I always thought stories were decoration on top of tricks. Then I encountered the idea that stories are maps -- for navigating landscapes, for navigating life -- and I realized I had been thinking about the relationship between story and magic completely backwards.
Read MoreWe talk about magic as entertainment, as art, as puzzle-solving. We almost never talk about what stories embedded in magic can actually do for people -- the way they process difficult truths through the safe container of narrative.
Read MoreI never understood why 'once upon a time' works until I realized it is not a greeting -- it is a door. And every magic performance needs one.
Read MoreWhen I stopped presenting tricks and started wrapping them in stories, the audience's resistance didn't just decrease -- it vanished. Stories are containers, and containers make difficult things digestible.
Read MoreJoseph Campbell's mythic structure sounded impossibly grand until I realized it maps perfectly onto a simple card routine -- and the hero is not me.
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