talkmagic.co.uk

are you born magical or do you become magical?

i am rather intrested to see whether we magic people (i would you use magicians but well i ain't one) believe we are natralley magical.

I am going for nature. I find that I pick things magical up very easily, and always have done. I know that other people have to work a lot harder at it than I do (I'm not trying to suggest that I'm anything special, it's just the way my mind works). I have a great respect for those who have to work harder than me to understand or acheive stuff as I don't think that I would have the patience for it.

Of course it is possible that I am actually deluding myself and that I pick stuff up quickly and easily because of constant exposure to magic, I'm not sure, but starting at a young age with easy stuff probably conditioned my mind to it. I do know that my dad is also very good at working out how tricks that he sees are done, but my mum is terrible.

I don't think its whether you are magical or not but whether you have an inquisitive nature. If you do then magic is going to provide you an outlet. Why else would you want to learn how to make 2 elastic bands link and unlink.

I would have to agree Nick, like every skill some people are just more suited to it, maybe upbringing has helped the brain along or genetics, who knows, probably both You lucky man.

I'm not naturaly gifted in any of the arts, how I wish I could paint or play a guitar etc and I have to work very hard to get anything down and I realise I'll never be David Copperbottom but that's cool, I still love it.
So nature it is and nature be damned.

I am guessing the true greats are the ones with the nature and the endless drive and practice, coupled with a warm personailty and a smidge of luck.
So that this lazy, natureless, driveless Guinness drinker out then
Oh well, more time for the pub then, yaaaaay.

I'm probably more like Nick's mum in my ability to suss out how tricks are done, but I think of that as an advantage as it means I can really enjoy magic as a spectator more than most praticioners of magic.

However once I know how it's done I get paranoid and believe it's really obviously and surely everyone would be able to work it out how its done?

As for the skill side, it's something I definitely have to work really hard at. (and when I get their I'll let you know), but the fascination is still there. There desire is still there.

I'm probably more like Nick's mum

Nick - Be afraid, be very afraid!

I agree guys, there has to be something 'in the blood' to attract you to this sort of thing and I'm quite sure you will learn and develop much quicker if you have that certain something - the additional 'Why' chromosome or whatever it's called. I have no doubt you could take a completely disinterested person, train them and show them how to do tricks quite successfully but the eagerness of one who is really interested will make that process much quicker and result in a much better performance. Which is why I don't sing for a living - I can't and I just don't want to anyway!

NATURE!!!!! I think some people are just more suited to things than others, for instance, I am rubbish at art but good at music (feeling a bit big headed today, don't worry, head will have deflated by tomorrow, one of the peeps at school will probably pop it with a pin for me). I don't think I'm 'naturaly magical' but I do believe some people probably are, however, just becasue you aren't doesn't mean there is no hope for you, if it does then I need another chat with the careers advisor. If she dares tell me to be a prison officer again, I'll kill her...grumble...grumble

Of course there are different aspects to our art, there is the performance, the mindset and the physical skills.

I find that I pick up sleights quickly but I have to work harder to come up with a convincing performance. When it comes to closeup magic there is rarely an effect that I see and don't have an idea pretty much right away how I would go about doing it (not necessarily how it is actually done if it is done very well), but illusions are a complete mistery to me and will fool me every time. Is this because of the time I have spent with closeup and the lack of interest in illusions or is it because I am naturally inclined towards closeup?

A case in point with the slight of hand is the classic pass. When I started to learn it I was given the impression that it is a sleight that takes most people the best part of a year to get up to a really good performance standard. It took me about two weeks to get to the level where I would be confident to use it in tricks but I left it there and didn't improve on it any further because I find it an impractical move and there are other ways which seem more satisfying to me. I do however use it in a routine similar to the card shark one on Ninja 1 when I meet new people and they are interested in card magic. I do it more to show off skill before I say that I'll do something more magical and I find that even with people burning my hands very few will actually see what happens and some don't notaict anything dodgy at all (using a riffle pass).

However, I have been working on the performance aspect of my triumph routine for years and I'm still not happy with it. I like the effect but can't seem to find any justification for what's happening and tend to just fall back on the old favourite of just describing what's happening, why is it that something as seemingly simple as a story or reason for a trick should escape me when complicated card sleights come easily?

This is a good topic, Nick likes.

Nature. I'v always lent towards the magical side of stuff, my favorite character in cartoons was always the magician & more recently when playing RPG's I would always choose the magic user . Have always been interested in doing magic & now that I am I seem to pick up most slights fairly quickly. But then like Nick I struggle with the performance side of the magic, esp linking tricks & coming up with original patter

I'm going to go against the trend and say nurture - people ask me how i startyed in magic and i tell them i wanted to learn sleight of hand, and i did... I had to sit down and learn it. it takes practice and anyone could do it if they tried hard enough. - i agree that you have to want to learn it and I'm tyhe type of person who loves performing to a crowd, whereas some people might be shy about an audience. - but my main argument is, as far as moves, etc go... they have to be learnt and can be learnt by anyone - even if you've only got one arm!!

True, all aspects can be learnt, but you can also teach a monkey to get on stage and perform. You mentioned that you love performing for a crowd, and in that way you are naturally drawn to performance in some way, magic just happened to be the outlet you chose.

As I mentioned, I reckon that there are three aspects that could be open to this discussion, performance, mindset and the skills involved. I don't think that you would have taken up magic if you weren't naturally good at one of those.

I have kind of grouped the stage presence type of performance together with the creative aspects of performance, which on further consideration I would now like to ungroup, making four possible areas, the three mentioned and the creative.

If you were naturally tallented in, or drawn towards, the technical, creative or magical mindset you would find it impossible to resist magic. On the other hand if you are drawn to performance then any of the performance arts will do, and as such you would have to work hard on the aspects that aren't part of your nature.

I think a simiallar thing happens in academic subjects too. I'm sure everyone has had the experience of being good at something but really bad at something else whilst people they know feel in exactly the oposite way. I for certain that there was nothing in my nurture that could possibly have made me naturally good at Physics but c*** (not the best) at Chemistry but it happened

nick tries to stir things up by disagreeing with disagreement, where will this lead I wonder?

well time for dr pcwiz to have his tuppanies ( two pennys) worth!

it at the moment it seems that we are devided straight down the middle so i spose some people are natrually magically the rest of us just have to work harder!!

I feel that it must be nurture for me at least!



PCwizme

I think that we're all born magical in that when we're kids we think anything is possible and we believe in magic. As life happens we become less and less magical, depending on our culture, religion, education, etc. There are a handful of us who, for a number of reasons, want to make magic happen and want to keep the magic alive. But in order to do that we need to stop believing that magic is the ability to do the impossible, but it is that experience when we come face to face with mystery.
So - we train ourselves to make it look as if we're doing the impossible in order to create a magical experience for us and our audience.
I think that deep down, though, most magicians yearn for magic to be real and to be able to do the impossible, and that is why we keep on learning, training and buying those new gimmicks and props and dvd's that subconciously promise this to us.

So I guess it's both: nature, cos when you think of it life is really a miracle and full of mystery;
and nurture in that you need to work really hard to remind people of that

Certainly from the view of an outlook on life we are born believing but how does that relate to the actual art I wonder? If you want to recapture some of that feeling you would certainly be drawn to magic.

Good question. IMHO the 'magical thinking' of a child is an important part of what we do, in that it's often the nostalgia of childhood that we are appealing to. Copperfield does that really well in that he often tells stories about when he was a child and it really sets the emotional atmosphere. Maybe we get involved in magic because there's part of us that just doesn't want to grow up