How to be the Famous Magician in Your Community
Learn an easy magic trick "hand-off" method
Writing my book, Magic for the Rest of Us, was a surprisingly cathartic experience. It gave me the opportunity to spend six weeks really working through a lot of thoughts on magic.
There's one line of thinking in the book that I really love about how dedicated hobbyist magicians actually have far more in common with famous magicians than they do with working magicians.
We tend to think about the three main types of magicians as though they are placed upon one line from left to right. Hobbyist magicians are on one side, famous magicians are on the other, and working pros are in the middle of the two.
In actual fact, this line is more like a circle, with famous magicians connecting directly with dedicated hobbyists.
While working pros have to worry about things like instant resets and pocket space, famous magicians and hobbyists do not.
While working pros rarely have 24/7 access to venues and the opportunity to use anyone as an accomplice, famous magicians and hobbyists can.
While working pros are often restricted to how long they can wait between a setup and a reveal, famous magicians and hobbyists are not.
While working pros will find it difficult to personalize tricks to every spectator, famous magicians and hobbyists almost always can.
If there's one lesson I'd like readers to take away from reading my book, it's that they should strive to be the famous magician in their community.
This is less about their celebrity status and more about their ability to take their time, be generous, and care about the people they perform for.
It doesn't take much to be the famous magician in your community.
Send Ahead
In the book, I write about how much more exciting it was for my grandfather to show me his magic tricks immediately following the excitement of going into the attic to retreive them.
This got me thinking about how much the lead-up to magic matters.
When I work on well-run TV magic shows, I pay great care and attention to "warming up" the spectators.
There's a casting process, and even then, we'll be really delicate when they arrive to choreograph where they'll be and for how long before we film with them. Often, on TV magic shows, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the spectators are the talent and not the magician. It's often the magician with the worse dressing room or, the less safe route to set.
