Posted on October 18, 2004
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Mon dieu.
This post has nothing to do with politics and/or religion per se; just the parallels between them and current magic discussions. There now — you may safely proceed.
I’d like to say I hate political discourse, but that wouldn’t be accurate. I love discussing politics. And religion too, believe it or not. In fact, some of my most cherished previous discussions were with people who had diametrically opposed beliefs from my own. I love intelligent debate.
The problem, though, is finding people with whom to discuss such matters. It’s not that there’s a paucity of people willing to engage in political or religious talk. The problem is finding people willing to actually discuss matters. There’s a distinction there worth noting.
It’s the same with the subject of ethics in the world of magic. Lots of people are more than willing to engage others in talk of ethics, but not much true discussion goes on. I’m convinced this is directly due to the cancer of moral relativism that’s sweeping the world at large. Most of the people I personally know who argue for ethics in magic come from a position of moral and ethical absolutes. Most of the people I encounter arguing against it come from a position that there are no absolutes. Deadlock. At this point, you might as well just order a pizza.
In an earlier post, I mentioned the importance of crediting and respecting intellectual property rights. This follows that up with a contemporaneous example.
A little back-story:
Richard Osterlind is a name that’s been well known and respected in the mentalist and mentalism community for many, many years. Richard is a very successful working professional, which is to say he earns a substantial portion of his income from performing for normal people, mostly in the corporate world. It’s what he does; he does it exceptionally well; and he’s been doing it for a long time. (This is necessary to point out for later.)
Through L&L Publishing Richard created a set of DVDs for magicians called Mind Mysteries and, as a direct result of that release and subsequent phenomenal response, his name is virtually a household name for magicians, too. Also as a direct result of these DVDs more magicians are getting their collective feet wet in the mentalism waters. This, I believe, is a good thing.
People who know Richard hold him in very high esteem and respect for a number of reasons, not the least of which is his well demonstrated level of integrity. He’s honest in his dealings with others, and he’s quick to help fellow performers when asked. (Sometimes he doesn’t even wait to be asked; he volunteers his help.) He cares about and genuinely loves people, and that shows very clearly.
So I personally find it not a little irritating to see his integrity questioned (here and here) — however veiled in “innocent” questions — by those who, obviously, don’t know him. And questioning based in something about which they apparently know even less. Since it’s hard for me to understand why a person would question another who is, by all rights, highly respected in the magic community, that leaves me wondering what is the underlying agenda.
Here’s where things get interesting.
There have been for quite a while now a number of us questioning the ethics surrounding the release by Magic Makers of a number of tricks. (My pal Tim Ellis created a page that compares and illuminates a number of these tricks and it’s worth a look here.)
Central to the discussion is whether or not an ethical performer would or should purchase tricks that have, apparently, been knocked off. That is, copied and offered for sale by someone who did not originate the trick, nor obtained permission to do so from the originator or owner of the trick.
As a result of these arguments (I scarcely can call them discussions, since they usually wind up in the land of epithets and ad hominem) is many people find themselves in the ethically indefensable position of trying to defend their decision to purchase knockoffs. Now, it’s just human nature that when you put someone up against the wall, shine a spotlight on them, and ask them to explain why they would do something unethical, you get defensive, insubstantial and deflective responses.
As I was explaining to my friend Jim Sisti last night, when you come across someone who, deep down inside, has a guilty concience because they know what they are doing is not right, you’ll also see someone who is looking for some way to excuse that behavior. In other words, “how can it be bad for me to support knockoffs when Well Known Magic Star is knocking off someone else’s tricks?” (This is best spoken in sing-song, just like it’s near relative, “Oh, so now the shoe’s on the other foot, isn’t it.”)
That brings us to Richard Osterlind’s new set of DVDs, Easy to Master Mental Miracles.
Even without knowing who is Richard Osterlind, or what’s on the DVDs, you just know with a title like that there is going to be a dust storm kicked up. (Just take every argument made against Michael Ammar’s Easy to Master Card Miracles DVDs and substitute Osterlind for Ammar, and mentalism for card magic. There, that saves us a world of time.)
In the same way Ammar researched the world of card magic for his Easy to Master… series, Richard researched the world of mentalism and arrived at a final list of forty pieces that represent some of the most baffling and wonderful mentalism a performer could do. One is his own creation; the rest are items created by others and considered classic mentalism. And, like Ammar, Osterlind made sure to clear permission to teach any item that required such permission.
Would you expect any less of someone who has otherwise demonstrated a high level of integrity? I didn’t think so.
For anyone who is wondering, let me set the record straight for you: everything on those four DVDs is properly credited and, where permission is needed permission was sought and granted.
So why the questions?
I have no problem with anyone asking crediting questions of anyone. Crediting and permission is important and, if you don’t know something, it’s generally better to ask those who might know the answer than just make things up. (I know, asking for clarification is not nearly as much fun as just making stuff up, but really, it’s for the best.)
What I object to, though, is insinuation for the purpose of excusing the inexcusable. It’s beneath dignity. But then, should you really expect dignity to be embraced by people who have already demonstrated a propensity to ignore ethics?
Back to the question about questions.
Well, one reason might be the underlying agenda that seeks to excuse away one action (making or purchasing knockoffs) by accusing someone like Richard Osterlind of essentially committing the same sin.
“How can Richard teach XXX when it’s not his original item to teach?”
Gee, you think he might have obtained permission?
“I believe he didn’t get permission to include XXX.”
That’s nice, but “I believe…” isn’t the same as “it’s a fact that….”
But why let a trifling detail like facts get in the way of a really good argument, right?
Maybe I’m wrong about the intentions of some people and the manner in which they are asking questions. I can only go by what’s said, how it’s said, and add to that previous statements made by these people to help provide context. There’s a respectful way of asking a question, and then there’s what I’ve seen recently.
I’m waiting on my set of these DVDs and will post a review of them then. In the mean time, Richard has a terrific offer: all four DVDs for just $110. If you don’t already own a set of the Mind Mysteries DVDs, you really should order those, too.
Posted on October 13, 2004
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If you’re lucky, you remember the first time you saw real magic. I mean the kind of magic that twisted your brain in knots to the point you’d cry, were it not for the fact you were smiling so hard. For me, it was like the first precipitous drop on the Zephyr at the Ponchartrain Beach amusement park on New Orleans’s lake front.
That’s what real magic feels like; the bottom of reality just disappears.
Fast-forward to a life after your third reading of Tarbell and Mark Wilson’s Course, several magic conventions, countless books and DVDs, and if you’re lucky, you can still get something that vaguely resembles that feeling. For most, though, it’s as rare as hen’s teeth. That’s the life of a magician in the know.
(As an aside, this phenomemon is why we have so much magic aimed specifically at other magicians, to fool magicians. And many are fooled into thinking that if it fooled them, it’ll fool lay audiences. But lay audiences aren’t fools. Back to Tarbell…)
We, as magicians, often come to a place where we feel almost smug in our vast knowledge of magic methods and workings of tricks. After all, we live in a technologically advanced culture; in a time when information is transmitted from one place to another literally in the blink of an eye. For pity’s sake, we can order a book from Amazon.com and have the thing delivered to us within a day.
So, while many of us were busy staring at our navels, along comes a fellow who gets a major network television special. His presentation — if you will call it that — was nearly roundly criticized by the magic community. Many lay people thought he was possessed by the devil. Many in the magic community thought he was the devil (though for a different reason.). “Look, look” became the punchline to a joke.
If you can get yourself past the technicalities that were necessary to produce a one hour television special and just observe what went on, you are faced with the fact that he managed to elicit wild responses using what many have unfairly called “slum magic” tricks — which is to say, tricks known to beginners in magic.
And yet, he managed to create a sensation that could have led to him starting his own religion.
How can that be?
After getting an earful from the magicians I personally knew, and those with whom I occasionally traded notes via the Internet, I spoke with normal people (those who are not magicians.) To a person, they believed they saw real magic. To a person.
While in Las Vegas a few weeks ago at the MAGIC Live! convention, I was on my way to talk to Michael Close, and ran into David Blaine (well, it was more of a shove, but that’s a post for another day.) To be honest, I’m not sure whether or not the grunts and guttural mumbles are real or just part of the act.
But in the end, what do audiences think of him? At the end of your own routines, what do your audiences think of you? Better yet, what do they believe?
Posted on October 10, 2004
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“You took that out of context!”
Ever hear that? Ever say that to someone else?
If I were to ask you to name something often taken out of context, chances are pretty good you’d mention the Bible, and rightfully so. (As a Christian, know that I am on record as stating as absolute fact that more Christians take the Bible out of context than anyone else. Another post for another day.)
What is context, and what does it have to do with magic?
The dictionary defines the word context like this: “the circumstances in which an event occurs; a setting.”
If you were to watch through a peephole and see someone fire a handgun at another person who falls over apparently dead, you might first run for your own life, and then call 911. That’s a reasonable reaction.
But what if what you were watching was a play and the gun wasn’t real, and neither was the blood? The context has changed and calling 911 would be…inappropriate.
Here’s my favorite example of the importance of context. It’s called, “The Farmer’s Horse,” based on a story by Lui An. This version can be found in Alan Watt’s book, “Tao: The Watercourse Way”:
There is a story of a farmer whose horse ran away. That evening the neighbors gathered to commiserate with him since this was such bad luck. He said, “May be.”
The next day the horse returned, but brought with it six wild horses, and the neighbors came exclaiming at his good fortune. He said, “May be.”
And then, the following day, his son tried to saddle and ride one of the wild horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. Again the neighbors came to offer their sympathy for the misfortune. He said, “May be.”
The day after that, conscription officers came to the village to seize young men for the army, but because of the broken leg the farmer’s son was rejected. When the neighbors came to say how fortunately everything had turned out, he said, “May be.”
The yin-yang view of the world is serenely cyclic. Fortune and misfortune, life and death, whether on small scale or vast, come and go everlastingly without beginning or end, and the whole system is protected from monotony by the fact that, in just the same way, remembering alternates with forgetting. This is the Good of good-and-bad.
Okay, Grasshopper, back to magic.
Much of what we do in the performance of magic typically is not experienced in the real world. (At least, not without Father Merrin around.) So, to provide the why of what we are doing provides the audience a context within which we do these otherwise weird things.
Context allows us to shift gears, go in — shall we say — convenient directions, and naturally explain what would otherwise be unexplainable and thoroughly suspect.
Context is the biggest secret in magic.
Posted on October 6, 2004
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On the surface, secrets seem to be the most important thing in magic.
It’s a brave man who would argue against the importance of secrets, but I’d suggest to you that secrets do not occupy the number one spot on the list of what’s most important in the world of magic.
What is magic?
I’ll bet tricks didn’t come immediately to mind. Neither did secrets. (Unfortunately for a few of you “greasy guy in a dirty tux” might have, but that’s a post for another day.) Maybe, if you’re lucky, the words wonder, or impossible came to mind.
In his e-book, “Making Magic Real,” Richard Osterlind writes:
Contrary to what anyone has written, magic is not the art of deception! It is an art of creation, just like all the rest! It is an art that creates a magic world! It creates a reality where the impossible can happen and we can all experience…wonder!
So really, whatever creates wonder also creates magic.
I have drawers and boxes filled with tricks. I have a wall of books in my magic library with more tricks than ten men could ever learn to do in ten lifetimes. Possessing either the tricks, or the knowledge of how tricks are done is not magic. And it certainly doesn’t make me a magician any more than owning a set of drums makes me a drummer.
Magic does not exist outside of performance.
Unlike the literal answer to the proverbial question, “Does a tree falling in a forest make a sound if there is no one there to hear it,” without an audience to watch, to be drawn in, to participate in the creation of a moment of magic, magic does not exist.
Even so, an audience can watch a magic trick being performed and walk away thinking what they just saw was anything but magic. Done poorly, most magic is not even barely interesting. Done just adequately, it’s not much more than a logical puzzle.
But done in an engaging, inviting, surprising, and believable manner, magic becomes magic to an audience.
Do those things have anything to do with secrets? No, they don’t. Two performers can do the same trick, exactly alike down to the words and gestures, and one will create magic and one will demonstrate a puzzle. The difference is in the successful performer’s ability to emotionally touch an audience. To literally reach out make an audience member feel something wondrous.
How can a performer do that?
Well, allow me to ask you this: if you saw someone — a complete stranger — from across the room, what could you do to make them feel happy to see you? I’ll give you a hint: it has nothing to do with secrets and everything to do with people.
Posted on October 4, 2004
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Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away (called “My Youth”), my best friend’s dad bought a new toy and he wanted to show it to me. It was called a Betamax, and it was magic incarnate.
Here was a machine, big and heavy, that took in a plastic cartridge and allowed you to record things from television stations and play them back later. Over and over again, if you wished to. If that wasn’t magic I didn’t know what magic was. (And by that time, I was deeply into magic.)
Not long after that, JVC introduced their version of the video cassette recorder. The format was called VHS (for Video Home System.) My dad chose this format.
After the novelty of being able to record and play back television programs wore off, we were introduced to pre-recorded movies we could buy and play over and over again. The price was astounding: nearly $100!
I remember telling my dad that it would be a great idea if someone would buy these movies, and then rent them to others so they didn’t have to buy them. Well, a couple of years later someone did.
During the eighties, my father-in-law lived in Houston, TX. One or two weekends a month we’d pack up the family and drive the seven hours from Louisiana to Houston to visit. My father-in-law was an engineering type, and we spend countless hours discussing engineering solutions to various problems.
One particular discussion had to do with tillers (the gas-powered thing you use to create a flower bed for your wife, as opposed to the manually operated thing called a shovel, which causes you to put off creating the flower bed.)
I’d just purchased a new gas-powered weed trimmer (commonly called a “Weed Eater”) that could be separated into two sections. I suggested that it would be a great idea to design a tiller attachment that snapped onto the shaft of the trimmer. Well, it was a great idea and someone did just that years later.
In those two cases and for those ideas, I will never get any credit outside of my family members who were witness to the birth of those ideas. The guy who registered those ideas first gets the glory.
In magic, sometimes the same thing happens. The guy who created a trick isn’t the guy who gets the credit. But, mostly, that’s the way it works.
So. What happens when a guy creates a trick, publishes it, gets widespread credit for it, and then someone else comes along and copies it putting his own name to it?
Would you consider that to be ethically and morally sound?
I don’t. Yet, we see that happening more and more these days in this bizarre little world of ours called magic.
In The Magic Cafe not so long ago, a discussion broke out regarding a new DVD by Simon Lovell. Evidently, it’s based on a book called “Million Dollar Card Secrets” by Frank Garcia. (Randy Wakeman wrote a very nice post about Frank and you can read it here.) Frank left this world about ten years ago and left his estate to his remaining family members. They own the rights to that, and Frank’s other books.
So far as anyone I know has been able to determine, the permission to take Frank’s book and turn it into a DVD has not been obtained. I consider this a problem, and a very troublesome one.
The DVD is being marketed by a company called Magic Makers, which is ostensibly owned by a man named Rob Stiff. Googling his name and the name of his company will bring up a number of hits, some of them painting Magic Makers in a less-than-rosy light.
This DVD does not help.
Is the material worthy of being turned into a DVD? Absolutely. Is Simon the guy to do it? I see no reason why not. I like Simon, and he’s certainly a talented performer. But should permission first be sought and be granted by Frank’s estate before that’s done? I think so. But I’m just one opinion.
The bigger question, though, is do you agree?
I sent Simon a personal email asking about these issues. His response was copied and posted by him to a thread on The Magic Cafe dealing with this issue. (Unfortunately, that thread was removed from view.) What troubled me then, and continues to trouble me now, is the fact that no assurances were made that permission was, in fact, sought and granted.
For some people, evidently, this is a trifling issue. This seems to follow a trend I’ve observed in many aspects covering intellectual property. There are many, many people who put ahead of things like permission and rights, their personal desire to obtain a particular work. (Downloading unauthorized MP3s of a music artist is a universally recognized example of this.) “But I want it” seems to be the universal excuse, as though that should suffice.
Copyright law isn’t as hard to understand as some would make it out to be. But this particular issue has less to do with copyright law as it does ethics and morals and respect for the work of a performer many claim to love and respect.
This has to do with “doing the right thing”.
In this case, ask yourself if what was done was the right thing. Then ask yourself if such things matter to you.
This is an issue I passionately pursue, so you can expect this post is just the tip of the iceberg.
Posted on October 2, 2004
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Since this blog is just getting started, and I just spent some time answering a question from someone just getting into this bizarre little world of magic, I’ll combine the two into this post.
Getting started in magic — whether close-up, stage, or anything in between — is best begun in the same manner as any other endeavor: with the fundamentals. A good grounding in the fundamental principles that make up magic is like learning the alphabet in school; it’s what words are made of. There aren’t many cogent sentences that can be made up without the fundamentals. The same can be said of magic tricks.
Conversely, there’s nothing precluding anyone from learning words before letters. The same can be said for magic: there’s no law that stops someone from learning any trick they can get their hands on. But it’s a lot like our dearly departed beautiful and very active Blue Front Amazon parrot named Sam. To others, it sounded like Sam could speak, but he was only mimicking what he heard and learned. There was no substance to his “parroting”.
Someone just getting a start in the world of magic can easily find himself in the same situation as Sam. You can get hold of the latest, greatest magic trick setting Internet web sites on fire, learn it and perform it, without having any clue where in the fabric of magic it belongs. Essentially, there’s no context. And to someone serious about learning the craft of magic, that’s a problem.
The solution is to become grounded in the fundamentals of magic, upon which most all magic is based. Learn the fundamentals and you have an opportunity to apply what you know to any trick you get your hands on.
This all came up recently when someone asked about where to obtain details of a Marlo trick (actually, it was a move, but he was told it was a trick). The bottom line was, he visited one of the popular “extreme street magic” retailer web sites and saw a $50 DVD that included the same sort of magic David Blaine performed on one of his television specials. He didn’t want to spend the $50 for the DVD (no argument from me), but the reason was he only wanted to know how to do that trick.
A couple of things became obvious very quickly. The first was that this fellow was brand new to the world of magic and his very first stop, evidently, was the one of the “extreme street magic” web retailers.
I don’t think it’s a terrible thing that television shows like Blaine’s specials, or T.H.E.M. are bringing new people into the wonderful world of magic. The issue is they don’t have any frame of reference for the ocean into which they just dipped their big toe, and retailers like the aforementioned web site are not educating them. That’s helpful if your goal is selling as many $50 DVDs as you can, which obviates the likelihood you’d mention that $6 booklets contain the precious secrets you rename and package in video.
My suggestion was for him to obtain a copy of Henry Hay’s “Amateur Magicians Handbook.” I don’t believe there’s a better, more accessible entry into the world of magic and mentalism. It, and Mark Wilson’s “Course in Magic” represent an incredible amount of fundamental information on magic, magic principles, and plain great tricks. From there, I’d suggest the Tarbell Course in Magic, a compendium of eight volumes covering what makes magic great.
There’s very little in the world of magic that can’t find its roots in what’s found in the pages of those ten books.
Karl Fulves, through Dover Publications, has released a series of books titled, “Self-Working…” and cover cards, coins, mental magic, rope, and other aspects of magic. At around $6 a volume, they represent a fantastic bargain.
There is an important place for DVDs in the world of magic learning. That place is as an adjunct to, and dependant upon the written word.
I had the pleasure of chatting with Michael Close at the MAGIC Live! convention in Las Vegas at the end of August 2004 and this subject came up. Close makes the point that reading magic books forces the mind to think in three dimensions, and I wholeheartedly agree with him that reading is an acquired skill. (He even suggests to people that it is helpful to pick up a book on origami to learn the skills required to translate into physical movements the magic tricks described in text.)
Without a grounding in the fundamentals of magic — both tricks and theory — DVDs, largely, fail to convey the context of the set of tricks they teach. That’s such a shame. And it’s a terribly hard concept to convey to someone new in the world of magic whose initial entry point is a web site retailing “extreme street magic” sold on $50 DVDs containing up-close shots of busty chicks showing more leg than Patty Anne Brown on FOXNews.
How do magic necessities like Vernon texts compete with that?
Posted on October 1, 2004
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My first blog would have been in 1993, on :::cough::: AOL :::cough::: — only it wasn’t called a blog, it was called an online journal. The idea was the same, though. It was the technology that enabled posting that has changed so dramatically.
Over the years I’ve created, fed, and subsequently killed a number of these projects. (Maybe I should call them goldfish instead of projects.) Like any periodical, interest ebbed and flowed. With enough ebbing, there’s not enough interest left to continue.
So, that brings us to today and this blog, Escamoteurettes. What’s this blog about?
Whit Hadyn provided a facinating bit of information on the Genii Magazine BBS:
“In the middle ages, conjurers in France were called “escamoteurs” and their art “escamotage.” Both of these words come from the word “escamot”–a cork ball. The Cups and Balls was such a part of the jongleur’s art that the performer was named for the prop.”
(The entire post may be found here.)
The latter part of the name might indicate to you the possibility that I may, on occasion, shout incoherent, strange and/or unacceptable words or phrases, or repeat the words of other people (echolalia). I will avoid the obscenities clause (coprolalia). After all, my name is not Penn Jillette.
This, then, is my latest petri dish. This, specifically, is post number one.
Here we go again.
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