As this title suggests, I’m currently writing this, sitting on a train on the way to a gig. I wish I could travel via train to gigs more often. It’s nice to sit and relax on the way to a gig instead of concentrating on driving. However there are a few downsides to this - like trying to carry a magic show on the train and of course the cost. It just doesn’t work on a regular basis (hint hint Mr Khan)
But that’s not what I’m writing about today. Over the next hour or so of travel time I’m going to try and write about something that I saw actually a few days ago while taking my kid to school. (It does eventually become magic related, honest!
Picture this. I’m walking my kids to school, it’s early in the morning and I’m just having fun with the kids. Doing stupid stuff like singing songs, playing I spy, just trying to make the 20 minute walk more fun. As we approach the school I see a man with a large sign approaching. He appears to be pacing up and down near the school not talking to anyone, just holding the sign. You can’t actually read whats on the sign until you get close(There was a lot of writing on this sign, which was big but he clearly wanted to get his message across in as much detail and possible.
It soon dawned on me as we got closer that I’d seen this guy in town before. The sign informing us that we were all sinners, demanding that we get saved (with the obligatory multiple bible verses to back it up) was very familiar. Now I’m not bashing on any religion with this and each to their own, but I was thinking about what his “success rate” would be with getting new people to church this way. Admittedly he was probably not doing himself any favours by doing this outside of a faith school (it’d be like shooting fish in a barrel) but from what I understand of people’s reactions both here and in town, his success rate would be negligable at best. So again this got me thinking, why continue doing it? Surely you’d be better investing your time into something with a better success rate. And what is more worrying with this is that I’ve seen him for the last few years in town, and many more “missionaries” before that for decades before. Why is this so popular for missionaries to do?
I guess it’s down to perceived success. He like many others have convinced themselves that by walking around they are saving millions of souls when instead they are pushing them further away from faith.
And you know what? Magicians are guilty of this too. Not the faith part, but there’s been many a time when magicians sabotage their own act by deluding themselves that what they are performing is gold when actually it’s crap. Ive seen too many magicians make this mistake. They become blinkered to the audience and don’t see or want to admit what others really think of their performances.
I’ve done it myself (We all have). I used to have a straight jacket routine that I loved, I’d run it through a few shows and really liked the concept. It just never actually pulled off into something truly successful. I believed I had gold with the concept, but audiences just didn’t agree. When I finally got it in my head that this routine didn’t work I begrudgingly cut it from my show and moved on.
It was only a few months later when working out a new show that I was playing around with a totally different routine and started to unknowingly add bits to this trick that were very similar to the escape. When I realised the concept was similar, I was able to work the concept of the jacket into this new routine. The straight jacket was out, but the core idea worked. It just needed refining. And after a bit of rehearsal and watching reactions, I realised this concept was a hit. So I did what any good magician does and put it straight into my act. It’s now probably one of my signature pieces - which wouldn‘t have happened if I hadn’t booted something I was convinced was working when it really wasn’t.
In my next post, I’m going to write about how to find out what doesn’t work in your show and what to do about it. Meanwhile I’m about halfway through my train journey and can hopefully write the next post now!