The State of Magic in 2022

Are we rolling, we’re back baby? What does that mean? I’ve never left right, as the title suggests. This is a video about the state of magic, as i see it in 2022, a few things to talk about first off this video has been long overdue. As a lot of you know, in a recent post I went to fism, which is like the olympics of magic and filmed this.

This super long video and I had dude you guys, like just a lot of the comments really hit home with me and told me how inspired they were by the video. The fact that I was inspired by inspiration happened and it really hit home. I wasn’t kidding when I said that. I definitely want to do magic again on this channel and I mean performing, I mean teaching, I mean all the stuff before I get into doing any of that. I want to talk about how I feel about magic right now and why I think it’s important to come back and do magic on this channel all right.

I know a lot of you are out there and you have your own reasons why i should come back and do magic on this channel, but with all due respect those reasons don’t matter to me um, i have to want this right. Does that make sense? So I put out a poll recently on my youtube channel. Okay, I said quote: unquote: I’ve seen a magic trick up close in person and then yes or no 51, 000 votes and 42 percent of you voted. No 42 percent of the people who saw this post have never seen a magic trick up close in person.

If that start doesn’t blow your mind it should. It blew my mind. Well, I kind of knew this already, but it blows magicians’ minds, and this is something I really want to talk about. This ties into why I’m coming back. I firmly believe that magic is in its infancy as crazy as that sounds because it’s been a lot. It’S been around for hundreds of years and talk to any elitist magic scholar on any stupid facebook forum. They will tell you the opposite.

They will say the golden age of magic is behind us and now it’s all. This trash internet youtube, tick, tock bs! We keep seeing – and this is me telling them they are dead wrong and that their ideas are very archaic and i’m going to explain why bear with me that post that i put up. Arguably, arguably, that post has reached more people with that question than any magician who’s ever asked that question in history. Arguably, all right, you want to debate that go ahead, I’m open to seeing debates, but arguably that has reached more people so now that we have this and and by the way, a lot of the people who have seen magic.

A lot of these comments were from my uncle. When I was 10, we had a magician come to a restaurant once, which is fine. We had um my brother learned a trick and showed it to me. So a lot of i would say it’s probably closer to 45-50. 50 

And even then that’s my audience, essentially my audience. I’m a magician and I put out magic content on youtube and that’s my audience saying: they’ve never seen a trick in person.

Okay, so that’s already a biased audience. I asked an audience that you know who knows, but I’m saying, let’s call it: 50. 50. Half half the people’s magic is very much in its infancy as magicians. We often forget that, because we are exposed to so much magic, we get to see performances all the time from friends or people we go see, or students or teachers or whoever we learn from. So we often forget how rare magic is as an art form.

I like to compare magic to another art form that I hold very dear to comedy, and I would say that with magic, we are currently in the knock, knock joke phase of comedy. If that makes sense, meaning this the magician. Sorry, the comedian goes on stage, tells knock, knock, jokes and the audience is dying of laughter. They are cackling their heads off, so blown away by how funny this new thing is, and they are laughing so hard. Meanwhile, comedians in the green room are probably telling themselves what a hack this guy over here is doing knock knock jokes.

Meanwhile, the audience has never heard a knock knock joke. Can you blame them for loving it? You see where I’m going with this, audiences have not been exposed to enough magic, that’s plain and simple, and what I mean is exposed to magic. I don’t only mean the effects, I mean the methods as well. I mean to everything I mean to the art form of magic, which includes creating, which includes the process of thinking about magic, psychologically and creating things with your hands practice and all that stuff.

I think that is part of our art form. It’s part of why we love it. Why shouldn’t we share that right? Why shouldn’t we share that with the world 50 percent, the only way for magic to grow as an art form. Okay, I’m not saying the only way.

Okay, let’s put something to bed here. There are magicians right now, probably even watching this video and you’re saying Chris, how dare you teach things right? I’m going backwards in time a little bit here, but I’ve been dealing with this even recently, exposing magic to the masses deluding our art. First of all, what are you afraid of right? What are you afraid of people will think you’re, not special.

That’s beside the point. People need to see every facet of our art form to fully appreciate it. The way we appreciate it as artists as magicians, they need to see all sides now again for the elitists watching this and the guardians of the old dusty books, you’re probably saying to yourself. Well, if we give them all the methods, then they’ll know everything and magic will be dead and we can’t fool them and I won’t be loved. But to that i say you’re dead wrong, because i just went to a magic convention.

I’Ve been doing magic for close to 20 years and I’ve never been fooled so hard in my life. This coming from a guy who knows lots of methods who loves, who knows lots about magic, and reads a lot of magic books. I watched a lot of DVDs and saw a lot of magicians. I have a wealth of magic knowledge compared to most and yet, and yet I stood there astonished, bewildered in awe with an absolute feeling of wonder, how can by your definition, how can that even be possible? It shouldn’t, it shouldn’t be possible to fool me.

It shouldn’t be impossible to amaze me and yet clearly it did so. You’ve got no argument there. So what’s the other argument, what are you really afraid of? Are you afraid that you won’t be invited to parties, because people haven’t seen magic? You’re going to get a great reaction with a knock, knock joke referencing uh, my other analogy here, but you’re going to get a great reaction with a knock knock joke? If you go to parties right now, as time goes on slowly, let’s say without the internet: slowly those knock knock jokes will wear off.

It won’t be as great. I’m talking about linking rings. I’m talking about whatever you want to talk about, but over time you have to change it up. You can’t just be doing the same joke. If you’re going to do a knock, knock joke you better, you know you better ring the doorbell from time to time. All I’m saying is you gotta switch it up a little bit because people are going to be on to you and they’re just not going to find it amazing, and you can’t blame them for that.

You can’t blame the audience for that, for knowing how you did it or seeing through it. You have to evolve, you have to get better and the only way to get better is to be exposed to more of it for everyone. You see if more people hear these knock knock jokes. It forces the comedians to tell by your standards, better jokes, to change it up to evolve so step it up. You know, make magic that fools make magic.

That makes me question reality as a magician. If magic is dead, the people who are posting online aren’t to blame. It’s the people who aren’t plain and simple. I think everyone should be posting about magic because I love it so much. I think everyone should be posting about it, even if you’re bad, even if you’re good, even if your camera quality isn’t great.

Even if you flash. I think that it’s important for everyone to understand that magic is a craft and an art form, and it’s up to you the magician to take that to the next level to be creative with it, not just perform something out of the box. You can do that and sure it’ll people will still be amazed, but one day they won’t, especially at the speed and at the rate at which magic is being spread right now it will stop being amazing, and you can already see that a lot of videos, if You read the comments, i know how you did this or that or that, and the only reason they’re talking in in that way is because the video is issued out as a challenge sort of. Can i fool, you watch the card nothing’s in my hand, and it doesn’t become about anything else. There’S no art there, there’s no art, there’s no artistic direction.

There’s no artistic creativity, it’s all about showing you something to fool you or an illusion, or something cool or whatever and I’m guilty of the same, but don’t get mad when people see through it or don’t like it. People are growing wiser, like I said, especially with the rate at which magic is growing. It’s not growing fast enough for my liking. I think people should be exposed to more magic. I think 20, 30 years down the line people who go to magic shows will be able to discern good magic from bad magic, and I think they have the right to know the difference and by keeping secrets from them, just keeping them out of the loop.

Well, you’re essentially depriving them of enjoying the art form the way that you enjoy it. They should be able to choose. There’S the old quote: um that a lot of people say that magic is the uh willing suspension of disbelief, meaning you suspend your disbelief like, and i’ve heard magicians talk about this on tick tock and it’s so cringe to me to say that why don’t you just Suspend your disbelief and stop trying to look at how i did it just enjoy the art and it’s not art if they can’t enjoy it like that, it’s just you’re not doing your job. Teller added magic is the unwilling suspension of disbelief, meaning you’re forcing them to suspend their disbelief because they have no explanation for what’s happening and nothing left to observe or explain. So they just kind of let it go and in a fooling someone context that works.

But I don’t think magic is about fooling people. My definition of magic is very simple. Magic is the first time you experience something whether it’s a soap bubble, a roller coaster or a card trick. Magic is the first time, and that happens a lot in today’s day and age, especially when 50% of people haven’t seen magic up close, so that’ll be real magic to them when you perform that, which is why magic is so rare and precious and amazing. However, one day everyone will have seen magic, there’s one magician for a thousand, maybe 10 thousand comedians right now.

Eventually, that number will grow and more people will be subjected to magic um, and when that happens, something really beautiful happens. It’s it’s. You can still be amazed and astonished by magic, even if you know how things are done this guy right here and i i was sitting with a whole bunch of other magicians who’ve, been doing it for 10, 20 30 years, who were equally as astonished as i Was because when you know more about magic, you begin to develop an artistic sort of palette. You begin to refine your taste for magic, the more information you have, the pickier you can be about it, the more beautiful the art form becomes because it’s like chipping away at a stone and eventually getting a statue, you’re figuring out what this is you’re, seeing it For the first time in its most complex and yet at the same time, beautiful state, you get to appreciate it, knowing all the variables now, i’m not saying everybody who goes to a magic show will be a magician, although a lot of magicians go to magic shows. Just like a lot of comedians go to comedy shows, they’re fans, but I think the more we travel into the future, the more that is likely to be right.

This is a lot of ranting. This is a lot of ranting um. It’s just something. I had to talk about something that i’ve given a lot of thought on in the last uh well, the last few years, but especially in the last couple weeks, i wrote something down in my notes here. I’Ll read, maybe maybe maybe it’ll be better.

If i just read from my notes, magicians will often base the effectiveness of a routine on how high someone jumps or how loud they scream without asking themselves what compelled them to do that in the first place, what internal series of events was happening in that individual’s Mind that forced this unexpected emotion, i thought it was really interesting to think about that as a thought experiment, rather than just like wow, that got a lot of screams last night, but you failed to think about what made them scream. What happened to them! I believe it’s the performers duty to provide an environment that allows the audience to feel safe, safe from feeling dumb, safe from feeling insecure, but, most importantly, allows them to be vulnerable. Magic is when you create a space, a well-constructed, yet very fragile bubble, one that you can look out from if you wish, but the feeling you have from inside the bubble is much more pleasant, because within this temporary bubble exists possibilities for new experiences, you’re, essentially taking Them out for a spin, the audience isn’t supposed to think you can do magic. The audience is supposed to think that they can feel magic, they’re there to be taken out for a spin, and it’s your job to do that.

It’S not your job to be smarter than them to belittle them to even fool them. It’S your job to create that astonishment. That wonder, am I getting sidetracked? Is this okay, I’ve waited long enough? I know I just want to get that off my chest.

Uh! All this to say that I will be doing some tutorials coming up. I have a lot of things I want to teach. I have a lot of things that I’ve been working on: some effects, some routines, some slights, some thoughts as well as some other projects which just live in the realm of wonder. We’ll put it that way, still uploading puzzle stuff, because I do believe that puzzles are adjacent.

I like the methods behind puzzles, we’ll mark this. As like a turning point of uh of my content right and i don’t care about views, that’s not true. That’s why I do. I definitely care about views um, but I care about making these videos more than I care about views so I hope you guys stick around. Thanks for watching this video. If you watch it in its entirety, I really appreciate it. It’s a one-sided conversation.

So if you, if you have your own thoughts, i’d really appreciate it. If you left them down below in the comments, so i can at least get your take on it, but uh. This is coming from 20 years of thinking about this and first those from uh i’d say. Those first 12 were, say, disagree with almost everything I thought of in the first 12 years of magic. That’s crazy!

That’s crazy! I thought I had it figured out. I remember being sorry, i know i’m still ranting, but it feels good, i remember being like my glasses full. I know so much about magic from seeing some magic being performed by someone and realizing that I knew nothing, that my glass was empty and that’s when I started understanding uh magic a little bit more and I expected to have the same revelation. Perhaps in another 10 years, but who knows anyways, that’s it for me.

Thanks for watching, we’ll see you bye!