What magic IS, what it MEANS, and the cognitive science behind why it works.
217 posts · 4 categories in this pillar
A thousand posts about magic, craft, and the long journey from a hotel room in an unfamiliar city to stages where real people experience genuine wonder. Cal Newport was right: passion follows mastery. But the journey that produced that understanding was the whole point.
Read MoreInnovation happens at the edges of what is already known — the adjacent possible. Felix's unique position at the intersection of business consulting and magic creates possibilities that neither world has alone. The most interesting territory is always at the border.
Read MoreDaniel Gilbert's research on unexplained positive events producing more lasting happiness than explained ones gives scientific backing to one of magic's oldest rules. The moment you explain the magic, the joy evaporates — and now we know why.
Read MoreRachel Carson observed that knowing the name of every bird does not mean you understand birds. I spent a period collecting techniques with the same misdirected energy — and learned that accumulation and mastery are not the same thing.
Read MoreDaniel Gilbert's research on memory as construction rather than reproduction explains something strange about magic performance: audiences often remember effects more vividly and impossibly than they actually were. Understanding this changes how you design endings.
Read MoreChildren have an indestructible sense of wonder that adults slowly trade away. Magic is one of the few things that can restore it — and watching it happen in a corporate audience is one of the strangest gifts of this craft.
Read MoreHuizinga's etymology: 'illusion' comes from Latin 'inlusio' — literally 'in-play.' To be under an illusion is to be inside the game. The deep linguistic connection between illusion and play.
Read MoreHuizinga's argument that play is not a cultural invention — animals play, play is biological — and Felix's defense of magic against the charge that wonder is frivolous.
Read MoreHuizinga's distinction between the cheat who breaks rules within the game and the spoil-sport who destroys the game itself — and why exposing methods is being a spoil-sport, the deepest violation.
Read MoreHuizinga's Homo Ludens defines play as creating a bounded 'magic circle' — a temporary world with its own rules — and why every magic performance IS a magic circle.
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