Dear Reader -
This just in y'all, did you know we recently passed our 1 year anniversary (last month)? It's been a crazy time here on the site and out in the world with the 4 Suits team. I'd just like to thank everyone for their support this year, online and irl, all my fellow teammates, and all the people who allow us to make this happen -- here's to more magic!
We'll also be at Magic Live this upcoming year, and wearing some sort of obnoxious branding that will ID us. The Jerx has done some fun challenges to "code in" to being a reader of their site in the past, and if you'd like to say hello to us in a secret way... well... ah screw it just say you read the site and we'll be extremely giddy that it isn't just all our mothers logging in from various VPNs trying to make us feel better.
Cheers y'all,
-- J.R.
Yes, you, magician, comic, Person-on-stage-requiring-my-attention. I'm giving it to you – all of it. In fact, I may have payed good money, silenced my phone, tried my damnedest not to scroll through my social feed, dragged my friends out to do something different just to be here to see you, Person, in the spotlight.
We could have seen your act on youtube, instagram, netflix or broadcast television. But we came out here to see you, here. Talk to us somehow.
Once your start talking at me and not with me, you have lost us, both the volunteer, audience and yourself. We are now a crowd of bodies in a room watching patter dribble from your lips.
"Patter is Death." - Jay Sankey, BENDING THE REAL.
Magic happens when you are able to take unexpected moments from the audience and turn them into gifts. That only happens when you know your act well enough; your hard work actually speaks to us and you'll get a response. If patter is your crutch, it will keep you crippled and distant from the people who came to see you.
Let's say I took a risk to be a prop in your act and I volunteered myself, have the confidence to be human – take that risk with me. Ask me something, directly, honestly, I'm already here for you. Learn something about me in hopes we can learn something about you.
The only difference between a Performer and a person yelling into the void, is the ability to earn a crowd as their audience.
Artist performing to a crowd, talk to me. Tell me what you have to say.
— H.A.
Dear Reader,
Some light philosophy and creative motivation for you...
From a Text Exchange between J.R. & T.N.
J: Dude I just thought of a crazy thought
- Imagine new ideas, and how there’s always negative feedback or confusion
- That’s because it’s a new idea. If everyone accepted it from the beginning, it means they would’ve somewhere in their mind have already thought of it.
- So if it’s a truly new idea, no one will have thought of anything like it, and they’ll immediately feel like it’s strange and foreign and reject it
T. THAT IS SO TRUE
- dude
- New ideas ALWAYS face rejection first
- Like it’s the first response it almost like challenges them as [they] come into existence
Lately we’ve been embarking on some new projects, and completing some segments of projects began previously. (I’d say they’re all done by now, but that would be a lie, but segments of them are done, so I’m just putting the goal line a little beyond these segments.) Point is, we’ve been starting some new things, and additionally, introducing the new ideas built into them.
Funny thing happens when a new idea is introduced: people generally have an aversion to it.
This aversion could be expressed as rational thought, and it’s almost a danger that these aversions are so logical; sometimes these negatives are enough to delay one’s embarkment onto a project, which is fine if your aversion is due to prudence and further research, as long as the emotional element of a rejection stays behind with the rejection itself.
Here’s the issue: there’s risk to everything. Everything has the inherent ability to fail. Nothing is a 100% success. The point of criticism isn’t to think about the negatives, it’s to make the negatives non-existent while continuing to focus on the positives. I don’t think I know anyone who finished something while focusing a majority of their time on the negative aspects of any given project.
What T.N. said is true: Initial rejection is an extremely important part of the creation process. Initial rejection stops everyone who isn’t willing to push beyond.
Every idea, every product, every world-changing thing you have in front of you faced rejection at it’s most vulnerable moment: right now.
— J.R.
What it’s Like to Work in Magic
It’s been a good 7 years or so since I first started working with Magicians. When I tell people, I almost always get asked the generally bewildered, “wow…what’s that like?”
It's pretty damn special, I'd say but it's a much harder than any artistic medium I've ever worked with.
That's a sweeping generalization, I agree. I can’t help but point out Magic as an outlier in the performing arts, I realize I am heavily biased because I’m spending a disproportionate amount of time with Magicians with aside from designers and filmmakers. In my observations over the years and being the quiet spectator at many heated “definition of Magic” debates, the similarities and differences are starting to surface more distinctly about why working in the field of Magic is so different from other performing arts.
Here’s my small attempt articulating what's a stake when working in Magic by observing the motivations of a Magician and their metaphoric cousin, a Comedian in effort to illuminate the obstacles at hand and what is gained when performing in a spectacular, yet equally unforgiving discipline.
The Intention to Perform
The Comedian
I heard a comic once say that a good Comedian exposes the truth in clever ways. This is a great reinforcement of a general evolutionary psychology theory that laughing is how Bonobos ⎯ one of our closest animal relatives ⎯ respond to the stimulus of learning something. Sure, those are monkeys and we’re the evolutionary marvel of the Earth’s history ⎯ how dare you claim we still act our primitive ancestors! Well, it’s because we kind of do. It’s the reason Seinfeld is the most successful and longest running comedy shows ever. The premise is 4 friends just going through their everyday life in New York City and the punchlines are these self-aware moments of insanity about the nuances of everyday interaction. It’s a show about nothing, yet it exposes the truth that underlies our day-to-day that we overlook. When we recognize this truth, we laugh; the more the truth resonates, the harder we laugh – the more we learn about ourselves.
Ever see a bad comic? A kind of innate rejection occurs that often manifests as a biological response, like gut twist of empathetic anxiety or an eye roll, maybe a squirm of visceral shame. When Comedy sucks, it’s painful, much like when you’re sitting through a disingenuous moment but when Comedy is good, the high from a good laugh is delightful and addictive.
The Magician
A Magician practices exposing the truth and then bends that truth right in front of you. When experiencing magic the Magician leaves the audience with a choice: do you accept the limitations of your reality or will you, for a moment, believe mine?
To fool people in a way that they’ll enjoy it is a bold way to live. To not be the ‘Asshole Magician’, as Derren Brown says, you have to fool them in a way that doesn’t feel deceitful or malicious but wonderful, which makes it even harder. To make matters worse, not only are you bending reality for the audience, you have to be confident enough to believe that what you’ll show them is presumably better. Basically, you’ve got to be quite the cheeky, charming son-of-a-bitch that people won’t hate.
This is why when you see bad magic it momentarily destroys your soul of joy and wonder and it leaves you empty, betrayed and annoyed. It takes a lot out of people to be open enough to trust a Magician to deceive them in a way that will be worth it. A bad effect will not only extinguish the audiences’ trust, they will carry the impression that anyone who shows them a variation of that same effect will also be terrible. A Comedian may have a bad night and ruin a delivery of a joke but jokes can be reshaped, recycled and recontexualized. A Magician shows a terrible trick, that trick is now a symbolic experience for the audience because the significance is placed in the subjects they manipulate, whether it be objects or even people. The next time that same audience encounters that same trick in a different presentation, there’s a good chance the bad taste of that memory will rear itself. This memory flavors the experience, the skepticism brews in their mind and it’s the responsibility of the Magician to make sure that this effect will turn the ever-present skeptics into believers, even for a second. Sometimes, that’s all it takes.
That moment is what we do it for. It’s what all of those hours of obsessing over details, practice and mania over ‘perception’ in all its forms amount to. And when it really works, the practitioner will even surprise themselves.
Let’s not forget that Magicians, sadly, are not super humans with extraterrestrial abilities; if they were, this whole thing would be a lot easier to do. It’s the fact that these skills even appear to be otherworldly in quality and at the end of all of it you realize, they’re just a person like anyone else but with very, very niche interests. As humans, we have very serious flaws in perception and cognition and we all are naturally prone to them, this is why things like misdirection and optical illusions are so powerful when done right. To create a moment of “magic” is to use these cognitive processing limitations to our advantage to create something seemingly impossible. A Magician, in spite of these cognitive limitations, must successfully manipulate the perception of their audience to see something different, knowing they won’t be able to perceive their method ⎯ this a little more than an act of confidence. It takes a very specific kind of person to be sure enough about their ability to defy the crowd’s perception and impress a new reality upon them when they themselves have the same limitations.
Underlying all the theory, technique, charm and the inevitable pretentiousness, we’re all a bunch of monkeys gathered around each other watching another monkey show us how to open a coconut with a rock. We laugh, scream and run away and back again as we realize that we’ve all played with rocks before but not like this. This is new and astonishing and now we’ll never look a rock the same way again. Maybe, we learned something about ourselves or how the world isn’t always as it seems.
-- H.A.
THATS IT. THATS THE POST.
— J.R.
“Magicians guard an empty safe.” - Jim Steinmeyer
Dear Reader --
Why do many magicians enjoy the idea of picking locks?
There’s a strong connection between the practices of security and magic. Z.Y. has made some comparisons between a mentalism effect where a mentalist gains private information to use during the course of an effect, and a criminal gains similar private information to use during the course of a con. I mean, I’ve definitely put/taken things from pockets only to give it back/reveal it later. With these sort of use-cases in mind, a person might argue that magicians are just about the most pacifist white-hat community out there, using wildly deceptive practices all for the purpose of a “magic trick”. To that, I say, well, yes, we probably are.
"Maybe we guard an empty safe just because we like to look inside it every once in a while?"
Then the question I’m still asking myself is why the hell we’re still so interested in hardcore thievery practices like picking?
Realistically, so few of us are going to work on an escape act that uses these actual principles, but yet somehow there’s enough demand for their to be an upcoming picking event at a well-known magic society in LA (the inspiration for this post). Dude, none of us are ever going to use these skills realistically, except maybe, maybe, to get back into our own houses or boxes if we lose our keys. But hey...maybe that’s enough?
Or maybe it’s enough for us to be using our hands for the simple practice of unlocking something, just like practicing something with sleight-of-hand gives us the satisfaction of being able to unlock an idea or presentation previously unattainable without said mechanical practice?
Maybe we guard an empty safe just because we like to look inside it every once in a while?
Or, we could just be strange.
-- J.R.
P.S. -- Probably just strange.
Dear Reader,
Why do people like Mind Readers?
This is a question I’ve asked myself many times -- it speaks to a human condition to hear and be heard for who we truly are, unbeknownst to others... a desire and danger to share our earnest secrets with someone else -- a showtime confessional.
Vinny DePonto explores his response to this question in his latest promotional video. He’s a stand-up guy doing some good work:
The video is extremely poetic and visually beautiful. For some reason, it also reminds me of the closing of a poem, Desiderata by Max Ehrmann: “...With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.”
Cheers,
-- J.R.
We were having a discussion regarding ______ ______ and its presence within the following acts of these three performers: Javi Benitez, Jeff McBride, and Shin Lim.
So we ask you, dear reader, magician or not, some of the questions we were asking each other (which will be discussed in a later post) -- What are some of the similarities you find within these three acts (whether it be in theme, presentation, etc.)? Is one type of framing/presentation more effective or engaging than the other? Do the specificity of the props change the end result (effect/story) of the performance for you? Could you imagine the magicians interchangeably performing the other’s magic equally, or do the performers themselves fit/belong to one type of prop, or magic, more than the other?
-- J.R.
Dear Reader --
The Spring of 2017 saw our founding as the Four Suits Magic Collective. At our very inception, our core team consisted of magical thinkers/practitioners who all approach magic from a similar perspective. We collaborated remotely at first, staging some performances at Uptown Bourbon in New York City and creating a traveling seance show (currently under its second iteration), with some of us collected at different cities across the United States, spanning from New York City to Los Angeles. In the Summer, deciding to continue work together in person, our East Coast team members travelled across the country by car, visiting various magic establishments along the way.
One notable visit during this trip would be with some of the folks at the Chicago Magic Lounge (one of the most forward-looking and promising magic venues in the country, in our opinion) where we look forward to performing at as soon as we get our act together (get it? “act”? Ha. ha.) (….. ) Another notable stop would be at the residence of a promising young sleight-of-hand mechanic, D.R., one of the best we’ve ever seen, who we look forward to further collaboration with in the future. It was great to see old friends and make new ones during this mini epic of a road trip.
Arriving in Los Angeles, our core member group would find more time to meet in person, as well as meet other groups and individuals in magic. We regularly attended the Monday and Wednesday “Night Jams” where many magicians would meet to share ideas and otherwise collaborate (shout out to Jeremy and Byron, respectively, for heading those up), in addition to the never-ending sessions at the Magic Castle Club (shout out to the whole Larsen family and membership). Some of the ideas we’ve generated this year have ended up in front of some people in magic we very much respect, such as in JAMM #11 of Andy’s “The Jerx” (world-class magic creator and 2016 Tarbell Award Winner) and with our very first product, the MO Wallet, listing on Penguin Magic online (one of the largest magic distributors worldwide), not to mention the friendships we’ve made with other magic creators in Los Angeles and places along the way.
We would’t stay in LA for long, traveling to Magic Live and other magic-related conferences throughout the Summer season (also Art of Play's warehouse party in the Fall). In the Fall, some of us travelled to NYC to stage The Woman Illusion, a play that Four Suits Magic produced and provided magic consultation/performance for. The full-length gender-based theatre and magic performance was greeted to sold out audiences at Theater for the New City on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
Returning to LA, in addition to performing our magic at Black Rabbit Rose, the new magic bar & lounge in LA by The Houston Bros., we begun to shift some of our energy to magic on the screen, and have begun production on a series of magic vignettes for distribution later in 2018. In the spirit of putting more of our magic on television/online, at the very close of the year, our team received an invite to audition for Penn & Teller: Fool Us’ 5th season.
As we take this moment to reflect on 2017 and look forward into 2018, we aim to audition for said show, to generate more meaningful on-screen magic, to continue our performance & creation of new material & products, to visit and/or compete at the following conferences: Magic Live (Nevada), PCAM (California), and Cardistry Con (Hong Kong), to continue creating and performing momentous magic at an expanding list of venues in greater Los Angeles, and, most importantly, to keep making friends, collaborators, and magical experiences along the way.
We hope to see you soon.
We are Four Suits Magic,
J.R. Z.Y. T.N. H.A.
Dear (Magical?) Reader --
Hey, you know those little circles that are tied up? (This is a post explicitly for a specific subset of magicians, btw) It blows my mind how little actual literature/instructional video there is on the usage of them. I was in The Library the other night, and found literally three instances of instruction. One was a DVD that included a lot of direct variation/riffing of Mesika’s work, another was the classic Mesika work with Finn, and another was a simple, but cool, idea on a card-change by Justin Miller. Counting another instance I found of a Morelli lecture, and that Guerilla’s DVD that came out way back, there’s been surprisingly little innovation on the usage of these items since the time they first dropped.
What’s the answer to this lull, you say? Well, we’re releasing an instructional .PDF on the matter, at the same time probably restructuring our “commerce” section of the site to be specifically for magicians/those invested in the art, so that we can better serve the interests of those who come here specifically for how-to magic material, and those who come here for entertainment or our other services.
Happy New Year!
-- J.R. + The 4SM Team
Dear Reader --
We're out of the office until the New Year -- Finishing up some old projects and starting some new ones. Here's to magic!
Cheers,
The 4SM Team.
Dear Reader --
Happy Thanksgiving! Be thankful to your pursuits today, and finish something you've been putting off, then start something new. Also, hug a magician.
Cheers,
The 4SM Team.
Dear Reader --
Last weekend we hit up the Art of Play warehouse party / Buck twins birthday, and it almost felt like a small scale magic convention with all the familiar faces that were there. It was lovely to see old friends and meet new ones, if you met us there and are reading this now, cheers. Some thoughts that keep sticking in my mind after I’ve had some time to reflect on the experience: Cards. Puzzles. Quality. These three words describe Art of Play to me.
Puzzles: The puzzle element I was very surprised by, in regards to how compelling these puzzles were. I suppose it’s the magician side of us that sees something hidden or obscured and wants to find out the secret. If you have any sort of puzzle itch yourself, I highly suggest you check out their inventory, they stock a number of really fascinating and unique puzzles from creators all over the world.
Quality: The quality of their products is insane. From everything to their goods, to the mechanics of the space (hello hidden-bookshelf door, private poker/whisky room, etc.), to their ideology, everything was done so thoughtfully. I had a brief conversation with Dan, and it was very clear that this result was not by happenstance, he has a very focused vision of what this company is and what they do.
Cards: H.A., who was scouring the card racks in the warehouse, had an insightful comment on how she primarily felt drawn to the decks that we had some personal connection to, such as knowing the creators or designers. Personally designed playing cards represent a manifestation of your own aesthetics, and I think it’s absolutely remarkable that we’re able to go from idea to completion with a deck of cards, easier than we were ever able to in history. Now, more than ever, a deck of cards has become a statement of personality and identity. From Jeremy Griffith’s Vitreous playing cards, Omar Renfro’s Red Stripe, the cards, themselves, tell their story. And when placed into your hands, tell yours.
What's your magic story?
-- J.R.
Dear Reader,
Do you know how, in movies, whenever the entire human race is threatened by some cataclysmic world-ending event, everyone puts aside their own ego, politic, and self, in order for the greater good?
At the risk of appearing overly sappy or optimistic, this is exactly how I feel about the magic community as a whole. Here we are, all strangers, that met one day in the pursuit of creating something that, ostensibly, exists only in our heads. We create weird plots and effects, craft gimmicks that could pass as some otherworldly artifact, play dress up to unending degrees of strange, spend hours staring at our hands in a mirror, all for the purpose of creating a fleeting magical moment in an as-yet-undetermined person’s thoughts. Sometimes our ideas don’t even leave our living rooms: we’re in love with the process as well.
I think we, those who take a vested interest in magic, belong to an increasingly special, supportive community. Rarely do practitioners of such great disparity in experience or skill share their literal secrets, their life’s work, careful tradecraft, all for the simple goal of sharing what they know to benefit others. This is why I find the magic community to be such a special place, and why I wax poetic about it today. We’ve been around for thousands of years, all for us to arrive at this very moment, and continue to create new, fun, and mesmerizing experiences for those around us. Thank you for being here.
-- J.R.
Blogging means writing. Writing means using my hands. Fractured my finger this week, so no post this time around.
-- J.R.
Dear Reader,
We take today to shamelessly plug our own production: The Woman Illusion which premieres in a handful of days at Theater for the New City, an Off-Off-Broadway space on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, NYC. We hope that if you're in town, you'll catch it!
Brief description:
"The Woman Illusion is a playful, wicked gallery of ways to be a woman. Our small cast uses the magic of theatre, and sleight-of-hand art by Magic Castle magician Jackson "Jax" Ridd to unravel spellbinding everyday acts of femininity from the podium to the bedroom. The result is revolution."
Tickets/Info.:
The Woman Illusion Website
Sincerely,
-- J.R. & P.R.
Dear Reader --
As we recuperate from the festivities at Magic Live 2017, and just Vegas in general, we share with you a list of interesting works you should take a look at:
Film:
The Fall (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460791)
Following (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0154506)
The Sting (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070735)
Catch Me If You Can (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0264464)
Vogue / Magic Diner (https://vimeo.com/149129821)
Literature:
Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman
American Gods - Neil Gaiman
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - Murakami
The Monkey’s Paw - W.W. Jacobs
Dear Reader --
Apologies for being out of the office last Thursday, we were radio silent on assignment.
Starting back up with your regularly scheduled posts today.
Dear Reader --
Welcome to the public face of the Four Suits Magic creative body. On this portion of the site we will discuss ideas related to magic, deception, bending the reality in grand and subtle ways, the duality of belief, and more.
While we won’t be revealing any deep magical secrets in these posts, many will assume some knowledge of different magical methods. Where possible we will point to public resources on these topics, but frequently that search will be left to the you, the reader.
Most of the thoughts here, then, will be about the entertaining, strange, and situational elements of magic, and effects that necessitate extreme or specific circumstance. We hope that our discussion will inspire, or at least entertain, and will help you find your way to stronger, more enjoyable magic, for both you and your participants.