In the opening essay of Shattering Illusions, Jamy Ian Swiss states:
When you fool the audience you indeed fulfill the essential mandate of your job. But you have in no way come even remotely close to completing the job-much less having done the job well.
Jamy Ian Swiss, “Magic Sucks”, Shattering Illusions, 2002
There must — simply must — be some larger end in sight, or else the audience is merely fooled.
Merely fooled?
Yes, merely, for fooling the audience is, in and of itself, no measure of greatness. A magician who has learned to fool the audience is little more than a musician who has mastered the scales, a painter who has learned his brushstrokes, an actor who has learned to remember his lines and not bump into the furni-ture. It is a beginning. But it is a necessary one. In no other field will an artist even be taken seriously if he has not achieved this most basic technical proficiency. Yet how many magicians have you seen fail to achieve even this much?
His argument is that magicians need to transcend techniques and become more powerful, something larger. Perhaps intentionally or otherwise, his argument aligns with the writings of Eugene Burger.
However that’s not what struck me during my latest reread. What struck me is that the phrase, it’s a fooler, is used repeatedly in the marketing of magic. Using Swiss’ argument, aren’t they saying that this item merely fulfills its minimum requirement? As Swiss says, people are fooled every day. It’s not that hard. Magic needs to be more than just fooling and that is up to us. As Eugene Burger wrote we need to take the effect to the end of the road. We have to answer the question that Eugene often asked, “What do you want your magic to be?”
We must never forget that the details of presentation are what make a trick. And study and thought brings us those details. If you have a trick you like but never do because of some weak or unnatural or illogical part, don’t lay it aside — just begin thinking. What I mean is thinking about that part. You will be surprised how a brilliant idea will crop up and you will be surprised even more that you hadn’t thought of it before. The usual trouble is that we don’t bother to think long enough or hard enough.
Al Baker, “What Makes a Trick”, The Sphinx, Vol.40, No.1 (March 1941)
