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As far as I can tell, Magic is my oldest hobby and I’ve counted myself as a “magician” on at least some level for over 30 years.

From my early teens until I left Uni I was performing reasonably regularly, first as a birthday party magician and later as a closeup/table hopper.  Once I left uni, I stopped performing for two reasons.

Firstly, I bought a copy of “Art of Astonishment” by Paul Harris, and realised I was approaching magic the wrong way.  Or if not the “wrong” way, not the way I wanted to approach it.   Very few of my effects were as strong as I thought they were (with the exception of my Card Warp handling and a really satisfying watch stopping routine I had), and only one or two of them unleashed anything approaching “astonishment” on my audiences.

I started to throw out material and work on new bits, and I took a break from performing to do so – “for the good of my performance” I kept telling myself.

Then I went and got a full time job that paid well enough that I didn’t need to top it up with money from performing.  The incentives to work on the new material evaporated, and working on finger skills took a back seat to reading about magic theory and history.

Over the next decade or so, my interest in performing magic dwindled further and my academic interest in it grew.  Eventually other academic interests grew along side it and took over the lion share of my thinking time – but I’ve always kept it bubbling away on a back burner.

In the last few months, a few things have coincided to start me thinking about magic again.

Penn & Teller – Fool Us (and Penns Sunday School)
I’ve always had a lot of time for Penn & Teller.  I like their style, I find Penn entertaining and engaging (apart from occasionally when he goes off on a political rant, which coming from a completely different political environment I can’t really relate to) and Teller is a formidable talent.  What Teller doesn’t know about magic isn’t worth knowing.

I started listening to the Penns Sunday School podcast about a year ago, and I’ve been enjoying it more than his previous podcasts – mostly because he spends more time talking about magic, juggling, performing in general, his background, people he’s met and experiences he’s had in the entertainment industry etc.

I’ve got enough to say about Fool Us for a post on it’s own – but I’ll just say I think it’s one of the best things that’s happened to TV magic in years.

Season 2 was only aired in the USA, but it’s worth seeking out if you can find it down the back of the internet sofa.

The Jerx
Wow.  I’m so glad this blog came back.  “Andy Lastname” sees magic in a way I can relate to, and his level of sarcasm and disdain for the majority of magicians really fits well along side mine.  I look forward to every post, and he’s really got my enthusiasm for “magical thinking” fired up again, along with really questioning why magicians do things the way we do, even when it doesn’t make sense.

Paul Daniels Magic Show
A very kind chap in Australia posted me a USB stick containing 67 episodes of The Paul Daniels Magic Show.  That’s around 50 hours of footage for me to watch.  I started watching it mainly for the speciality guest acts (jugglers, acrobats, other magicians) but watching the magic content has proved really interesting as well.

Some of the humour wouldn’t fly these days, some of his handling of the audience members is a little patronising to todays eyes, but there’s an awful lot of gold in there too.  I’ll write more about Paul Daniels another time.

The Magicians Podcast
This is the most recent thing I’ve latched on to. http://magicianspodcast.podbean.com – the “gateway drug” for me, was stumbling across a reference to the interview with Paul Daniels. Since then I’ve cherrypicked the names I was most familiar with, and have now decided to go back through and listen to the lot.

It’s far more about magicians than it is about magic, but there’s a lot of really interesting information in there about how professional performing magicians think. Being a Magic Circle podcast, it’s very UK focused – but includes some cracking interviews from some really talented people.

My Niece and Nephew
They’ve both expressed an interest in magic. I’ve been holding off on showing them everything (and drowning any enthusiasm they’ve got) but they’ve both learned a couple of tricks recently.

It’s fun showing them the odd trick.

Where am I at now?
A couple of weeks back, I picked up a pack of cards to give my hands something to do while I waited for computers to do computer things.  Various moves started coming back to me, but in the decade and a half or so since I last seriously mucked about with cards I’ve clearly forgotten almost as much as I’ve ever known.

I’ve dredged up some old routines, and have started relearning a few bits and bobs. Nothing that’s remotely “performance ready” yet, but I’ve managed to reverse engineer my handling for Twisting The Aces (Dia Vernon)

This was a routine that 20 years ago I could do with my eyes shut.  This week, I couldn’t even remember how many cards it needed.  All I could remember was that there was an Elmsley Count in there somewhere.

My handling is now back in my short term memory (although I need to rediscover the context and patter I used to put it in, as it’s not an effect which makes logical sense on its own) and hopefully I can ingrain it further by the time I work out how I used to present it.

I must say, I’m really enjoying all this. It’s been a long time since I felt the sense of achievement from learning a new routine.


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