Someone I know is beginning to learn magic. They’re taking a course in “mentalism” at the Magic Castle. This “someone” in this case is a person who attended a show of mine randomly, and then just kept showing up to more shows. They messaged me talking about wanting to become a magicians assistant. And then eventually expressed interest in how the tricks were done. This, I believe, ended up leading her to do the Classtle.

She’s messaged me a few times about ESP cards, or sending me a photo from their photocopied pamphlets, one of them with the heading “Cold Reading” and I can’t help but feel that this path leads down such a path so far from what I am doing or even what is being accomplished on stage. Even though the subjects are the same, the words are the same, and the setting/context/etc. bears strong resemblance, the throughput is entirely different. In fact, they couldn’t be opposed enough.

I suppose it’s most similar to the two oversimplified polarities of acting: outwards in or inwards out. Acting with gestures or acting with internal emotion. The true north in acting, or magic for that matter, is in not knowing which practice is in action at any given time.

Truth be told, when I perform the plot of a “drawing duplication” I have forgotten what I am about to draw. Yet, I somehow find it again. I grasp at it, piece it together like a puzzle being formed, and eventually I draw it out, their drawing, from my own hand. Could this be accomplished without knowing the secret artifice of truly learning their confidential drawing? Could this be accomplished without being able to find it again?

— J.R.

• Clip Shift

• (This list will be updated)

Dear Reader,

Are we back? I keep asking myself that question. I think that it could be interpreted in many ways, depending on where you are in the world, and the time at which you’re reading this. But I keep coming back to it nontheless.

Coming up, I’m going to likely curate some of the older blog posts, and, if I can, restructure the blog portion of this site (don’t hold your breathe on this one). But right now would be the time to take a snapshot of this site, if you care about the posterity of it all.

I find myself at a curious cross-roads in life. For the first time, it really feels like jumping into the unknown. Kind of a wild time to be a live performer when a significant amount of my audience isn’t ready to watch live performance in a room with other strangers, which is kind of the whole appeal of live performance.

I mean, yes, there are other things which I can do for fun and hazard, but if that theatre is missing, but, worth it? Not sure. Anyways, I’m sure we’ll see eachother soon, we do have so much to look forward to after all.

— J.R.

A follow-up from Miscellanea Chapter 1 we have some recommendations for you:

Read:

Handling Traumatic Imagery this article does an amazing job at flexing the magic/psychology of the mind to combat traumatic viewing experiences. Something, sadly, many of us are facing even more currently in America.

The Forgotten Art of Assembly if there was one article to completely summarize how I’ve personally felt during this global pandemic, it would be this one. This is labelled as a MUST READ for any Four Suits aficionado. Truly amazing.

Watch:

Baraka sit back and get a perspective on the entire world, I’m not kidding you, the entire world, in this film. Be ready for an experience with this one.

Dear Reader —

At this current moment in time, at this literal exact moment you’re reading these words, I want you to imagine me saying “Thank you” to you.

Now, I’m currently heavily inspired (and somewhat in awe) by this: https://noproscenium.com/enjoy-a-quiet-moment-of-contemplation-with-the-end-of-the-day-review-c249cad5eb95

Isn’t it beautiful?

No lie, I/We have been mulling over stuff like this for a while now, but I think there’s a distinct difference between Theatre and Magic in this sense. Is it possible to evoke a feeling of Magic in a remote manner such as this?

I guess you’ll find out.

— J.R.

What follows here is one of my favorite videos of all time. For some reason it reminds of the time we’re currently living in. Bless you all.

2021.

— J.R.

Dear Reader,

I have been thinking about the concept of gift-giving lately. And, while there is plenty of anthropological drivers for receiving/giving a gift within the anthropocene, see The Gift by Marcel Mauss, there are also many reasons to have a strong reason for materialism, and not simply purchase something for the sake of it, or because we see it on a list, or read it in a catalogue and are told we should like it.

I will often make the argument for experiences over materials. Back before the #COVID times, I would advocate to travel places, thereby creating memories that would essentially last longer than any material possession. How are these experiences created during these #unprecedented_times ?

Memory.

Purchase memory.

Recently, I purchased a fragrance for myself. It’s called By the Fireplace. The scent is supposed to evoke the memory of sitting by the fireplace. Honestly, I just liked the smell. BUT, do you know what does transport me back in time?

Allspice Dram brings me to Winter in New York City in 2017.

Strawberry Frosted Pop-Tarts bring me to my elementary childhood in Los Angeles, and also, weirdly enough, Portland, Maine.

Crushed dried mint brings me back to my second home. Not a very good time overall, but a real one that grounds me.

POINT IS: Perhaps you can think of a time when things weren’t like this. Or think of a time when you really had some fun with someone, made an experience with them in the past. if you’re seeking a gift for someone this year, perhaps try to give a material gift and recall an amazing memory?

— J.R.

related reading: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/02/how-scent-emotion-and-memory-are-intertwined-and-exploited/

“Folks, I’m a psychic. Now, I know what you’re thinking..”

You know the “I want to believe” poster from the X-files? I want to make one with David Copperfield flying and with the same phrase posted over it.

Some information inherently transfers at a very low bitrate.

Jackie Chan uses grunts during his fight choreo to establish beats and cues.

Stripper using a stripper deck for a card routine.

Phantom hand tests for a QB.

Four Suits … Four Loko?

Flour Suits will be the name of our bakery

Wrestling WWE magic match

Eat some turkey, hug your family (in person if they’re in your bubble, virtually if they are not), and maybe read up on some Indigenous history. Stay safe everyone.

Today we are shouting out friend-of-Four Suits Gina Fiore, also known as rx gamble, who just had an interview drop on The Ringer podcast. (We talked to her anonymously back in 2017). It’s a pretty fun listen that gives a great glimpse into the life of an advantage player and how one learns to count cards and gain an edge in any game. Give it a listen here:

So I was watching a Tested video where Adam Savage shows how to weather prop money to make it look more real (don’t… don’t ask why…) when he mentioned an interesting story about an artist who drew money and then traded it for goods, but somehow not as a counterfeiter. I’ll let Adam explain (go to 4:28; the story is only about two minutes):

This idea intrigued me immensely. It plays with the idea of where the ‘art’ was. The art wasn’t the bill, nor was it even the performative act of exchanging the bill for goods, but that it was the receipt, the record of the exchange, that he would actually sell, leaving it to the buyer to track down the drawn bill and purchase it from the merchant, if they desired. You could even say them tracking it down was part of the art, making it experiential for them in a powerful way.

“He was just short of being a con man, but no more than anyone in the art world, or for that matter in the world of finance — which, of course, was his whole point.”

— Lawrence Weschler, Bogg's biographer

It also raises questions about why and how we value both art and money itself. Was he conning the shopkeepers out of their goods? Or was it not a con because he knew his buyers would come and pay the shopkeeper far more for the bill than the value of the merchandise they had given him? It raises questions about how the state maintains its legitimacy and the legitimacy of its currency (because of him the UK put a copywrite notice on its bills, though only after losing a counterfeiting case). And it asks us to think more critically about the art and performances that already fill our everyday lives, if we are willing to look at them as such.

—Z.Y.

Whenever I am trying to decide if the work needed for a certain method is worth it I think back to the book, “The Psychic Mafia,” by M. Lamar Keene, and just how far people are willing to go for an effect, laying the groundwork sometimes month in advance. Sometimes it’s being willing to put in the work and sometimes it’s recognizing that organizing and file-keeping can yield results more magical than any sleights or moves.

Dear Reader,

Recently I began wandering the public domain sphere of magic. I found a lot of really cool old art, old theatrical posters, old paintings of medieval magic/theatre festivals, old theatres. Those are all awesome, and I will be sharing some of those with you next week.

However, in the effort of recreating the experience I had digging through a series of public domain works (many of which are from the 1920’s and beyond) I also came upon a significant amount of modern magician publicity images. Now, many of these have been uploaded by the magicians themselves, onto public domain servers such as wikimedia commons, so it’s all fair game for me to share them here, but every time I think about doing it, I almost feel sad. Granted, I know I’ve taken some cringe photos as well at a younger age, but then again, I didn’t have the wherewithal to upload them onto a server for literally anyone to access and use for the rest of eternity.

I link you here for either your enjoyment or suffering, or perhaps both: some of them are really a sight to behold.

— J.R.

Credit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Unexpected/comments/iy0f73/when_he_hits_the_pool_ball

Dear Reader —

I was looking through some old novels and found this highlighted from an earlier reading:

“Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does the beauties of nature. The starry sky, the sea, and every sight afforded by these wonderful regions, seems still to have the power of elevating his soul from earth. Such a man has a double existence: he may suffer misery, and be overwhelmed by disappointments; yet, when he has retired into himself, he will be like a celestial spirit that has a halo around him, within whose circle no grief or folly ventures … Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity and ruin.” — Mary Shelley

^ That’s from Frankenstein. A truly iconic work which as a whole describes some of humans most beautiful sentiments and fatal flaws. They say that the monsters we create as a society, the monsters we write about and create in myth, reflect heavily upon the societal fears of the time. I think many of these fears present in her time can also be seen today.

Above, she highlights some of the beauty to be found in the center of a human soul, a human soul that we all have inside of us, and which connects to the others around us. I find it both comforting and concerning that we still face the same fears and pleasures of a time gone by, but an overwhelming joy that the human spirit, and the spirit of magic, is capable of connecting and uplifting those around us.

Enjoy the beauty of humanity, it’s here to stay.

— J.R.

Fight Against Fallacy

Patterns can be true or false. Humans are hard-codes to find and recognize patterns (even when they aren’t there). Patterns aren’t the problem, the real problem is that we often have a hard time telling the difference between when we’re drawing a real inference of a fictitious one. Analysis through correlation is a gateway to believing unfounded theories. Next time you realize you’re recognizing a pattern, think twice: be sure you’re drawing the right conclusion.

— J.R.

There’s a lot of heavy shit going on right now: unprecedented weather disasters driving by climate change, a pandemic that seems like it will never end because some people refuse to take it seriously, the economic repercussions of that pandemic that the government seems to refuse to take seriously, growing state-sanctioned police violence, and more that honestly I don’t want to think about right now. In the face of all of that it can be hard to answer the question, “Why am I doing magic?”

And the truth is, this is a question a lot more magicians should have been asking themselves before all these things came to a head, but it’s a question that is simply unavoidable now. The answer that I found, and that I think I always meant for that question, is that magic, performed and created thoughtfully, can serve a powerful emancipatory role.

“emancipate
(transitive verb)
1: to free from restraint, control, or the power of another
especially : to free from bondage
2: to release from parental care and responsibility and make sui juris
3: to free from any controlling influence (such as traditional mores or beliefs)”

— Marriam-Webster’s Dictionary

Like I listed above, we are facing a lot of shit right now, and the first step (and often one of the hardest when the problems are deeply entrenched and normalized) to changing anything is not only imagining an alternative but trusting in our human power to make it real. In this excellent interview, Adrienne Brown and Walidah Imarisha explain the role science fiction, and speculative fiction more generally, has played in pushing our understanding of what justice can look like, especially when one looks to the works of authors like Octavia Butler and Ursula K. Le Guin.

“Any time we try to envision a different world—without poverty, prisons, capitalism, war—we are engaging in science fiction. When we can dream those realities together, that’s when we can begin to build them right here and now.”

— Walidah Imarisha

So if the emancipatory power of art comes from its ability to help us imagine not other worlds, but other ways our world could be, then magic, with its unique ability to literally show you things you thought were impossible, fits perfectly. This is not to say all magic is emancipatory. It’s not. It’s also not to say magicians should be shoehorning in social justice messages into every effect (I will personally hunt down and slap anyone who does an oil-and-water routine but uses the cards going from separated to mixed as a metaphor for diversity). What it does mean is that when conscientiously created and performed, magic can be an incredible tool for reminding us that the change we want to create, the change we need to create, no matter how difficult it may seem, is not impossible. As Le Guin said in a speech at the National Book Awards, “We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings… [, and] resistance and change often begin in art.”

—Z.Y.

(I think there is actually more to this theory as well, like magic’s emancipatory role for children or anyone who lacks a sense of control over their lives finding magic, but that can be a topic for another day.)

J and I had a conversation today about trying to perform magic during the COVID pandemic, and I wanted to share a couple highlights. The first is that he, I, and a number of our other usual collaborators had all independently come to the conclusion that we really didn’t enjoy or want to pursue digital performances or Zoom shows. None of us felt satisfied by the forays we had made, and the medium seemed always too much of an impediment to what we wanted to do artistically and to the kinds of connections we found meaningful with our audiences.

The second was that we were both experiencing a lot of frustration because so many of the instincts and intuitions we had spent years developing for how to create an enjoyable experience were now wrong. Time and time again we would brainstorm an interesting idea for a new show just to realize some element of it was fundamentally incompatible with the realities of living safely during The Age of COVID. And this extended frustration that other skills we had spent so long honing were also useless or not applicable, like close up magic that we couldn’t be near enough an audience to share.

The last was that this was just about the longest we had gone without some kind of show, some kind of magic production, and we felt we had been neglecting magic because of it. We were working so hard to come up with something that maintained the size and level of production we had painstakingly achieved in The Before Times that we had failed to produce anything that could live in this new reality. We were stymied because we failed to appreciate just how fundamentally different this performance climate is, and now that we do we are stepping back, scaling back, and looking back to the basics that got us here. This was all oddly summed up when, while we were talking, I found an old button I had gotten at an instillation J and I visited when we both lived in New York when we were first working together. So, like the button says:

--Z.Y.

I’m going to be honest with you, reader: things have been pretty wild over at the Four Suits Saloon recently. From canceling and moving our live events to transitioning our DEFCON Rogues Village presence to be entirely virtual, it’s been a whirlwind, and our humble blog has fallen by the wayside. But no more!

This will begin our attempt to bring a little bit of order back into this wildly chaotic moment by once again regularly sharing some neat magical tidbits and insights with all of you. This week’s morsel of magical goodness is one for your ears. Magicians spend a lot of time thinking about physical illusions, verbal illusions in our language, or even physiological illusions in our bodies, but this week I thought it would be fun to take a look at a whole other world of illusions in music. Enjoy!

—Z.Y.

Dear Reader -

I’m working on a little pamphlet to publish soon. It’s called the “Lil Book of Magic Hacks” and it’s going to be super cute. They’re all just small snippets of ideas I’ve encountered in magic research that parlay quite nicely into other situations. I figured I’d share with you one of the hacks in advance:

Hack #7
Counting Cards
Counting cards (w/ a Hi-Lo count) in BlackJack is predicated on Aces, Faces and Tens counting as High Cards, Twos thru Sixes as Low Cards, and Sevens thru Nines as null cards. If you’re able to track the cards that have come out of the deck, you’re more likely to predict the upcoming cards. This kind of pattern isn’t only present in card games, it’s present in any defined set of values. If you’re paying attention to what’s come before, you may be more likely to predict what shall come to be. Always be counting.

— J.R.