talkmagic.co.uk

The issue of XCM in magic is a tough one. I think its best only to be used to sort of let the audience know your a professional, rather than displaying skill. But perhaps not, because in the audience's mind they might be more amazed at the guy who dropped cards a few seconds before making it change, rather than the guy who had 18 packets of cards between his fingers before he done the same thing.

I personally like to learn it, because it amazes myself, but I never use it in performance.

in some ways though, you can't blame 'dah kids' for buying effects the 'professionals' release can you? its that fine line again, people want to make money from their skills...yet also protect what they sell...

if those effects never existed/got released, they could never of been bought, if they couldnt of been bought then perhaps those kids would never bother with magic...and annoy others with their constant whining and whinging when they find out not all of magic is the same...

but then if you stop releasing these easy effects, you run the risk of missing out on someone special; as i think most of us started off with 'easy' stuff, and once we caught the bug we progressed...

i think its a wider cultural thing though, nowadays you can get famous for nothing, not because your talented...lets face it, Bruce Forsythe is hardly the most handsome of men (and lets not even get onto why his hair managed to grow back from the 70s), yet in his way, he is/was an entertainer...had talent in some form...

nowadays, we might be having the magical invasion of Jade Goody style magicians, but that's almost to be expected in some ways when examining the majority of today's entertainment...

i have a great love for the 60s, when talent could get you somewhere if thats what you wanted, skills were respected and encouraged..

i think the thing to bear in mind is this - if magic was such a closed book, like it used to be, where some of the time you would have to be almost tutored by someone, how many of us would be doing magic today?

how many of us would be luck enough to have a Blackstone, a Devant, or nowadays, a Lennart Green on our doorstep?

If you start off playing the guitar you can tune it to an open E chord and just strum along to your hearts content, and thats fine to start off with, to gain confidence, but sooner or later, you'll wanna fly on your own, learn the proper stuff...

I think if you dont want to search out Royal Road, then you don't have it in you to be a magician...

Anyway, i've actually decided that any post on here from now on that says "how do you do that - and by they way, for free..." kinda posts, im gonna just ignore the idiots, let them get on with it...

not even asking them to introduce themselves or anything, nada, zip, nothing...by default if they say something like that then...they are dead to me...

they're not even worth getting wound up over to be honest, you won't ever be able to change their mind-set...they'll soon hover over something else vulture-like, waiting to pick the another part of the carcass of entertainment as it lays decaying in the glow of a spotlight...