Tag: Causal Premise

Posted on

Lady Spade
or She Lives In His Throat

I try to keep my feelers out on the world of the arts¹.

I follow a fair number of comedians, illustrators, poets, writers, and musicians on social media to keep myself up to date with whats going on at the leading edge of the creative world. I’m also in a group called Queer Creatives who meet online every fortnight to learn about aspects of queer media and the arts².

I’m mentioning all those facts upfront as an explainer for how I came across this story of a performance which initially I thought would be great inspiration for a magic act and in hindsight may have simply been a magic act.

The person who posted this gave me persmission to talk about this on the condition that I didn’t link back to them or reveal their identity³.

Continue reading “Lady Spade
or She Lives In His Throat”

Posted on

Outies
or The Severed Floor

It was pointed out to me that the effect presented in my previous post bore a striking resemblence to an effect from The Jerx.

I mean the fact that the effect is Jerx inspired should be obvious by the fact that the password for Nulanima is Jerxian but bizarrely I was actually thinking of a totally different Jerx routine at the time of writing as well as two non Jerx effects.

The differences are so important I think it’s worth revisiting briefly.

Continue reading “Outies
or The Severed Floor”

Posted on

Innies
or The Overtime Contingency

I said in a previous post that I am not a fan of hypnotism. It’s probably the only kind of magic I don’t like.

Maybe also troublewit.

But there’s one kind of magic I love and that’s faux hypnotism.

The kind of trick where regular magic techniques leave you with a sense of missing time or involuntary compliance without the coercive act of actually performing hypnosis.

Of course if you don’t know the difference it might feel similarly violating, which is why I love the premise behind the TV show Severence.

Umm… Spoilers for series 1 of Severence I guess.

Continue reading “Innies
or The Overtime Contingency”

Posted on

The Lost Wonder Room
or It’s an object, one of many

I rather enjoyed the section of my last post in which I listed out moments from film and television which could be ripe for magical effects, and I’ve mentioned one TV show before.

What’s fabulous about The Lost Room as an inspiration for magic is that the core premise is that ordinary looking objects are imbued with strange properties, not the people who wield them, so it sidesteps the whole ego problem of wanting to seem special.

But also the people who end up owning objects from the titular lost room are all weird little freaks, which if you recall is what I want more magicians to lean into.

Continue reading “The Lost Wonder Room
or It’s an object, one of many”

Posted on

F.E.G.
or If Tricks Could Kill

Back in October 2023 I posted a two part intro to what would have been my next post, a video about a trick I had been working on. However upon performing this trick in a magic competition it did not have the impact I had hoped for, a fact that was mostly down to my volunteer selection.

He didn’t get into it, so it didn’t land. I have since performed it again in a different competition and while it went much better, I’m now of the opinion that this kind of magic is kind of wasted on an audience of magicians.

Continue reading “F.E.G.
or If Tricks Could Kill”

Posted on

Linus’ Blanketfort
or Every Day Clutter

A few days ago I mentioned how much I hate the term Organic as it pertains to magic. To re-iterate I get the need for gimmicked props that look natural, like a John Cornelius perfect pen, but somehow nicely engineered objects like that very rarely get categorised as organic. Rather, organic magic tricks are usually pitched at the younger end of the magic market who apparently don’t seem to own anything which costs more than £2.99, so they have to carry gimmicked bottle caps, gum packets and novelty keyrings.

Although the term gets passed around now and again, Organic has been supplanted by the new buzz phrase which if anything I hate even more – though not as much as its three letter acronym

Every Day Carry
Continue reading “Linus’ Blanketfort
or Every Day Clutter”

Posted on

The Toothfairy Act
or an Insight to the Creative Process of a Maniac

A rarity for you all today. not only am I clearing a backlog of old topics by posting 3 times in one day, this post has TWO embedded videos featuring yours truly.

At the start of May I used a new routine I’d been working on to enter my local magic club‘s closeup competition. Within this post you will find a recording of my act AND a separate video giving details of my creative process in coming up with it.

Later today I will post some sour grapes about coming second masquerading as a treatise on creativity.
Continue reading “The Toothfairy Act
or an Insight to the Creative Process of a Maniac”

Posted on

Slice of Lith
or An Acquired Aesthetic

The year was 2004 and a group of cosmopolitan, metropolitan, Neapolitan (we all liked ice-cream) friends invited me to visit them in London, from whence we travelled to Camden Lock Market and I tried on many cool articles of clothing, none of which would comfortably stretch over my corpulent frame. I did however obtain some jewellery made from old circuit boards, all mounted in fixings that turned my skin green. 3/10, should have gone to Cyberdog.

Cyberdog wasn’t really my aesthetic at the time, but what IS an aesthetic?

Aesthetic is often used as a complicated way of referring to a look or fashion style, such as vapourwave, steampunk, goth, bdsm or the cultural appropriation of the Harajuku fashion scene.

Believe it or not this is a continuation of my series on the future and subversion of coin magic, but I’m coming at it from the other direction so buckle in as I explain a little art history.

Continue reading “Slice of Lith
or An Acquired Aesthetic”
Posted on

Go hang a salami, Tenet
I’m a lasagna hog

In the pandemic, when everyone was told to stay home when possible and categorically avoid densely populated enclosed spaces, one absolute maniac decided against all odds to throw caution to the wind and release a movie with a theatrical only release, insisting that the only way to properly appreciate it was on the big screen. He asked people to line up and possibly give their lives to keep the magic of cinema (and the studio stranglehold on licensed screenings) alive.

And four months later I brought the Blu-ray because time is an illusion. You’d think he would know that, given that his previous movie Interstellar was about interacting with the past from the distant future (and also something about love and space).

The movie was Tenet and its a great example of how people go wrong in trying to construct a magic trick with a sensible causal premise.

Continue reading “Go hang a salami, Tenet
I’m a lasagna hog“