for me, it was things to do with my fingers, and my tongue
i've always been into what the knuckle dragging lot in my hometown of Romford would class as "artsy-fartsy" stuff...screen printing, typography (doing it properly, not just leading and tracking on photoshop), photography and so on...from there i got into music and playing the guitar, from there trying to write songs, but i couldnt...but i found i could maybe have the knack for writing...
so i tried that too...then remembering how much i enjoyed Jerry Sadowitz's flashes of magic on his bbc2 show, memories of Mr. Berglas, the first special of Blaines, and the very first show of Derren Brown kinda got me interesting in these arts...
however, i didnt know where to start, had no internet access, and there was only one magic book in my local library which contained no sleights whatso=ever...thankfully, work provided me with internet access (heaven help them), that was about 4-5 years ago...and the bug not only bit me, but seemed to of burrowed into my mind and settled there....
i immediately bought 13 steps to mentalism, read it from cover to cover, only to put it away feeling completely out of my depth...so i researched more...and thought i'd best start at the beginning, bought RRTCM, bobo's, and began practising like a beast...
at the time, i was caring for a sick relative, so i had lots of "me" time in the late evenings...after gaining more confidence in myself in this style of performing (completely different from performing in a band), and the whole rapport thing, i suddenly felt comfortable doing this...
so i slowly started to understand Corinda alot more, moved onto annemann, and slowly started trying out others work, knepper, banachek, knepper alot actually...
i liked the whole mystikal approach, even though that character wasnt "me"...so, from there on in, it was all a big experiment, history of playing cards got me looking at tarot, tarot got me looking at palmistry, the link as i see it - is that there is some cross over, magicians sleights for cards and coins, could be used within the mental arena...plus, i've always been very good at reading people emotionally...
and like lots of people, i was really intrueged and entertained by Derren Brown, admittedly, i did read a NLP for Dummies book, and maybe a couple more, but did realise that its a wolf in sheeps clothing in some respects...
so, combining my love of language, story telling, and magic, it just nudged me more towards the mental-framed effects....and i started performing at dinner-parties, variations on experiments, intuition and tests - though, most importantly, i dont consider/label myself as a mentalist at all...
I'm just me, with a heightened sense of intuition and empathy than the average person...
and zoinks! i still use cards as devices, given their symbolic nature...so therefore i am a natural outcast from the inner-chambers of mentalism....thankfully....im not too keen on labels and definitions, i've always felt them too limiting...
