Posted on December 25, 2004
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In 1977 — long before some of you were even born, I’m sad and/or frightened to say — NASA launched from a pad at Kennedy Space Center Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. The initial primary mission of the Voyager program was the exploration of Jupiter and Saturn. (I’m sure no one at mission control ever uttered the words, “We’re going to probe Uranus next.”) When the longer term capabilities of the spacecraft were examined, the program morphed into a interstellar journey just this side of Captain Kirkville.
Being a geek-in-training at the time, I was absolutely, completely fascinated by these projects. (There may even be some NASA employees who recall the regular letters I sent, which, remarkably, were each answered kindly.)
In what some deemed technological hubris and typical human egocentricity, to each spacecraft was attached a gold-coated copper phonograph record meant to convey a series of messages to any alien race that receives it. This was assuming, of course, they were advanced enough to break down the second most common element in the universe: hydrogen. (The most common element in the universe, apparently, being stupidity.)
NASA also, wisely, attached a cartridge, stylus, and a how-to diagram instructing how to play the album. Thus demonstrating, again, high hopes that the recipients would have already cleared the required level of scientific intelligence commonly known as the “How To Program a VCR” hurdle which so clearly delineates intelligent life from lower, insignificant lifeforms known as “normal people.”
As an aside, for those of us who have read L. Ron Hubbard’s book, “Battlefield Earth” or the story from the first Star Trek motion picture, you have to accept the possibility that this might not turn out all that well for the future generations who may be visited by beings less affable, if more attactive than Spielberg’s E.T. But, since Carl Sagan suggests it may be ten billion years before either Voyager spacecraft even enters a planetary system — and assuming the gold album isn’t first melted to create a grill for some gangsta alien — I’ll go out on a limb and state for the record:
Any unfriendly aliens determined to make earthlings their slaves will first have to fight mankind’s other three masters — roaches, McDonald’s Big Macs, and Microsoft.
On the record is found 118 images of earth and its civilizations and almost an hour and a half of music (for some bizarre reason no Led Zeppelin was included), and greetings in nearly sixty human languages and one whale language.
But how do a room full of adult human beings select ninety minutes of music meant to represent humanity when one has to sift through hundreds of years and a multitude of cultures from which to choose? Why, via fisticuffs of course. (Kidding.) Carl Sagan had the final red pen, but he surrounded himself with people more than capable of making valuable suggestions. And the end result is a lovely representation of planet earth’s music as of 1977.
But none of the discussions over which piece of music or image to use could eclipse the “discussions” ensuing over the plaques attached to Voyager’s previous stellar brethren, Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11. To the antenna structure of each of those probes, fired in the general direction of the outer space of 1972 and 1973, was affixed a gold-covered plaque — an interstallar greeting card of sorts — meant to convey our humanness and location in the universe. More hubris in action.
But, as Sagan wrote of the plaque, the reaction to the contents were “both amusing and amazing” — surely one of my favorite phrases.
Among the things depicted on our gold greeting card were drawings of a man and a woman — nekkid as jaybirds. This presented a national crisis in the making since newspapers had to decide how to depict such nudity in print. And then there were the angry letters and phone calls asking why taxpayer money was being spent to send “smut” into space.
There were letters of protest from feminists who were outraged that the woman seemed to be depicted as subservient to the man — as if there was anything wrong with that. Sure she was barefoot, but she wasn’t placed in the kitchen, so I’m not sure I can see what the problem was.
There were the men who couldn’t be terribly happy with the way he was depicted. I’ll leave it at that.
There were those who complained that the depictions of the man and woman were created by only three people, rather than a planetary council which included all races and, therefore, did not actually represent all of mankind. Some even demanded that any future depiction sent into space be by such council so as to not leave anyone feeling left out.
So. Given the relative level of importance of this project, which can legitimately be measured by cosmic proportions, and the fact that so many uninvolved people can nitpick the details, can it come as any suprise that the details that make up any individual performance of magic or mentalism — surely a smaller world than that of the space program — might succumb to the same human tendencies?
While observing our own navel, and those of others, may be a fascinating past time — and even necessary from time to time — what it is we are looking for or hoping to accomplish is something of importance. When we pick apart our performance, or that of another, the intent makes a difference.
Is there much point in complaining that David Blaine used tricks found in a beginner’s magic set? Or that David Copperfield is performing the same illusions from years and years ago? (I could make a compelling argument for for asking why is he no longer featuring Joanie Spina, but I’ll have to save that for a later date.) I’d say, no there isn’t. But studying the effect of either performer on the audience is, I think, time well spent.
But let’s keep our perspective in check. Let’s remember where on the vast piece of cosmic fabric we sit. It might be time better spent to first nitpick our own routines and performances and compare them to the results we hope to obtain when we perform for others. Surely a good starting point may be to observe our relative importance in the world of magic and mentalism before trudging off in some direction of critiquing the performance of another.
One of my areas of deep interest (both personal and fiduciary) is music production. One of our Grand Zen Masters is George Massenburg who, in putting into perspective the relative importance of our work in the grand scheme of things, stated:
“Finally, get some perspective. Pro Audio is but one tiny cell of a fungus on a short hair of a flea on the pink part of a rather large elephant’s ass meandering aimlessly through a huge foetid marsh somewhere on the surface of a tiny, insignificant planet lost in an infinite universe. Don’t take yourself too seriously.”
Indeed.
Posted on December 23, 2004
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Since it is December 23rd, it is incumbent upon me to wish each and every one of you a joyous Festivus holiday.
Posted on December 23, 2004
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A couple of years ago, Steve Martin, working with the twisted folks at CountingDown.com, created this short web film called Morto the Magician. Imagine, if you will, a stage magician for whom everything goes wrong. (This not for the squeamish.)
Since this has been “out there” for a couple of years, you’ve probably already seen it. But maybe, like me, it’s been long enough that you need a reminder: Morto the Magician.
(It’s only my irrational fear of karmic retribution that prevents me from drawing any parallels between this film and one of the acts I recently saw perform. )
One of the consistent and consistently troubling aspects of mystery entertainment is that so many performers don’t take the considerable time and effort required to create an act that is their own. There’s no denying that it sometimes takes years putting together a really good act, and more years on top of that to fine tune it. I realize it’s far easier to simply channel the personality of a performer who is already enjoying a relatively high level of attention and success — Blaine Clones come immediately to mind — but that does no good to anyone, really.
It’s not good for the original performer. He’s traded his blood, sweat and tears to craft an act that resonates in some meaningful way with his audiences. It’s not fair for someone else to pull the same stunt McDonald’s has often been accused of: staking out the competition’s territory after they’ve spent their time and money identifying a good location, then moving in next door. It looks awfully unprofessional, doesn’t it?
It’s not good for audiences, either. Here we hold in the palm of our hands the knowledge and the power to turn upside down the solid beliefs of our audience members, and some, instead, choose to take that opportunity and spurn it away by cloning an existing act. Audiences necessarily expect a special experience from practitioners of something as exquisitely special like magic and mentalism. I think it’s criminal to treat audiences so disrespectfully by giving them less than they are due.
It’s not good for the art of magic and mentalism for many of the same reasons it’s not good for audiences (which makes abundant sense as there would be no performing art of magic and mentalism were it not for audiences.) No other performing art is like mystery entertainment. No other performing art. Even outstanding part-time professionals know not to treat it like a part-time lover.
Also, it’s ultimately not good for the performer. For some silly reason, Deddy Corbuzier comes to mind yet again. (He’s our poster child for how not to behave.) In a recent thread on The Magic Cafe, Corbuzier claims he will turn in his Max Maven Clone act. (Maybe he’s trading it in for a kabuki theater style. Sorry, Jeff, I know that’s not funny. Well, not very funny, anyway.) But for some bizarre reason, he wants to make that change concurrent with getting married. It frightens me to consider the subconcious thought processes that put those two monumental events in accord with one another.
When he does change, though, he’s going to be nearly at square one building an act. Sure, he can continue to do essentially the same tricks and trade on his name, but audience expectations will be for one act that — we hope — will no longer exist. It’s like playing some cosmic game of Monopoly and he’s dealing himself the big “Go to Jail” card. “Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Go. To. Jail. Intellectual property misappropriating bastard.” (It may not actually say that; I just made that up.) He gets to start over and all the time and effort he spent building a name using someone else’s act — no doubt considerable on all accounts — evaporates into thin air.
What if he’d spent all that time building his own act instead of cloning Max’s act? Where would he be right now?
Here’s a better question (i.e. one not so rhetorical): What are you spending your time doing? Are you working at being like someone, or are you creating someone? There’s lots to ne said for dressing up your imaginary friend and sending him out to entertain the masses, you know.
Bob Cassidy is not Dr. Bob, although they may look alike. Dr. Crow may be related to both of them, but he sure doesn’t act like it. Dr. Bob can perform in a manner (and in venues) Bob Cassidy may not wish to. Dr. Crow, on the other hand…well, I’m not sure what to say about him. Never let it be said that split personalities have no place in this world.
Let’s play a game of “what if.”
What if you could create any character you wanted, and endow him — maybe I shouldn’t use the word “endow”, so let’s instead say imbue him –with whatever powers, history and abilities you wished. Some people may call that a convenient excuse for abberant behavior, but I suggest to you a better word might be context. Within context nearly any behavior is appropriate. (Why do you think pseudo-schizophrenics can have so much fun?)
Not that you actually have to follow through, but you may find it an interesting exercise to take out a blank piece of paper and a pen and design someone you are not now. Study him. Let him do things you’d never dream of doing. Wonder how he might dress if given the opportunity to pick out his own socks. (Not that he’d necessarily wear socks, of course.)
Let him choose tricks from the vast, almost endless canvass of magic trickdom. Let him choose those tricks that fit him. But most importantly, wonder how he might routine them in ways maybe you wouldn’t. (I mean in ways you wouldn’t in a million years routine them. After all, you have a reputation to uphold; he doesn’t.)
Once you’ve done that, close your eyes and picture what it might be like to watch him perform before an audience.
You might come to like someone like that.
Posted on December 15, 2004
Filed Under General | 3 Comments
This might come as a shock to some, but I am a quite the fan of language.
I believe the seeds for this were planted at a very early age. My two earliest, clearest memories are of watching the black and white television version of “Superman“ with my dad, and of my mom reading to me. I recall vividly that, when I was old enough to attend school, each and every morning, while waiting for the school bus (the longer variety, wise guy), she’d read to me. I’ve always had a natural love of books and reading. (Some magazines, too, but mostly for the articles.)
If you think about it for a moment, language really is magic. Words are simply shortcuts to memories of our personal experience.
If I say to you the phrase, “sweet, juicy, delicious red apple” it wouldn’t mean a whole lot until you allowed your brain to go back and pull out your memory of biting into a sweet, delicious red apple and having the juice run down your chin. When your brain does that, you substitute the words I used for the experience had. You didn’t really bite into an apple, but your brain experienced the sensation and substituted the memory for the words I used, so that you could understand what I meant. (Some people might call that hypnosis. Other people might suggest that hypnosis doesn’t exist.)
All of that happens in a split second. The words themselves don’t mean anything until you can match them up with your personal experience, which the brain is only happy to do for you without sending to it an engraved invitation.
Words are shortcuts to memories of personal experience.
Perhaps you’d not given that much thought until just now. It’s a profound concept. It’s also a very powerful tool in your performing toolkit.
In NLP-speak, the map (the words, invoking the memory) is not the territory (the apple.) It’s a representative of the territory. If you were looking at a map of New York City, you wouldn’t actually be looking at New York City, would you?
How we use language determines the level to which we can personally affect other people. One would think that, as mystery performers, we’d want to maximise our affect on our audiences. And I’m not denying that’s often the goal, either consciously or subconsciously; I hope that it is. But, in my experience in observing the performances of others in our trade and craft, I question whether enough people give it sufficient attention and, in the process, short-shrift our audiences.
Out of curiosity, allow me please to ask the question: Why use an impotent word, when it takes no more effort to utter another word which explodes meaning in the minds of our audience?
Every once in a while the subject of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) erupts on the discussion boards. Sometimes on more than one board at the same time. And each time the resulting threads of conversation eventually look like a book burning in progress. (Spirited discussion of any religion will do that, you know.)
There are the proponents, the opponents, the agnostics, and everything in between. I find it ironic that a field of study, the demonstrable results of which indicate a number of methods by which one person may more effectively communicate with another person, should create such conflicting reports of efficacy. It’s like watching two dozen blind men describe an elephant, with many of them grabbing at the wrong parts.
So, with that in mind, if you will, allow me to tell my tail.
The history of NLP — the real history — is available to anyone who can spell “Google” so I won’t go into the specifics or comment much on the folklore. Suffice it to say that as the 1970s were getting started, John Grinder, a professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz and student of linguistics and transformational grammar, met up with Richard Bandler, student of mathematics, psychology and computer programming. Their friendship formed the basis of future study, joined soon enough by others, including Leslie Cameron Bandler, Judith DeLozier, Robert Dilts, Stephen Gilligan, David Gordon, and Frank Pucelik. (And, if you believe what you’ll eventually read if you study NLP long enough, another three or four million co-founders — or so they believe they are.)
Bandler and Grinder found themselves living on a lovely wooded piece of property in the mountains behind Santa Cruz, near a man named Gregory Bateson. In 1955, Bateson and his colleagues attempted to create an “appropriate theoretical base” to describe human interaction. In other words, a way to break down human communication into identifiable components. It seemed simple in theory, but difficult to bring about.
Bateson challenged Bandler and Grinder. The result was found in the books, The Structure of Magic and The Structure of Magic II. (In fact, Bateson wrote the introduction to the book which formed the opening volley of NLP: The Structure of Magic. In it, he complimented Bandler and Grinder for succeeding in ways Bateson and his colleagues had not.)
There are some people who have the astounding ability to clearly communicate with others; to “connect” with people; to influence and persuade them; to get them to change. (And, while this group of people includes them, I am not specifically referring to televangelists.) Bandler and Grinder focused on a select group of therapists who inarguably achieved outstanding results with patients, most notably Dr. Milton H. Erickson, Dr. Virginia Satir and Dr. Fritz Perls.
By studying not only what they did, but how they did it, Bandler and Grinder described in exquisite detail how Erickson, Satir and Perls did their magic. The word used in NLP is modeling — an apt term if there ever was one. Think of it this way: if, somehow, you did what Erickson did, in the same manner in which he did it — if you created a model and acted that model out — you would achieve the same results he achieved. To the degree you managed to accurately model Erickson, you could more consistently achieve those results.
It’s a simple concept, but many people have a problem accepting it. “It can’t be that easy.” But, allow me to ask this question: what if it really is that easy?
Bandler and Grinder began modeling human excellence by studying therapists because the results were immediately observable. For instance, when a patient came to see Erickson, the change in that patient was often immediate, noticeable, and — if I may use the word — magical. They soon moved on to modeling other forms of excellence: sales people, managers, consultants, negotiators, educators, coaches, and performers (both atheletic and entertainers).
There was something awfully interesting in what they found through their study: they found that, when stripped of stylistic differences — that is, those personal fingerprints that make a person’s style what it is and different from others — and from the context in which they communicated, these people were doing essentially the same thing. They were following the same basic recipe for communicating with others; the same patterns of communication. And, as a result, they achieved a level of success that excelled.
One of the most important aspects was that each of these outstanding people had at their fingertips the ability to change their approach if what they were doing was not getting the results they wanted to achieve.
Kindly read that last paragraph again, because that’s a key component to your success as a performer.
If what you are doing isn’t getting you the results you want, do something else. Albert Einstein geniously observed,
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”
Yet many people are in the habit of doing just that. (Read the story of researchers and their adult-sized mazes.)
As you structure your act, you can only imagine the response from your audience to what it is you say and do. That’s all you can do. It is only by actually performing your act before an audience and, most importantly, noticing the results as your audience responds (or doesn’t respond) that you can mold an act to achieve the results you wish. Unless you are performing a silent act — curiously avoided by those who would benefit most from the choice, I might add — I’d suggest that the choices you make as your structure what you will say is far more important than what it is you actually do.
As with other examples, this aspect applies in spades to the performance of mentalism.
There are untold numbers of anecdotes told by professional performers who found that just changing one, single word made an enormous difference in the response of the audience to a performance piece. One word. That’s magic.
Model successful entertainers. Study what makes them successful. This is the real secret to the value of DVDs. It’s not the performances; it’s the thinking behind the tricks. It’s what goes behind making certain choices about how to perform a certain piece that achieves a greater level of audience response than another choice. Strip away the stylistic fingerprints and the context within which the trick is done, and find the common traits outstanding performers share. It’s right out there in the open.
Want another secret? Fielding West’s L&L Publishing DVD “The Fielding West Comedy Magic Show.” While there are some clever and very funny routines, it would not do you anywhere near as much good to copy those routines as it would be for you to study and model what makes West’s magic go over so well with audiences.
Here’s another secret. Take three steps back and give some serious, considerable thought to those people you may already be modeling. Often this may be completely accidental in that we tend to take on the qualities of those people with whom we surround ourselves. And sometimes some of those qualities aren’t quality material.
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