Module 3- Part 3: “My hands as fast as lightning, my mind as fast as Siberian Tortoise…”
Benji
“My hands as fast as lightning, my mind as fast as Siberian Tortoise…”
I think what I’m about to tell you is the MOST important attitude to keep in mind when working with the memorized deck.
More important than any ‘one’ technique I can show you, more important than your patter,
and yes, more important than how technically ‘good’ you are with the cards.
That attitude is this:
At no point in your performance should it look like you care about the order of the cards.
The minute you do, you’ve already failed.
There’s a couple of reasons I think this is the most important attitude to have.
First, as Eric Mead has pointed out before, the main danger in working with a memorized deck is that the audience can’t shuffle the cards.
Secondly, as Darwin Ortiz has pointed out, whatever YOU treat as important, the audience will follow suit.
Thirdly, the fact of the matter is that you DO care about the order of the cards.
These three factors add up to one thing:
If you’re going to get ‘caught’ on any one thing, it’s the fact you seem to care an awful lot about the order of the cards. And since YOU seem to care, the audience is going to start to care.
At which point, they might start to notice that there doesn’t seem to be a lot of shuffling being done by the audience…
(in other words, factor 3 leads to factor 2 which leads to factor 1.)
And even if your audience doesn’t know exactly what you’re doing, ‘something’ is going to feel wrong and the illusion will be broken.
As Simon Aronson said—there’s a world of difference between not knowing HOW something is done, and knowing that it can’t be done.
When we betray our dependence on the order of the cards, your audience might not know exactly HOW you’re doing what you’re doing—but they’ll sure as heck know you’re doing SOMETHING.
(aka…they’re going to hear the elevator creaking.)
But if we can stop that doubt from ever arising, they’ll swear what you’re doing ‘can’t be done.’
And, as Aronson says, that makes a world of difference.
Now that we know that, we need to do everything we can do make it seem the opposite—we have to make it look like we couldn’t care less about the order of the cards.
If we can, we should also make it FEEL like the audience DID shuffle the cards.
In this module, we’re going to look at specific techniques and tactics to:
- Prevent audiences from noticing that we DO care about the order of the cards
- Make it feel as chaotic and unorderly as possible
Both of these things add up to a very nicely ‘greased’ set of hinges that will ensure the method is invisible to the audience.
The Spanish School magicians are the masters of this.
(With the honorary mention of Lennart Green, of course.)
If you recall the case study we watched in ‘The Coincidental’ in Module 2, you’ll remember that Juan Tamariz opened his performance with a completely nonsensical yet hilarious card trick that involved him crazily shuffling and throwing cards away.
This performance includes one of my all-time favorite ‘lines’ in a magic act:
“My hands as fast as lightning, my mind as fast as Siberian Tortoise…”
The whole thing creates a ‘crazed’ atmosphere that communicates to the audience that, whoever Juan Tamariz might be, he isn’t an ‘orderly’ guy.
He seems like he barely knows what day it is…let alone the exact position of each card in the deck!
It’s also interesting to note how Juan starts by letting the spectator shuffle the cards, however, over the course of the effect he throws away all the cards.
Since all the cards are all over the floor, it makes sense for him to pull out another deck—after all, what else is he going to do?
Well, as we know—he’s now stacked to the hilt!
But because he spent the first few minutes building up the impression of himself as the kind of person who doesn’t care about the order of the cards, we don’t suspect a thing.
After all…is there a better way to prove you don’t care about the order of the cards than throwing said cards all over the room?
Now, you may be (justifiably) thinking:
That’s all well and good, but I’m not in a position to throw away a deck of cards each time I perform.
Don’t worry.
There are plenty of other ways to grease the proverbial hinges of your memorized deck. We’ll be taking a look at them in a moment, but first…
The answer I promised…
Here’s one other concept I want to talk about while we’re on the topic of ‘attitude’ in mem deck work.
As I mentioned in the last module, one of the other most important mindsets to have in place while working with the memorized deck is this:
“You have to be willing to THROW AWAY a miracle…to make that miracle stronger.”
What did Michael Close mean when he said that?
I want you to cast your mind back to EACH of those case studies we looked at it in Module 2.
In each one, there’s a ‘moment’.
A moment where something happens.
Something mighty convenient for the goals of the performer (the card selected, the number, the face-down card pointed to, etc.)
But rather than immediately pounce on that, the performer allowed the spectator the chance to change their mind.
In essence, they gave them the chance to ‘throw away a miracle.’
In doing so, they strengthened the effect by introducing the idea that they ‘could have changed their mind’.
This one little thought is one of the most powerful in all of magic, because it prompts the question:
“What if I had changed my mind?”
This is something Asi Wind talks about in his ‘Repertoire’ under ‘The Trick That Never Ends’.
As he points out, once we can implant that question in the mind of the audience…the trick will never truly end, since they’ll keep on asking themselves that question.
“What if I had changed my mind?”
Here’s an example:
If we once again return to that Juan Tamariz video, watch what happens after both the number and card are chosen.
In both instances, he spends a LOT of time focusing on the fact that the spectator can change their mind if they want to.
“Are you sure you want the Ace of Spades?
Not this card? Not this card?
Are you sure you want 7? Not 22, 31?”
If you watch Juan’s video…he ALWAYS does this.
He never ‘pounces’ when they pick the card/number he wants.
Occasionally, people change their minds—but they very rarely do.
(and since the mem deck is so versatile, we can usually still do an effect with the new card anyway!)
But by the sheer fact that you’ve proven they COULD have changed their mind if they wanted to, the whole thing is made so much stronger.
Here’s one more example:
This is actually the clip that Michael used to demonstrate what he meant by ‘throwing away a miracle.’
If you watch the other case study for ‘Coincidental’, you’ll see that Michael gets VERY lucky in this performance. The participant names a very convenient card…but Michael makes sure to ask him “are you sure?” before revealing.
That one sentence is a huge deal.
Actually, just for fun, here’s one more example:
If you watch practically ANY of the Chan Canasta stuff, you’ll see he was all over this technique. He would constantly be telling people that they could change their mind at any moment.
Indeed, perhaps his most magical moment came when they DID change their mind (the pocket trick.)
Chan was a master at this kind of thing, but I’d wager every mem deck performer could immediately strengthen their routines by making sure to ask ‘are you sure?’
Incidentally, this ties back into what we were talking about earlier.
By giving them a chance to change their mind, you reiterate how little you ‘care’ about any of the cards.
So it also achieves that goal too.
An all-round very powerful psychological tactic that I hope to see all of you employ.
Let’s get into some of the other techniques and tactics to achieve this, along with more stunning effects…