Magician vs. Magic

What are the effects that do well? The paradox of any art form is doing what you love vs. doing what they love. Can I learn to love what they love to see? Of course! The magician's best paintings are in the faces of the crowd, and nowhere else:

- coin spins, rises, and bends in mid-air
- empty beer can seals and refills itself
- balls vanish in magicians hands and reappear in the spectators'
- chewed-up piece of gum is stretched and restored
- dozens of rags overflow from the magician's hands
- rubberband transforms into silver necklace
- forks bend and twist at the magician's will
- endless amounts of coins are plucked from thin air
- sand produced from magician's fingertips
- leaves change color in magician's fist
- eggs produced from magician's mouth
- matches jump and break at the snap of magician's fingers
- $1 turns into $100
- hot cheeseburger appears inside burning napkin

Notice anything? No cards! And most of these aren't that creatively or technically or artistically challenging to do compared to what I find myself doing- the less, the better. And all these effects can be simplified to play to a child audience.

Now this is what most magicians find themselves wanting to do:

- selected card appears in between two other selected cards
- selected card pops out of deck at the flick of a wrist
- selected card switches places with another selected card
- selected card moves inches from its original location in the deck to the top
- selected card changes into another card
- selected cards are shown in different places of the deck, lost, shuffled, and dealt out on table again
- selected card is 26th card from the top, as predicted by the magician
- selected card goes into deck and is found by the magician
- selected card isnt 9 of spades (magician knew that)
- cards dealt down in piles..magician knows where aces are
- selected cards..values..numbers..flat, 2d..paper..
- deck of cards vanish at magician's fingertips!!!

Good magic is so simple. Why is it that the older us magicians get, the more complicated we make magic seem?

-antidote