talkmagic.co.uk

Hi all.

As i said in my introduction I have only been involved in magic for a few years. I have always loved watching magic and I have very early memories of magic on tv, and those classic magicians at your spanish holiday hotel(!). However what made me want to become involved was when i was at a barbeque and a guy there (well i say a guy he was about 15!) was showing some card tricks. I remeber him using a svengali and stripper deck for some effects, which at the time I had no idea about. I really wanted to be able to perform these things. But what floored me was the 2 card monte he done on me! From then on I was hook, line and sinker!
Do you remember the exact moment you thought "Magic is for me"?

Chris

Yeah I remember, I was about 5 & I watched my 1st David Copperfield TV special - he vanished a Lear Jet - I knew then that I want'ed to do magic, but it took me 18yrs to finaly get into it (Had some misconceptions of what magic was & Magic wasn't exactly freely available in South Africa) but now I'm here & there's no looking back

Watching the Doug Henning TV shows back in the 70's gave me the shove to take an interest again but it all really started to come together roughly 2 years ago when I first found TalkMagic in the old Forum days. At this point I realised that there were several million amateur magicians in the UK and I wasn't on my own in having this strange interest. It was all reinforced when I also discovered that the professionals are usually very approachable, many times willing to advise or even share the odd tip or two. Magic isn't just something you do to entertain (although that's very important) it's a world where we can all do our own thing and be equally valid. And when you start to think up your own effects, variations and ideas, it really doesn't get any better than that!

I've very much been one for drifting into and out of magic. My first major period of interest was inspired by Paul Daniels, in particular in about 1981 when he had a series of magic tricks released under his name. They were a bizarre mix of incredibly easy effects which you might find in a kids' magic set and stuff which is quite professional (his 'Magic Egg' being a good example). Later on, he released sponge balls and the extra booklet you could buy was actually very handy and contains some moves I've not seen elsewhere.

Paul was everywhere in the 80s and I doubt one could find a better exponent of making magic commercial than him during that decade.

More recently, 'Monkey Magic' and Derren Brown have inspired me to go back to this hobby with more interest and I'm moving in a more focussed direction now. Some of the reactions Derren's got are my current inspiration.

I have to say the David Nixon was probably the firsted time I was wowed by Magic, and then later I still don't think there has been any Magic on TV that has come close to the Paul Daniels shows.

In recent years, the one person that got me back into actually wanting to find out more about magic, and doing it myself has to be David Blaine. No matter what anyone says about him, his Street Magic TV programmes were (and still are) very magical. This obviously is a controversial point, but from the lay-person's perspective I don't think the fact can be denied.

When I was a kid it was definitely watching the David Copperfield shows. I was convinced he was the real deal.
More recently - about 2-3 years ago - hate to admit it, but it was the first David Blaine street magic tv special that got me interested again. It was just different from anything I had seen - and yes, from a layman's perspective, very magical.

I think it was David Blaine that sparked off magic again by showing a new approach to the art. As much as we love to hate him, i supposed its him thats made everyone iinterested again. How many people have said to you "Can you do that one by David Blaine?"

How many people have said to you "Can you do that one by David Blaine?"

Far too many!

Stock smartypants answer is, 'No - but then again, he can't do mine either!'

I really don't want to start a David Blaine thread - this thread is cool. But I was watching this really brilliant close-up magician and this one guy - layperson - said "wow - you're almost as good as David Blaine". The magician said something like "David Blaine can kiss my ... "etc.
I thought that was wrong - the person watching had just given the guy the best compliment he could think of.
People outside of magic see things very differently to the way we do and we forget that so easily.

Anyway - back to the thread..

When I show magic there are usually 3 types of people. The people who are amazed... the people who dont like it (im sorry its usually men as well, espicially if they are with their other half!) and people who want o know how its done.
How do you deal with these people? They may have a genuine interest and want somewhere to start in magic.... or they just want to tell everyone and for their own knowledge. I normally recommend to look on the internet for some websites or books as they are good starting points. I dont want to turn people away from magic though. Do you think this is right or should it remain more "exclusive"?

the person watching had just given the guy the best compliment he could think of

I'd be well chuffed with a compliment like that. David is young, cool, an accomplished TV performer, muscular, well known to a lot of people, inside and outside of magic whereas I'm..... er...... not.

PS Thumbs up for David Nixon as well - a true gentle man and darned good magician.

When people ask how things are done, I usually adopt the Jonathan Creek thinking - sometimes the answer is so disappointingly banal and non magical that it would spoil everything if the secret were divulged. At other times the whole process is so amazingly complex that folks wouldn't believe you'd take so much trouble just to fool them and sometimes it's sheer luck so we wouldn't want to admit to that under any circumstances! If there's a genuine interest in magic then a gentle prod in the direction of a good magic shop, real or on-line, plus a forum like this ought to show whether the enquirer's interest is genuine or not.

David Nixon for me.

I was recently speaking to John Palfreyman who used to work with Nixon (making his props etc), and was delighted to hear that Nixon really was the perfect gentleman in real life that we all imagined him to be.


As for Blaine, he simply has the best production team there is, which is why his programmes are so appealing to the public.

As madrake has said, I think that it's a working magicians dream come true for someone to compare them to one of the TV greats, whoever's name in mentionned.

Whether it's Blane or anyone else for that matter, their TV performance obviously stuck in the layperson's mind for some reason and made a big impression. For me, I think that there is no greater compliment and at the end of the day, what better way is there for someone to compliment you on your performance?

I was very fortunate a number of years ago to watch, very close up a magic circle magician performing a routine at a private party. He's no one that you would know (probably) and I don't even remember his name myself, even though he's a relative of a good friend of mine. He gave nothing away but was very willing to talk to me about magic in general and in doing so he pointed me in the right direction. That was it for me and I owe him my gratitude for the inspiration that he gave to me in that one hour of conversation.

I've watched many of the TV greats and I've now seen and met Zenon and Redfearn, each on a number of occasions at corporate events and they too have been interesting to chat to. I often think how fed up they must get with other magi's asking for tips but credit to them for not showing it. Despite this, they've not given me any inspiration to go away and better myself and I can honestly say that some of the posts that I read on this site from 'the regulars' inspire me far more than the big names.

I remember my cousin having a Svengali deck (not that I knew what it was then) when I was 8. I was totally gobsmacked.

Since then I have persued an interest in magic. But have only really been truly devoted for the last couple of years.

When I was young (about , my mother brought me a book of kids card tricks - self working tricks mostly.
I used to do them for friends, siblings, etc. Then when I was about 13, I was chatting to another kid, and we were showing each other card tricks, and he showed me a trick using the glide - my first contact with sleight of hand magic. He could also waterfall shuffle and charlier cut, both of which got me hooked. I spent weeks practising the above two flourishes, and in messing around, accidentally came up with a version of the riffle force. I am not going to claim that I invented a new force, but I have read and seen a lot of magic, and not seen this force I came up with anywhere. I still use this force a lot today, as quick, easy and virtually indetectable.
I brought a few books, but after about a year, my interest died out. It was only about 2 years ago, that a friend showed me his ellusionist - Ninja 1 that I had my first contact with using video to teach magic - so much easier than books. I was newly hooked, and still spend at least an hour a day with a deck of cards in my hands...
Bcfaigg
P.S. If anyone is interested in my force, feel free to PM me - I would be interested if anyone can find it anywhere else.