Unusual Solutions to Magic's Biggest Problems

Last year, I attended Cardistry Con in London, and I watched a talk given by Biz. I love Biz, and he's written an excellent article for One Ahead in the past about why some sleights get forgotten. But, it was clear when I looked around the room that Biz was preaching much bigger ideas than the attendees might have anticipated.

He was zoomed out much more than anyone else there and cared much more about cardistry as a whole, where it stood in the world and the future that was coming for it, than what the next cool cardistry move might be. He spoke of ways to gamify cardistry in order to get more people learning and creating new moves. He imagined a bright future and put the work in to establish ways to encourage more people to pick up a deck of cards and learn it, too.

I enjoy talks like these, and they leave a lasting impression on me. The last good example of this was a lecture I saw by Ondrej Psenicka (someone we should really ask to write a guest article for One Ahead). His talk on crediting and researching the history of moves, tricks, and methods was the first time I started to wrap my head around why so many magicians care so much about doing so.

I'm about to publish my definitive book on magic, which has inspired me to zoom out and look at the bigger picture, too. Magic has its issues, and I wondered if there could be some unusual solutions for them we have not yet put into play.

Public Ledgers

I've written before about the piracy issue that plagues magic. It's a serious issue which has led to a considerable decline in the number of magic creators and publishers. Overall, the quality of work has diminished, and many have left the industry.

I do not think the long-term solution is to go after the pirates. People will always pirate things, and they will definitely pirate magic – remember, for many magicians, the way to become a magician is by not giving up until you find a method for a trick you see. It makes sense why someone who has taken this path might end up obsessed with hoarding secrets and happily file sharing and downloading pirate copies in order to collect more.

An owner of a magic publisher once posted online a photo of them watching a magic lecture on their laptop. Pinned along the top of their web browser was a popular pirate movie site. Nothing illustrated more so than this that going after magic pirates is a fool's task.