Here are The Magic Memories #45, gone online SUN, 7th November, at 0:07h… and we have only ten more “sessions” to go until the end of 2021. Right now I don’t think I will be continuing this in 2022, so hope you’ll enjoy the ramblings during this final sprint.
Caricature by Juan Luis Rubiales (Spain 2015) – all rights reserved
There is so Much to Do
One of the most interesting questions you can ask in conversation almost anyone, but in particular a creative artist, is what he or she still has up the sleeve, meaning wants to do in life. I’m asked this often as the semi-last or last question in interviews, of which I’ve given plenty in 2020 and 2021, and have always been a bit reluctant to answer. If I tell you the reason, you might find this funny, in the double sense of strange and amusing, but at some point in my life I had read a piece of “wisdom” – can’t remember when and by whom – that goes like this: “Do what you said you would do” (it is in one of the Agendas among the list of “Favorite Quotes”). I then thought, and frankly still do think, that this is a very good and practical piece of advice, and I try to live by it. This is why I’d rather only talk about things I’ve already finished or that I’m so far into, that I know I’m going to finish them.
Recently I’ve been asked again what projects I carry within myself but haven’t yet realized for various reasons. I thought some of you might be interested in that, and perhaps even be motivated to ask yourself that question (and give answers, of course).
So, without further ado, here is my list of the ten things I might do one day:
1. Write a book about 18 magicians I admire. Each of the 18 chapters starts with a portrait I would write about that particular performer, followed by a lengthy interview, followed by one trick, and finished off by one recipe. Then I would organize a convention, where all 18 magicians are present, each do some kind of short talk, a performance together, and of course cook the 18-course-menu for a limited number of attendants. BTW: 18 courses are the standard for a classic menu in Piedmont, Italy (home of the white truffles, Agnolotti, Vitello Tonnato, Barolo etc.).
2. For one year, to invite once a month 4 interesting magicians to my house, for 3 days, and share magic, bread and wine. A “Symposium” in its original meaning. To save you looking up “Symposium”, here it is, from Wiki: ” In ancient Greece, the symposium was a part of a banquet that took place after the meal, when drinking for pleasure was accompanied by music, dancing, recitals, or conversation. Literary works that describe or take place at a symposium include two Socratic dialogues, Plato’s Symposium and Xenophon’s Symposium, as well as a number of Greek poems. In modern usage, it has come to mean an academic conference or meeting such as a scientific conference. The equivalent of a Greek symposium in Roman society is the Latin convivium.” Adapt to magic.
3. Play a Surrealist Magic Game at a convention. The surrealists had come up with a game where one started a drawing, and then the next had to continue it, and so on. A similar procedure could be taken with a trick, or a routine, or an act…
4. Found a Magic City: A city or a village on a hill, with all inhabitants doing magic in some way: collectors, performers, inventors, researchers, with several small theaters, and a large one, a TV and sound studio, all essentially with an artistic vision rather than a commercial one – people who come just to make money would not be admitted.
5. Write a second volume of Sharing Secrets, with the new concepts and “theories” I found since the publication of volume 1.
6. Create a “Magic Wish Book”, similar to those catalogues big department stores used to send out to their customers before Xmas so they could choose and order their gifts. This would be a leporello-style book, with 52 pages (what else?), each page with the idea of a trick that can immediately be performed, as the spectator wishes.
7. Create a video course out of the Card College volumes 3, 4 and 5, similar to those I did for Card College 1&2 (those were produced by Jim Steinmeyer and Frankie Glass titled Card College 1&2 – Personal Instruction). This might be done by the end of 2022…
8. Create and publish a book in a numbered and signed edition of 100 copies, with 50 (or so…) forewords to my favorite 50 magic books and/or fictitious magic books.
9. Write a book titled “A Better World”. I’m very critical, most of all with myself (!), but also with the world around me. Wherever I go and stand, I see things that could be improved. This is a curse and a gift. A curse, because although I consider myself a happy individual, I am so often unsatisfied; a gift, because without this “sense for excellence” I could not have written my books the way they are.
10. Inspired by Jamie Olivers cookbook Five Ingredients that describes easy and quick to do recipies with only five ingredients each, create a book with card tricks that only use five “moves” (The Five Moves Card Book): Dealing, Overhand Shuffle, Riffle Shuffle, Hold a Break, Transfer Cut. Maybe add to that the spreading of cards between the hands and on the table, and it would be The Seven Moves… The actual trigger for this idea, though, did not come from Oliver’s book, which I discovered later, but from an ice cream which claims to contain only five ingredients 🙂
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Wow! That is a very impressive, creative and innovative list! I like all the ideas and I like the idea of coming up with mine!