Pillar Three — Capture the Excitement

10 posts in this series

Reading Order

1 of 10 — 9 min read

Pillar Three: Why Most Magicians Forget What's Actually Magical About Magic

I performed an effect that should have been extraordinary and the audience barely reacted. The problem was not the effect. The problem was that I had treated the most magical moment as if it were no big deal -- and the audience took my cue.

2 of 10 — 8 min read

The Frame of Reference Problem: Your Audience Has No Idea What's Difficult

I spent years mastering difficult techniques, only to discover a brutal truth: the audience cannot tell the difference between what nearly broke me and what I learned in an afternoon.

3 of 10 — 8 min read

Why Kreskin Makes Borrowed Ring Linking Into High Drama (and Most Don't)

I watched Kreskin turn a simple borrowed-ring effect into something his audience could not look away from, and it taught me more about performance than a year of practice ever did.

4 of 10 — 8 min read

The Milburn Christopher Blur: When Great Magic Becomes Invisible

I learned about a performer whose magic was so smooth and so fast that audiences literally did not realize anything had happened. It made me rethink everything about how I present my own work.

5 of 10 — 8 min read

Show the Difficulty -- In Words or Gestures

I realized that my audience would never know how hard something was unless I showed them. Not by boasting, but by building the moment with the right words and the right silence.

6 of 10 — 9 min read

The Paradox of Magic: Stronger Magic Needs Less Showmanship

I kept hearing that stronger magic needs less showmanship -- and the more I performed, the more I realized this apparent contradiction contains one of the deepest truths about performing.

7 of 10 — 9 min read

Why Everything Kreskin, Copperfield, and Blaine Do Feels 'Special'

Three performers with completely different styles, completely different audiences, and completely different methods -- yet everything they do feels like it matters. I spent months trying to figure out what they share.

8 of 10 — 8 min read

The Billiard Ball Problem: How Producing Four Balls Makes the First One Seem Easy

I watched a performer produce a billiard ball from thin air, and the audience gasped. Then he produced a second, a third, a fourth -- and by the end, nobody was gasping anymore. That pattern taught me something crucial about how repetition commoditizes wonder.

9 of 10 — 8 min read

Why You Treat Your Best Moments as Trivial (and How to Stop)

I was blowing through the most astonishing part of my show in under three seconds. The audience had no idea they were supposed to be amazed -- because I was acting like it was nothing.

10 of 10 — 8 min read

The Juggling Chainsaw Principle: Audiences Need Help Appreciating What You Do

A juggler can add a chainsaw and the audience instantly understands the danger. Magicians have no equivalent -- our audiences have no frame of reference for difficulty. Unless we teach them.