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The Collected Essays of Eugene Burger.

A CLASSROOM DISCUSSION

2

A NEW YEAR?

5

BEING "ME"

6

BETRAYING OUR INTENTIONS

8

BRIEF MEETINGS WITH GIFTS THAT LAST FOREVER

9

CAN YOU TELL ME THE BEST CARD TRICKS?

111

CHALLENGES

133

EDITING OUR SCRIPTS

144

FIVE SECRETS

17

GETTING REACQUAINTED

18

IMAGINATION, SOLITUDE AND CREATIVITY

200

IMPORTANT DISCOVERIES ALONG THE WAY

22

MAGICAL PRESENTATIONS

233

ON IMITATION

25

PERFORMING STUNTS & PERFORMING MAGIC

277

PLAYING WITH DEEP DOWN FEARS

28

REFLECTIONS

300

THE FIFTH WAY: LOST IN CYBERSPACE

311

THE LAST WORDS

333

THE THEORY AND ART OF MAGIC

35

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A Classroom Discussion

by Eugene Burger and Larry Hass

Originally published in Linking Ring magazine

Eugene Burger has created an enviable, world-wide reputation as a superlative close-up magician and
lecturer on both the theory and performance of magic. His television appearances and lectures in England,
Europe and Japan have generated enthusiastic response. What is less known is that he has begun performing
on stage and discovered that his special brand of magic plays just as well on stage as it does at your table. The
very approachable Mr. Burger loves to interact with both magicians and lay people and this quality is very
evident in the classroom give and take discussion which follows.

It is interesting to realise that Eugene is here speaking not to one but to two different college classes which
were meeting together because of his visit to the campus. The first was a studio class in performance magic,
taught by Larry Hass, and the other was a religion class, which was studying the relationship between magic
and religion.

First, let me say something to the magicians in the magic class. One of the challenges of performing magic is
coming up with a way to present it so the sub text isn't about how cool you are.

Further, most magic is presented by magicians as exposition. By that I mean the performer is simply telling the
people what he or she is doing, "I am going to do this, I'm going to do that, now I'm going to do this, now I'm going
to do that." My view is that this is okay for one trick in the show, but a whole show of exposition is just tedious
beyond words.

I'm going to perform the same trick twice. First of all, I am going to do this as exposition: by that I mean that I am
simply going to tell you what I am doing, and then I am going to do it.

(Card Warp, is performed.)

That is how most magic is performed and, again, my view is that it isn’t that this is bad but, rather, that a little bit of
this goes a long way. If I want to make my magic presentations more interesting, what shall I do? I think the best
thing to do is to move into your own life and ask yourself, what is it that interests you? One of my extra curricular
interests is religion. And so I set out to take the trick that you just saw and turn it into something that interests me. I
think the students in the religion class may find this presentation of interest.

I call it "Highlights from the History of Christianity told with a Deck of Cards, Chapter 12, the Spanish Inquisition."

(The trick is performed.)

By the way, I think a whole show of stories would be equally tedious, but one story can make your show much more
interesting.

Question: Where do you get the story?
Eugene: As I said, the best place to find your story is out of your own personal interests. You have to ask yourself,
what outside of magic interests me? The second version I performed, The Inquisition, is a political presentation.
There is a political sub text there. What that trick is about, as I see it, is what happens when we give religious people
political power: they very often want to kill the rest of us. So this is a political statement. If you'd like to incorporate
a political statement in your magic, well then go for it! It seems to me that one of the implications of this
presentation is that we all live in a pluralist world and westerners can't just go around killing people who are
different and seem to get our way. I see that some of you have questions.

Question: When did you first get interested in magic?
Eugene: I fell under the spell of magic when I was about eight-years-old, and it continued until I went to college. In
college, they convinced me that I should do something worthwhile with my life, and so for seven years I did
“worthwhile.” You can do that, but then you are not following your own dreams but someone else's.

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My dream always was to be a magician and so at 39, I decided it was time for a career change. I quit my job and
became a magician. That was in 1978, so I have been doing this for more than 20 years, and I have never looked
back.

This points to a problem with much American education, because you all are encouraged to spend so much time
with things that don’t really interest you deeply, but are what other people tell you should interest you. You know in
life there are offbeat occupations, and then there are more conventional occupations, and many people think the aim
of life is to find some cubicle and work there for 40 years. If that’s what you really want, what deeply interests you,
go for it! My point is that there are also wonderfully weird occupations. One of the things I love about my offbeat
occupation is that every day is different. I really like that. I like the novelty in my life.

So if you can graduate from this place and, during your time here, really discover what interests you, then you've
found something most people in our society don't have. You have found a great treasure.

Question: Who is your favourite magician to watch?
Eugene: I don't have a favourite, but with stage magic I really enjoy Jeff McBride, Siegfried and Roy, and Lance
Burton, and with close-up magic probably many performers you've never heard of.

Question: What about Penn and Teller?
Eugene: Penn and Teller. I'm a real fan of their work. For me, they are post-modern magic. I thought one of their
greatest triumphs was producing the cockroaches on David Letterman's desk. That was a great moment.

Question: When you watch magic, do you usually know the secret to how it's done?
Eugene: Yes, usually, yes. But not always. My friend Max Maven regularly fools me!

Questioner: Then how do you go about judging the magic that you see?
Eugene: Beyond the secret of the method lies the question how well a magician is presenting the magic. How well
are they able to make magic out of that secret? That is one of the main questions I ask myself when I am looking at
another magician’s work.

Question: What did you think about the television show where they were showing how it was done?
Eugene: Well, to tell you the truth, I felt creepy watching the first one. Frankly, however, I think more magic is
exposed by inept performers than by television shows. So if you want to perform magic, you have a responsibility to
do it well. If you're going to do anything, why not do it well? You know, it always amazed me, when I taught in the
University, how many students would rather get a C and say, "I didn't even study for the course," than really study
and get a B. What is that all about? Is it about fear, or magic, or what?

Question: Eugene, I had a question for you about repertoire selection. There's always this pressure on magicians to
buy more and have more and more tricks, how does one go about making these decisions about what should go in
one's repertoire?
Eugene: First of all, I want the magic that I do really to look like magic. Does this look like magic? Or does it look
like I'm just messing around with those cards?

Secondly, there's the great Lutheran New Testament scholar, in the middle of the 20th century, whose name is
Rudolf Bultmann who said that it was important to exercise ruthless honesty when dealing with the New Testament.
What a fabulous phrase, "ruthless honesty." One of the things that's required to be a good magician is to exercise
ruthless honesty and decide what your skill level is, because most magic is exposed when people are trying to do
something that's beyond their skill level.

So the first thing is, does it still look like magic? And the second thing is, does it fit within my skill level? If it's not
in my skill level, then I could practice it, and get my skill level up to that?

Ultimately, however, I don’t think that I have so much “chosen” the effects in my own repertoire. They have chosen
me! They called out to me and I responded.

Question: How often do you invent tricks of your own?

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Eugene: Well that's interesting, because I don't view myself as an inventor of magic at all. I don't invent tricks, and I
don't think that is my gift. That's another thing for you all to find out. What are your gifts? And if you're starting in
magic, what are your strengths? You can sit down and write on a piece of paper. What are my gifts? And what are
my liabilities? It's really important to know that, especially if you're going into a performance art. What are your
gifts?

My gift is not inventiveness. I think my gift is taking a trick that someone else invented and changing it around and
making it mine. The Inquisition effect that I showed you earlier is the perfect example of that. The first version is the
trick that any magician would do, and the second method is what I would do. I would take this trick that's about a
card trick, and I would connect it to something that was interesting to me and my life.

Question: How do you see your persona?
Eugene: A naughty and mischievous Santa Clause.
Someone in the audience: "That's how I described you to a friend, as a cross between Socrates and an evil Santa
Clause."
Eugene: Yes! Give that man an “A”! Yes, that's how I perceive it. This was a good question!

Question: Could you talk about where you see your art form in the future? Especially with respect to a visual
wonder created by visual effects in movie or other technological games which have created a great deal of wonder,
at least the way they're able to do it right now. Is that going to impact on magic's audiences? Are people now going
to watch the "Matrix" instead of going to see you perform?

Eugene: I think in the 21st century, magic is going to move in two different directions, with a few performers
attempting to combine them. On the one hand, a large number of magicians are going to be moving toward bigger
explosions, more fire, more smoke, and more special effects. The other movement is, well, what is the one thing on
this planet that can compete with explosions, special effects and all that? The human personality. The human
personality is the one thing that can stand up to special effects and still be interesting.

The "Matrix" was a delightful film, by the way, but we all know that a special effect on even a large screen is not the
same as one that happens right in your hand. Again it's that personal quality that keeps magic going.

Question: Have you ever, like, messed up?
Eugene [emphatically]: Of course! Sometimes I think the best thing to do is just admit to it, and say, "Look, I'm
sorry, I messed up." Sometimes you can save the day by switching gears, and start another trick that will hopefully
work. But the happy news is, unlike brain surgeons who mess up, all I've done is lost your card. No litigation.

You know, learning magic is like learning many things. You have to fail in order to succeed. I suppose the question
is whether or not you can keep going even if you've made some mistakes. I supposed that there are people who, once
they've been caught the first time, just put their magic away, and take up stamp collecting or some other safer hobby.

Question: When was the last time you made a mistake?
Eugene [laughs]: Last night. No, just kidding!

Question: I watched your performance last night, and I was impressed with the spirit writing piece. The final
message was humorous but, as I was walking out of the theater, there were two girls in front of me, and one said,
"He is so creepy!" And the other said: "I thought I was going to have to leave I was getting so scared."
Eugene [interrupts]: Wonderful! That's the nicest thing any one has said to me all week. Thank you so much, you
have made my day!
Question [continuing]: What were we supposed to think during that trick?
Eugene: What I wanted was, first, to show you that slate writing by the spirits is a pretty weird phenomenon. In the
19th century, slate messages converted more people to the belief of spiritualism than anything the mediums did. It
was the big conversion tool. And though I see this as pure entertainment, I was hoping last evening that I could
evoke a bit of that strange world of spiritualism for you. Second, this idea of communicating with the dead is itself
really strange and, for many, scary. So, if the two girls leaving the show were scared, well then, perhaps I was
successful in touching them.

Question: Do you ever get pulled out of the audience by magicians, or do you pull magicians out of the audience?

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How do you deal with this?
Eugene: I really enjoy performing for other magicians. I pretend that they are not magicians. I pretend they are
simply people who know nothing of magic.
Question: And does that work?
Eugene: Yes. I think it does because, as in any field, there is a wide range of knowledge among magicians. Some
know a great deal, but many, especially those new to magic, don't know very much at all. I don’t deal with them as
magicians; I deal with them as people in my audience.

In another way, of course, magic is different from other fields. If you started piano lessons today, you wouldn't have
business cards printed next week proclaiming yourself a "concert pianist," because you'd understand that you were
still learning the scales. In magic, the there are those who do buy five magic tricks and do print business cards that
say "Magic For All Occasions." And, of course, when the national economy is down, there is even more incentive
for this kind of thing.

Larry Hass [interrupts]: Well, Eugene I think it's about time. We have another class coming in here in just a few
minutes.
Eugene: Oh, that's too bad. I was about to begin the goat sacrifice!

Coordinated for Muhlenburg College by Dr. Lawrence Hass.

A New Year?

by Eugene Burger

Originally published in Genii Magazine

Every so often magicians will tell me that whenever they try to write presentations for their magic, their minds go
blank. Just blank; no ideas at all. I am usually then asked if I ever experience this kind of creative blankness myself.
Of course, I do! I'm experiencing it right now, in fact, as I ponder a subject for this month's column!

Part of the difficulty is that I am writing this in mid-October. Crisp leaves are falling from the trees and will soon fill
Chicago's sidewalks and streets with vivid colors and the sounds and smells of autumn. I've been traveling quite a bit
this year and I am happy to be home for a few weeks because autumn in Chicago is my favorite time of the year.
Even though you will be reading these words in December, with its profound symbolism of stars and light, my
psyche is presently caught up preparing itself for the darkness and mystery of Halloween. This Halloween, along
with Will Rosenzweig and Jay Inglee, I will be summoning "Wine and Spirits" at the Belvedere Winery in Northern
California. I've been busy preparing some new spirit materializations. Not exactly the state of mind to write a Genii
Christmas essay.

Whoops! A self-correcting image just flashed before my mind: I was in Los Angeles a few months ago and stopped
by The Magic Castle for Sunday Brunch. As you probably know, Sunday afternoon is the only time of the week
(happily) when children are allowed in The Magic Castle. I was sitting in the Palace of Mystery enjoying the show
when the performer on stage, the utterly delightful Jim Piper, noticed that one of the children in the audience was
missing a few front teeth. Jim commented, "Well, we all know what you'll be wanting for Christmas." The five or
six year old immediately replied, "We don't celebrate Christmas."

The self-contained little world in which I grew up seems to have disappeared. When I was in elementary school -- a
Chicago public elementary school, I should add -- we always celebrated the Christmas season with a complete seven
act Nativity pageant, including somber readings from the Gospel of Matthew! Once, wearing a bright plaid bathrobe,
I got to play a shepherd boy along with Dennis Minsky, the only Jewish student in my class and one of four or five
in my school. I don't think anyone ever asked Dennis what he thought about all this pageantry -- though we at least
got the ethnicity of one of the shepherd boys right!

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But those days are gone forever. During the 22 years that I have been a professional magician I have observed the
magical transformation of corporate Christmas parties into more neutral Holiday parties -- with everyone evidently
selecting the holiday of their choice to celebrate. These changes reflect our growing realization that we really do live
in a pluralistic world -- a world in which we need to talk and relate to other people without feeling the need to
convert them to our values. Fellowship across differences. Peace among persons of goodwill. These seem to be the
general mottoes for the American "Holiday Season."

Well, if a Christmas essay is out, my next thought for a good subject was (obviously) the new Millennium. Here we
are, facing the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st (which will be but days away as you read this). I
hate to spoil the party but it all depends upon when you begin counting. In calendar reckoning, for example, Jesus'
birthday was December 25 of the year 0, yet probably less than five percent of today's Biblical scholars would place
his birthday in that year. Most seem to prefer 6 to 10 BCE as a more likely date. Some even suggest a BCE birth
year. (The fascinating thing about Biblical scholarship is that no one seems to agree with anyone else about
anything.)

As for the "New Millennium," I strongly suspect that around January or February of the year 2000, the cry will
suddenly arise that we didn't really celebrate the "New" Millennium when the calendar went from 1999 to 2000; no,
no, that transition happens when the calendar goes from 2000 to 2001. In this way, advertisers, marketers, and party
goers will have yet another big party to celebrate at the end of 2000. It should be great for anyone in the party
business. But, honestly, these numbers are all quite arbitrary because they all depend on when we start our counting.

And much the same applies for our basic New Year celebration as well. In the West, we place this in the winter.
Other calendars put the beginning of the "New Year" at different times of the year.

What is interesting to me in all this is not that different cultures start the New Year at different times, but that they
celebrate a new year at all. Yet the fact seems to be that a surprisingly large number of cultures around the world do
look to this idea of a New Year and its symbolism of a new beginning for all life.

Why have we humans come to feel that such ideas are important? Why do we entertain them? These are celebrations
that remind us that it is time to die to the old, to put it behind us, and to awaken to the new, to the gifts and
challenges that await us. The New Year is a time for personal reflection and inner refreshment as we contemplate
where we have been and where we might be going. These, I submit, are important activities for our own sanity --
and so even if there isn't a "New" year in fact, we must invent one to satisfy our deep inner need to move forward.

Will this be a New Year for my magic? Or will my magic simply reflect a thousand yesterdays? Shall I now die to
the old in my magic and awaken to something new? And what would this mean? What would it be to do this? Will
the coming year, 2000, really be a "new" year for your magic! This is the time for each of us to reflect upon such
questions and, more than reflect, be moved to action.

Being "Me"

by Eugene Burger

Originally published in Genii Magazine

Some months ago I received a letter from Rick Cavaliere, a young magician in his twenties, in which he raised two
interesting sets of questions. I’ll save one set for a later column and look at the first group of questions here. Rick
writes: "All books on the subject of magic talk about how the magician needs to be himself/herself. He/She must
find their own personality. I am having a hard time finding my own personality. I feel as though I can be whoever I
want to be and I don't know who that is. I can be funny, serious, witty, theatrical, and kind. I was wondering if in a
performance the magician could wear all these masks. If not, how do we find ourselves and make sure that the self

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we find is someone that others will enjoy?"

To answer the last, rather easier question first, we never know in advance, we can never be sure that the magician
we are portraying will meet with success. It’s a roll of the dice. You organize as many of your dreams as you can
and you hope that others will find what you’ve concocted of value. But we never know how things will come out in
advance. This is why the performance (of anything) requires that we take real risks—which is easy to say in words
but much more difficult to apply in practice. Taking risks requires courage.

But who is this "me" who is hoping to entertain you? Is it the same me that shops at the grocery store and drops his
clothes off at the dry cleaners? Is the me that is standing in front of a group and performing the Burned and Restored
Thread, speaking while I do it about Hindu gods and the creation and destruction of the universe, the same me that
orders food in a restaurant or flags down a taxicab?

Yes and no. It IS the same me since, obviously, it is the same person who is doing all these things. Yet it is the same
person who is now doing a SHOW. When we present a show, we allow only selections of our larger personalities to
be experienced by our audiences. We determine what these selections will be by our individual choices, whether
fully conscious or otherwise. (I say this because I feel the character that many magicians play when they perform
their magic has not been consciously chosen by them at all, but has come about more or less by default—that is, by
watching other magicians and going with the flow by imitating what they see others do.) In this sense, the me that
performs is not quite the same me that might relax with you after dinner. In a performance, I’m focusing on some
aspects of myself and keeping others in the background.

If you’ve followed my train of thought this far, we now come to what I shall call "the rub"—the part where words
meet reality and we don’t particularly like what we hear. Making these decisions, deciding where to put the focus
when the subject is us, is enormously more difficult when the performer is in his or her twenties than when they are
older. We don’t like to hear this because, being raised on dreams of total egalitarianism, we like to believe that
everything is available (at least in theory) for anyone who is willing to work hard to get it.

Yet when ‘I’ work on "me" the waters begin to become muddy. When I was in my twenties, these waters were a
swamp! Honestly, my head was filled with confusions and doubts and worries and all the inner demons that keep a
person from enjoying and feeling alive in the present moment. I’m sure that when I performed my magic in those
days, the "me" that was being put forward seemed just as confused and out of focus as I was!

Am I saying that all people in their twenties are inwardly confused about who they are? Certainly not! I’m only
saying that I think there are more people in their twenties who are confused as I was, and fewer who feel they know
exactly who "they" are.

So I think that age, if one has been attentive to one’s experiences, does have something to do with all this talk about
"being yourself." The truth seems to be that as one grows older much of the inner turmoil quiets down and the
theatrical choices come much easier. Frankly, I didn’t become a professional magician until I was I thirty-nine. By
that time, I had my beard and some sense of who I was (neither of which I had fifteen years earlier) and I found to
my surprise that people were actually willing to GIVE me their attention. Fifteen years earlier I would have had to
push and sometimes fight to get that same attention.

Am I saying that one can’t make it professionally as a young magician? Certainly not. I know several people who
are. But I can’t believe that their lives aren’t much more difficult that anything I encountered starting on my magic
career so much later.

So, Rick, the happy news is that these questions about who we are and how we can be "ourselves" in a performance,
will become easier to understand and deal with as the years roll on. So I would say, don’t get too hung up on them
now.

Here’s the important thing: perform your magic as much as you can. See if you can perform for different types of
persons, different age groups. As you perform, see if you can remain attentive to what is happening. Perform as
much as you can and, as Don Alan always told me, watch their faces. When their faces are happy and smiling, or
deeply moved and mystified, you know that at least some of your decisions have been correct.

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Betraying Our Intentions

by Eugene Burger

Originally published in Genii

M

agazine

While it is true that every moment in a magical presentation is important, it is also true that some moments are more
important than others.

Consider, for example, that moment in a piece of card magic when a spectator is about to return a selected card to
the deck. If you think about it, you will realize that this moment is exceedingly important. I would say that it is a
make-or-break moment as far as creating any sense of magic is concerned. If this moment is handled poorly, I'm
afraid there will be no sense of magic. If it is handled well, the possibility of a sense of magic still remains.

Let's look at this moment, examine it, and see what is involved here. A spectator is about to replace the selected card
into the deck. First of all, you must appreciate the fact that if there are any observant individuals in the audience, this
is the moment when they are intently observing, intently watching what the magician will now do. Sensible people
realize that the magician isn't really going to let that card get lost in the deck! On the contrary, sensible people
realize, when -- and if -- they stop to think about it, that the magician must in some way keep track of (or, as we say,
control) the selected card.

And, of course, they are correct. The fact is that in most card tricks the magician must indeed now do something. In
those effects where a card is selected, the card, in fact, usually now must be controlled (brought to the top, bottom,
or a known position).

So something must now be done. There are two very different questions here. Let's put aside the usually pondered
question of what shall be done (a Pass, a Side Steal, cutting the deck, etc.) and instead turn to the equally interesting,
yet too often neglected, question of how whatever is to be done is done.

How shall the magician do whatever now needs to be done? Here is the question: Shall it be done in a way that calls
attention to itself? In other words, shall we do what we need to do in a way that audience members notice that
something is being done? These, I think, are crucial questions because, obviously, this is exactly what a sane
performer does not want to do! If the audience's attention is drawn to my Pass or Side Steal or my cutting of the
deck or whatever I am doing, then I am afraid all is truly lost. Members of the audience may not know what I did but
they certainly know that I did something -- and any sense of magic is snipped at the bud. These are the cruel facts of
life of close-up performance with playing cards.

From one perspective, as magicians we are in a rather paradoxical situation: we must perform an intentional act
without betraying any sense of intention. Such moments, of course, come into play not merely with card tricks but
with much of the magic that we might choose to do. There are often those moments when something special needs
to be done and yet we must do it in such a way that it is not noticed. We must execute an action yet give no sense
that any special action is being done -- so that our audience never becomes aware of the fact that we are doing
anything at all.

And how shall we do that?

At its heart, I think this really is a question of acting. It is a question of the individual performer's ability as an actor
whose challenging role here involves the necessity of intentionally doing something and yet, at the same time, of
pretending or acting as though nothing at all is being intentionally done. Again, to betray our intentions at this point
in a magic routine is to spoil and destroy the sense of magic.

So, how shall we do that?

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Would you like a single -- or simple -- answer to that question? If so, I shall now disappoint you. Frankly, I don't
think there is a single or simple answer. I think there is only awareness.

First of all, there is the general awareness that we need to cultivate that not all of the interesting and important
questions in magic are questions of method -- questions that deal merely with "what" method or technique we shall
use. Beyond that, we need to be aware that there are also equally important questions of "how" we are able actually
to perform our sleights and moves, the questions of which intentions we actually betray and which we are able to
truly conceal in our performances.

Second, there is the specific awareness of how we are actually handling (specific) moments in some of our (specific)
magical routines. Moving beyond general awareness, I am talking about actually beginning the process of
examining and evaluating whether or not you are betraying your intentions when you actually perform the concrete
effects in your own repertoire -- and then facing the truth of what you discover.

Here, recording your performances and watching them can give you a real picture of what your face is doing as you
perform that Pass, or how your hand is twitching just before you execute your Side Steal, or how you really look
very guilty just before that Double Undercut.

I am saying that sitting down alone and quietly watching your recorded rehearsal sessions and performances,
watching with a specific awareness of what you are doing at specific times, can be a very great help if you are truly
sincere about wanting to grow and not simply move sideways with your magic performances.

Quietly watching what you are doing. Just seeing it. Not being in a hurry to make evaluations or changes but, rather,
first of all, just seeing what you are doing. Simply watching yourself with "ruthless honesty," as the theologian
Rudolf Bultmann used to say. Have you ever watched yourself in this way?

Need I tell you that it requires courage?

Brief Meetings with Gifts that Last Forever

by Eugene Burger

Originally published in Genii magazine

As we travel along life's path, we inevitably meet many people -- and many people meet us. Some of these people
are quickly and easily forgotten. Others remain in our memories -- and in our lives -- forever. For one reason or
another, we never forget them. Some, of course, we remember because our meeting was not what we wanted or
desired. Experiences we do not enjoy are easily remembered. Other people are remembered because their words and
actions had a profound influence on what we later became. From these last, perhaps, we have learned something,
something of value.

Learning something of value from others is not always dependent upon spending long periods of time with that
person. Sometimes brief meetings with certain people have great power over us and our lives -- and so they last
forever.

Let me tell you about two individuals whose words or examples had a deep and lasting effect upon me. The first is
not a magician; the second is.

The non-magician was the philosopher Alan Watts who helped bring Asian philosophy into Western consciousness
in the 1950s and 1960s. You can still find many of his books at your local bookstore. Probably his most famous
book, The Way of Zen, remains a wonderful introduction to Buddhism in general and Zen in particular.

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I met him 10 days before he died in early 1973. How I met him was itself rather magical. I was living with several
housemates at the time and one of them, Marcella, got it in her head that "if you want to meet someone, you should
just do it." Well, we all wanted to meet Alan Watts and knew that he was in Chicago giving a two-day seminar
nearby. Basically, we "kidnapped" him during his two-hour lunch break and took him to our house and had a
perfectly marvelous time with him for about an hour-and-a-half -- and then we returned him.

When you think about it, an hour-and-a-half isn't a long time. Yet this brief meeting had a profound effect on me.
Even though it was 25 years ago, I still remember two things quite vividly. First, Alan Watts was having a grand
time being Alan Watts. We laughed at his stories until our sides hurt. He was an expert entertainer and he was
thoroughly enjoying it.

The other thing I remember was something he said to me: "Sensible people get paid for playing. That is the Art of
Life."

At the time, struggling with a job I didn't especially like, his words passed right over my head. I understood them on
a verbal level, but I certainly did not understand them deeply. That understanding was to come years later, after I
had become a professional magician.

A brief meeting, yes, but its power has lasted over twenty-five years. His words and, especially, the joy that he
seemed to be having simply being himself are gifts that have remained with me through the years.

The other person was the magician Irv Weiner. I first heard of Irv in the 1950s when Holden's Magic Shop marketed
his effect "Soft Dice." The dice were made of sponge in different colors and the basic premise was that, with soft
dice, you wouldn't disturb the neighbors when you and your friends were gambling late at night. It was a clever
routine and I enjoyed performing it.

When I heard about Irv's death in December of 1999, I spent some time reflecting upon the few brief times we had
spent together. And, again, I realized that I had been given a valuable gift.

I suspect that many who are reading this have no idea who Irv Weiner was. That's sad. Though he had been sick and
inactive for some years, in the late 1970s and 1980s, his show, "Mr. Fingers," was one of the top non-music college
programs in the United States. For several years, he received the award for Best Show of the Year. And he greatly
deserved it.

As I said, I spent very little time with Irv -- in Chicago for a few days when he gave a lecture and workshop, and
then at Ray Goulet's shop in the Boston area in the 1980s. Yet, I greatly admired him. Not the least important, Irv
had triumphed over alcoholism. Others have told me stories of how low he had sunk before his recovery. When I
met him, those days were long past. What remained was a sense of positive power. And he wasn't afraid to give his
audience positive messages throughout his show, messages of power and hope. He often closed his show by telling
his audience that his own parents were deaf and he learned to communicate with them using sign language. Then he
taught the audience to sign the phrase, "I love you." Now he performed the "Tom and Restored Cigarette Paper" as
his closing piece, signed "I love you" to the audience -- and got his standing ovation.

There was something elfish about Irv. To me, he was like a leprechaun. He wasn't a tall man and he had a short
white beard. He absolutely sparkled when he was performing. His eyes lit up and twinkled and his smile was
irresistible. It reached across the footlights and touched you.

Before I tell you the great gift I received from Irv, let me tell you something about his show. In one sense, the magic
effects he performed were hardly new and earth-shaking. Irv Weiner was a great testament to "It's not just what you
do but how you do it."

This isn't to say his magic wasn't powerful. It was. He did a very clever book test. He performed a prediction effect
where the prediction was in a sealed can. The college would provide an electric can opener so the can could be
opened and the prediction confirmed. He also performed an effect called "Problems in Dimension," which was a
two-in-the-hand, one-in-the-pocket effect except that the sponges used were different sizes and shapes.

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And then there was his Thumb Tie -- called the "Red Tape Thumb Tie" -- which is probably one of the two best and
most practical methods ever devised for this effect (the other, in my opinion, is Jay Marshall's "Jaspernese Thumb
Tie"). Another of his effects involved a coin vanishing from a folded piece of paper (Irv's handling on the coin fold
was excellent), which appeared in a small nest of boxes that a spectator had been holding.

Max Maven tells me that Irv had an effect where he brought out a jewelry box about 8" by 6" by 1" deep. Irv would
set it on the table, open it, and immediately remove three very tall metal cups for his "Cups and Balls" routine.

When Irv performed the "Miser's Dream" he literally transformed himself. He turned away, rumpled his hair, and
turned back with crazed eyes. He was a miser and now he was dreaming of money appearing at his fingertips. The
acting was wonderful and everyone understood the message.

When we look at these effects analytically, we discover something rather fascinating. Basically, Irv Weiner was
performing close-up magic on a stage before audiences of one to three thousand people. And his audiences were
loving it and voting for him as the best college show of the year!

And that was Irv Weiner's gift to me, a gift given during several brief meetings. Irv taught me -- and, even more
importantly, showed me -- something that was later to be reinforced by my study of the shows of Max Maven and
Billy McComb: You can do close-up magic on stage if the effects are clear and if you know how to do it!

Thank you, Mr. Fingers!

Can You Tell Me the Best Card Tricks?

by Eugene Burger

Originally published in Genii magazine.

I receive quite a bit of email. In fact, I think that we are only at the tip of the future email iceberg--the point where
all of us realize we are getting so much email that the whole process has ceased to be easy, fun and convenient and
has turned instead into a horrible nightmare. Until we hit that iceberg, I will continue to answer the email that I
receive, but I make no promises for the future.

Much of my email is from magicians who are asking questions. Sometimes they ask so many questions I would need
to write a small booklet just for them if I were to answer them intelligently. Often the questions are the same. One of
the recurring questions that has been asked on more than a dozen occasions is this: “Can you tell me the best card
tricks?”

I am reminded of a posting on one of the Internet magic bulletin boards where a writer explained he had purchased a
specific (large) book and asked whether anyone would be interested in splitting the reading of it with hi--so they
could tell each other the best card tricks.

Silly?

Stupid?

Or just lazy?

Since I suspect I will be asked for my recommendation of the “best” card tricks many more dozens of times in the
future, it seems like a good idea to answer this question once and for all here. Eventually, I think we’ll put this
answer up on my website and then I’ll be able simply to refer new email questioners to that place for my answer.
Tidy.

This question, I might add, cuts across age. I have been asked it by fourteen year olds and forty year olds. Many who

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are drawn to the art of magic come under its spell. But, perhaps sadly, some spells need to be broken.

Ready? I strongly feel that there are no “best” card tricks. The notion that there are “best” card tricks is a purely
imaginary idea, a fantastic and fantasy-driven concept, that exists purely in thought, in your head, and not in reality.
If you take it too seriously, the search for the “best” card
tricks, further, can drive you crazy--and destroy the fun and satisfaction that the art of magic might bring you. For
me, seeking the “best” card tricks is a supreme example of climbing the greased pole.

Let’s put this another way: the “best” card tricks are the ones that you can perform to great audience impact and
response. And that “you” is also “me.” The “best” card tricks for me are the ones that I am able to perform to a
powerful response.

I am saying, in other words, that what makes a card trick--or any magic effect--great or the “best” always involves
the performer. Much as I don’t much appreciate the performance of disembodied sleights, I really don’t believe in
disembodied card tricks--that is, card tricks that supposedly exist independently of their performance. A card trick,
of course, can exist as a text in a book with illustrations. Yet, as Alfred Korzybski, the founder of General
Semantics, repeatedly told his students: the map is not the territory. A card trick in a book is very much like a map.
A card trick in performance is the real territory.

Reading card tricks in books, and talking about them with our magician friends, helps us create this illusion in our
minds that card tricks do exist in some real sense independently of their performance. But I think it’s just an illusion.
It’s an example of what Alan Watts called eating the menu instead of the dinner.

Again, this suggests that magic in performance, at the very least, is equally about the performer and not simply
about the card trick in isolation. I have seen even very simple card tricks produce a tremendous response
(sometimes, a much more tremendous response than I even imagined it could receive!). Why? Simply because the
performer knew the card trick so well that it was presented in a way that made it a very special--and powerful--
experience the audience.

The “best” card tricks for me and the ones that fit (1) my personality and performing style, and (2) my range of
technical expertise with cards. Attempting to perform a card trick beyond my technical competence is very much
like walking into quicksand. There is no magic; only disaster. Yet this is something that we sadly see all too often.

How did I find these “best” cards for me? Today, my answer may not be wholly pleasant to many readers: I found
them through study and experimentation!

I studied magic books when I was young. I experimented with the things I read. Other magicians showed me card
tricks and sometimes, really rather rarely, I experimented with them as well. Of the probably thousands of card
tricks I have experimented with over the years, only a very few have made it into my performing repertoire. Those
that did were the ones that “called” to me in some way.

The idea that card tricks can “call” to us isn’t as spooky as it might first appear. During an Olympic television
broadcast some years ago, an athlete, who was proficient, in several sports was asked how he finally decided upon
the sport in which he would compete. He replied with breathtaking brevity: “I let the sport choose me.”

In much the same way, the magic effects in my repertoire have chosen me and I have responded to their call.
Consequently, and this is the important point, they are all card tricks that I genuinely love to perform. The
performance of any of the card material in my repertoire really does bring great pleasure to me, the performer. When
that powerful connection between card trick and performer happens in the context of a performance, we can talk
about “best” card tricks.

Do I think there are “bad” card tricks? Well, that’s another story.

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Challenges

by Eugene Burger

Originally published in Genii Magazine

The famous historian Arnold Toynbee, writing earlier in this century, saw the great sweep of world history as a
series of challenges and responses. How our ancestors responded to the various challenges put before them, in other
words, in large measure has determined the course of our history. While Toynbee did not convince many historians
that all of history could be understood in this way, challenge and response does seem to be one of the major paths
for our own individual growth. As we know from our own experiences, sometimes the best stimulus for own our
growth is a good challenge -- a challenge to which we respond in new and creative ways. Saying this, let me know
offer you two rather interesting challenges.

VISUALLY CHALLENGED

I received a letter some time ago from Tim Wallace, a magician who is legally blind (but is able to see things that
are very close to him). Tim wrote to me because he is interested in finding magical material that he might be able to
perform for other blind individuals. It's an interesting challenge, don't you think?

I wrote to him telling him about my own experience a few years ago with a blind audience member. While I was
appearing at Cafe Royal in Chicago in the early 1990s, a blind young man came in with a group of sighted persons. I
didn't realize that he was blind until I joined the group at their table.

What did I perform? First, I performed my Sponge Ball routine. I began by giving the single sponge ball to the blind
man so that he could feel it. I then started the routine narrating what was happening. I used the blind assistant for the
final stage of the routine, where the spectator discovers twenty-two sponge balls in their hand. My blind helper
seemed thoroughly delighted when he slowly opened his hand and began feeling the balls expanding.

I followed the Sponge Ball routine with the Mullica Wallet, again narrating what was happening. Then the Cecil
Lyle Paper Hat trick. Here, he was able to feel the papers as well as the finished hat. I made a second, different hat
for him.

As I was putting the second hat onto his head, a thought flashed before my mind. I forced a card on one of the
sighted persons and then asked my blind assistant whether he thought the selected card was red or black -- kicking
him gently under the table with my foot on the appropriate word. He caught on instantly. Needless to say, the
sighted people at the table were dumbfounded when he finally revealed the card. We did it several more times (using
different card forces!) and the effect on those present became weirder and weirder.

My blind assistant became a Friday night regular at the restaurant. He would come in with different groups of
friends and he genuinely seemed to enjoy fooling them when he became the magician who was able to divine their
selected playing cards.

When thinking about material to present before non-sighted audiences, we must first make a basic division. The first
situation would be one where ONLY blind people are present in the audience. The second performing situation
would be one where both sighted and non sighted persons are present. In this second case, obviously, the range of
possible effects is greater since those present who are sighted can verify certain things during the performance and
keep the proceedings fair and "on the up and up."

Here's my first challenge: perhaps you would like to spend some time thinking about what you would do if you were
performing for non sighted (or sighted and non sighted) audiences. If you come up with some good ideas, do send
them to Tim Wallace directly. Because of my travel schedule, don't send your thoughts to me; it will only delay
things. You can write to Tim Wallace at 3860 N. Electric Avenue, San Bernardino, CA 92405. Or, you can email
him at: [e-mail].

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VERTICALLY CHALLENGED

Over the past year, watching magicians in various parts of the United States and Europe perform their card tricks, I
have become aware of a rather strange situation. It happens quite frequently. Basically, the magician is sitting at a
table with other magicians doing card magic. Suddenly, the performer stands up to perform the next effect. Why did
the performer suddenly stand up?

Invariably the answer is that the next card trick requires an Elmsley Count -- and the two basic handlings for that
sleight (the finger tip method associated with Dai Vernon or the handling where the cards are held in a Mechanic's
Grip associated with Ed Marlo) do not work very well when the performer is seated. Both methods, in fact, provide
better viewing for the performer than they do for audience. Hence, the performer stands up so that everyone can
better see the faces of the cards.

Yet, the fact that the performer suddenly stands up is strange. Why not continue the show sitting? (The answer is
that it puts a terrible strain on the performer's wrists which observant spectators can easily detect!)

Here's the challenge: why not learn to perform this useful and popular sleight holding the cards with their faces
toward the spectators? For all our endless magical talk about "being natural" the NATURAL way to display four
playing cards to a person sitting at a table across from me is to hold them vertically, so the faces are toward the
spectators.

Can the Elmsley Count be performed with the cards in this position? Certainly, it can! To do so usually requires
adjustments in our routines (because, among other things, the performer is seeing the cards in a different way) but I
believe these adjustments -- and the thought required to make them -- will help us create more deceptive card magic.
Will you accept this challenge?

Editing Our Scripts

by Eugene Burger

Originally published in Genii Magazine

When I reflect upon most -- and I do mean most -- of the bizarre magic performances that I have seen over the years,
one sad similarity comes immediately to mind: most of the scripts performed needed a great deal of editing.
Sometimes for grammar and sentence construction but always for length. Too many words! Too many words before
something happens and, especially, too many words after the magic has happened.

This is particularly unfortunate since, for most attempts at bizarre magic to succeed, the story which surrounds the
magical effect must itself be an engaging story and one that is well told by the performer. Overwritten stories
quickly destroy any real engagement. Yet for many magicians the editing process -- which might transform their
overwritten stories into stories with real power -- seems itself to be a thing of great mystery. Many magicians don’t
seem to know where to begin.

Let’s begin with something utterly basic: I think that good writing is always the result of rewriting. Don’t expect
what you write to have much merit when you first put it down or type it out. The important thing is to get your
thoughts down on paper -- and then to start playing with the words. It is at this stage of working on a script that I
experience the deepest enjoyment from my involvement with magic. Here, for me, is where the real joy appears. I
repeat: Good writing is rewriting.

There is an old Chinese proverb that "One showing is worth a thousand sayings." Consequently, rather than talk
about the editing process, I thought it might be instructive for you to see an example of a real edited script from my
own work. If you compare the first script with the second, I think you will begin to see how I work when cutting

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down a script that is too long.

The effect that I have chosen is one that I have been intently working on recently. It is from Bob Neale’s thoroughly
enjoyable book, Life, Death and Other Card Tricks. This book, I must add, is filled with marvelous examples of
how to meaningfully connect card magic with existential, life and death stories. Even if you were never to do a trick
in the book, a careful reading of it will teach you a great deal about how to connect your own words in a
presentation with your actions.

When I read his effect Thirteen at Dinner, I immediately decided that I wanted to develop this off-beat version of the
Six Card Repeat into a performance piece of my own. I spent a great deal of time reading and studying Bob’s script
and then set about writing a version of my own. At first, I used much of his phrasing. I wrote the first version out
and then began editing it. When I was finished, I (mistakenly) thought that I was finished! Here is the first script that
I finally developed.

THIRTEEN PEOPLE AT THE PARTY

Adapted from Robert Neale’s, Thirteen at Dinner from Life, Death and Other Card Tricks (Seattle: Hermetic Press,
2000)

Superstition is a fascinating subject. First of all, just what is superstition? Mostly, I suspect, it is a label we use for
other peoples’ beliefs -- beliefs that we find find objectionable. But superstition can change a person’s life in ways
that can never be imagined beforehand.

Using these playing cards, let me tell you a story about a superstitious woman. We’ll call her Mrs. Smith. Of course,
she didn’t think of herself as being "superstitious." Superstitious people never do.

Mrs. Smith invited some of her young, lively, red-blooded friends for dinner in the private dining room of an
expensive restaurant. As they were being seated, she looked around and counted the number attending. On her right
were one, two...six. She was number seven. And on her left she counted eight, nine...thirteen. Thirteen people at the
party! That would never do! Frankly, the number thirteen gave Mrs. Smith the creeps.

A bit embarrassed, she asked two of her guests to leave. Somewhat fearful of the number thirteen themselves, they
were happy to do so.

Relieved, but still concerned, she counted again. Thirteen! Could she have been distracted? Had more guests
arrived? Now, somewhat confused, she again persuaded two people to leave.

Having kept her eyes open, she knew no additional guests had arrived, but she counted the number present anyway.
Thirteen!

Now she was really frightened. Suspecting her own senses, she asked a friend to count the number of people present.
Please count them aloud onto my hand. There were still thirteen people! So she asked two more guests to leave.

Then she panicked. Was she caught in some hideous, cosmic joke? She decided to leave the party herself!

When she arrived at home she was feeling foolish and guilty. How would she explain her absence to her guests? To
calm her nerves, she turned on the television set and was stunned by the evening’s top news story. There on the
television screen was the private dining room of that expensive restaurant -- containing only ten people...all
blackened by death from food poisoning.


When I finished the above script, I must confess that I felt genuinely pleased with myself. After performing it
several times, however, I realized that it was definitely over-written. If I wanted to perform this quite marvelous
piece of magic for real-world audiences of strangers, I knew that I had to make some changes.

So the task before me was to tighten the script: to tell the same story but to do the telling with far fewer words. The
first thing to go was the wordy introduction. Other changes and shifts will be obvious to you. There is also a change

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in the delivery of the timing of the last line. Here, then, is my revised edited script:

13 AT THE PARTY

REVISED PERFORMANCE SCRIPT

A superstitious hostess invited some of her lively, red-blooded friends for dinner in the private dining room of an
expensive restaurant.

She looked around and counted the number present. On her right were 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. She was number 7. And on her
left she counted 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13...people at the party!

Frankly, the number 13 gave her the creeps, so she asked two of her equally superstitious guests to leave -- which,
under the circumstances, they were happy to do.

(Two cards are discarded)

Relieved, but still concerned, she counted again. 1, 2, 3...13!

She hadn’t noticed any additional guests arrive. Confused, she persuaded two more people to leave.

(Two more cards are discarded)

She was now absolutely positive there were no additional guests, but she counted the number present anyway. 1, 2,
3...13!

Was she caught in some hideous, cosmic joke? She asked two more people to leave...

(Two more cards are discarded; then the Queen)

...and then, frightened, she decided to leave the party herself!

The next day, she was stunned when she saw the morning newspaper. They had discovered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
people in that private dining room -- all blackened by death...

(Display the faces of the 10 black cards)

...from food poisoning.

SOME TECHNICAL NOTES FOR 13 AT THE PARTY

I use a different switch of the packets during the first count from the one suggested by Bob. My switch was inspired
by the one used in Edward G. Brown’s, Wandering Card, in Willane’s Complete Methods for Miracles (London:
Davenports, 1985). This switch makes it much easier to keep the packets square (and not prematurely show the
hidden black cards).

Begin by holding the (17) face-down cards in the left hand. The left thumb pushes the top card to the right and it is
taken by the right hand, with fingers at the top narrow end and the thumb at the inner, bottom narrow end. The card
is then held up so its full face is displayed to the audience.

The left thumb then pushes the next card to the right. Again, the right hand comes over and takes it below the first
card. The two cards are squared by moving them to the left and squaring them against the left thumb. The right hand
then moves away and displays the full face of the second card.

After the 6th card has been taken, the right hand packet moves over the left hand packet and slightly to the left. Two

17

things now happen at once. First, the left thumb pinches the top packet, thereby holding it in place. Second, the right
3rd finger releases its grip on the upper packet and takes hold of the lower packet. In one continuous action the right
hand moves away to display the Queen of Hearts to the audience. The 10 black cards are held squared behind the
Queen. This happens as the performer says, "She was number 7."

After the first two cards are discarded (from the face of the deck), the 15 cards are false counted as 13, with their
backs toward the audience.

I have also eliminated the repeat counting of the cards by the spectator since I envisioned this as a stand-up piece
performed without audience assistance.

SOME FINAL THOUGHTS

You might wonder whether this second script represents the end of the process for me? Am I now finished with the
editing process? Is the script now "set"?

Absolutely not! I fully expect the script to change and grow as I continue to perform it -- and as I change and grow.
In performance, I must be attentive to the reactions each of the lines of the script receives from my audiences.
Which lines are connecting? Which ones are not connecting? These questions go on forever.

And tomorrow, Max Maven is coming to Chicago to spend eight days. I have a strong suspicion that he will suggest
new and exciting changes, not only in the scripting but also in method here described.

Five Secrets

by Eugene Burger

Originally published in Genii Magazine

I am visiting my friend Max Maven in Hollywood, and I told him that I was planning to write a column about
secrets. He immediately (in that terrifyingly bright way of his) directed me to the following quote from the British
social critic Malcolm Muggeridge: "Secrecy is as essential to Intelligence as vestments and incense to a Mass, or
darkness to a Spiritualist seance, and must at all costs be maintained, quite irrespective of whether or not it serves
any purpose."

Last year, I was not surprised when many magicians went slightly crazy (some even ballistic!) over those television
shows that gave away some of our secrets of magic to an audience that was primarily composed of the completely
disinterested.

Now that the uproar has quieted down somewhat, let's talk about secrets.

When I watched those TV specials, I felt kind of dirty, too. But, I didn't personally join any of the movements
against them, for two reasons. First, I felt that all the fuss and protest activities were giving free advertising to the
exposure shows. They were fanning the fire, in the hope of putting it out. And that hope was sincere. But things just
don't work that way.

I was, quite frankly, stunned when I saw the full-page ad in VARIETY sponsored by the Academy of Magical Arts,
the International Brotherhood of Magicians, and the Society of American Magicians. From my perspective, the
people who really benefited from that ad were precisely the people we wanted to make disappear.

The second reason that I avoided joining in these protests is this: In the United States, more secrets of magic are
sadly exposed in a single week's worth of performances by unprepared and unthinking magicians than were revealed

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in all of those dreadful TV shows put together. That's the fact of it. We need to tend to our own gardens.

But sometimes I wonder, what are the secrets of magic, anyway? Are the secrets of magic really about Double Lifts
and forklifts?

Maybe the deepest secrets of magic are so secret that we don't even know them. So, let's look at what I think are
some useful (if offbeat) secrets that perhaps we're in danger of forgetting.

Here's a good secret: Most people really DON'T want to know how it's done, unless they're pushed into that mindset
by a magician who frames his or her work in a confrontational way. When those specials aired, many laypeople told
me that they had started to watch, and soon changed the channel. They realized that knowing too much can take the
fun out of many activities--and magic is clearly one of them.

Here's another secret: An audience isn't simply "there." In a very real sense, we CREATE our audiences through our
own attitudes, words and actions. Let's say you want to perform a piece of magic for a group of people. The words
you use to introduce this will, in large measure, guide the reactions you will get.

Consider these two possible opening lines: "Here's a trick I've been playing with for the last couple of weeks," or,
"Here's a piece of magic I've been working on for the last six months." Do you see the differences? Which
introduction is likely to create more interest, set up a better expectation, and ultimately produce a more profound
response?

Okay, how about another secret: If you broaden the range of your magical reading, you'll also expand your
understanding of magic. (I know, that doesn't sound like it's much of a secret, but judging from what I see around
me, it appears to be a very little known and confidential idea.) My personal suggestion is to use the following ratio:
For every magic book you read that was written during your lifetime, read at least two that were written before you
were born. (If you're a young teen-ager, you're probably better off moving the dividing line to about 1950.)

The reason for this is not because the more recent books aren't as good as the older ones. There are good and bad
books from every era. But it seems to me that most of the time, the recent books that are worthwhile have built upon
a foundation made up of earlier books, and it's worth learning where we've been before we go barreling ahead.

Here's a final secret, and one that's very practical. It's a secret that was difficult for me to apply, and here it is: No
matter how good your Ambitious Card routine may be, if your fingernails are bitten to the quick, the audience will
be watching--and remembering--your fingernails, and little else.

It's not enough to acknowledge this; you've got to DO something about it. And that's a hard thing. I was a
professional magician for over a year before I made this important jump, from thinking to doing.

So, there's a collection of some strange little secrets for all of us to consider. And this is certainly an appropriate
time for that, because as you read this it's October, and my favorite holiday is coming up: Halloween. Wait 'til you
see my nails! nails! nails!

Getting Reacquainted

by Eugene Burger

Originally published in Genii Magazine

A new column with a new name. From one point of view, we generally live in well-travelled ruts, endlessly
repeating our yesterdays, and so the idea of being able to start over again, really to begin anew, is rarely given to us.
From another point of view, every moment of our lives IS already new and change is happening always, forever and

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ever, everywhere—from the farthest star to the seemingly most insignificant cell in our bodies. So which is it?

Well, how you judge these things depends upon your own perspective. It depends upon how YOU are looking at--
and evaluating--them. Much the same is true of our relationship to our magic. The quality of this relationship (or as
we might say, what we "get" from our relationship to our magic) depends to a large degree upon how much interest,
dedication and energy we want to give it. In short, it all depends upon me.

Some time ago, I received a series of questions from Martin Goluchowski who, at the time, was in high school and
doing his senior project about magic. Interviewing various magicians was a major part of his project and I was one
of those selected. I’ve always taken school projects seriously, so I answered Martin’s questions. Then I realized that
Martin’s questions would serve as an excellent introduction of "me" to any new readers.

M.G.: WHAT AND WHEN WAS YOUR FIRST CONTACT WITH MAGIC?
E.B.: My first contact with magic was when I was about six or seven years old and I received a Mysto Magic set for
Christmas. When I was eight years old, I saw Jack Gwynne perform at the Oriental Theater in Chicago and I was
transfixed. From that moment, I wanted to be a magician.

M.G.: WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST MAGIC TRICK?
E.B.: After the Mysto set, I think it was Nickel to Penny to Dime. I was utterly delighted with it and thought it a
very wonderful creation. I performed it hundreds of times, mostly for myself!

M.G.: HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN A MAGICIAN?
E.B.: I’ve been a full-time magician since January, 1978.

M.G.: WHY ARE YOU A MAGICIAN?
E.B.: This is a great question. Frankly, I feel that I was "called" to be a magician in a way not unlike a minister is
called to be a minister. In other words, becoming a magician was something that I needed to do if I was honestly to
fulfill something deep within myself.

M.G.: DO YOU LIKE BEING A MAGICIAN?
E.B.: Like it, I absolutely love it! In 1997, for example, I spent the month of January in California, I had six trips to
Europe (all paid for by other people!) and many additional trips around the US. In 1998, I went to Europe three
times and Asia once. It would be difficult NOT to enjoy it, don’t you think? Plus, and more important, I am now
doing exactly what I want to do in life -- in a society where so many individuals seem doomed to "earn their
livings," as we say, in ways that they don’t find personally fulfilling.

M.G.: WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE MAGIC TRICK AND WHY?
E.B.: Honestly, I don’t have "a" favourite trick. I enjoy performing all of the effects in my repertoire. If I didn’t
enjoy performing them, they wouldn’t be in my repertoire. There is so much magic out there, much more than
anyone could master in an entire lifetime. It is important to me, therefore, that I perform magic effects that I truly
enjoy performing, as opposed to effects I don’t deeply enjoy but think that I "should" do. In my view, what I
"should" do is what I ENJOY performing!

M.G.: HAVE YOU EVER BROKEN MAGICIAN’S RULES?
E.B.: It depends on what you think the "rules" are —and who you think is supposedly in charge of deciding on these
"rules" for the rest of us. Are there any true and eternally valid "magician rules" other than the rule that there aren’t
any rules?

M.G.: HOW DO YOU PERFORM MAGIC TRICKS?
E.B.: This is another good question and one that is crucial for every magician to answer for him or herself.
Hopefully, I perform my magic in a way that that is sophisticated and charming as well as in a way that gives the
individuals in my audiences the sense that I think THEY are very special people and also that I have something
wonderful to share with them.

M.G.: HAVE YOU EVER MESSED UP WHILE PERFORMING A TRICK?
E.B.: Of course! At one point or another, I suppose everyone messes up. I once wrote an entire column on this issue
of messing up. Check out, "What if I get Caught?" in GENII magazine, August, 1995.

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M.G.: WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE MAGICIAN?
E.B.: I really don’t have "favorites." In close-up, I have always admired Don Alan, who was very kind and helpful to
me when I was young, Tom Mullica, Tommy Wonder, David Roth, Juan Tamariz, the late Albert Goshman. Saying
this, I suddenly realize there are many names I have left out. In stage work, I enjoy the performances of Max Maven,
Jeff McBride, Lance Burton, Siegfried and Roy, David Copperfield and, again, the list goes on.

M.G.: WHAT IS MAGIC FOR YOU?
E.B.: This is a difficult question to answer in a few sentences. Theatrically, I think magic is the creation of wondrous
effects through the use of sleight-of-hand, mechanics or some other secret strategy. On a personal, symbolic level, I
think that magic is a deep and even profound art whose symbols and metaphors point toward the power and
possibility of human transformation that can be real for each of us.

M.G.: WHAT IS YOUR PURPOSE FOR SHOWING MAGIC?
E.B.: To give people enjoyment and also perhaps the sense that our universe really is a deeply mysterious place—
and, in the process, to make money.

M.G.: WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM MAGIC?
E.B.: Magic has already given me more than I could ever have imagined. At this point in my life, it is more
important for me to think about what I am giving something back to magic.

M.G.: WHAT ARE YOUR FUTURE PLANS WITH MAGIC?
E.B.: I just returned from living for two months in Los Angeles, rehearsing and then starring in "Hauntings: A
Shakespearean Séance" produced by the Shakespeare Festival/LA. I found that I thoroughly enjoyed performing on
a stage and hope to do more in the future. Beyond stage work, I want to continue doing what I enjoy doing. I love
close-up magic. Every Tuesday night I appear at the Zebra Lounge in Chicago which was purchased by the former
owner of Biggs restaurant where I previously appeared. Most of the rest of my close-up performing work is
appearing at corporate cocktail parties. I have several books in the works, I am very involved with Jeff McBride in
the Mystery School convention. And I hope to continue writing for GENII.

Imagination, Solitude and Creativity

Originally published in Growing in the Art of Magic

Selecting the topics for these [articles] hasn't been an easy task. But I've been guided in the selection by some of the
questions that typically are asked by the magicians who attend the seminars that I've conducted. I began doing small
seminars in January of 1983. I suppose in large part because l had lost faith in the educational value of the traditional
magic lecture format which encourages a lecturer to give a performance instead of encouraging serious exploration
and thinking about magical questions.

Over the years, I've conducted more than one hundred seminars in America and Europe for groups of usually a
dozen or so magicians. I begin by explaining that in a lecture, I get to talk about whatever I choose, but in a small
group, we can talk about whatever you choose.

I then give everyone some time to think and write down the questions that they would like discussed. Some of the
questions are about specific effects or magical techniques, such as forcing or card controls, but most of the
questions, interestingly, are concerned with much more provocative topics such as uncovering our character or ways
of approaching people in close-up magic, and difficult audience members, or questions that concern the business
side of magic.

And almost always one topic appears with surprising regularity. And that topic is creativity. Most serious magicians
want to be more creative with their magic; they don't want simply to be imitators. Most serious magicians would like
to do something magically that is special, even unique. Bur they feel blocked in these creative endeavors and the

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harder one tries to become creative through an act of will power or conscious effort, the more blocked we seem to
become.

And so we ask: 'How can we become more creative with our magic' Is this your question too? May I ask you: Is this
a serious question for you, an important question, a question whose answer you urgently desire, or is this merely a
passing question, a question whose answer you would only store in your head for use sometime later?
The problem with "later," of course, is that it exists only in the head and not in reality. I am convinced that some of
the questions in life require a sense of urgency if they are to be answered at all. And so, I ask you, do any of these
magical questions fill you with. a sense of urgency, a deep desire that you find the answer so that you can get on
with your magic and grow, or are these simply interesting but ultimately unimportant questions? Questions whose
answer wouldn't really make much difference in your life anyway.

As I said on the first recording [of the Growing in the Art tape set], whether you agree with me or disagree with me
is rather unimportant. I'm asking questions, and I'm giving my answers to some of them. I sometimes think of my
writings and even of these recordings as a spiritual autobiography wherein I tell you how I have personally answered
some of the big questions about magic and magic performance. I would therefore find it rather depressing if you
were simply to agree with me.

The questions that we've been asking [in] these [articles] in the last analysis are questions for you to answer in your
own way, according to your own experience and insight. My aim has been to raise a variety of questions that I think
deserve the reflection of all of us who love the art of magic. So, how can I become more creative with my magic?
Where shall I begin?

Since most magical knowledge is transmitted to us via the printed word, and now the videotape, the first thing I can
do is not do what the book or tape says! Sometimes I might try doing what the book or tape says not to do and see
what happens. Just because something is in a book doesn't make it true. With magic books, even, it doesn't always
mean that the author can perform the material!

In the big picture, everybody doing what the books says produces a sameness and monotony that not only begins to
affect our audiences, he also affects us. If I'm just doing what everybody else is doing, if I'm not growing, then I
become affected by the sameness and monotony I see all around me. And thereby, I begin reinforcing those feelings
that I am a dull and uncreative person. And, yes,1 do think that audiences also get this sense of monotony, that
magic is all pretty much the same.

I'm reminded of a story told to me a few years ago in Seattle by my friend Kirk Charles. Kirk was in the audience
watching a magic show, and there was a young girl about ten years old sitting next to him. As one of the acts on the
bill began their Substitution Trunk routine, an effect that the audience had just seen an earlier act on the bill perform,
the little girl looked up at Kirk and said, "Do we have to watch it all again.?" You know, I often ask myself that
very question when I watch magic shows at magic conventions.

The truth is, so long as I am doing what the book says, saying what the book says to say, I am being uncreative and
dull; that is the fact of it. And so, if I want to start becoming creative, it seems to me that one place to begin is with
those books I've been reading and with the routines that I'm trying to learn from them. Try doing something different
and see what happens. You might fall flat on your face; on the other hand, you might discover things that are of deep
and personal value for your magic and also for you as a performer of magic.

My own view, and I suppose it is slightly subversive, is that many of us turn to books in the first place because we
do want to be more creative, and we simply don't know where else to turn.

And we've been taught, conditioned our entire lives, to turn to books for answers. I think that books can stimulate
ideas, but I seriously doubt that we get many important answers from them An author can stimulate us to think, even
to think in new ways, but if there are going to be any important answers for us, these will have to be provided by us
and that means that we will need to begin exploring our own imaginations and our own dreams.

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Important Discoveries Along the Way

by Eugene Burger

Originally published in Genii magazine

It probably won't surprise you to learn that, over the years, I have experienced my own involvement with the art of
magic as endlessly fascinating-and so my enthusiasm for magic is today as intense as ever. As I see it, there is so
much to learn about this marvelous art, so much to study and then to experiment with for ourselves. There are plots
that have not yet been imagined and explored, and there are exciting new methods that are waiting in the future, in
the next clearing along the path. For me, in other words, magic really is a road that has no end.

As I have written, when this thought first occurred to me as a teenager, I found it both sad and beautiful. Every
accomplishment in magic was balanced by the deep knowledge that I would never be able to master all of this art,
not in an entire lifetime. There is simply too much material and our lives are far too short. And so we must make
(hopefully intelligent) choices.

On the way, as each of us travels along our magical pathway making our various choices, if we are attentive to what
we are doing, we sometimes do make interesting and important discoveries about this art of magic, and also
discoveries about the ways in which we might perform our own magic to greater impact and power. With most of
these discoveries, it isn't that no one has ever made them or thought of them before us. It is, rather, that finally
discovering them for ourselves, in this individual way, gives them new power and makes them real for us in a new
way. We can claim them, not as original discoveries, but as our own personal discoveries.

In our mad scramble to devour the newest magic books and videos, we are in danger of sometimes forgetting the
important things about being magicians. The important things fade from our consciousness as we become lost and
tangled in things that are less important. But what is important? And who is to answer that question?

For me, one thing that has steadily grown in importance over the years is discovering certain things for myself,
through my own work and magical experimentation in solitude, and not simply relying on what other people say I
should be doing. Yet, today, this seems but rarely valued in the magic community. We appear much more concerned
with gossip and politics and finding out what is new and what other people think. We look to others to be our
magical authorities. Yet, sadly, if we are always trying to fill our heads with what other people are thinking, there is
little room for recognizing and appreciating our own thoughts and ideas. And without some sense of ongoing
personal discovery, our relationship to magic becomes, at best, second-hand. Putting this in down-to-earth, practical
terms, don't you see that you can learn far more about naturalness when palming coins, for example, if you spend a
day with a coin secretly palmed in your hand than you will learn from reading several books? And if you were to do
this every day for a month, I suspect that your hand will exhibit real naturalness when palming even if you can't
explain everything that is going on in words.

Here, then, are two things that I have discovered through watching the performances of countless numbers of close-
up magicians over the years. Let me state them The first discovery is that most of them, as performers, talk too much
and, other than when giving specific directions to audience members, say very little of consequence.

My second discovery is that most of these performers are going too fast. The vast majority perform their magic at a
pace that is much too rapid. They are in too big a hurry. Performing close-up magic at a fast pace, except in the work
of the few who really can do it entertainingly, is the breeding ground for experiences of confusion rather than
experiences of magic.

I think that for magic to happen at all in performance, at least two things need to hold. First, there needs to be a
sense that what is happening is special. By almost anybody's definition, magic is special: we speak of "magic" when
we are confronted with the amazing, the astonishing, the impossible, the uncanny. Performing too fast loses this
sense that the performance is special.

Second, magic requires focus. If audience members lose focus, the performance become unclear and even confusing.

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We get the sense that anything could have been done by the magician. Impact dramatically drops.

In my work, I want to create a sense of magic in the minds of my audiences. My first concern is to give people the
sense that my performance is special and, by extension, that I am a truly special magician-and even that it is their
good fortune to be able to witness one of my performances. And, need I add, I want to do this without coming off as
an egotistical bore?

Second, I want to perform my magic in a manner that allows my audiences never to lose focus on the proceedings,
so everything remains clear and there is no confusion about what is happening. To do that, for me, has meant
learning to slow down and to treat what I am doing with a conviction that my magic really is important and worth
your time and attention.

How are you relating to your magic during your performances? Is it with the underlying presumption that magic is
silly, trivial, unimportant? Are you performing at a pace where your audiences lose focus and lose the sense that
what is happening here is special?

Magical Presentations

by Eugene Burger

Originally published in Genii Magazine

I suppose there is one question that is asked of me more than any other. It is asked in a variety of ways, but the main
thrust remains the same. The question is this: How do you go about putting together a magical presentation?

My answer is usually a variant of, "If I had a simple answer to that question, I would write a book and tell everyone
the secret of constructing presentations, but the truth is that I don't."

I really don't! If I had, not only would I write that book, but I would also no doubt have a larger and more fabulous
personal performing repertoire of my own.

No, I don't think there is a simple answer to the question of constructing presentations. Well, there is one answer:
"Jump into the water and begin!" But we'll get back to that rather curious answer in a moment.

When I look at the more successful routines in my own repertoire, I see that there was no one simple way or method
by which they were put together. Sometimes, the idea of a presentation came first; but in other cases, the bare
magical effect was the beginning point.

Let me be specific. It may surprise you to know that I have written -- and actually perform! -- four different versions
of the "Torn and Restored Thread." Many readers are familiar with the version I have done on several television
shows where I burn the thread and talk about the Hindu myth of the creation and destruction of the universe,
symbolized by the activities of the gods Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. That version, however, was the second version
that I created.

My original presentation was about vampires -- and I bit the thread with my teeth. I might still be doing that version
today except for some dental work which altered that place in my mouth where I could bite the thread. Suddenly I
found that I could no longer bite thread easily and so, without a presentation, I didn't perform the effect for almost a
year. Needless to say, that depressed me because it is certainly one of my favorite pieces of magic.

Then one day, quite out of nowhere, the thought hit me that I could burn the thread with a candle. A second flash
reminded me of the Hindu creation myth. Then the task was relatively simple: tell the story in as few sentences as
possible and choreograph the words spoken with the effect's action - which is (1) show thread, (2) burn thread, (3)

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ball up loose pieces, (4) put ball on single strand, and (5) show thread restored.

When I appeared in Hauntings: A Shakespearean Séance, in Los Angeles in 1998, the show's writer, Peter Howard,
Max Maven, and I wrote a third script for the effect that would bring it into the theme of the show: the spirits in the
works of Shakespeare. I have since revised that script around the theme of broken human relationship and
sometimes perform it for both magician and non-magician audiences.

You may find the fourth script the most interesting of all because here the effect is performed in silence! This
presentation was written for those performing situations (such as corporate cocktail parties, restaurants, and lounges)
where (1) such serious themes might not be fully appropriate for the happy occasion, and (2) there are more things
than my performance competing for my audience's attention.

While the effect is performed in silence, there is a verbal set-up that goes like this: "One of the things that people
often say to me is that I talk a great deal and, therefore, distract you. And so I would like to perform a piece of magic
without saying anything at all. Well, I do need to say a few things. First, this is yellow cotton thread. Second, this is
an example of pure sleight-of-hand. Third, this is dedicated to the pyromaniac alive deep within each of us." Then, I
smile and perform the effect in silence, but with apparently great concentration on what I am doing. I find that this
silent version can be as strong in its impact in some settings as the verbal presentations.

The point here is not simply that there are many presentations that can be wrapped around our various pieces of
magic, but also that we need to think about the types of places that we perform when we think about the
presentations we might develop.

Here are two concrete thoughts. First, when you start thinking about a presentation for a specific piece of magic,
don't forget that, if you are typically a speaking performer, presenting one effect silently may give your show a new
sense of texture. When you consider the surprising compactness of sound systems today, you might want to think
about adding some music to this silent routine. The image of Andrew Goldenhirsch, a magician in Southern
California, has flashed before my mind. Andrew performs utterly amazing sleight-of-hand with coins silently to
beautiful, almost hypnotic music. The result is truly marvelous because, as we watch him, we realize that magic is a
beautiful art.

My second concrete thought has to do with audio taping rather than video taping. Although I have always been an
advocate of video taping rehearsals and performances -- and have learned a great deal from video taping my own --
there is also a benefit from audio taping. When we video tape, we can be so dazzled by the visuals that we don't
really hear what we are saying. When we audio tape, we have no pictures to distract us; there are only our words.

This is important: As a speaking performer, I deeply believe that my performances (of an idividual trick or an entire
show) should be interesting purely on the verbal level, without the visual addition of the magic tricks. If, through
audio taping, I find that my show moves along and is interesting purely on the verbal level, then I am confident that
when I add the visual effects to the verbal presentations the result will be even better!

Is your magical work interesting purely on the verbal level? Try audio taping one of your own routines, or a Full
show, and find out for yourself. You might discover pauses that don't contribute anything positive as opposed to
moments of silence strategically placed for impact. You might discover that you are endlessly repeating yourself.
You might find that some of those jokes are helping in the big picture. I have a strong feeling that if you do audio
tape your presentations you will certainly discover some things of great value, things that you would not otherwise
have discovered about yourself and how you perform your magic.

So the answer really is to jump into the water -- and begin!

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On Imitation
By Eugene Burger

It was Charles Caleb Colton ( Who was born in 1780 and who died in 1832) who first seems "officially to have said:
"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery."

I have nothing to say about Mr. Colton, but about the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people who have
repeated his statement approvingly. I would say this: Most likely they have themselves been copyists and imitators.
Is it surprising that the criminal doesn't always find his crime offensive?

Let me suggest two axioms upon which we might hang our understanding of the problem of imitation.

This "problem" of imitation?

Don't you think imitation is a problem? On several levels?

There is, first, the problem of imitating the book or imitating the teacher. We do this all the time. We attempt to
imitate what this person or that person, what this book or that book, says we should do. We make the person or the
book our authority. We try to copy what the book says, and, in all that there is little artistic creation - For doesn't
creation involve finding out for myself, discovering this for myself, working with it, playing with different
approaches, refining what I am doing? Do you think creation is copying what the book says?

If the sleight-of-hand artist is attempting to copy anything, it is reality itself; seeking to imitate the action itself.

I pick up a coin from the table with my right hand and place it in my left so that my right hand is free to pick up
something else. When I look at this action with attentiveness, with care, I see what it is to pick up the coin and
transfer it so that I might do something else with my right hand. What I am trying to imitate, in conjuring, is how I,
myself, pick up the coin. I am not trying to copy how Slydini picks up a coin, or how Al Schneider does it, or how
David Roth does it - no, I am attempting to copy how I, myself, do it. And you must look at how you , yourself, do
it. That is what you must imitate: your own action. That is where you begin. I want this other action, this action in
which I do not place the coin in my left hand but secretly retain it in my right, to be perceptually indistinguishable
from the action in which I actually place the coin in my left hand.

Too often, however, we attempt to imitate not the action itself but, as I have said, we attempt to copy what the book
describes or the action of how someone else does it. But the teacher may be wrong, his hands might be much larger
than yours, or smaller. The book might be wrong, not for its author, but for you! There might, in fact, be a far better
way for you; an entirely new and more deceptive approach. You can only find it by yourself - in the solitude of your
practice and rehearsal.

It is, of course, interesting for us, as magicians, to watch and enjoy other magicians, to see and learn how others do
these things. Who isn't interested in collecting such information and experiences? But, after their show is over, you
are not them. You must find your own way.

Second, there is the problem of imitating and copying another performer's presentations, not to mention the
approving jokes one hears about such copying among groups of magicians. When you look at the amount of
presentational copying there is on the contemporary magic scene, don't you think it's a little outrageous?

This is not a problem that is peculiar to magicians. Don't humans generally seem to think it is easier to imitate rather
than to strike out on their own? In imitation there is the promise of security, while in working to find out what is best
for you, as in all self-discovery, and there is always the risk of failure and the pain which failure brings. For
centuries and centuries, consequently, humans have generally opted for copying those they admire. (In this rather
sad sense, Colton's famous quotation has a ring of truth to it.) We opt for copying, I must add, even though this
usually entails stealing the fruits of the admired persons labour.

Here, then, are my two axioms:

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I. Presentation is that point where you put yourself into your magic.
II. Imitation is attempting to put someone else into your magic.

Stated in this way, you can see that imitation must ultimately be a form of chasing the (Ever-elusive) brass ring and
going round and round in the process, not unlike a laboratory rat in a cage.

The truth is that, while you can put yourself into your magic, in the final analysis, it is futile and impossible to try to
put someone else into it. Deep down, it just can't be done. It is an utterly unattainable goal - like the television
housewife's unattainable goal of completely and forever-and-ever eliminating all the dust and germs from her
kitchen.

My point is simply this: Once you stop putting your energy into seeking the impossible, you suddenly have a great
deal of energy to put into projects which you can accomplish - such as making your magic as uniquely you as you
are!

I am saying, then, that the question of imitation isn't simply an ethical issue. It is that, of course It's bad enough not
to have any morals, but not to have any ethics rather reduced humankind to the level of the rutabaga, doesn't it.
Imitation is an ethical question because it usually involves stealing the fruits of another's labour.

More interesting to me, is that imitation is also a theatrical question - a question of impact and the magician's
character or persona, and this point, I am afraid, is very rarely understood by those performers who are so quick to
imitate another performer's presentations. Imitation is a theatrical issue: Do you see that you will always appear to
your audiences as a little awkward and you will feel a little awkward yourself so long as you are trying to imitate
someone else?

Matt Schulien was his own character. He was himself. That was part of his power. Why attempt to imitate someone
like Matt - whom everyone saw as a one-of-a-kind? ( Wouldn't that be like trying to climb the greased pole?) When
all is said and done, you can only be yourself. You have no other choice. Why not put some real energy into this
process?

I have worked to make (Matt Schulien's) cards discoveries my own. In the descriptions, I've attempted to explain
what is involved. But the goal for you is surely not to mindlessly imitate what I do, but to make these fabulous
efforts your own as well. The goal for each of us must always be to perform our magic in our own way.

If we fail, we will end up with a world of interchangeable magicians- something which is already beginning to
flower at many theme parks where teenagers, disguised as giant plastic bunnies and carrots with pre-recorded
voices, perform in major illusion shows.

Common sense will tell you, however, that being an interchangeable magician is just what you don't want to be- not
simply from the artistic point of view, but from the pocketbook/practical point of view as well. Don't you want
people to want you and not just "a magician"? Don't you want people to hire you? Prospective clients are often
funny; Budgets for interchangeable magicians tend to be on the low side whereas, if someone wants you, really
wants you, the rewards will be far greater.

So next time you feel tempted to take the easy way and copy what this person or that person, what this book or that
book, says STOP!

Why try to put someone else into your performance? Presentation, remember, is that point where you put yourself
into your magic. But, then, isn't that the fun - and wonder- of performing?




Copyright 2000 by Eugene Burger and Richard Kaufman

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now know

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or to be invented, without written permission.

This article first appeared in ' On Matt Schulien's Fabulous Card Discoveries ' (1983) Eugene Burger.

Currently in print within the excellent collected writings of Eugene Burger ' Mastering the Art of Magic' Kaufman
and company.

Performing Stunts & Performing Magic

by Eugene Burger

Originally published in Genii magazine

Like many of you, I genuinely enjoy watching magic. Happily, I get to see a large number of magical performances
over the course of a year. Not only are there my students here in Chicago who regularly perform their magic for me,
but also the students who come from all over the world to attend Jeff McBride's Master Classes with which I have
become involved. Then there is the magic that I see at the Magic Castle, which I always visit during my several trips
each year to California. Finally, there are the magicians that I meet in the many cities to which I am drawn here in
the United States and Europe and Asia. I think you get the picture: I really do see quite a bit of magic.

Sadly, much of it isn't performed as magic at all. It is performed as a series of stunts.

I mean by "stunt" something like balancing an egg on your nose or a feather on your chin. Stunts can be a lot of fun.
A stunt is very often performed as an exhibition of an acquired skill. This skill might be something that anyone
could develop if they devoted the time and effort; or it might be a skill that is achievable only by a very few. The
skill, however, is always within the realm of the possible. Further, the very fact of exhibiting the skill is the whole
point-and, in itself, worthy of applause. You have balanced the egg on your nose and there is nothing left but to take
your bow.

Performing magic is different. Magic takes us out of the realm of attainable skills, out of the realm of the possible,
and into the strange world of the impossible: a world where the impossible is made magically possible. There is a
great difference between this and balancing an egg on your nose. If the magician knows when to stop talking,
audience members may even enter this strange world where there is no laughter and applause-or where, before any
laughter and applause, there is that moment of stunned silence which appears when we come face-to-face with
something that we absolutely believed could not be.

To achieve such moments of impact with an audience requires, among other things, that we are able to create a real
sense of importance around our magic. Magic demands a sense of importance. And this is what I find so sadly
lacking in much of the magic that I see performed. Consequently, we must approach this question of how we shall
present our magical effects with great sensitivity and care. We are, after all, talking about empowering people to
leave their analytic mind-sets at the door and to enter, for a brief time, the realm of the impossible, a realm of make-
believe and imagination, where our most basic beliefs are turned upside-down. Without an over-arching framework
of importance, the sense that what we are doing is in some sense very special, there simply is no magic. There are
only stunts.

Have I lost you yet?

I ask you this question because I don't think this is the way most magicians approach the question of how they shall
present their magic before real audiences. Most magicians-and I really do get to see a great deal of magic
performed-seem utterly afraid of presenting their magic in a way that presumes it is important, a way that seeks to
give a sense what we are experiencing here is special. They do their tricks as stunts and they hope for the best.

I wonder why. Do you wonder as well? Why do you think so many magicians-perhaps even you yourself-fail to

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create a sense of importance with their magic, this sense that what is happening here is very special? Why do they
present their magic in a way that suggests, instead, that it is basically unimportant and trivial?

The list of answers might be a long one. Most obviously, if we haven't practiced and rehearsed enough, confidence
is replaced with the worrisome fear of getting caught, the fear that our audience will see through our intended
deception-and, in the process, we will look exceedingly foolish. Informally, the logic goes as follows: "If I make a
big deal out of this trick and it flops, I will look like a jerk. Better to present my magic in a way that, if it does fail, I
won't look too bad." Enter idiotic comedy. Go for one emotion, laughter, and forget the fact that there are many
human emotions that a magical performance might successfully engage.

If you think about it for a moment, it really is strange, if not surreal, to organize our magical performances around
the presumption of failure. Yet, that seems to be what many are doing.

Then, of course, there is the fact the person or character they become when they perform their magic has not been
consciously chosen by them but, rather, it is a "person" which they have become, more or less, by default. That may
sound strange to you, but think about it for a moment. An unpleasantly large number of magicians "develop" their
performing character simply by watching other magicians and, like good little monkeys, take a line here, a trick
there, a moment from someone else and ideas from wherever they can find them. If they have learned their card trick
watching a Michael Ammar video, they often attempt perform the effect as Michael-saying exactly what Michael
said on the video. If they have learned their coin trick from a David Roth video, they attempt to perform it, more or
less, as David Roth. They watch their videos and then they imitate what they see.

And, in the process, magic dissolves into stunts.

So I leave you with a few questions. How can you give your magic a new sense of importance? What can you do or
say-or, more likely, not do or not say-to create in the minds of your audiences the sense that your magic--and you!--
are both very special?

Do these questions even interest you? Do they interest you deeply? If so, what shall you do?

Playing with Deep Down Fears

by Eugene Burger

Originally published in Genii Magazine

I thoroughly enjoyed Lance Burton's recent, third television special. I thought it was his best so far. As Lance
performed one of the effects on the show, my mind was flooded with memories of a moment from my childhood.
The effect was "The Web" -- and the memories which filled my mind concerned my cousin Lorraine and an
experience we had when I was twelve years old.

Coming, as my father did, from a large family, Lorraine was much older than me, probably in her late twenties or
early thirties at the time. Among my family members, I always remember her as being especially positive and
enthusiastic and supportive of "Eugene, the teenage magician." She was always ready to watch "a new one," smile
and laugh and applaud in all the right places and then go on and on about how WONDERFUL and CLEVER I was. I
suspect that Lorraine never doubted that I would one day become a professional magician. In the mad inner turmoil I
remember as my twelfth year, Lorraine was indeed a shining star, and I loved seeing her and performing my magic
for her -- which happened about four or five times a year (depending upon family weddings and funerals).

I think it is important that I tell you that my cousin Lorraine was a successful and highly organised person. She was
the secretary (today, I suppose that we would say EXECUTIVE secretary) to the President of the Canteen
Corporation.

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Lorraine's phobia was spiders. If a live spider happened to come near her, she simply went crazy. There is no other
way to put it. She would scream and sob and shake and exhibit all the borderline hysteria that you might imagine a
person would exhibit whose darkest deep, down fear had suddenly been triggered. She went so crazy that it
sometimes took quite a bit for her finally to calm down and get put the unpleasant experience behind her. Everyone
in the family knew about "Lorraine and spiders" and I knew about it too. In fact, I once confided to Lorraine that I
felt much the same way about snakes.

Enter "The Golden Spider." Created in England, it was an almost perfect magic trick for a twelve year old. I say
"almost" because it did require that you force one of five balls of colored yarn. Not necessarily an easy task for a
twelve year old. (The one text that might have helped me, Phil Goldstein's brilliant VERBAL CONTROL; A
TREATISE ON THE UNDER-EXPLORED ART OF EQUIVOQUE; TECHNIQUES AND APPLICATIONS, would
not be written for another twenty-five years.) The force used, as I remember, was a less-than-deceptive mix of
counting OR spelling the number named OR eliminating OR not eliminating -- in short, a verbal mess.

At twelve years of age, however, I thought much less about the deceptiveness of the force and much more about the
magical payoff at the effect's conclusion -- not unlike today's magicians who think much less about the
deceptiveness of their Double Lifts and much more about what happens magically at the end of the effect. It took me
years to learn that if the steps up to a magic effect's climax are flawed, EVERYTHING is flawed and the effect is
RUINED!

Along with the five balls of colored yarn, the Golden Spider involved a rubber spider which was appropriately
painted gold, a two fold screen with a secret pocket on its back, and an open wooden framework that stood on the
table. The framework had a thread stretched across its center. The golden spider was shown and then hung on the
thread with a pin that was fixed to its underside. The screen was placed in front of the frame, masking it from view.
A ball of colored yarn was "chosen" by a member of the audience and dropped behind the screen (and into the secret
pocket). When the screen was removed, the spider had spun a web that filled the entire framework with that very
color yarn. It was colorful, goofy fun. I loved it.

It was Sunday afternoon and about a dozen relatives from the South Side (my family lived on the North Side) were
visiting us. The house was buzzing with people talking and eating. With perfect timing, Lorraine said, "Eugene,
won't you do a magic show for us?"

Delighted, I went to my bedroom and happily began moving magic tables and props into the living room. As I put
the Golden Spider on one of the tables, "Lorraine and spiders" did flash before my mind. But THIS, I reasoned, was
only a RUBBER spider -- a rubber spider spray painted gold! And Lorraine was sitting at least ten feet from the
magic table. My mind turned to more important questions, such as figuring out what the order of effects might be
that I was now going to perform.

The show began well. Family members are tolerant of twelve year old performers. Later, I discovered they changed
radically and had become much less tolerant by the time I was seventeen.

Time for the Golden Spider. I removed the two-fold screen and displayed the open framework. Everyone was
smiling. But when I reached into my pocket and removed and displayed the Golden Spider pandemonium broke out:
Lorraine went crazy. She screamed, jumped up from her chair and ran sobbing into a bedroom. Several people
followed to comfort her in her time of distress.

The show stopped.

My mother, father and several other family members were very angry with me. "You know how Lorraine is about
spiders," they all said.

"But this was only a RUBBER spider painted gold and it was no where near her," I protested to little avail. I had,
after all, RUINED the afternoon with my thoughtlessness. I felt terrible. The truth is, I LOVED my cousin Lorraine
and I certainly didn't want to upset her in any way. I really never thought that I would upset her simply displaying
that rubber golden spider. But I did. I personally felt horrible and most everyone was angry with me. It wasn't easy
being twelve years old.

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Is there a moral here about taking other people's deep down fears too lightly? I have no interest in preaching to you,
but it is a question that might be worth considering.

Reflections

by Eugene Burger

Originally published in Genii magazine

As I write this, it is the first of September. I have been traveling much of the year and have come home to Chicago
only for short periods of a week or two -- usually to face a small mountain of mail. This time I have been home for
twelve days. Chicago is presently muggy and hot. In a few days I will go to Las Vegas for two weeks where it will
also be hot but not muggy. After dozens of visits, I still find Las Vegas an exciting city.

In Las Vegas, I will conduct two Master Classes with Jeff McBride and also work with Dan Harlan and John
Thompson on a book of John’s magic and fascinating recollections about magic and magicians. These are all
exciting projects for me: teaching with Jeff is always stimulating and surprising, and a book by John Thompson will
be an important addition to magical literature.

You will be reading these words in December. Richard Kaufman tells me that Mastering the Art of Magic, the book
of my early collected writings with Interludes describing my present thoughts on some of that material, will be
published this month -- and suggested, further, that I might want to write about what it was like to reread and think
about these early writings. Perhaps you will forgive me for these personal reflections.

The fact is that, after each of these booklets was published in the early 1980s, I reread it and then put it on a shelf
and didn’t read any of them again until I began work on this project with Richard. As you might expect, the
experience of going back was mixed. On the negative side, there is always the sense that I could have done it all
better. Endless judging of ourselves and finding ourselves wanting. Fortunately, over the years, I have come to see
the utter futility of spending much time in this negative frame of mind.

On the positive side, happily, I thought the booklets held up pretty well over the intervening years, and I enjoyed
reflecting about those years of performing during which the booklets were written.

When I became a professional magician in March of 1978, I turned to restaurant magic because my mind had been
dulled by years of regular paychecks, and I felt, without them, my life would simply involve too much worry and
anxiety. Restaurant magic provided me with the regular paychecks that I craved and also, and much more important,
the opportunity to advertise myself for private and corporate parties -- and get paid for it at the same time!

To be honest, when I began working in restaurants, I really had only the most general idea, derived from observing
restaurant and bar magicians while I was young, how this sort of thing was done. I was to learn my trade on the job,
as it were, but I deeply enjoyed this learning and so those were exciting times for me. I found out what worked and
what didn’t work by trial and error. In the process, I was growing and things began changing.

To give but one example that I discuss in the book, after years of doing restaurant magic, I asked myself the simple
question what I dislike most about this sort of work. The answer was instantly there: walking up to patrons cold and
trying to interest them in a magic show. For me, this was the most difficult and awful part of an otherwise most
delightful performing situation. Then I asked myself why I was doing it this way. The only answer that came to me
was that this is the way all the monkeys are doing it. Since I was being another monkey, I was doing it that way too.
In that moment, I also saw how insane it was! And I vowed, then and there, that I would change things and free
myself from that aspect of restaurant work that I so disliked. And I did.

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I moved to another, more expensive restaurant. When the owner asked, how having a magician in the house
"worked," I immediately replied, "Well, since this is such an upscale restaurant, I know that you don’t want me
walking up to tables like a traveling Mariachi." "Oh no," he replied, "I certainly don’t want that. How do we do it?"

"Simple," I said, "you tell the waiters to tell each of their tables after dinner, 'We have an absolutely wonderful
magician here tonight and he’ll come to your table to do a little show for you. You’ll really enjoy it.'" And that is
how I have worked in every restaurant or lounge since. I would never go back. This scenario makes me much more
special. Walking up to a table cold doesn’t.

People, when they learned about the magician, either said yes or no -- but not to me. I only went to tables that had
made a positive response. Restaurant magic became much more fun. Further, I soon realized that this way of doing
things was better not only for me but also for the restaurant. What any restaurant wants is for every patron to have a
pleasant experience without any unpleasant moments. If people are having important conversations and the magician
appears, they either have to say no to the magician or watch the show when they really would have preferred to
continue their conversation. Having a third person introduce the presence of the magician not only makes the
magician more special, it also removes a potentially embarrassing moment for the patrons (and the magician!).

Honestly, it still amazes me how many restaurant magicians continue to see their jobs as walking up to tables and
trying to sell these strangers on a magic show. If you talk with many restaurant magicians, as I have over the years,
you soon discover that very few enjoy walking up to the tables. Some do, of course, and even find it an exciting and
invigorating challenge, but most really don’t. Most restaurant magicians seem to find walking up to the table an
uncomfortable moment that they hope is over as soon as possible. I understand that feeling because I shared it
myself for many years when I was walking up to tables too. Happily, one day I realized that enough is enough -- and
it was time to move on.

These are the kinds of thoughts that came to me when I reread my early booklets. I realized that, in some ways, I had
definitely grown as a performer over the years. Most important, I think that my respect for myself and my magic has
grown and deepened. Most of this growth, further, came from asking questions, and not simply doing what everyone
else is doing.

Could there be a message in all this for you as well?

The Fifth Way: Lost In Cyberspace

by Eugene Burger

Originally published in Genii Magazine

How shall I learn to be a magician?

This appears to be an exceedingly important question, but one that is seldom deeply explored in our time when the
marketing and selling of magic seems to dominate so much of our thinking about magic. Yet, it is a basic question
and needs to be addressed by anyone who is seriously interested in our magical art.

When I was young, I learned about magic from books and from watching magicians perform, live or on television.
Looking back, I think I learned as much about magic from watching other magicians as I did from the books. Books
taught me about tricks and methods, but observation taught me other things that proved to be much more important
for my own development as a magician. Observing other magicians raised questions for me about how I might
present my own magic.

Observing rude and obnoxious performers, for example, raised questions in my mind about whether that was the
kind of person I wanted to play when I took the stage as the performer. In truth, much of this observation seemed

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essentially negative: I was discovering what I didn’t want to be. Looking back on it, that discovery, when carried
over into action, was a great treasure.

So how shall you learn to be a magician? Four answers seem obvious. First, you might begin reading books about
magic. In the past two hundred years, books have been very important in passing on magical knowledge to
succeeding generations and so it seems rather sad that so many have lost -- and are losing -- the love of reading.

Second, you might begin watching instructional magic video tapes. Frankly, I think that videos are wonderful in two
specific ways: on the one hand, they are the archival records of performers that we can enjoy long after they are
dead and, on the other, magic videos are very helpful in learning particular sleights. Imagine that you wanted to
learn a Shuttle Pass with coins. I suspect that you could read David Roth’s excellent book and still have difficulty
understanding the timing of this sleight. The timing of the move, however, is something that you can see on his
video tape -- and that, indeed, is a wonderful aid for the serious student. For learning complete magic tricks or
routines, unfortunately, video tape learning tends to produce monkey-performers who simply imitate what they have
seen and heard. It gets pretty uncreative and dull.

Third, if you want to learn to be a magician you might seek some personal instruction from a magician you abilities
you respect. Actually, this is probably the oldest method for the transmission of magical knowledge, extending far
back into time before written records.

Fourth, you can watch other magicians (live or on television) and try to figure out what they are doing and then steal
their tricks and routines. This path, however popular it might be, isn’t as simple as one might suppose: I’m afraid
those who follow it inevitably face hassles and problems and -- and perhaps even general “bad karma” in life.

Is there a fifth way to learn to be a magician? I think it is truly fascinating that many involved with magic seem to
believe that there is. This fifth way is to go onto the Internet and try to learn magic from others in cyberspace. I
know quite a few magicians who spend really long periods of time on the Internet, visiting magic web sites and chat
groups. If we asked them what they think they are doing, I imagine they would tell us that they are learning to be
magicians.

But are they? That’s the question I would like to ask you to consider.

Please understand, I have no doubt that the cyberspace student of magic is indeed learning about magic. These
people are quite obviously gathering information, data and knowledge. But are they really learning to be magicians?
I can, for example, read dozens of books about driving a car, and collect hundreds of opinions about it, but does this
knowledge-in-the-head make me a driver? Reading the books and gathering opinions about driving a car may be
very important when I first get behind the wheel and turn the key in the ignition. I may, in fact, have been utterly
lost if I had not read the books (or watched the video tapes). Yet, “knowledge about” something -- whether driving a
car or a simple card trick -- is not direct knowledge. And it is direct knowledge that is needed if one wishes to be a
driver or a magician. Knowledge-in-the-head is never enough.

Unfortunately, the path of trying to learn to be a magician on the Internet really is a path filled with brambles and
thistles. The would-be cyberspace learner of magic faces real perils. First of all, with whom are you talking -- and
what do these people really know from direct experience and not simply from their thoughts about thoughts about
thoughts about magic? Since many on the Internet choose not to use their real names, I suspect it is very difficult for
the would-be learner, who lacks prior knowledge, to wade through all the ideas and suggestions that are offered and
decide which are truly of value.

This difficulty leads us to another: many of the ideas and suggestions that people (who, admittedly, want to be
helpful) give on the Internet to the would-be learner really are dumb and stupid.

A few examples will explain my point. One Internet questioner, on a magic board, asked, “How should I vanish a
card.” Suggestions that were truly meant to be helpful rolled in: a Card Box, a Himber Wallet, a Devil’s
Handkerchief. No one, it seemed, thought it necessary to ask the questioner some further questions before jumping
in with their suggestions -- questions such as, What is the effect you are trying to achieve? How old are you? What
is your present skill level? And perhaps even why are you looking to anonymous people to answer your magic
questions? And the list goes on.

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On another chat group, a questioner posed the following question on Wednesday: “I have a show on Friday night in
three parts: precognition, clairvoyance and telekinesis. Can anyone suggest a precognition effect?” In the dozen
responses that I read, each of which suggested concrete tricks for the questioner, no one told him the truth: namely,
if this is his goal, he was an idiot and, further, he doesn’t have a show! -- though he does seem to have a dream of
one! No one bothered to tell him that two days are certainly not enough time to put a mentalism piece together and
make it entertaining for a real audience. People were kind and wanted to help this questioner but no one addressed a
fundamental issue: an intelligent student of magic does not ask anonymous individuals for new material on
Wednesday to be performed on Friday. And intelligent magicians don’t encourage such thoughtless behavior in
other magicians by suggesting tricks that they might “perform.”

The bottom line for me is this: I think attempting to learn to be a magician on the Internet is filled with perils. Of
course, we are gaining knowledge, information, ideas, theories, data on the Internet, but it all comes without a
“User’s Guide.” It is knowledge without practical wisdom. Without priorities, without a value system in place to tell
me what is important and what isn’t, it is a glut of information and little more.

Do you want to learn to be a magician? Honestly? Come closer. I want to whisper something in your ear: As
opposed to learning about magic, learning to be a magician begins when we close the book, turn off the video
player, turn off the computer and take out our mirrors and cards or coins or whatever -- and begin the real work!

The Last Words

by Eugene Burger

Originally published in Genii Magazine

Questioner: I’d like to begin at the end—since it is at the end or conclusion of a magic presentation that many
magicians lose the impact that their magic might otherwise produce on their audiences. Do you agree?

Eugene: I agree. Without concrete ways to bring our individual magic effects to strong conclusions, our magical
presentations will never produce the power that we might hope they will produce. And I agree with you when you
say that this is where most magicians lose the power their magic might have.

Q: How do you approach the concluding lines in your own presentations?

E: Let’s step back a moment and look at the big picture. Speaking for myself, I view each of the individual close-up
magic effects in my own repertoire as if it were a short play, complete in itself. Consequently, the presentation I
have created for each of these effects has much the same structure: there is a beginning, a middle and a conclusion.
To create a show, I then arrange these short “plays” in some order and connect them with (hopefully interesting)
segues.

Q: You evidently feel that there is value in viewing each of your magic effects as a short play.

E: Yes, I think that viewing the magic effects I perform in this way, as little plays, has been very important for my
growth as a magician in several ways. First, it has helped me see that even close-up magic can be viewed
theatrically. I’m not simply “doing tricks” or stunts. I am, rather, working to engage you in a short, theatrical close-
up magic play -- a play in which I am the star and you and your friends are valued and respected supporting players
in my close-up show.

Q: And the second thing you’ve learned?

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E: Second, it has forced me to work to find a concrete opening and closing line for each piece. Without a strong
opening line, I have lost an opportunity to begin building interest and setting the stage. Without a strong closing line,
I fail to tie things up and, in most cases, to tell my audiences that it is time to applaud. And there is another, third,
thing as well: viewing my close-up magic as short plays has helped me realize that every moment in a magic
presentation must be interesting to the audience. I want there to be no uninteresting or unimportant moments in any
of my magic plays or presentations. This is where many magical presentations fall apart.

Q: Why do you say that?

E: Because many magical presentations are boring in the beginning and the middle—usually because of too much
talking on the part of the performer—and then the magical payoff at the effect’s conclusion is expected to make
everything work, make the effect entertaining. Of course, it doesn’t! If the presentation’s opening and middle are
boring, the effect’s magical conclusion is not going to save the sinking ship.

Q: But it does save the “sinking ship,” as you call it, sometimes, doesn’t it?

E: I don’t think so. Perhaps very rarely -- but so rarely that I don’t think we can count on it. No, what we need to do
is look at our presentations with a great deal of honesty, without self-deception, and ask ourselves if our scripts are
entertaining from beginning to end -- or simply at the end.

Q: Our scripts?

E: Yes, I am presuming that we are working with a script for each of our effects.

Q: But that isn’t how most close-up magicians do it, is it? Most don’t work with literal scripts, do they?

E: I suppose you are correct. Most magicians do not work with memorised scripts and, as I see it, that explains why
they lose much of the impact with their magic.

Q: Why do you say that?

E: Let’s be very simple here. Take something concrete like timing. Do you think that a performer’s timing is
important?

Q: Certainly. Timing can make or break a performance.

E: I agree, but how can we even speak of timing if you have nothing to time? If you give me a concrete sentence we
can ask some fascinating questions about how to deliver it. What word in the sentence should be stressed? Is there to
be a pause in the delivery of the sentence? If so, where shall the pause be? How long shall it last? You see, these are
very important questions for a performer to ask, but they are meaningless questions if you are ad libbing your way
through the effect in a different way each time you do it.

Q: What do you think is a good closing line?

E: First and fundamentally, it tells the audience the effect is finished. After that, it rather depends on what, as a
performer, you are trying to accomplish. Do you want applause at the conclusion of the effect? If so, the final line,
and the way it is delivered, should prompt that applause.

Q: That seems pretty simple.

E: Yes, but it is deceptively simple!

Q: Why do you say that?

E: Because it is simple -- in words. It is simple to say all this but quite another thing to act on these ideas. If one
were to act on these ideas, one would need to begin evaluating the magic that we already perform. We would need
to begin putting concrete scripts together for each piece of magic we perform. We would need to take one effect we

35

already perform and ask ourselves whether we have a strong opening line for this effect, whether the middle of the
presentation is boring or entertaining and whether our final line brings the effect to a definite conclusion. And then,
in performance, we must ask ourselves whether we respect our final line.

Q: Respect our final line?

E: It is not enough to have a great closing line on paper or in our heads if we don’t respect that line in performance.
We might have a terrific concluding line but if, because of nervousness or whatever, we continue babbling on after
we deliver the final line, we have lost the final line’s power. We have failed to trust our final line. So, by respecting
or trusting our final line, I mean that after we deliver that line we allow silence -- or applause -- and stop talking. For
many magicians, this does not seem easy to do in performance: they keep talking and thereby lose the power.

The Theory and Art of Magic

by Eugene Burger and Lawrence Hass

Originally published in Linking Ring magazine

Last month in these pages I presented an overview of "The Theory and Art of Magic" program that was held
at Muhlenberg College during September and October of 1999. This month we begin running a series of talks
drawn from the program with the first of two pieces by Eugene Burger.

As most readers know, Eugene Burger is one of the brightest stars in contemporary magic. He is two- time
winner of the awards for "The Close-Up Magician of the Year" and "Lecturer of the Year" by the Academy
of Magical Arts in Hollywood, California. He is the author of 15 books on magic, including: The Experience of
Magic, The Performance of Close-up Magic, Magic and Meaning (with Robert E. Neale), and Spirit Theater
books that have profoundly shaped the way magicians think about and perform their art.

He has performed magic around the world, and his television credits include specials on ARE, PBS, The
Learning Channel, CNN, and TBS. In October of 1998 he starred in Hauntings: A Shakespearean Seance
produced by the Shakespeare Festival of Los Angeles. In April of 2000, he starred with Jeff McBride in The
Forbidden Secret of Magic at Magicopolis in Los Angeles. Last year MAGIC magazine named Eugene Burger
one of the "One Hundred Most Influential Magicians of the Twentieth Century."

When I began conceiving this program some years ago the first thing I did was call Eugene to see if he would
come to inaugurate it. He enthusiastically agreed, and provided sage counsel throughout the entire
production process. Eugene and Margaret Steele opened the program with a performance-lecture entitled An
Introduction to the Art of Magic. Later in the week he presented the following talk to the campus community. -
Lawrence Hass

The topic today is "Who is the Magician?" I believe that if we look at magic metaphorically and symbolically we get
a surprising answer to that question. This is what I want to explore with you.

I think the central image of magic, the central metaphor, is transformation. And 'I thought it would be interesting to
take an example of something that I think is magical thinking and to look at it specifically to see what is going on,
because all of us indulge in magical thinking at one time or another. All you have to do is buy a lottery ticket and
you are in the midst of magical thinking: All reason tells me that I am not going to win, and yet whenever I buy a
lottery ticket it's the only time I enjoy giving money to the State!

I would like to talk about a person who clearly seemed to indulge in magical thinking and his name was Emil Coue.
Coue was born in 1857 and died in 1926. He was an obscure pharmacist in France. Around the turn of the century
his interests turned to hypnosis and autosuggestion. In 1922, he wrote a rather famous book called Self-Mastery

36

Through Auto-Suggestion. He made trips to England and to the United States and claimed to have effected many
rather remarkable cures for people.

In his book Self Mastery Through Autosuggestion, he encouraged something that is essentially magical thinking, that
every morning you should say twenty times, "Day by day, in every way, I am better and better." What a fantastic
idea! "Day by day in every way I am better and better." What makes it even more magical is that he said you should
say this mindlessly, without necessarily thinking about it, and you should say it twenty times every day. And so you
wouldn't have to be counting, Coue suggested that you take a piece of string and tie twenty knots in it. Then when
you are taking a shower in the morning or wherever you happen to be, all you do is take this string and every time
your fingers hit a knot you say "Day by day, in every way, I am better and better," and you keep going down the
string like that.

What a strange idea! What a strange idea on one level. Of course at a lot of universities people talk about Emil Coue
only to make fun of him, but here's the payoff: I think there is really something sensible going on here. For what you
have to understand is Coue's presupposition. That presupposition is that our mental lives, our inner lives, are not in
balance - that is his premise. And they are not in balance for the following reason: Most of us are caught up in
negative thought.

By negative thought, I mean the chatter in the skull, the little voice in the head that tells me I won't succeed, that I
must inevitably fail, that I couldn't be having any interesting ideas of my own and therefore I have to turn to
somebody else for authority. Negative thought quite clearly limits my possibilities; it limits my action. Again, by
negative thought I mean negative reinforcement, worrying about this or that -- whether I am going to pass the test,
whether I am going to understand the book, worrying about death, my death, somebody else's death, worrying about
money, the past, present, or future.

Fritz Pearls, the founder of Gestalt therapy, wrote about people who play the game of "catastrophic expectation."
That is when people forever tell themselves that things are going to turn out for the worst. That they will never
amount to anything. That the most dreaded and horrible catastrophic fantasies are really going to come true. That
life generally is headed toward inevitable disaster. Well, Coue's idea is this: most of us are already caught up in
negative thought and so his little exercise is really a way of trying to put our inner lives in some kind of balance by
consciously giving ourselves positive reinforcement.

What a strange idea, what a fascinating example of magical thinking! It is thinking that seems to go against all
reason and rationality. Now you might wonder whether this thing works. Rather than tell you that it does or doesn't
work, I would just say that if you find this interesting or of some possible use, try it yourself tomorrow morning. Say
to yourself: "I give myself permission to be powerful." Or tomorrow morning when you take your shower tie those
twenty knots in a length of string and say, "Day by day, in every way, I am better and better." Yes, it is absolutely
indulging in magical thinking, but if Coue was right that our inner lives are already out of balance, and that this is
merely a technique by which we can perhaps begin to put these things back into perspective, then maybe it works. I
think because something is called magical thinking we just assume, thereby, that it doesn't work.

I said at the outset that I think the primary metaphor of magic is transformation. I think you could probably take any
effect of magic and restate it as an instance of transformation; it is a primary symbol of magic. And of course, we all
want transformation, don't we? We grow up in a society where we are constantly being told indirectly that we are
not right, we are too fat, we don't have enough hair, we are too thin, and we grow up learning that we need to make
changes.

I bet if we did an inventory of every student and every faculty member and we asked them, "Do you think you need
some changes in your life?" that everybody would say "yes." How could we not? We have been totally conditioned
in this area. And here we come to what I think is the nub of the human problem: everybody wants change, but
nobody wants to do anything differently. That is a tension with which all of us live. We want to quit smoking, we
want to lose weight, we want to do this and that, but we don't want to do anything differently. Or take it the other
way around: we all October, 2000 want to be different, but we don't want to change anything. So I think that is a part
of the human problem.

I don't think this is necessarily an innate problem. I think that we've been sold a bill of goods about our own
inadequacies so that marketers can sell us products -- grim but true! So magic in our lives is about transformation.

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And in traditional, ritual, or ceremonial magic, one of the key techniques for this is visualization. It is about
visualizing something differently, visualizing it concretely, and Coue is, in a sense, playing the same game. The idea
is that through directed, conscious choice, you can imagine and then actualize a better state and that's magical
thinking.

If that's all true, then I think we can restate the game of performance magic this way: that the performance magician
is telling you that you are the magician in your own life. You are the agent of transformation, your own
transformation, and other peoples' transformation -- the people whom you come into contact with, the people you
love. You are the agent of transformation; you are the magician and that is a fabulous, liberating, and even a little
scary notion, because it puts all of the responsibility back on me. If I want my life to be different, I am the magician
and I must make this happen. If I want a relationship to be improved, I am the magician and it's up to me, I can't wait
for the other person.

So it comes as a great gift, and it is also a kind of shocking challenge because I think many people don't want to be
the magician. They fight it. It's much easier to play the roll in life of the victim, "poor me." Magic says "no more
poor me." It says, "you are the magician, and what are you going to do to make your life more magical?"

A couple of years ago I gave a talk in Aspen, Colorado for the president and five vice-presidents of the Williams-
Sonoma Company. They were having a little paw-wow and I was the novelty speaker for their event. At one point
we 'were discussing how to make the work place more magical. I said there are three magic words that really work
and the first one is "recognition." Recognize people. Recognize people who are lower than you in the power
structure. Say "hello" to them and not just pass them in the hallway. The second word was "appreciation." Overtly
appreciate what people are doing. That's pretty magical when you think about it. And finally "praise." Praise people
for what they do well. I think that if more businesses in America were to adopt these magic words, "recognition,"
"appreciation," and "praise," not only would the work place be more magical, but it would be a lot more fun and
workers would be more productive.

But let me stop there and hear what you have to say....

Question: You were talking the other night about magic as deception. How do you understand the relationship
between magic as transformation and magic as deception?
Eugene:Well, the method of the stage magician is deception, but I think the metaphors and the symbols are
independent of that. It's interesting because there is a principle that magicians hold, or at least some of them, that it
is fun to be fooled. Magicians sometimes put that on their business card. There was a magic bar in Chicago that had
that phrase written on their awning, "it's fun to be fooled." Well, maybe it is and maybe it isn't. There is a marvelous
book by a guy named Loyal Rule called By Grace of Guile, and his whole point in this book is that it's not fun to be
fooled. In fact, it is very bad to be fooled!

Question: You say the symbols of magic, the metaphors, explain it better than deception, but when you get down to
it, isn't magic just tricks? I mean, there is actually a way you do it that isn't symbolic, but it's [only] your
presentation that makes it magical.
Eugene:Absolutely -- magic tricks by themselves are just tricks. But magic is what you are going to do from there
on. I can do a trick for you and the response that it generates in you is "what a jerk this guy is," because perhaps the
whole premise of my presentation is, "I know something that you don't know." That is kind of irritating. Who wants
to be around that kind of person for very long? A person who knows things that I don't know and then rubs my nose
in it. Very unpleasant.

It seems to me the same magic trick that generates that kind of response can generate a very different kind of
response. Why is that? Part of it is people watch magic with two minds. The aim of a magician, if he or she is a good
magician, is to upgrade one and downgrade the other. It is to get you out of the analytical frame of mind so that you
are able to experience this amazing effect. If I'm a good magician, by my definition, I am trying to get you to
suspend your analytic frame of mind. Not for ever and ever, because you need that mind, for instance, when you
cross the street, when you sign up for classes, when you take final exams, and so on. It's not a matter of your getting
rid of something, rather it's about seeing that the human psyche is more than simply rationality.

We tend to do everything in dichotomies. There is rational and irrational, and one of the things that a liberal arts
education teaches you is that irrational is bad or at least not as good as the rational. My view is that the dichotomy is

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suspect. First of all some of the most rational beliefs have irrational elements, and vice versa. But also the
dichotomy itself is kind of crazy.

I think there is another category that we ought to talk about called the "non-rational." The non-rational is not
irrational, it's not counter to reason, it's just different. I think there is a non-rational aspect to life. And I think one of
the things magic tries to do is to tap into that so that you are able to experience wonder. As Aristotle said,
philosophy begins in wonder, even though that was pretty well lost on Aristotle and the later scholastics as well. So
yes, I think the presentation is always the key to creating a sense of magic.

Let's talk, for instance, about the Linking Rings. The way it is usually done is that the magician will bring somebody
up on stage and the kid will constantly fail, and then the magician will link two rings and give them to the kid and
the kid will stand there and try to pull them apart and the magician is urging him on and of course he is going to fail
and that generates laughs. Of course it generates laughs -- at this kid's expense. But when the Linking Rings trick is
presented in that context I don't think any symbols come through or at least that the symbols that do come through
are pretty awful ones. They're about putting people down, having power over people in a negative kind of way,
using other people as the butt of my jokes, for my applause and laughter....

On the other hand when Margaret [Steele] did the Linking Rings the other night, you didn't see any of that nonsense,
and I think there is a greater possibility that people tune into the metaphor of what is going on. Why? Because the
magician didn't get in the way. That's a very hard thing for most magicians to learn, that sometimes we get in the
way of the innate symbols that are already present in our work, and therefore we're never communicating them.

When I say "communicate them," I don't mean that all of this stuff is necessarily taking place on the conscious level.
I think one could watch Margaret's performance of the Linking Rings and one might not have any conscious
thoughts of the separate being joined. But I think that the way she presents it in such a beautiful way, with gorgeous
music, and lovely staging and choreography, I think the symbols have a greater possibility of seeping through to
people. Whereas if I am just getting in the middle of all this and being a jerk, making fun of little kids, and torturing
them psychologically, then I don't think the message gets through at all. So that means the problem for the
performing magician is to have enough respect for what they are performing.

Margaret and I have a dear friend whose name is Max Maven who has a theory that little boys get into magic
because of what we might call character disorders. I'm sure Max has a better phrase here! But this happens usually
just before puberty. Here's this little boy who is powerless, whose parents might be hassling him, whose teachers are
a pain in the neck, whose friends might be problematic as well and this kid is powerless and now he discovers
magic. It's interesting how little boys go through a magic period very often. Not everybody, but certainly a lot more
than you think. This little magic period, some of them get out of it. Others like Margaret and me get drawn into it.
The idea is, here's this powerless kid, eleven or twelve years old. What gives him power? Well, having a secret.

We should talk about the phenomenology of the secret. What does the secret do to a person? Knowing a secret is
power. So we have this little kid who is having all these problems in life, not terrible problems, but problems of
estrangement, problems with parents, teachers and peers. This kid learns a couple of magic tricks, he can make a
coin disappear, and that's power.

Now what happens is that many magicians never get out of that stage. As Margaret was saying the other day, when
they are presenting their magic they revert to being that ten year-old. So the magic they perform is essentially a
power display. And power displays are fine for thirteen year-old little kids, but they are less interesting in twenty-
one year-olds. Knowing a secret is power.... And I have to say that for a long time my presentations in magic were
adolescent power displays too -- probably all the way up to college I bet that's what I was doing.

But after a point it's time to grow up. Then we realize that magic is really a deep art, that there is a great depth to it,
that the symbols are profound. And the symbols have to do not with external things, but with our own lives. Who is
the agent of transformation? Will we make the transformation? Will we accept responsibility for it? Will we become
the magicians in our own lives?

Question: I've been puzzling over something you said earlier about how it can be fun to be fooled in this society
where we have such a long tradition of fighting deception. What Plato had to say about beauty was that beauty is a
sham; it disappears over time. But at the same time, it can serve the function of helping us to find other forms of

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beauty and maybe deception and magic do the same thing. Maybe that's why it's fun for us to be fooled.
Eugene: See, I don't think it is fun to be fooled; I don't think that at all. I think it's fun to have a magical experience,
but if the experience is all about fooling it primarily engages the analytic mind. The analytic mind, whenever it finds
a problem it wants to solve it. So now the magician comes around with this card trick and if the audience is in the
analytic mind then their primary interest is in solving it and figuring out how it's done.

This issue is really about performers and the kind of audiences they want to create. As a magician I create my
audiences. It's not that there's just an audience out there. No. What I do and what I say create the kind of audience
that I have. If, for instance, I start with a trick where I challenge you, where you feel personally like I'm challenging
you, then you're going to be in the analytic mind. On the other hand, if I can put you in a non-rational state, then you
let go of some of your analyticity of trying to figure it out and just have this experience.

For example, you just watch the woman floating in the air and are not concerned with all the wires or pipes or
whatever, but just the sheer beauty of this woman's body floating in the air. That's a rather profound Shamanistic
symbol because it's the Shaman who travels out and floats into this other world. If I'm not in the analytic frame of
mind and if I'm watching the sheer magic of the effect, then it's not about figuring it out, it's about enjoying it, and
letting it speak to me on a number of different levels, both conscious and unconscious. No, I don't think it's fun to be
fooled.

I'd like to say that this has been very enjoyable for me; I know it has been for Margaret also. I'd like to thank Larry
for setting this up; he's been a wonderful host. And thanks to all of you for being here!

Coordinated for Muhlenburg College by Dr. Lawrence Hass.