Personal Level

I am a firm believer in delivering magic on a very personal level; I want my audience to experience the magic in what I do, because what I do is special to me, and hopefully through my presentation, they appreciate magic the way I do. From a male spectator’s perspective, it is perfectly understandable that the presence of a magician, who undeniably has the unlimited potential to impress and charm women with tricks, is seen as a threat to his role as an alpha male in the eyes of his female companions (or so he thinks of himself), and it is his primal response of trying to discourage the magician to perform using all possible means without appearing too dominating.

Although it was palpable that what I do is purely deception, I am convinced that magic is not only about the foolery of the mind, it is about drawing your audience’s attention away from analytical aspect of life into a seemingly impossible world, and guide them through a journey of experiencing the metaphors of magic, one of them is change. Have I lost you yet? In fact, the metaphors presented in magic speak volumes about life. Take change for instance. It is said that nothing is permanent and change is the only constant in the dynamic universe we are living in. Therefore, one should not be afraid of change. Change is presented in magic in such a way that what the audience perceives is unusual, completely different for what was used to linger in their mind; the logic. Magic bends reality and violates the logic, leading to astonishment and confusion. However, it is important to point out that astonishment and confusion are two distinct entities.

So what is the point of all this? If the magician is able to present his or her effects on a personal level, which means you treat your audience with utmost respect and you do not, by any means, trying to set yourself on a higher level or trying to be different from them, your presentation will be much more powerful in delivering the message of the effect. Performing magic at a personal level denies the audience with the opportunity to conclude that you, the magician, are merely trying to be ostentatious by showing cool tricks. Like what Daniel Madison said, you are just a normal person. Do not try to go beyond who you actually are. By that I do not mean that you allow yourself to be the subject of heckling or bullying by the group of people you are performing to. Just be yourself, allow your personality to flow into your magic and set yourself on par with your audience. Trust me, it will be a more pleasant, rewarding experience for both parties: to you, the magician, as well as to the audience.

Most magicians lose the impact in their magic today because they fail to present their magic as a form of art or what I regard as a beautiful piece of literature over a set period of 10, 30 or 45 minutes. Instead, they perform magic as a display of power, dexterity and knowledge that laymen do not possess. It is very loathsome when someone is trying to rub your nose into something you do not have knowledge of, isn’t it? They lose the respect for their own magic, let alone see it as an art, because their idea of magic is that if they meet the prerequisite technical requirement of a particular trick, they consider themselves to have achieved what is needed to be a good magician. Most of them, unfortunately, do not realise this grave misconception. If the exhibition of power, dexterity and knowledge is going to be the theme or motivation of every piece of magic that you perform, your magic disintegrate into stunts. From audience’s perspective, your magic is a piece of confusion, it is not a form of astonishment the way it supposed to be.

How are you going to appreciate something when you are confused by everything that is presented to you? Allow me to give an anology of the message that I am trying so fervently transmit across to whoever who is reading this article. Assuming that you are reading a Shakespearean sonnet. If you do not understand the metaphors or identify the salient message behind what was written, most likely you will not appreciate or respond positively to that particular piece of literature, although it was a masterpiece to individuals who truly understand it.

Same thing goes to magician-audience interaction. Magic is a piece of literature and it is the only medium that the magicians use to connect with his or her audience. Laymen are illiterate in magic, because the obvious answer is that they are non-magicians. Therefore it is of paramount importance that the magician plays a role in bridging the gap by ensuring that what he or she does during a magical performance is completely understood by them. Unless a magic is performed at a personal level and with pure dedication, it is going to be a declining art, and will continue to lose respect it deserves to be at the same level with other artforms such as music, play, etc.