talkmagic.co.uk

Another crosspost from my blog that I'd like to open out to a wider discussion...

Mentalism restricts itself to certain effects, and I think it is fair to say that those effects can be characterized as being those that represent powers of the mind. It is the mind’s ability to predict the future, to see beyond normal sight, to think the thoughts of others, and to render cutlery useless. Within this little box I am happy. I do, from time to time, come to envy the honest-to-goodness magician, who can commit himself to throwing coins into glass bottles or having selected cards mysteriously appear in wallets or shoes, but I generally recognise that the path on which I travel is slightly different, that it seeks out something that I might cynically qualify as “believable magic” (this with the caveat that all magic seeks believability, I just suspect that few adults go away from a traditional magic show believing they have witnessed real miracles - the suspension of disbelief is only temporary). But there is a wrinkle, I have. I love a coincidence effect. I would say, too, that mentalists greater than I love them too. Cassidy, who I understand has gone on record as saying that the difference between magic and mentalism is that the former presents the impossible, but the latter presents the improbable, has written of his handling for Do As I Do, perhaps the granddaddy of all coincidence effects. Add to that OOTW, GT, and ACAAN all mentalism favourites and there seems to be a serious suggestion that actually coincidence effects constitute a strong theme.

But let’s slow down here, because I can already hear you countering this assertion. Before I give voice to those perfectly valid counters I just want to highlight something else about coincidence effects. They are effects in which, more often than not, there is no suggestion that the magician did anything more than take a risk on the coincidence playing out. And it is for this reason, I suspect, that many magicians don’t actually like them very much. The performer doesn’t get to do the magics.

Right, now what were you saying? Ah yes! OOTW isn’t a coincidence effect because the effect is that the spectator is capable of determining the colours of the cards without looking at them. This is true. Equally GT involves the participant knowing when to stop dealing cards. ACAAN constitutes one person naming the position of the card another person has named. These are all, one may argue, effects of clairvoyance, of sight beyond sight. I think that is a perfectly valid and fair observation. But I think that beneath that, there still lies coincidence. We can, of course, calculate the odds for the above effects, and demonstrate to ourselves how unlikely a successful outcome would be. This goes some way to suggest the power being demonstrated. The odds against someone successfully completing OOTW is truly astronomical, to the point where we can pretty much rule out chance, and plump for some other power being at work.

But I’m not so sold on ACAAN as clairvoyance. Let me pick this straw man of mine apart. In short, two people happen to select the same card in a totally fair and free, hands off manner. That is a coincidence above all else. It’s true enough that it can be presented as clairvoyance, or even a prediction (I predicted you would say the queen of hearts, and you would say eleven, so I placed the queen of hearts… etc.) but I’m not sure I’ve seen it done very often as such. And some may say that without giving it such trappings, it somehow is not an effect, but I think this is wrong.

I think it is wrong because of this; people love coincidence. Whole books devoted to synchronicity have been written. People thrill at those chance-in-a-million encounters - the long lost relatives who, by chance, end up holidaying together in the same hotel, the angler who catches a fish only to gut it and find his wife’s long lost wedding ring, the person who put the wrong numbers on the lottery and ended up winning the jackpot. These are stories that excite, that (and this is crucial) suggest to us that there is some great plan that we remain blind to, but from time to time is partially revealed to us. More than this, coincidence is really the recognition of patterns, and it’s the recognition of patterns that helps us make sense of the universe we live in. It is a deeply human part of ourselves and to create it within an effect is no small thing.

Here’s, more or less, the presentation I use for a Darwin Ortiz effect I accidentally reinvented.

“Before we get started I’d just like you to do something for me. If you can take these cards under the table, cut them and cut them again, as often as you like, then take either the top or the bottom card, turn it upside down and stick it back into the deck.

“Done that? You can place the deck down here. We’ll come back to it in a moment.

“You see, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about coincidences. It strikes me that there are two key ingredients to them. The first is improbability; what the chances are of a particular thing happening. But that can’t be the whole story. The odds of rolling any six numbers consecutively are something like one in 47,000 but no-one rolls 6,3,5,5,2,4 and thinks of it as a coincidence.

“Let me show you something. I did what you did earlier today. I took a card at random and turned it upside down in a deck of cards. Here it is. Why don’t you get yours, and just leave it face down here next to mine.

“You see the second ingredient is significance. A coincidence is really something that happens that is unlikely but somehow significant.

“With all of the billions of people alive in the world today, two people breaking their arms at the same time isn’t particularly significant. But if they are twins…”

The performer turns the cards over. They match.

To me this plot is gripping. The effect itself is solid, and it is played out against what I think is a real world observation both about what goes into making a coincidence and, implicitly, how coincidences seem significant to us.

Ah, but is it mental? I think it is. I think it’s magical too. It took me a while to realise this, but it’s in the way that the reveal is handled. The effect remains at heart a coincidence, but it is the certainty of the performer that makes all the difference. I had tried gingerly turning over the card, alive to the possibility of failure, but I dropped this in the end. The spectator turns over a card that matches mine. This is a coincidence.

What remains mysterious, though, is that I seemed to know with absolute certainty that that coincidence would happen. I don’t mean to say that this makes my turned over card a prediction - within the silent script of the effect, I have no idea which card I turned over. All I know is that my card will match my participant’s card. That certainty is something that adds to, rather than undermines, the joy of the coincidence.

nice post.

I have toyed with using the premise of being able to force coincidences around me.

I went through my routines and found that a lot of them could be reworded as coincidence effects. It is a good point about being certain that there will be a coincidence, but I think you could also play up the fact that it freaks you out a bit.

thanks for sharing,

regards,

Sea

Freaked out works. If you can communicate it, what can also work is a sense of resignation to the coincidence. That's certainly part of my silent script when performing Choked, although that's not presented as a coincidence.

I've always liked the idea of "Mr Coincidence" and how far one could push that idea. I envisioned a show (just building castles in the sky) where the odds were projected on the back wall throughout the show, getting higher and higher. Then years later I am sitting in the audience of Infamous...

Hi Mr Grue,

I haven't been to any of the shows, that sounds pretty cool though, having the odds coming up in the background.

Sea