My father took magic very seriously and went way beyond simple slight of hand that this article suggests. He could make coins disappear without a trace. Our mother was often astonished when she found all the money in the house and bank had vanished. One day he wanted to show us a disappearance trick with a cigarettes carton. He didn't have one so he went to the corner to pick one up. He hasn't been seen since. A true magician never reveals his trick.
It was the prolog to a 70s sitcom as I recall, about the dad going to the corner for cigarettes and only coming back years later. I can’t remember what the show was now though.
> If a trick fooled me, I made it my job to discover how.
Tangential but that's one of the reasons I actually migrated away from sleight of hand towards juggling. IMHO it's far less stressful when your performance doesn't require fooling the audience.
There was a very good article about magic [1] where the magicians describe tricks that are too good to perform because people will get angry. Apparently the audience is much more receptive when they believe they can figure out how the trick was achieved.
[1] The New Yorker. “The Real Work: Modern magic and the meaning of life.” by Adam Gopnik July 28, 2008
I dabbled in magic, and what I found beatiful about it is, as an audience, you're amazed once (because magician never does same trick twice). But as a performer, you're actually amazed three times!
First time as an audience, when someone shows you a performance of a trick. The second time you're amazed, when they show you the method, and you think - how could have I been fooled by this stupid detail? And the third time you're amazed, when you actually learn it, you perform it, of course imperfectly, and it still fools the other people.
>>"The real wonder is in the human mind that constructs reality from fragments, that can be fooled by a flourish, but that can also be illuminated by experiment. "
I grew up loving magic. I watched David Copperfield on a grainy old tv, and vividly remember rewatching taped performances of "The World's Greatest Magic" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World%27s_Greatest_Magic) trying to figure out how the big illusions were done. I was part of a magic club and loved peeking behind the curtain. It fascinated me how as you learned those building blocks of simple sleight of hand, you could compound and build on those components to pull off more and more impressive tricks. A double lift, palming, french drop, etc...all pulled together to a cohesive "trick".
I feel like a lot of what entertained me about magic also pulled me towards web development. Sites and interactions online seem like magic until you realize they also break down into simple problems, simple components that build upon one another to deliver the trick. That interest in figuring out how things work just never went away I guess!
> I became my father’s assistant, carrying props, rehearsing patter, acting as the straight man. But I was also his skeptic. If a trick fooled me, I made it my job to discover how. When he succeeded, I applauded; when I found the secret, I felt the satisfaction of uncovering a law of nature.
I find this beautiful
> My father taught me to vanish before I learned to appear. Science taught me to appear without vanishing — to stand by evidence, to let truth emerge even when it contradicted the spectacle.
My dad is a tax attorney/cpa, but is also a magician. My birthday parties were dope. It certainly wasn't a full time job, but he made enough money from corporate parties doing walk around magic to fund his habit, and magic is expensive (most videos teaching the trick are ~$100 or more). He has a magic library that if I had to guess is worth 6 figures.
I've tried getting into the craft many times, and if I had to boil down the essence of nearly every trick (especially for slight of hand, not necessarily stage magic)... Imagine the stupidest, dumbest, simplest explanation of the trick that you write off as "well certainly they're not doing _that_", and that is what is happening. The real art is that doing that simple thing is hard AF, they have to practice it a thousand times to make it look convincing. I never really got into it because it required too much dedication. And if anything, that makes it more special than something more cerebral.
My father took magic very seriously and went way beyond simple slight of hand that this article suggests. He could make coins disappear without a trace. Our mother was often astonished when she found all the money in the house and bank had vanished. One day he wanted to show us a disappearance trick with a cigarettes carton. He didn't have one so he went to the corner to pick one up. He hasn't been seen since. A true magician never reveals his trick.
Sounds like a Johnny Cash song.
It was the prolog to a 70s sitcom as I recall, about the dad going to the corner for cigarettes and only coming back years later. I can’t remember what the show was now though.
The dad who went out for cigarettes is a big trope in American culture. The joke only really works if you know that. See https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ParentNeverCameB...
Also Springsteen (at least the opening lines): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boJhWtw-6Gg
Probably this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Z1Ple-qYuU
Was your dad D. B. Cooper?
From the article:
> If a trick fooled me, I made it my job to discover how.
Tangential but that's one of the reasons I actually migrated away from sleight of hand towards juggling. IMHO it's far less stressful when your performance doesn't require fooling the audience.
There was a very good article about magic [1] where the magicians describe tricks that are too good to perform because people will get angry. Apparently the audience is much more receptive when they believe they can figure out how the trick was achieved.
[1] The New Yorker. “The Real Work: Modern magic and the meaning of life.” by Adam Gopnik July 28, 2008
> [1] The New Yorker. “The Real Work: Modern magic and the meaning of life.” by Adam Gopnik July 28, 2008
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/03/17/magic-the-real...
a.k.a. https://archive.is/kBpwF
I dabbled in magic, and what I found beatiful about it is, as an audience, you're amazed once (because magician never does same trick twice). But as a performer, you're actually amazed three times!
First time as an audience, when someone shows you a performance of a trick. The second time you're amazed, when they show you the method, and you think - how could have I been fooled by this stupid detail? And the third time you're amazed, when you actually learn it, you perform it, of course imperfectly, and it still fools the other people.
>>"The real wonder is in the human mind that constructs reality from fragments, that can be fooled by a flourish, but that can also be illuminated by experiment. "
Beautiful.
Agreed, sounds Lovecraftian.
Seems a little pretentious.
[dead]
I grew up loving magic. I watched David Copperfield on a grainy old tv, and vividly remember rewatching taped performances of "The World's Greatest Magic" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World%27s_Greatest_Magic) trying to figure out how the big illusions were done. I was part of a magic club and loved peeking behind the curtain. It fascinated me how as you learned those building blocks of simple sleight of hand, you could compound and build on those components to pull off more and more impressive tricks. A double lift, palming, french drop, etc...all pulled together to a cohesive "trick".
I feel like a lot of what entertained me about magic also pulled me towards web development. Sites and interactions online seem like magic until you realize they also break down into simple problems, simple components that build upon one another to deliver the trick. That interest in figuring out how things work just never went away I guess!
> I became my father’s assistant, carrying props, rehearsing patter, acting as the straight man. But I was also his skeptic. If a trick fooled me, I made it my job to discover how. When he succeeded, I applauded; when I found the secret, I felt the satisfaction of uncovering a law of nature.
I find this beautiful
> My father taught me to vanish before I learned to appear. Science taught me to appear without vanishing — to stand by evidence, to let truth emerge even when it contradicted the spectacle.
Poetic
This is an topic where internet and camera phones have ruined it.
Well, obviously, you don't believe what you see. :-)
My dad is a tax attorney/cpa, but is also a magician. My birthday parties were dope. It certainly wasn't a full time job, but he made enough money from corporate parties doing walk around magic to fund his habit, and magic is expensive (most videos teaching the trick are ~$100 or more). He has a magic library that if I had to guess is worth 6 figures.
I've tried getting into the craft many times, and if I had to boil down the essence of nearly every trick (especially for slight of hand, not necessarily stage magic)... Imagine the stupidest, dumbest, simplest explanation of the trick that you write off as "well certainly they're not doing _that_", and that is what is happening. The real art is that doing that simple thing is hard AF, they have to practice it a thousand times to make it look convincing. I never really got into it because it required too much dedication. And if anything, that makes it more special than something more cerebral.
Talmudic test of Abrahamic faith.
Bit of Jungian parapsychology: tell the physician to forget everything he knows prior to undergoing psychoanalysis.