Genii Bash - Episode IV: A New Hope

The next lecturer at Genii's 75th Anniversary Birthday Bash was Charlie Frye.

As was the case with Mr. Long's presentation, there was a torrent of information broadcast with a similar nervous energy.  

Master Genii, Richard Kaufman, introduced Mr. Frye by saying that he had seen him lecture in Asia and had been very impressed.  I came away from the Orlando presentation wishing I had seen what Mr. Kaufman had seen. This is not a comment on Mr. Frye's skills as a performer--he put on a hell of a show at the closing night gala--but more about the structure of his lecture presentation.

Not being familiar with Mr. Frye's work prior to his lecture, I had no contect for the torrent of gags and stunts that he demonstrated.  That he performs a high energy cabaret act that clearly seems to have been informed by a lot of street performance experience helped to frame his presentation retrospectively.  Having just listened to Eugene Burger talk about scripting and the idea of tricks as pictures without a frame, Mr. Frye's presentation seemed a clear demonstration of this idea.

***

I largely kept my notebook holstered for the evening show.  It was exciting to see a performance of Thurston's Rising Cards by Jonathan Levit ably assisted by the lovely and talented Mr. David Regal.

The effect was recreated for the Los Angeles Conference on Magic History which is a tough ticket to get so seeing Thurston's signature piece brought back to life was a rare and genuine treat.

***

After the evening show was the lecture I was most excited to see.  Magician, writer and skeptic Jamy Ian Swiss was going to talk about mentalism.

This last sentence deserves a second look not because it is so artfully crafted, but because it conveys something of a conundrum.  How does a skeptic, an advisor to the James Randi Educational Foundation perform mentalism without irony?  As Mr. Swiss repeated near the beginning of his lecture, "Jamy Ian Swiss is not a mentalist, he's an asshole."

Listening to his presentation, it's hard to think of Mr. Swiss as anything other than a thoughtful and passionate advocate for his art.  As Rick Maue noted in reviewing Mr. Swiss's book Shattering Illusions, "Mr. Swiss doesn't hate mentalism, he hates bad mentalism."

Mr. Swiss went to some lengths to differentiate between mental magic and mentalism.  He referenced a conversation with Teller of Penn & Tell wherein Mr. Teller defined mental magic as being concerned with the revelation of proper nouns ("You're thinking of a_____.")  Mentalism, by comparison, Mr. Swiss defined as the revelation of thinking.

As a mentalist, Mr. Swiss claims no special powers which, he noted, was unlike another performer attending the convention.  Mr. Swiss accomplished his effects as a result of observation, experience and some specialized knowledge.  

It is perhaps because I have been listening to a lot of old radio dramas, but as I listened to Mr. Swiss, I was reminded of one of the old Sherlock Holmes programs.   Holmes would make pronouncements about visitors to 221B Baker St. that would, with different framing, rival those of Alexander or Kreskin.  As Holmes explains, his pronouncements are the result of a string of observations and deductions.

Holmes was a rationalist and Swiss is a skeptic so is it too much to describe Mr. Swiss as the Sherlock Holmes of Mentalists?

I am not a big fan of mentalism per se, but I am fascinated by the psychology of it.  Reading books on the subject, it has always seemed to me that there are so many different ways that an effect could fail and that uncertainty made it very unsettling as a form.

As I write this, it occurs to me that the critical factor in mentalism is the experience of the performer.  We audience members imagine ourselves to be wildly individual and capable of an infinite number of choices in response to any situation.  To the experienced performer, one closing in on Gladwell's 10,000 hours to mastery, the patterns of response become apparent and the selection of 37 as an uneven number between one and fifty less and less of a surprise.

It would also make sense that, after mastering magic's carefully structured classics that the more bi-directional quality of mentalism would have a strong attraction.

Somebody, and it may have been Mr. Swiss, likened mentalism to performing jazz and the comparison seems apt in that it requires a mastery of skill and technique and the ability to listen and adapt to the input from the spectator.

Mr. Swiss also spoke about the importance of "clarity of effect."  The audience should be able to describe what happened in a simple sentence.  Too many effects, both in mentalism and in traditional magic, have lots of process and that can undercut the magical moment.  As Mr. Swiss said, "Just because the audience is confused doesn't mean they've had a magical experience."

Too often the processes of a magical effect exist to disguise the method and the effect on the audience is not so much magical as confusing.  One thinks immediately of the 21-Card Trick and its endless counting and pointing.  When you contrast that with magician shows hat empty and pulls rabbit from hat, you quickly understand the difference.

The last thing I wrote down was "You have to talk away the box."

To be frank, I no longer recall the context in which the remark was made, but as I reflect on my impressions of Mr. Swiss's presentation the comment makes sense to me as integral to the creation of a piece of theatre.  Absent supernatural forces, every effect will have a method that creates boundaries and limitations on the performer.  It is therefore incumbent upon them, through their scripting and presentation to deemphasize those limitations for the audience.

More easily said than done, but foundational to the creation of magical experiences.

Dare I say, "elementary?"

21 Card Trick

Like many who come to magic, I have always been drawn to card tricks.  Perhaps I am just a good audience, but they always seem the most magical of effects.  Whereas you might be able to content yourself with a "smoke and mirrors" explanation to the big box illusions, card tricks seem to have no place to hide.  There are few ways to disguise the secret of the trick.

I remember going to see "The Sting" a few times and always being drawn to a short scene where Paul Newman's character, conman Henry Gondorff shows off his skill with a deck of cards.  That was something I wanted to do.

Card tricks were "real" magic and I wanted to be a real magician.

Learning card tricks, I quickly found out, could be very frustrating.  In the days before video tutorials, the only way to learn a trick was out of a book or magazine.  I would go to the bookstores and libraries and search out their magic sections hoping to find a book that would teach me to be as good as Doug Henning or David Copperfield.



I had subscriptions to magician's magazines, I bought a few books, but I could never find a trick that I had any confidence that I could pull off. 

I can remember reading instructions for card tricks in Genii, "The Conjuror's Magazine" and coming to a point where they would say something like, "and then execute a slip cut" and I would be stopped dead.  What is a slip cut?  They didn't explain it, it was assumed to be part of the common knowledge.  It was like being in one of those restaurants where they don't print prices on the menu.  If you have to ask then perhaps you would prefer the McDonald's at the corner.

Another common roadblock was the phrase "by the ususal method."  Again there was not indication what the method was, or where to find it.  It was so frustrating to have the recipe for card magic success and not have access to all of the ingredients.

I remember finding a book called something like "Self-Working Card Tricks" and thinking this was the answer.  It was kind of like finding a cookbook by Julia Child:  I didn't have to master French cuisine, all I had to do was follow the steps and I would be able to look like a French chef.  And after all, wasn't that what magic is all about?  Isn't it the job of the magician to appear to be able to do something he can not?

It was only later that I learned that in the culture of magic, manipulators are held in higher regard than those who rely on apparatus and other shortcuts.

One of the first of these self-working tricks I learned was called "You Do As I Do."  In the trick, the performer and the spectator each have a deck of cards and they each select a card from their deck and when the selections are revealed, they match.  It was simple and direct and it looked like real magic.

I remember seeing a mostly forgettable movie called "Magic" with Anthony Hopkins.  In the movie, Hopkins uses this same card trick to impress Ann-Margaret.  Using magic to impress girls?  Only something that would ever happen in the movies. 

Self-working card tricks depend not on secret moves so much as they do on procedures.  They are essentially mathematics dressed up with a magic wand.

Another classic of the genre is the "21 Card Trick" and this clearly demonstrates some of the principles that underlie this genre of trick and perhaps why it is so far removed from the ideal that I had for myself.

The performer counts out three columns of 7 cards each and has the spectator mentally select a card from any of those on the table.  After identifying which of the columns the card is in, the magician gathers the cards and deals them out two more times.  Following the third time through, the magician reveals the spectator's card. 

There is literally nothing to this trick.  It can be done by a blind person and after watching the performer deal out three columns of cards treee times, there is nothing left for the audience to be engaged by.  I doubt if even Sesame Street's The Count could make all that counting interesting.

Of course, at the time I learned the trick, I thought I was doing a fabulous job of fooling my audiences.  I didn't recognize until years later just why it was that I had to chase them down and force them to sit still while I did one of these "miracles."

Over the years, I have collected books and videos that have filled in the gaps in my knowledge base.  I know now what a slip cut is and I have a pretty good idea of where to look for the "usual method," but I still can't do a card trick that I would describe as real magic.  It doesn't come up that much now, but when I am asked to do a trick, I find myself picking up a deck and starting to count.