There’s a common path trodden by many in the world of mystery entertainment. I’ve been down that path, watched others walk it, and pointed still others down it from time to time. It’s tried, true, and — for many — virtually unavoidable mostly because they don’t know there’s any other way. (Not that there’s anything terribly wrong with what I’m about to describe. It’s staying on the path that causes the problems.)

You buy a trick or two and hurry along through your first performance for someone who isn’t sleeping, dead, or your cat. And good, bad or indifferent that performance (really the response to that performance) whets your appetite in much the same way I’m told the first drag on the glass pipe affects people.

So you buy more tricks.

You perform more tricks.

You desire more, so you acquire more.

Eventually, though, a good magic dealer will grab you by the bits and pieces of metal you might have jutting from your nostrils, eyebrows, ears or…well, let’s not go there…and suggests you buy books. As Paul Diamond says, “books are your best investment.” (Actually, Paul growls it, but if you know Paul, you already knew that. In which case, you’re probably hearing in your head Paul shouting, “Hey you! Come here!”)

If you’re lucky, you have a good magic dealer. He’ll suggest Tarbell and Giobbi and Stars of Magic. If he’s a really good magic dealer, he’ll put a gun to your now-dog-eared deck of Bicycle cards and tell you that you’ll either read the Tarbells or he will kill your deck. If he’s a truly disturbed magic dealer, he’ll actually pull the trigger.

But enough about the Jeffs of the world.

If you read enough books on the performance of magic and mentalism, you’ll run across the suggestion that you should be ever mindful of the mental and emotional state of your audience as you perform. You realize, maybe slowly but surely, that there’s more to this stuff than not dropping the cards. Knowing fifty ways from Sunday how to force a card may be clever, but knowing how to successfully covertly do it every single time is more important. You learn that, as a performer, you are (or should be) in control of guiding your audience where you wish them to go.

At this fork in the mystical road to enlightenment, magic texts tend to take one of two paths. And for you, it’s a lot like Neo having to chose the red pill or the blue pill not fully knowing the consequences of your choice ahead of time. (Lots of us call this situation “real life.”) Except in this case if you swallow the wrong pill, you can always hack it up and try the other one and no one named “Smith” is chasing you. Unless the glass pipe from the second paragraph above isn’t just metaphor for you. In which case, who is that guy standing behind you? Ha, ha, just kidding. Not really.

One path suggests that, as Magician, you are in a position of power. Never abuse that power. Love, coddle your audience. Embrace them, protect them.

Take this creepy path and you’ll end up hugging your audience to sleep.

What’s worse is you’ll rob yourself of the fire and power and surprise and magic this stuff is capable of creating for audiences. It’s cutting vital organs from a living, breathing thing your audience desires to witness. The Point, for pity’s sake. (Unless you happen to be a large bosomed chick, in which case it’s your special magic most audiences wish to see. Hey, I’m just the reporter — don’t shoot the messenger.)

This emasculated path is not something you’ll find suggested by Juan Tamariz. Or Darwin Ortiz. Or Jamy Swiss. Or Michael Ammar. (Truth be known, the entire point of this post was simply a logical context in which to juxtapose Swiss and Ammar on a topic in which they are in accord. That’s magic, my friend.)

Months ago when I told my friend Jim Sisti that I’d ordered the book/DVD package from Jamy Swiss, he told me about a certain point Jamy made in his “Live in London” DVD about the effect he wished to have on his audience. I quoted it in an earlier Escamoteurettes post, but here it is again:

I want to destroy my audience! I want to induce inoperable brain tumors! I want them to remember me, not the magic, but me! And not for today, or tomorrow, or next week, but for the rest of their damn lives and tell their grandchildren about me!

Let’s file that under the category of “tough love.” Works for me.

In his excellent, must-have book, “The Magic of Michael Ammar” Michael reprints an essay titled “Have No Mercy.” In one part, he states:

If it is true we only get what we give, then we should HAVE NO MERCY when it comes to dishing out wonder and amazement. Grab the helm and wage all-out war on the spectator’s senses.

Know thy enemy. Systematically analyze their primary lines of defense: sight, sound, touch, taste and smell, and brutally attack the weaknesses of each. (That’s called ‘Know How.’) Thoroughly research their secondary lines of defense, the ‘safety nets’ against deception: their experience, their logic, their assumptions, their common sense, and cunningly twist them against themselves. (That’s called ‘KNOW WHY.’)

That’s not even a hop, skip and a jump away from Brain Tumorville, wouldn’t you say?

There are two essays in that book I value more than the balance of the book collectively and that essay one of them. (The other is on how to make more money.)

So, how far is “too far”?

Ferris suggests you can never go too far. But I’m not so sure about that. Afterall, he wasn’t a magician.

Eugene Poinc, bless his dearly departed soul, suggests in the introduction to his book, “The Practitioner“ which is aimed at the bizarre magick performer (as opposed to the plain bizarre magic performer):

The implements used by the Practitioner (and they are never gaudy magic shop props) are carried in either an aged grey carpetbag, or a very old, weathered black leather medical bag. An attache case is anathema, a commercial close-up case even worse.

The Practitioner never uses a silly little birthday cake candle, only a fairly massive grey or brown beeswax candle in appropriate holder. A plaster or plastic human skull or devil’s head is absurd. A real skull, human or animal, or decaying fragment of a coffin lid is used. The candle is ignited preferably with small wax matches (Lucifers) or a very simple but handsome silver cigarette lighter — never book matches.

If something must be written, it is with a grey or silver fountain pen, never ballpoint; if with a pencil, it should look very old (sans yellow paint) and have no eraser set in a metal ferrule. Paper employed is always very high quality to look and touch, or parchment if to be of antiquity.

Now, just reading that puts me in a good frame of mind. (Not that I’m going to go Googling for Skulls-R-Us inventory. Again, I mean.)

I will end this — as I often do — by asking a question or two: are you going far enough, showing no mercy, and giving your audience the experience they deserve even if they don’t know exactly what that experience should look like? You should know; it’s your job to know. Or are you surgically removing the thing that can set you apart from most everyone else who calls themselves performers, and create for them a memorable experience your audience will be talking about for the rest of their lives?