talkmagic.co.uk

Ok, so excuse the pretentious sounding title. It's not meant to be but I am setting this out as a kind of challenge. Please let me explain by posing a question.

I'm assuming that most of you can double undercut, false shuffle, DL etc etc etc....

What would you do if you couldn't?

I've recently returned to my love of magic which I first had as a kid. Since doing so I've had some fabulous help, especialy from one famous on-line store inparticular but I'll not mention it here (but thanks Ben and Dom!).

But I was born with a muscle deficiancy in my right side. My left of course has compensated and to look at me you'd not really ever notice the condition.

But because of it it makes me look at each trick differently and how I would have to do it. A swift double undercut, hindu shuffle or swapping easily from one hand to the other is not on the cards (sic! ok sorry bout the pun!!) for me. I have to work around the problem.

Now I think in many ways this gives me an advantage because I do have to look at things afresh something that (and I hate the term) 'able bodied' magicians don't have to think about.

So what I'm interested in is what would you do?

If you needed to false shuffle, control to the top, bottom middle. Try sitting on your hand for 15 mins till the pins and needles make your hand and arm go a bit numb and then try!!

I'm realy hoping that this stimulates some new perspectives, not only from a disabled issue side of things----which is not what this post is about-----but in that the forum may start to look and think differently about the basics.

Of couse in the process I hope I get same interesting and constructive ideas!!

Well, there you go. Will stop boring you now!!

And thanks

same as iv'e always done used a stripper deck, shruggs shoulders and wanders back into the basement.
i know how you feeel mate its a pain when you loose your capacities through no fault of your own but feer not there are ways and meens.

Thanks for that magicdiscoman.

Of course a striper deck is useful but I was hoping for some more creative ideas with an ordinary pack. I'm working on some but there are many far more experiance than I.

I'd like to see if there some fresh approaches can be developed, not only from a one sided (handed) point of view but leading on to different concepts.

theres a one handed french magician possibly called mascalain that I'm sure has some material out for one handed magic, might be worth a search.

Having carpal tunnel in both hands effectively ruled out anything dexterous for me. Operation has restored one hand and other will hopefully be done later this year but no chance of doing any serious card or coin until early next year. Fortunately, neither of them are my area but I still want to have a go as I hate it when the kids show off! I don't believe your difficulty is totally new so I'm sure someone will have devised gimmicks or methods to suit. Good luck in your hunt.

magicdiscoman wrote:theres a one handed french magician possibly called mascalain that I'm sure has some material out for one handed magic, might be worth a search.

Rene Lavand?
He's only got one arm, but a fantastic magician.

I'd probably revisit stacked tricks and memorize the stacking for all the ones I like. It'd be hard to memorize them all and pair the right tricks with the right stacks, but I think it would pay off. The only problem is that you wouldn't really be able to do impromptu magic unless the stacking is only one or two cards or you stack a deck before hand with a trick in mind.

I have Excema on my left hand, mainly on the main and middle fingers...this makes certain card routines awfully difficult - I have to use this weird cream which makes flourishes hard as well, but I still try to do card tricks in the way that I find easiest, which often involves me playing around with shuffles etc, but yeah - it makes an interesting point - trying card routines in a different way