feature=watch_response

Other stuff. On Friday we had an open door policy at Electr[o]crasy which meant I had free time to try out some tricks on the crowd. As normal "Do as I do" had a good effect however card in hand and "Here then there" were a little stronger. The supirse was how strong 'direct mind reading' was.
A final thought is my beloved Invisable Deck. I stopped trying to perform with this deck because I kept screwing up the handling. I popped it in my pocket as an after thought and decided to be bold and have a go in public. It worked flawlessly time and time again. It seems a few weeks of practising shuffles and lifts had given me the level of dexterity i needed without even realsieing it. So the moral here is simpl. If something is too hard, take a break, do something else for a while and you may be learnign how to dso it without realasiing

Crash Course 2

I've been simply blown away with Crash Course in card magic 2 by the Ellusionist. I can't rave about this enough. The first hour is an in-depth look at the ambitious card routine. Whilst a simple sounding trick of a card transporting from the middle of a deck to the top the course offers much more. For instance it talks about new ways of double lifting as well as the transportation. You can do the effect 3 or 4 times each time doing it slightly different ways. all these ways combine to exclude any possible method conceivable to the spectator. Seriously take a look at it.

practising when you don't feel like it.

I've never liked practising at something if I don't feel up to it. IN my days of ju-jitsu though I l;earnt going when I was achy was often very rewarding. Sometimes it helped loosen up muscles and nerves, other times I just felt better knowing I could pick someone up and throw them across a room even when I was limping bad and close to tears. Why drag up the past, because of Friday....

I'd gone into he shop to help out as we are short staffed at the moment. Afterwards I'd arranged to meet up with a good mate who's a far better magician than myself. I sat there on his floor and performed a few tricks and we both knew my double lift was bloody awful. I'd managed it perfectly when performing on Monday, and at practise every single day this week. At first I thought it was just nerves but I slowly realised just how physically wrecked I was feeling. My hands had been somewhat abused with all the lifting and I was generally feeling rubbish. When I had gotten home I had a bath, took my pain meds sat down and controlled a card through 45 minutes of constant shuffling and followed that up with half an hour of perfect double lifts. So there is a temptation to only practise when I feel well, do I don't get disheartened. However, provided I accept that I will suck royally when in pain I can continue to practise and hopefully learn to maintain fine finger control no matter what state I'm in.

Magic and Theatre

A quick thought I had this morning regarding the whole 'Is Magic theatre/art' argument. I performed "Here then There" for a friend at the Wiv fair. afterwards she just smiled and said she'd seen it before. That was it. not 'I know how that's done" she didn't but the fact she'd seen it once before, on television meant it was pointless to perform it for her. This same person loves theate. She's seen many different version of Hamllet before, and will happily go and see another/ So she's happy to sit through 3 hours of theatre where she knows the ending and even where she knows how it's done. However, sitting through 1 minute of rather good magic that still leaves her baffled is 'old hat' and nothing special because she saw the same trick done before, all be it by someone else, not as close up or even in the same style. This is sounding liek a rant, but I'm not cross with her at all. This is how she feels. This is how other people we meet in the world of magic will feel. We need to be prepared for this and maybe, for the top effects plan a twist, something new for them, or maybe an interesting follow on trick they might not have seen. In other words, pure artistry and perfect performance seems to be less important than shiny shiny.

With this in mind, time to hit the books and get some more tricks under my belt.