Magic Words: A show of magical poetry

I'm thinking of moving my show, and my audience, to another art form. Like relocating them completely. I'm tired of stepping on a stage and having them looking at me as their trickster, or "entertainer". I want to cast a spell on my audience, and make them feel something more complete than astonishment. I want to bring them back to art: all I have to do is say the magic words.

So, I am going to give them a poetry show- a collection of my original poems that I feel so much more connected to than every fancy coin vanish and elaborate card routine I do. I've scribbled out so many poems over the past two years- about magicians, skies, scholars, a day called Mayday, about miracles, and Himala, about a girl who loves me back. I feel these poems, so much more than the tricks I do, and would love for them to find their way into my audience ears. I'd be so much more excited before each show knowing that that is what I'm going to share, not tricks. I'm tired of cued-applause, and David Blaine style WTFs, and stoic I've-seen-magic-before reactions.

Each poem will slip into their ears like a whimsical encantation, a spell of rhythm and abstract visions and creative musings. They're so absurd! They don't make any sense- no one will get them. I don't mind- they don't have to be listened to fully. The energy and rhythm of the words will relax the audience into a silly trance, and the effects I will perform over each one will seep into their minds comfortably and produce a new texture of astonishment.

What a perfect candidate for patter! I hated having to tell an audience what I am doing, or what I will do, and giving them a pseudo explanation of why I am doing it. Or worse, resorting to comedy- every magician resorts to comedy. The poems themselves are patter, loosely related but intriguing in their aloofness to each effect, and will hit the ears of my audience lightly, and delightfully, while the effects I show them ease their way into their minds and blow them quietly from the inside.

It's a poetry show, with magical visuals. No-verbal with verbal. Spoken words with sleight of hand. Artistic slant. The poems will carry the show, and the magic will give each one an accent. It'll play like an open mic night, or a play, with a magician lost in a crowd of thoughts, rambling in his own dialect, surrounded by his own effects. I can't wait to try this flavor of performance on an audience. I've always wanted to do this: give my poems an audience. And I pass up that opportunity with each shallow magic trick I do. "Magic Words" might just work. And even if it doesn't, it still sounded like a cool idea.



-the antidote