Many years ago, I read something Lloyd Barnes shared online: you either die a magician or live long enough to see yourself become a mentalist.
I don't know where the phrase originated in its magical incarnation. It is, of course, a play on Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight line: You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
There is this trope in magic in which people get into magic, perform magic tricks, and then slowly but surely transition into mentalists.
Why does this happen? Is it a good thing? And are there lessons to be learned from mentalism that magicians can build into the ways they perform their tricks?
Magic Vs. Mentalism
Honestly, I sometimes struggle to put into words the differences between magic and mentalism. It certainly seems easier to define mentalism. In fact, if there were no such word as a mentalist, we'd likely allow every mentalism effect to get categorized as a magic trick.
Even the word mentalism sounds weird to me. I once sat down to write an essay for One Ahead readers all about how mentalists should be calling themselves mind readers instead of mentalists. I thought that surely more people know what mind reading is than they know about mentalism.
In my own experience, I've had a ton of people in television production crews, and even commissioning rooms ask what on earth mentalism is. They wouldn't ask the same question if I had simply called it mind reading.
