So I mentioned in my previous post that my every day carry used to be a Professors Nightmare and I just wanted to share a couple of tips on how to carry a Professors Nightmare setup in a sensible way, so you can keep all the ropes together and lead straight into a performance, in case you wanted to try this liberating process for yourself.
3 Rope Setup
Conventional wisdom for the professors nightmare is that the three ropes are introduced separately in their natural state, usually with an emasculating joke made about the length of the third one. However as a carrying trick this needs to be rethought. Remember I mentioned the notion of compartmentalising your every day carry, having to dig in my handbag to pull out the three ropes separately wasn’t what I would call “a good look”. Even if I set a pocket aside, I would have to pull them out individually and make sure they didn’t tangle and all come out at once and fall on the floor like Giuseppe Stromboli¹.
It’s hard to tie three ropes together when they’re all different lengths… But they all become the same length in the trick. In a standard 3 rope routine they start different lengths, become the same length, then go back again. It’s a loop, so just tie them together when they’re all the same length and run the loop from that point. Starting by untying them, and then ending by tying them up again, up near the top, so the knot hides where the action happens. This has the advantage that you can wear it tucked into your belt like a badass to save on pocket space, and possibly send some very interesting signals in your local gay bar.
2 Rope Setup
Anyone who learns to do the unequal ropes naturally evolves to include more of the professors nightmare type moves typically referred to in modern parlance as Fibre Optics, after the DVD release from Richard Sanders teaching quite a few of these techniques². This addition means you’re starting with 3 ropes, showing them as equal, making them unequal, then equalising them again, before removing one, joining the other two together for a different effect, and having to work your way back to 3 equal ropes to re-tie it. This is a pain in the arse.
Obvious solution: ditch the middle rope.
Less obvious solution: you’re now in a position to present yourself as only having one rope. This one is discrepant so you need to handle it carefully when you take it out and put it away but that’s a small price to pay for the elegance of it, where the long rope is bundled up with the short rope tied around the bundle to hold it together. I’m pretty sure the technique for folding and retrieving this arrangement is on Fibre Optics, but one additional convincer that I apply to it is to make the ends of the rope slightly shorter than the loopy double backs, and when possible, surrounded by them, so that when handling the tied up bundle, the short piece’s ends are the only ends visible. Then casually reach in and grasp one of the hidden inner ends in the bottom of your fist before adding one of the short ends to the same hand when untying the bundle, it should just fall out like a single length of rope and you’re ready to go. I would carry a bundle like this in my handbag, but it will fit in a reasonably sized jacket pocket or belt bag³ quite easily.
1 Rope Setup
There’s a surprising amount of magic achievable with a single rope. I’m not going to list the index of Abbott’s Encyclopaedia of Rope Tricks, but it involves a lot of knots and escapes, which play pretty big for about 4 foot of rope. Also if you encounter scissors, you’re one cut and restore away from having a 2 rope setup, with the option to end by giving them a popped off knot and walking away with your one rope slightly shorter.
Carrying one rope removes the need to keep it together, opening up the possibility to carry it in weird and wonderful ways. you could wear it as a belt in a pinch, nothing throws off a spectator like a magic performer not looking like their imagined conception of a magician. Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin never went on stage wearing tie-dye flares with a belt made of rope.
You could even give yourself a partial shibari⁴ over a sexy outfit. As magic trailers for things like Ringer 2.0 proclaim, “People will ask you about the rope!”
0 rope setup
I know what you’re thinking. Am I seriously suggesting that an advanced way to carry a professors nightmare is to carry nothing at all?
Did you know you can perform the bachelors needle with the electrical cord of any electrical appliance?
You can cut and restore a length of wool or a piece of string or a strawberry liquorice lace. You might not even need scissors. Once you recognise the fundamental properties of your magic props, you can find replacements everywhere.
WWRMD
Myst is a videogame conceived by Rand Millar of Cyan Worlds. It was a point and click adventure unlike anything else in 1993. While every other point and click game had you collecting items to combine in arbitrary and nonsensical ways, Myst gave you nothing. The only thing you collected was information needed to solve puzzles in other areas. Sure you would occasionally have to carry a page or a lit match, but it was all about the information. This trend continued for a number of sequels and even followed Rand and Cyan into modern games like Obduction and Firmament, fully structured point and click games without a single rubber chicken or monkey wrench.
No inventory.
Just knowledge.
The only thing you need to carry every day is yourself.
¹ If you haven’t heard of Giuseppe Stromboli and the Briefcase Full of Meatballs, you’re probably not as terminally online as me.
I pity you.
² I still remember when Richard Sanders’ routine was called 3 ropes and a baby, but I guess it just wasn’t a cool enough name for the street magic renaissance of the early 21st century.
³ I use the term “belt bag” here because the British term is “bum bag” and the American term is “fanny pack”, despite the fact that in both cases the bag is worn at the front and the American “fanny” and British “bum” both mean the buttocks, which are at the back. Even more bizarrely, “fanny” in British means a woman’s front bottom. If anything, we Brits should call it a “fanny Pack”, but “fanny” is considered ruder than “bum”, so that’s never going to happen. I propose both nations sign an accord to call them “cunt satchels” and have done with it. It’s only marginally more offensive than asking everyone to wear sporrans.
⁴ Shibari is a form of Japanese rope bondage which looks remarkably like Romany’s jacket escape. Now I’m not trying to start a conspiracy theory here but in her autobiography Romany talks about all the time she spent with Jeff McBride – who is well versed in Japanese culture. Make of that what you will.