Whereas the two previous posts in this series have been about genres of music, this post is dedicated to the living genius Neil Cicierega, who created the three greatest albums in the world.
Those links aren’t Spotify playlists like the others by the way, those are links to download the albums, made freely available by Neil himself.
Because sometimes you gotta mix it up a bit.
Sometimes the most creative thing you can do is mush two things together. In fact this has been used as a formula for daily topical comedy shows to fill their scripts night after night.
So many media experiences now fall into the X meets Y categorisation, often used in initial pitch meetings. I was going to give a list of examples but FAR more have been collected over on TV tropes.
It’s very rarely used in magic however, and I think this is a real shame because I’d argue this is easier in magic than in any other art form. Look at the effort Neil Cicierega puts into carefully extracting audio tracks, matching tempos and syncing the results together, and that’s after finding songs with similar structures to begin with.
In magic 90% ofthe work is done for you if you use the same prop for two tricks.
I use the same rings in my linking rings routine that I use in my thumbtie, I use my misers dream bucket as a benson bowl, three of my effects use the same little cutout of a paper figurine.
Prop overlaps are only one level of this however. Thematic overlap comes next. Two tricks with one prop is still two tricks. Integrating the narrative purpose of the effects turns several distinct tricks into a single one. This can be explicit such as directly attributing both tricks to the same causal premise or a subtle aesthetic link (but not this one).
The simplest way by far is with the staple of magic the world over: The final load.
Tricks over, but you can produce one final item, and it could be anything. A callback to the first trick, the thing you’re using in the next trick, something which pulls it all together or something totally unexpected.
No footnotes today because this post was meant to go up months ago and I got sidetracked by other projects. Hopefully I can begin posting regularly again soon.